Energy (renewable and traditional): wishing doesn't make it so

The Secretary of Energy designate, Stephen Chu, is no fan of fossil fuels. He thinks they cause climate change (formerly global warming). He is a fan of renewable energy, even advocating converting solar energy into automobile fuel. But, as the title of this post says, wishing doesn't make it so.

The Wall Street Journal reports that renewable energy contributed only 6.7% of the total US energy demand in 2007, down from 7% in 1981. This in spite of the fact that renewables received almost $4.9 billion in federal subsidies in 2007 alone. Renewable energy sources are not likely to dominate the scene anytime in the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, the news regarding fossil fuels isn't reassuring either. Pemex just announced that its crude oil output fell 6.5% in November year-over-year, largely because production at its Cantarell field declined at a faster-than-expected rate. As I've noted in a previous post, Cantarell is the third-largest producing oil field in the world, and Mexico is one of our largest foreign suppliers of oil. Mexico can't even agree on how to develop the deepwater fields it is counting on to replace Cantarell. I would be surprised to see significant production from those fields within the next 10 years. Saudi Arabia's major field is half a century old, and it's production either is or soon will be declining.

What should we do? The answer is so obvious that I'm surprised there is even an issue: develop and produce our own supplies of domestic oil and natural gas. The logical place to start is the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. The oil companies already have a lot of experience and seismic data regarding formations in the western Gulf. And the extensive infrastructure already in place (particularly the subsea pipelines) can be extended to accommodate the new production. This will not solve the problem, and it may not have an impact overnight, but doing nothing is not a viable option.

Jay Currie's blog

I recently came across a blog that deals with some of the same subjects that I post on. You can find it here. His posts get down into the weeds much deeper than mine, i.e. they are longer and more detailed. If you are interested in a subject discussed on this blog, but would like to read even more about it, you might want to check out Jay Currie's blog.

Is the federal bailout working?

If you believe the answer to the question in the title is yes, please post a comment and tell me why. I have to agree with Jonah Goldberg's recent article essentially characterizing the government's response as a financial panic. See link. We've gone from TARP to CARP to an auto company bail out. And others on both sides of the aisle are claiming that we are not doing enough to aid people who can't pay for the houses they've "bought."


Big Bill Tilden, a tennis great before my time, had a simple approach to the game: "Never change a winning strategy, always change a losing strategy." But that presupposes you have a strategy. If Paulson has a strategy, other than throwing as much money as he can get his hands on against the wall, I haven't seen it. And of course, now every one has their hand out asking for federal money.

The current situation in Iraq

Charles Krauthammer has an excellent article (as usual) about recent events in Iraq here. (HT:RobinsonandLong). As he points out, in a little over two years, Iraq has been transformed from a country in a state of chaos and incipient civil war to an ally with a democratically elected parliamentary government. This week, that government ratified military and strategic-cooperation agreements with the United States. This is a remarkable turnaround and a huge setback for Iran. Iraq may yet become the Middle East's version of a shining city on the hill.

Now, to paraphrase Charlie Wilson (of "Charlie Wilson's War"), we need to make sure that we don't screw up the endgame.

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FDIC boondoggle

I read this morning that the Chairman of the FDIC, Sheila Bair, is "frustrated" by the lack of support from the current administration for her proposal to have the United States guarantee troubled mortgages. Her plan is estimated to cost somewhere between $24 billion and $70 billion and involves restructuring mortgages that home "buyers" can't pay. The plan involves restructuring the troubled mortgages with the federal government guaranteeing them . Even if the plan is enacted, the default rate on the restructured mortgages is expected to exceed 30%.

This would be a really bad joke, except that it isn't a joke. Thank God the Bush administration hasn't completely taken leave of its senses (although it has come perilously close). Obviously, if this program is enacted, the federal government will have to stay on the hook for these mortgages for 15 to 30 years. All so that people can continue to live in houses they can't afford. If the mortgage lenders foreclose on these houses, they will eventually resell them to people who can actually afford to live in them. Isn't that the way it is supposed to work? Today's article in the WSJ, , validates this argument.

Your tax dollars and government spending

The courts have a doctrine called standing to sue, which requires a plaintiff to show individual or particularized harm or impact in order to contest the legality of a government expenditure or program. Simply having paid taxes to the government is not sufficient. This is a salutary doctrine: it prevents the courts from becoming even bigger political footballs.

But it is a legal doctrine, not a political doctrine. In evaluating the desirability of governmental activity, I assume that the money being spent by the government is my tax money. Money, after all, is fungible, and it makes just as much sense to assume that the government is spending my tax dollars as to assume that it is spending somebody else's tax dollars.

