Nantucket NIMBYs* Mocked On “The Daily Show”

Ra-ther!

Haven’t you been warned?

Now, this is “The Daily Show,” and their satire is relatively benign.  It makes fun of the rich, some of whom happen to be environmentalists or Kennedys.  But what it only glancingly hits is the destructive hypocrisy on display.  Why should a farming community or a rural town put up with the admitted blight of a wind farm if the these people won’t put up with the minimal intrusion of Cape Wind?

Are we serious about global warming or not?  Seems like too many advocates are more focused on trying to convince the bitter-enders that the phenomenon is real (see this week’s Newsweek cover), and not focused enough on pushing past the special-interest opposition to getting vital projects like Cape Wind built.

*NIMBY = Not In My Back Yard

A Sticky Week for Writing

Tempers are flaring everywhere I go, and even a simple non-athletic feat like washing the dishes or walking the dog can get me sweating enough to where I have to throw my clothes into the ever-growing pile in the laundry hamper.

Everywhere around me, people are on vacation. It’s not like living in Martha’s Vineyard, but Southern California is one of those places where working people coexist with people who are off the clock, temporarily or permanently. Since I work from home most of the time, and live not too far from the beach, it’s more pronounced. Take my dog for a walk at, say 11 a.m., and there’s a guy about my age all dolled up in colorful spandex sitting on a bike. Vacation? Early retirement? He couldn’t be unemployed. Nobody’s unemployed these days, supposedly, except by choice.

But I also have friends and family who are off and want to do things. When I was unemployed — or as I like to call it, “exiled” — I partly justified my existence by becoming the unofficial recreational planner for stressed-out friends and relatives. It almost seemed like I could take it up as a full-time gig: “C’mon. Relax. Go to the beach.” “You think I should?” “Hey, look where being a workaholic got me!”

Anyway…it’s one of those sticky summers we get occasionally. Hot sometimes, humid always. Today in the South Bay, the temperature is 73 degrees, but the humidity is 66 percent. Over in St. Louis, center of a big heat wave, it’s 97 degrees, but only 38 percent humidity. Up in Boston, it’s 76, but with 80 percent humidity. Awful, but we’re not much better. We Southern Californians typically don’t complain about weather, though. That would look ungrateful.

Could this be a signal of global climate change? Could be, but if so, the pattern began more than 20 years ago. I remember a summer in the mid-1980s as the first sticky one in memory, when whipped cream puffs of clouds hung over the region, the coastal waters were hot and subject to algae blooms. It seemed very weird, even ominous. We still talked about nuclear war back then, and for some reason that summer felt like the final days before apocalypse. Unlike this summer, I remember that one never gave us an afternoon breeze. The waves didn’t crash on the shore — they shuffled their feet and fell to their knees.

Now I get it. The weather has changed in some way. We get dealt a humid summer out here once every four or five years, and 2007 we got stuck with one.

Anyway, so I’ve not been writing here much because it’s so sticky that my mind is stuck, and because so many people around me are either on vacation, in a bad mood or both…but I’ve got a few things in the works. So stay tuned. Or come back after your vacation.

Tired Earth*

Not too long ago, having a celebrity at your environmental press conference was a sure way to attract the cameras and spread the word. Luckily, most of the celebs who agreed to appear were walk-the-walk types, like Ed Begley, Jr. You wouldn’t invite anyone who wasn’t serious about it. Begley would bicycle all the way from the Valley to Santa Monica to stand up for Heal the Bay or the Coalition for Clean Air. If someone had taken a satellite photo of his home, it would have embarassed neither him nor his cause. And he was never sanctimonious.

Now, the celeb phase of the environmental movement has achieved its absurd apotheosis and badly needs to be shut down. Billed as a massive teach-in on climate change, the Live Earth concerts were, politically, a train wreck. From Rasmussen Reports, a polling site:

The Live Earth concert promoted by former Vice President Al Gore received plenty of media coverage and hype, but most Americans tuned out. Just 22% said they followed news stories about the concert Somewhat or Very Closely. Seventy-five percent (75%) did not follow coverage of the event.

By way of comparison, eight-in-ten voters routinely said they were following news coverage of the recent Senate debate over immigration. Fifty-four percent (54%) said they followed news coverage of the President’s decision to commute Scooter Libby’s sentence.

Skepticism about the participants may have been a factor in creating this low level of interest. Most Americans (52%) believe the performers take part in such events because it is good for their image. Only 24% say the celebrities really believe in the cause while another 24% are not sure. One rock star who apparently shared that view is Matt Bellamy of the band Muse. Earlier in the week, he jokingly referred to Live Earth as “private jets for climate change.”

Only 34% believe that events like Live Earth actually help the cause they are intended to serve. Forty-one percent (41%) disagree. Those figures include 10% who believe the events are Very Helpful and 20% who say they are Not at All Helfpul. Adding to the skepticism, an earlier survey found that just 24% of Americans consider Al Gore an expert on Global Warming.

Given a choice of four major issues before the United States today, 36% named the war in Iraq as most important. Twenty-five percent (25%) named immigration, 20% selected the economy and only 12% thought Global Warming was the top issue.

Whatever needs to happen next to bring about a reversal of man-made global warming, that goal is now farther away, thanks to Al Gore, Madonna, Leo DiCaprio and the global concerteers, who only managed to persuade the public they received some personal benefit from their association with the issue. Neither the celebrities nor the event organizers never answered the question of their basic hypocrisy. In a TMZ/Defamer/Murdoch world, of course we’re all going to find out how much energy the movement’s stars use, how many times they fly in private jets, tour demands completely at odds with their stated positions, huge stock positions in companies that pollute the most, and the vast amounts of energy burned and pollution released by the concerts themselves.

Gore and the celebrities complain about the tabloidization of the news, and are especially bitter if the snark gets in the way of their unselfish efforts to, you know, change the world. But an intriguing NY Times Magazine piece about a neurological disorder called Williams Syndrome and its implications for understanding why the human brain evolved the way it did, contains a profound nugget of insight into why celebrities hurt the causes they seek to help, unless they’re willing to be more like Ed Begley, Jr., and less like the people we saw on those concert stages Saturday.

Bear with me, it will all make sense:

Robin Dunbar, an evolutionary psychologist and social-brain theorist, and others have documented correlations between brain size and social-group size in many primate species. The bigger an animal’s typical group size (20 or so for macaques, for instance, 50 or so for chimps), the larger the percentage of brain devoted to neocortex, the thin but critical outer layer that accounts for most of a primate’s cognitive abilities. In most mammals the neocortex accounts for 30 percent to 40 percent of brain volume. In the highly social primates it occupies about 50 percent to 65 percent. In humans, it’s 80 percent.

According to Dunbar, no such strong correlation exists between neocortex size and tasks like hunting, navigating or creating shelter. Understanding one another, it seems, is our greatest cognitive challenge. And the only way humans could handle groups of more than 50, Dunbar suggests, was to learn how to talk.

“The conventional view,” Dunbar notes in his book “Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language,” “is that language evolved to enable males to do things like coordinate hunts more effectively. . . . I am suggesting that language evolved to allow us to gossip.”

Dunbar’s assertion about the origin of language is controversial. But you needn’t agree with it to see that talk provides a far more powerful and efficient way to exchange social information than grooming does. In the social-brain theory’s broad definition, gossip means any conversation about social relationships: who did what to whom, who is what to whom, at every level, from family to work or school group to global politics. Defined this way, gossip accounts for about two-thirds of our conversation. All this yakking — murmured asides in the kitchen, gripefests in the office coffee room — yields vital data about changing alliances; shocking machinations; new, wished-for and missed opportunities; falling kings and rising stars; dangerous rivals and potential friends. These conversations tell us too what our gossipmates think about it all, and about us, all of which is crucial to maintaining our own alliances.

For we are all gossiped about, constantly evaluated by two criteria: Whether we can contribute, and whether we can be trusted. This reflects what Ralph Adolphs, a social neuroscientist at the California Institute of Technology, calls the “complex and dynamic interplay between two opposing factors: on the one hand, groups can provide better security from predators, better mate choice and more reliable food; on the other hand, mates and food are available also to competitors from within the group.” You’re part of a team, but you’re competing with team members. Your teammates hope you’ll contribute skills and intergroup competitive spirit — without, however, offering too much competition within the group, or at least not cheating when you do. So, even if they like you, they constantly assess your trustworthiness. They know you can’t afford not to compete, and they worry you might do it sneakily.

The sentence I emphasized suggests why a global TV event featuring movie stars and pop-music performers might be just about the worst way to convey environmental information — or in fact, any important political message. In the very same global village Live Earth sought to educate, we are consumed with gossip about the stars who pretend to teach us–the truth about how they live as opposed to what they want us to hear and believe.