Thus, I ask myself whether I want to government spending my money to [fill in the blank]. For example, do I want the government to spend my money to pay off other peoples' mortgages? Or their credit card bills? The answer is obvious: no, heck no. We bought our house the old-fashioned way -- we paid for it, over the course of many years.

Do I want the government to spend my money to bail out Ford, GM, and Chrysler? The answer may not be as obvious, but it is still no. The so-called big three automakers have avoided making tough decisions regarding labor costs, the number of dealerships they support, and the number of plants they operate (or own but don't operate) for decades. If a government bailout would resolve these issues, it might make sense. But the automobile manufacturers want a bail out so that they can continue to avoid making these hard choices. In that respect, it really would be corporate welfare: the automakers would remain uncompetitive and continue to rely on government financial support indefinitely. The only way I know of for these companies to become competitive is to go through bankruptcy reorganization. That would be painful to be sure, but it would allow for the necessary restructuring.

So the next time you think about an existing or proposed government program, assume that your money will be paying for it, because it will be. There is no government money, just money that we earn and send to the government. I try never to lose sight of that fact.

What the oil companies really do with those leases.

I have very mixed feelings about Newt Gingrich, but his Townhall article on what oil companies have to do to explore and develop their leases is superb. You can find it at townhall.com (I cannot get the link to work for some reason).

As he points out, oil companies cannot hoard their leases, because those leases expire after a specified period (usually 10 years), unless the oil company begins commercial production on them. In fact, this "use it or lose it" requirement is common in the industry, where leases are "held by production."

Moreover, the federal government does not give these leases to the oil companies as Harry Reid claims. The oil companies buy them, often paying tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars for a single lease. If they do not, or cannot, commercially produce their leased acreage, that money is a dead loss.

Gingrich also shows that a lot of "idle" acreage is anything but. Oil companies may be exploring, testing, even drilling leased acreage, but until they actually begin commercial production, that acreage is classified as idle. Of course, if a company decides that a lease is not commercially viable, the lease simply reverts to the government.

Once you know the facts, the statistics bandied about by those who oppose opening additional acreage to drilling are neither surprising nor sinister. Nor do they support the argument against allowing additional drilling.

"I'm trying to save the planet. I'm trying to save the planet."

Well, that's a relief. But frankly, I'd feel a lot better if Nancy Pelosi would allow a vote on the "trivial" issue of permitting drilling on the outer continental land shelf and other federal lands. The current high oil and gas prices, in the main, are the result of the current supply/demand imbalance. And traders in the futures market have been bidding those prices higher, because they expect that imbalance to get even worse in the future (although oil prices came down after Bush rescinded the presidential order forbidding oil exploration on the outer continental land shelf).

The point is that we can do little or nothing to affect the burgeoning demand for oil and gas in other parts of the world. Developing countries aren't going to stop growing on our account. We can, however, improve the supply side of the equation.

As for saving the planet, again, the biggest increases in the production of CO2 and other "greenhouse gases" are occurring in those same developing countries (no surprise there). If oil prices get high enough, the resulting world economic slowdown might cause world demand to slacken. But that "solution" would be both painful and temporary.

By all means, let us strive to increase efficiency and develop alternative energy sources. But we also need to increase domestic oil and gas production. Saving the planet is a longer-term project.

Global Warming redux from Powerlineblog

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The Arctic, getting warmer:

“The Arctic ocean is warming up, icebergs are growing scarcer and in some places the seals are finding the water too hot,” according to a report to the Commerce Department yesterday from US Consul Ifft, at Bergen, Norway. Reports from fishermen, seal hunters and explorers, he declared, all point to a radical change in climate conditions and hitherto unheard-of temperatures in the Arctic zone.

“Exploration expeditions report that scarcely any ice has been met with as far north as 81 degrees 29 minutes. Soundings to a depth of 3,100 meters showed the gulf stream still very warm. Great masses of ice have been replaced by moraines of earth and stones, the report continued, while at many points well-known glaciers have entirely disappeared. Very few seals and no white fish are found in the eastern Arctic, while vast shoals of herring and smelts, which have never before ventured so far north, are being encountered in the old seal fishing grounds.”

This morning's New York Times? No, the U.S. Weather Bureau, 1922.

Wind Power Redux

A report on the limitations of wind power in the United Kingdom and Europe was published in The Register last week here.

The report is discouraging. It concludes that the vagaries of wind in the UK and Europe are such that wind farms may effectively need to be structured as supplements to conventionally-powered electrical plants(gas-fired, because of the need for rapid startups). The necessary duplication makes such a system very expensive. Additionally, frequently starting up and shutting down gas-fired turbines causes excessive wear.

I take no joy from reporting this. I wish that all forms of alternative energy, especially wind and solar, were more practical. But denial is not the answer.

Obama and the Chicago gun ban

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Has anyone in the MSM asked Obama whether he believes Chicago's ban on guns is constitutional? If they have, I haven't seen it.

While the constitutionality of the District of Columbia's ban on handguns was pending before the United States Supreme Court, Obama expressed at least three different positions on the issue. At one point he said he supported DC's gun ban. Then he said that he hadn't listened to the briefs, so he didn't have an informed opinion (I read a number of the briefs in the case on the Internet, but I didn't find any in audio format). After the Supreme Court affirmed the holding of the DC Court of Appeals that the ban was unconstitutional, Obama stated that he agreed with the majority opinion. Take your pick.

Constitutional challenges to Chicago's gun ban have now been filed. Obama has lived in Chicago for over two decades, so he has to be familiar with its gun laws. And, of course, Obama claims to be a constitutional law scholar. He presumably has some opinion whether Chicago's ban violates the Second Amendment. Someone should ask him what it is.

Energy myths explored

Investors Business Daily here explores a number of energy myths in a recent editorial. Can we drill our way out of "this situation"? That depends on what "this situation" means. I don't believe that we can drill for and produce sufficient amounts of oil to meet all of our current and future needs. So we will still need to rely to some extent on "unreliable sources of oil from abroad," as Bob Hope used to say in the Texaco commercials.

But can increased domestic drilling significantly alleviate the current oil supply/demand imbalance? Absolutely. Demand for oil is increasing fastest in other parts of the world -- the Middle East, the Far East, India, and some parts of Latin America. These increases in demand are beyond our control. People in other parts of the world are not going to forego higher standards of living because they raise the worldwide price of oil and gas. Consequently, even if we aggressively pursue conservation measures in this country, world demand for oil will continue to expand.

We can, however, improve the supply-side of the equation by increasing domestic production. Yes there will be lag time before future production comes on line. But the prospect of increased future supplies can have an immediate impact on prices in the futures market (those dastardly speculators). Our only alternative is to continue to watch domestic production decline while world demand increases. Not a pleasant prospect.

Mexico's oil production continues to decline.

A three paragraph article in today's Houston Chronicle reports that Pemex has had to reduce the amount of crude oil it supplies to Texas refineries, because output at its Cantarell Field fell to an almost 12-year low in May. Cantarell is the world's third-largest oil field.

The oil reserves that Pemex is counting on to replace Cantarell's declining production are located in the deep waters in the Gulf of Mexico. Pemex is just beginning to develop these new reserves. In fact, Mexico's major political parties are still squabbling over whether to allow Pemex to contract with foreign oil field service companies to assist in developing these reserves. Don't count on any significant production coming online from these fields anytime soon. This does not bode well for the world's future supply of oil.

Taking yes for an answer in Iraq

A while ago I was watching a television show (I think it was Law & Order). The prosecutor and the defense lawyer were arguing a motion in the judge's chambers. The judge ruled for the defense, but the defense lawyer kept on arguing. Finally, exasperated, the judge turned to the defense lawyer and said: would you just take yes for an answer?

I am frequently reminded of this scene when I listen to the Left(especially Barack Obama) talking about Iraq . Before the Surge, Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Obama himself predicted that the Surge would fail, arguing that Iraq was in the grip of the civil war, and injecting additional U.S. Troops would not work. Obama also said that, if the Iraqis had not gotten their act together in five years, they probably never would, and it was time for the United States to withdraw.

Both of these positions were plausible, but they were wrong. Iraq was not in the midst of a full-blown civil war. Much of the mayhem was being caused by Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) who were, perversely, killing Muslims, Sunni and Shia alike. Once the Surge suppressed the violence, many of the Sunnis allied themselves with the Iraqi government and against AQI.

The Left responded to this development (to the extent they acknowledged it at all) by saying that they always knew that the surge would work militarily (not true), but that the Iraqis had failed to get their act together politically, so we still needed to withdraw.

But during the last 6-8 months, the Iraqi Parliament has passed a series of measures that aided reonciliation and accommodation, including a national budget that apportioned its oil revenues among various regions and factions. I could compare the performance of the Iraqi Parliament favorably with that of the US Congress during the same period, but that would be damning the Iraqi parliament with faint praise.