Stars attract attention, but the audience’s relationship with them is complex. We’re suspicious of their motives, don’t completely buy their idealism, and are on the lookout for hypocrisy — which this group of stars gave us by the carload. The media doesn’t create this; it’s human nature.

That is why the “carbon offset” concept is not working and should be dumped forthwith. All it does is emphasize that rich entertainers can’t bear to sacrifice and will buy their way out of living their lives in anything remotely resembling the fashion the rest of us must do. It destroys any possibility of consensus on dealing with climate change.

Climate change is a scientific issue. It raises complex issues for governments. Individuals can’t do very much about it, but they are avidly interested in considering viable solutions offered by experts. Of course, we might want to know something about those experts to determine if they’re trustworthy, but we wouldn’t be bombarded on a daily basis with stories about their incredibly opulent lives. Instead, the focus would be where it belongs, on the points of debate leading toward a political solution that, one would hope, would make a difference in earth’s environment.

Ironically, in “the entertainment capitol of the world,” there was no Live Earth concert. Just Mayor Villaraigosa, Begley, produce Lawrence Bender and a few supporting-actor types from TV like Daphne Zuniga and Sharon Lawrence, turning on some lights that made City Hall look green. I was glad the mayor mentioned that “Los Angeles recycles more than any other metropolitan city.” Hurray for the Bureau of Sanitation!

*Edited, 7/9/07

We’ve Got Global Warming Right Where We Want It

First, former Vice President Al Gore goes to Congress, winning converts to the cause of reversing man-made global warming, and support for his proposal to cap U.S. emissions of carbon dioxide at current levels, and begin cutting them back by 90 percent over the next 43 years.  The political trend gets noticed:

As Gore concedes, he is more salesman than scientist. But most scientists acknowledge that he is absolutely right on the fundamentals: Humans are artificially warming the world, the risks of inaction are great, the time frame for action is growing short and meaningful cuts in emissions will happen only if the United States takes the lead. An increasing number of business leaders and politicians outside Washington are moving his way.

Congress is paying attention to this shift. Representative Henry Waxman of California has signed up 127 co-sponsors for a very tough bill he proposed last week that seeks to reduce U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by midcentury, which is close to what Gore wants. When you consider that Gore and President Bill Clinton could not find five senators willing to ratify the far more modest 1997 Kyoto treaty – which called for a mere 7 percent reduction below 1990 levels, with no further reductions scheduled after 2012 – you get some idea of how far the debate has come.

But then, project-by-project, in states across the country, viable ways to actually achieve these kinds of cuts get blocked.  From today’s LA Times:

In a blustery stretch of desert two hours east of Los Angeles, where many of the world’s first power-producing windmills were built, a plan for more turbines has triggered a backlash that echoes a national debate over the merits of wind energy.

A proposal to build about 50 windmills next to Santa Rosa and San Jacinto Mountains National Monument has aroused passions in a region already dotted with 3,000 windmills, with opponents charging that the wind energy industry has neither delivered the promised power nor spared the environment.

The industry, which was born in California, now has projects in 40 states and $8 billion in investments over the last two years, according to the American Wind Energy Assn.

Supporters say wind power has come of age and will help slow global warming, while critics contend that it has delivered only a quarter of its promised energy, proved lethal to wildlife and, in the view of many residents, blighted the landscape.

Around the country, Internet blogs and anti-wind energy websites hum with angry postings about projects on picturesque ridgelines, seascapes and farmlands from New England to Texas.

Politicians and celebrities have weighed in. Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and his Nantucket Island neighbors have so far successfully fought installation of offshore turbines.

Their opposition, in turn, has prompted criticism that rich liberals are all for alternative power providing it doesn’t mar their views.

So, are we serious about global warming or not?  Wind power is not perfect. But locations like San Gorgonio Pass, where the wind blows constantly, are inherently scarce.  We don’t have the luxury of ruling these sites off-limits, even when there is some other environmental impact.  Local politics should not drive how the pros and cons are weighed.

If we were serious about global warming, there would be a national policy to encourage development of wind projects in locations where there is the highest potential to exploit it for baseline power. Perhaps we should require environmental impact reports for each site — with the burden of proof being shifted to advocates of the no-build option.

I know that Gore and Waxman probably see the coming battles to be about conservation, green industries, solar power incentives, etc.   And certainly that’s going to be part of it.  But a properly located wind energy site is one of the few alternative-energy methods now available that is even close to being cost-competitive with burning fossil fuels.  Shouldn’t we be looking there first? 