Moreover, Iraqi security forces have lately taken over more of the fighting. Iraqi forces led the fight to disarm or otherwise neutralize the largely-Shiite rogue militias that were threatening the country's security. This action by the al-Maliki government, itself largely composed of Shiites, helped establish its legitimacy with the Sunnis and the Kurds.

What is the left saying about Iraq now? Not much. Obama's website link still claims that the al Maliki government has made "no progress" in ending "the civil war" in Iraq and that violence in Iraq remains at unsustainable 2006 levels. The first claim is dubious at best, and the second is flat wrong.

Why doesn't Obama know what is happening in Iraq? Well he hasn't been there in over two years and he's never spoken directly with General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker. On the other hand, I've never been to Iraq or spoken with General Petraeus or Ambassador Crocker, and I seem better informed about what's happening over there than Obama. So what is going on here?

I think that Obama, like much of the Left, is in denial. Obama's strongest selling point during the Democrat primaries was that, unlike Hillary Clinton, he opposed the Iraq invasion from the start. During those primaries, Hillary liked to say that both she and Senator McCain had lifetimes of experience, and Obama had "a speech he gave in 2002." That 2002 speech trumpeted Obama's opposition to the Iraq invasion from the start.

If the Iraq invasion actually turns out to be a success, Obama's opposition to it won't look nearly as good in the general election as it did in the Democrat primaries. Simply put, Obama can't afford to admit that he may have been wrong about Iraq and that McCain was right. Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan is frequently quoted as saying that everyone has the right to their own opinion, but they don't have the right to their own facts. That observation may end up haunting Obama,if things continue to go well in Iraq.

Boumediene and the Nuremberg trials

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court held 5-4 in the Boumediene case that non-citizen enemy combatants, captured and imprisoned abroad, are entitled to access to United States courts and to petition for writ of habeas corpus. John McCain has criticized this decision; Barack Obama has applauded it.

I am not going to debate the merits of the decision here. But Barack Obama's statement over the weekend, supporting the decision, is, frankly, bizarre. Senator Obama stated that the Court's decision carries on this country's tradition exemplified by the Nuremberg trials after World War II. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The Nuremberg trials did not involve American courts or apply United States law, including our law regarding habeas corpus. The Nuremberg trials were conducted before an international military tribunal and applied international law. Supreme Court Justice Robert Jackson served as a prosecutor at the trials (the chief prosecutor I believe), not as a judge. In short, Barack Obama doesn't know what he's talking about here.

There is an understandable tendency, when a politician makes a boneheaded statement, to simply shrug and say what the heck, he (or she) is just a politician, what can you expect? But Barack Obama touts himself as a constitutional law professor (in fact he was a visiting lecturer for several years at a Chicago law school). Cass Sunstein, a well-known Professor at the University Of Chicago Law School has stated that Obama knows this stuff [constitutional law] cold, a statement that causes me to wonder about both of them.

If Barack Obama is this uninformed on a subject about which he claims expertise, I can't help but wonder about the reliability of his numerous other pronouncements on various issues.

More on the global warming debate

I am not a scientist, but John Coleman is (he is a meteorologist). And, to put it mildly, he is a global warming skeptic. His very thoughtful article on the subject is here. whatever you believe about man-made global warming, the issue is definitely not settled.

More regarding the pre-invasion view of Iraq

At National Review Online today, Andrew C. McCarthy has an excellent article entitled "Treachery," which discusses last week's majority report from the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. Mr. McCarthy is the author of the book "Willful Blindness: Memoir of Jihad." His article, link here, contains much more detail than my short post from yesterday.

Bush lied (about Iraq)? If so, he had a lot of company

Fred Hiatt, the Washington Post's editorial page director, wrote an article, which appeared in today's Houston Chronicle, entitled "Did Bush Lie? Sorry, but it's Just not that Simple." The link is here. The gist of the article is that the recent majority report of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, which claims that the Bush overstated the reliability of the intelligence regarding Iraq, in fact shows that the administration's claims were generally substantiated by available intelligence. Hiatt notes: "As you read through the report, you begin to think maybe you've mistakenly picked up the minority dissent."

The article reminds me of a site that I viewed a couple of years ago (I wish I still had the link) that showed a montage of video clips of Democrat political figures claiming in no-uncertain-terms that Saddam Hussein was a dangerous threat, that he had or was seeking to acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he could not be allowed to remain in power. The individuals I remember include Bill and Hillary Clinton, Senator John D. Rockefeller IV, the chairman of the Select Committee on Intelligence, Al Gore, and John Kerry, plus a number of other prominent Democrats whom I cannot now recall. I believe that the Hillary Clinton clip was from 2002.

In short, virtually every major elected official at the time, both Democrat and Republican, proclaimed that Saddam Hussein was an intolerable threat, who possessed or was attempting to acquire weapons of mass destruction. But somehow, it was only Bush (and perhaps Cheney) who lied. Everybody else just made an honest mistake. Some of these politicians (including Senator Rockefeller) now claim -- falsely -- that they did not have access to the relevant intelligence reports.

Look, everyone relied on the CIA's inaccurate reports that Saddam Hussein had stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction (he apparently tried to maintain programs that would allow him to produce such weapons in the future). But it's undisputed that he stockpiled roughly 100,000,000 tons of conventional munitions. Think about that: 100,000,000 tons of munitions. Does anybody really think that this guy was not a threat?

I have plenty of issues with the way the war in Iraq has been conducted. And I have plenty of criticisms of the Bush administration on other issues. But "Bush lied, and boys died" just doesn't cut it. Neither, apparently, does the report issued last Thursday by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.

Suggested reading

I usually read fiction (mysteries mostly). But every now and then I read nonfiction that more than repays the effort. During the past year, I read three books that I thought were exceptional. All three are histories or historical narratives of sorts. I will discuss them in the order in which I read them.

The Forgotten Man, by Amity Shlaes. This book recounts FDR's economic policies and concludes, as have many economists, that many of those policies actually worsened and prolonged the Great Depression. It is undisputed that the Great Depression lasted until this country entered World War II, an occurrence that FDR worked hard to bring about. There is no question that FDR's vigor and (apparent) confidence buoyed the nation's spirits. Unfortunately, many of his policies and programs proved to be economically perverse. This book, which just came out in paperback, is fascinating and informative.

Liberal Fascism, by Jonah Goldberg. This best-selling book has certainly caused a great deal of controversy. The title, itself, has raised a lot of hackles. Tellingly, a significant number of the reviewers who are critical of the book are apparently unaware that the title is actually a phrase coined by H.G. Wells in a speech that he gave at Oxford in 1932. Maybe those "reviewers" didn't bother to read the book.

Goldberg's thesis is that fascism is a form of socialism and is closely related to communism (the term "Nazi" is shorthand for National Socialism, the German Worker's Party). I learned a lot of fascinating information about the Wilson Administration that they didn't teach in school. The book also contains an extensive discussion of the early Progressive Movement both in this country and abroad (H.G. Wells was hugely influential in that movement). The book is both very readable and extensively documented.

War and Decision, by Douglas Feith. Mr. Feith was the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy during the first four years of the George W. Bush administration. He was deeply involved in the formulation of the strategies underlying the war on terror, including the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. His boss, Don Rumsfeld, wanted everything significant put in writing, so this book is very densely documented. It provides a detailed refutation of the cartoonish portrayal of the decisions made by the Bush administration presented by much of the mainstream media and antiwar politicians.

The book is not an apologia; it criticizes several of the key decisions made by the administration, especially as regards Iraq. But if you want to know why we did what we did militarily after 9/11, you should read this book.

One book I have not read and do not intend to read is What Happened by Scott McClellan. The reason is not that the book is critical of the Bush administration -- Goldberg and Feith's books contain trenchant criticisms of the Bush administration. Rather, I am not bothering to read McClellan's book, because, as far as I can tell, McClellan doesn't really know what happened.

In recent interviews, Feith has noted that McClellan was not present at any of the meetings where Bush's military and foreign policies were discussed and determined. McClellan was not on the National Security Council, and apparently did not have a high-level security clearance.

Robert Novak, in a recent column, pointed out that McClellan seems unaware that Richard Armitage at the State Department, not Karl Rove or Scooter Libby, identified Valerie Plame as a CIA employee who got her husband, Joseph Wilson, assigned to travel to Niger. In short, Scott McClellan seems clueless as to what really happened in the Bush Administration.

energy continued

Conservation

I am all for conservation; who isn't? In fact, we practice conservation as far as is practical: we use compact fluorescent light bulbs and energy-efficient appliances. Since we live in Texas, we took special pains to shop for the most energy efficient air conditioner we could find. We use ceiling and other energy-efficient fans to keep our air conditioning costs down.

When politicians talk about "conservation," they are usually referring to better gas mileage for automobiles. The gas mileage for cars and trucks has improved significantly over the past decades, but no one seems to have noticed. I don't know how much further the mileage can realistically be increased (I am not discussing hybrids here). Congress recently mandated that average mpg increase from 25 to 35 by 2020.

But even if carmakers significantly improve the mileage of vehicles that people want to buy, it will take years for the older vehicles to be replaced by the newer models. And until current vehicles are traded in for the newer, more efficient vehicles (which haven't even been developed yet), the newer vehicles will not make a significant contribution toward energy independence. I am not saying that we should not develop vehicles that are more energy efficient. I'm simply pointing out that this option also has a built-in time lag.


Alternative Energies

Like conservation, every one (including me) is in favor of developing alternative sources of energy, primarily wind and solar. If everyone is in favor of it, why do we have so little of it? The answer is that these alternative sources of energy, as they currently exist, have significant technological limitations ( and therefore economic limitations). More people and communities would utilize these sources if they made economic sense.

Wind power

Wind power is the fastest-growing source of alternative energy in Europe and the United States. Wind turbines have become significantly more efficient, mainly because they have kept getting bigger. Some modern turbines are as tall as 360 feet. Improvements in blade design and gearing have also increased efficiency.

Unfortunately, the best places to locate wind turbines are often remote areas. In order to be useful, the power has to be transported to existing power grids, and transmission lines are expensive to build and maintain. Many wind power projects that are economical based on the cost per megawatt produced become uneconomical when the cost of moving that power where it needs to go is factored in.

Also, some environmentalists have concerns about wind farms killing birds. One has called them "avian Cuisinarts." Wind turbines appear to rotate slowly, but the tips of the blades can reach speeds of 150 mph. One study conducted in California from 1994 to 1997 determined that 37% of 61 tagged Golden Eagles were killed by turbine strikes. Another study estimates that each wind turbine kills two birds per year. Wind farms can also deprive birds of habitat. It takes 2000 wind turbines to generate the same amount of electrical power as the typical coal-fired power plant. No one knows how serious these problems will become as wind farms proliferate, but some environmentalists are understandably concerned.

Solar power

Solar panels have also become significantly more cost-efficient during the last 50 years, partly because designers and manufacturers have developed thinner and thinner panels. But a solar power system for a single family residence still costs $20,000--$30,000. And there are limitations on the amount of electricity that a panel of any given size can generate.

Moreover, solar panels generate direct current, and virtually all appliances and lights in this country run on alternating current. An inverter converts the current from direct to alternating, but some power is lost in the process, and the need to include an inverter adds to the cost of the system.

Obviously, solar panels cannot generate electricity at night. So the user either needs to include a method of storing electricity (think batteries, lots of batteries) or maintain a connection to a conventional power provider, or both. Many electric utilities impose minimum monthly charges. Bottom line: solar-generating systems are often not economical. They seem to work best on small projects ( e.g. space satellites, stand-alone street signs, etc.) or larger projects like manufacturing facilities, office buildings, and possibly apartment complexes. All in all, it appears that solar power will remain niche player for the foreseeable future.

Overall conclusion

As I stated at the outset, none of these three strategies will provide us with energy independence. In fact, it is likely that all three of them together will not accomplish that goal. That certainly does not mean that these strategies are not worth pursuing, they are. Simultaneously pursuing these strategies will both increase the supply of energy and reduce the growth of demand (note that I said the growth of demand). Accomplishing these goals will make us both more prosperous and more secure. The problem is not that we lack options, but rather that we seem to lack the will to implement them.

Energy

This country has never had a coherent energy policy. It still doesn't. We are currently spending record amounts to import oil and gas (we import 60% of our oil). Some percentage of our petrodollars are going to terrorists who want to destroy us. This post will attempt to make some sense out of our hodgepodge of conflicting energy policies.

Options. This country has three primary options to deal with its dependence on foreign sources of oil and gas: 1) produce more domestic oil and gas; 2) conserve energy so that we use less oil and gas; 3) develop alternative sources of energy, e.g. wind and solar ( coal and nuclear energy are also alternative sources,, but significant parts of the population object to teach).

For unfathomable reasons, many of our politicians treat these options as mutually exclusive. Many on the left object to increased production of domestic oil and gas, insisting that the nation should pursue some combination of conservation and alternative energy sources. Politicians on the right argue for increased domestic production. Few if any of our politicians advocate a comprehensive approach employing all three options. This is unfortunate, because none of these three options by itself will solve the problem. Indeed, it is entirely possible that all three options combined will not solve the problem. But pursuing all three options gives us our best chance of success.

This post will discuss the strengths and weaknesses of each of these options in turn ( although not in elaborate detail). I take it as given that there is no practical impediment to pursuing all three options simultaneously.

Increase domestic oil and gas production. Since 1985, domestic oil production has declined by 40%. During that same period domestic oil consumption has increased by 30%. We now import over 60% of the oil we consume. The numbers are stark and undeniable.

Discussion of the domestic production option requires consideration of several distinct geographic areas: Alaska, the East and West Coasts of the United States and the Eastern Gulf of Mexico. To give you an idea of what is at stake, experts estimate that Alaska and the East and West Coasts contained 25 to 30 billion gallons of oil and 80 trillion cubic ft. of natural gas.

Let's start with Alaska, which contains two major sources of oil and gas: the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge ( ANWR), which sits on a commercially-producible reservoir of oil and the North Slope, which contains huge reserves of largely-untapped natural gas. Each needs to be discussed separately.

Environmentalists have blocked production of the huge oil reservoir lying beneath ANWR even though the proposed wells would actually be located on the western border of the Refuge. Jonah Goldberg visited the proposed drilling site and reported that it is in fact salt marsh, indistinguishable from the terrain where the Prudoe Bay production facilities are located. This decidedly un-scenic area is home to huge mosquitoes and vicious flies. Even the Caribou avoid it, because the flies lay their eggs in their nostrils.

The proposed production activity would take place during the winter, utilizing ice roads. This is not a new concept. Logging operations in the northern United States were conducted during the winter utilizing ice roads. After the thaw, logging operations stopped, and crews worked to float the logs down the river to the mill.

The wells would be slant-drilled under the Refuge. Slant drilling is also a mature technology. It has been used in Texas for decades. It is also used to produce oil in the deep waters of the Gulf of Mexico, so that as many as 50 wells can be drilled from a single production platform. Slant drilling is no riskier than straight drilling.

Simply put, the proposed production of the oil under ANWR would not despoil the Refuge and would be done using mature technologies, entailing minimal risk. Nevertheless, those opposed to producing this oil frequently make it sound as though ANWR would be strip mined if production were to go forward.

The huge amounts of natural gas that Alaska contains have not been produced for different reasons. This gas cannot be commercially produced until a new pipeline is built to transport it to market. A combination of political and economic issues has stalled construction of a new pipeline. Permits and rights-of-way would have to be obtained not only from Alaska but also from Canada ( and perhaps specific Canadian provinces), since the pipeline would necessarily extend across Canada to reach the United States.

Fortunately, it appears that the log jam may soon be broken. A major pipeline construction proposal has been made, and it may now be in the best interests of all parties involved to make it happen.

One objection to going forward with these projects is that they will not bring the oil or the gas to market for a number of years (I would estimate five to 10 years, but I am no expert). This is quite true. But these significant quantities of oil and gas will never get to market if their production has never started. And, as we shall see, the other two alternatives will also probably take years to make significant contributions to our energy independence.

The West Coast

Significant deposits of hydrocarbons are located off the West Coast of America. Politics have blocked their development. I was in Santa Barbara, and I remember looking at the offshore oil platforms. At night they were lit up, and I thought they were pretty. But even though the platforms have been in place for decades, some of them have never drilled a single well, because they could not get the necessary permits required to transport the oil to shore. This, unfortunately, is not an isolated instance. I don't know how much oil could be produced from reservoirs off the west coast, but at the rate things are going, we are never going to find out.

The East Coast

All I know about the East Coast is that, like the other areas discussed, it contains sizable deposits of oil and natural gas that are not being produced for political rather than technical or economic reasons. Given our current energy usage, not producing these reserves aggravates our problem.

The eastern Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is a prolific producer of both oil and natural gas. But for political reasons, only the western half of the Gulf has been open to exploration and production (or at least to production). The states bordering the eastern Gulf, primarily Florida, have blocked production in the waters off their shores.

I understand that tourism is a huge business in Florida, and it wants to protect its beaches and coastal waters from the possibility of pollution. But we have a national energy problem, and the production of relatively inexpensive and politically stable hydrocarbons is being blocked by local concerns. We have been drilling in the Gulf of Mexico for decades, and there have been very few oil spills. Four thousand platforms were in the Gulf of Mexico when Hurricanes Katrina and Rita struck, and there was not a single significant spill.

Conclusion

Seventy five percent of the world's oil reserves are government-owned. This adds significant political risk (think Venezuela) to the technological and economic risks inherent in exploring for introducing oil and gas. Can we really afford to allow the not-in-my-backyard syndrome to limit our domestic production of oil and gas?



Robert Samuelson wrote an excellent article on this topic several weeks agohere.

(to be continued)

Excellent article re global warming

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Charles Krauthammer has an excellent article regarding the global warming debate here.

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I started this blog because of the shortage of intelligent analysis of and commentary in the main stream media ("MSM") on critical political, cultural, and environmental issues facing us today. To be sure, there is no shortage of commentary on these issues in the MSM. But an appalling amount of this commentary displays little or no thought or analysis. I do not expect this blog to change the world--the internet already has innumerable incisive blogs, but, hopefully, it will improve the quality of the debate about important issues facing us.








The first issue to discuss is referred to variously as global warming or climate change. Important questions regarding this issue are not being asked,at least in the MSM, and, therefore, are not being properly considered. This and some of the following posts may be longer than traditionally found on blogs. That is because they will attempt a fairly in-depth discussion of the issues that need to be considered.

Is the Earth getting warmer?

I assume it is, because it has been getting warmer literally for thousands of years. I have no reason to believe that this very long-term trend has stopped.

What has caused this long-term warming trend? Theories abound, but no one really knows. The important point, however, is that no one claims that man's activities contributed to this warming trend until the second half of the last century. So the important question is not whether the planet is warming, but rather whether man's activities are now contributing to or accelerating this pre-existing but naturally-occurring warming trend.

Are human activities causing the Earth to warm?

Many scientists -- but by no means all -- contend that our activities are contributing to global warming. Simply put, the theory is that "greenhouse gases," primarily CO2, emitted by burning fossil fuels, either trap heat or create heat in the Earth's atmosphere.

This theory is certainly plausible. But there are scant historical data to support it. To be fair, it would be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to demonstrate that human activity over the last 60 years has altered a trend that has been in place for 10,000 plus years. Some scientists contend that the measurable effects of these activities will only be felt in the future after these greenhouse gases have built up to higher levels. Nevertheless, I would contend that there are little or no historical data to support the theory of man-made global warming.

Not that proponents of man-made global warming haven't striven mightily to find support in the historical data. Scientists have attempted to measure the Earth's temperature over the past thousands of years. These efforts are not very exact -- one can only do so much with tree rings and ice and sediment cores. The initial study showed that the Earth's temperature varied significantly, both warming and cooling, without input from humans.

Proponents of man-made global warming then reanalyzed the data and claimed to have found the "hockey stick" pattern, demonstrating that the Earth's temperature started rising significantly in the second half of the 20th century. Subsequent reviews of this analysis, however, have apparently discredited this purported hockey stick pattern. So we are back to a pattern of data that show significant changes in the Earth's temperature that no one contends were caused or influenced by human activity.

But let's assume that human activity is increasing the rate of global warming. We then must ask:

How much is human activity adding to the long-term secular warming trend?

The estimates of the actual effect of human activity on the Earth's temperature are all over the lot and have quite large margins of error. Consequently, it is nearly-impossible to determine the size of the problem, or if it even creates a meaningful problem.

Why then does Al Gore and some reputable scientists shrilly warn that we are facing a crisis of near-apocalyptic proportions? Because they want us to change the way we live; they want us to reduce our use of fossil fuels and generate energy from renewable sources, e.g. wind and solar. This post will not discuss the feasibility of doing this. Rather, it will discuss that Magic talisman of the left, the Kyoto treaty.

Assuming that man-made global warming presents a real problem, does the Kyoto treaty provide a real solution?

The short answer is no. The treaty does not affect the major developing countries, most significantly India and China. Those countries are significantly increasing their use of fossil fuels as their economies expand and the standard of living of their people improves. To give just one example, China is currently opening a new coal-burning electrical-generating plant on the average of one every seven days (I saw one article saying they are opening a new electrical plant at the rate of one per day, but I distrust this number). In addition, as people become more affluent, they are trading in their bicycles for automobiles, which of course run on fossil fuels.

This is the reason that the United States Senate passed a resolution by a vote of 95-0 stating that it would refuse to ratify the Kyoto treaty if it were submitted to it in its current form. Obviously, the chances of the Kyoto treaty obtaining the two-thirds vote in the Senate necessary to ratify it are remote. Even Senator John McCain, who has become a recent convert to the doctrine of man-made global warming has stated that he would not support any scheme to reduce "greenhouse" emissions that did not include China and India.

CONCLUSION

Man-made global warming may be real, it may be serious, though neither proposition has been established. Even if these propositions are true, however, the Kyoto treaty clearly is not the solution. I don't have a solution ( I'm still not convinced there's a problem to solve). But until we start analyzing and discussing these issues realistically, nothing truly useful is going to occur.