Also, why isn’t there more discussion of hydro power?  According to this site, there are 80,000 dams in the U.S.  Only 2,400 of them generate electricity.  Wikipedia’s entry on hydroelectricity articulate the case against the energy source.  But what about installing turbines in existing dams?  If the dams are already built, what’s the incremental environmental damage from doing that?

Gore needs to shift his salesmanship toward selling solutions. Rep. Waxman is following the old Clean Air Act model of setting high standards and forcing local areas to meet them or else face lawsuits and federal sanctions.  That’s great if your purpose is to grandstand against enemies of the environment.  But I’d prefer we try to depoliticize this issue, acknowledge (which Gore does) that it won’t be easy, and stop creating binds for ourselves by simultaneously pursuing two competing environmental goals.  In San Gorgonio, in Cape Cod and elsewhere, we need to make tough choices.

If’ we’re really serious.  

Was Al Gore Abused as a Candidate?

Although the post is more than six months old, a lively little discussion erupted underneath my item chiding former VP Al Gore for using a private jet on his promotional tour for “An Inconvenient Truth.”  Someone who signed his comments “algoredotorg” and has a website called Drafting Gore claimed here that during the 2000 campaign, the news media “was incredibly biased against Gore (moreso than any candidate in modern history)…” 

The sub-amateur historian in me didn’t recognize this as a political statement but as a historical claim with little basis; so I went on to list all the victims of media bias who ran for president since 1960.  (Interestingly, in many cases, the media showed unfairness to both candidates, which some news media spokesperson like to claim is proof of their objectivity.  It could also be proof that they are consistent horse’s asses.  You decide.) 

Anyway, being somewhat of an Internet Pangloss, I didn’t really see what “algoredotorg” was really trying to do.  This was not about comparing views of history.  This was about creating an alternate history of the 2000 election.  It’s a campaign.  Salon.com pundit Joe Conason gives it full expression on Salon.com:

The same press corps that once snarled for his blood is now smooching his boots — an implicit apology that might be gratifying to the former future president, if only he were still naive enough to value their esteem.

The sudden fashion for favorable comment won’t influence any thoughtful American’s opinion of Gore, but it should remind us of the dismal media performance that did such a terrible disservice to him and to the nation. Although Gore himself certainly deserves a measure of blame for the catastrophic conclusion of the 2000 presidential election and the events that led up to it, his hateful treatment by the press slanted the campaign against him from the beginning.    

Conason puts Gore on notice:  If Gore decides to run for president, the smooching will stop.  Like my commenter, Conason links to a Daily Howler piece that cites the many mean things pundits said about Gore in the past — the same pundits who like him now and are seemingly encouraging him to join the campaign.  He quotes ominously a statement from ABC’s The Note:

“Basically, the political press wants to tempt Al Gore into the race, and then they will destroy him as a flip-flopping, exaggerating, stiff loser. And Gore knows this.”

I dunno, Joe…that sounded kind of like a joke to me.

If Gore is too sensitive to take the media pounding that all presidential candidates get, then Conason’s right — he should stay out.  It’s like a star ballplayer deciding whether to play in New York or Kansas City.  If he doesn’t like being called out on the back of a tabloid in type face other cities’ newspapers save for presidential assassinations, don’t play in New York. 

But I’ve never heard Gore himself whine about his press coverage in 2000.  Gore is an odd fellow, like most politicians, and the press likes to join in the fun of making fun of public figures’ peculiar qualities.  I think Conason, the Daily Howler and “algoredotcom” do their friend Gore a disservice by making it seem as if harsh press coverage caused Gore’s defeat (or un-selection).   There are plenty of candidates who got terrible press and went on to win the presidency, including the current occupant of the White House.  Of presidents in my memory, I don’t think any of them won because the press was biased in their favor.

Gore lost in 2000 because he ran a bad campaign.  He is getting adulation now mostly because he is being so blunt about the cause that means the most to him, climate change.  It’s pretty clear now that he’s felt the way he feels about global warming since the early 1990s.  But he didn’t talk about it in 1999-2000 because his advisors didn’t think environment as an issue would be decisive.  And maybe it wasn’t – but Gore’s lack of passion was.  He campaigned on focus-grouped issues he didn’t give a shit about, and it showed.  The meme that Gore had to hire a feminist writer to teach him how to be an “alpha male” stuck because, by the time that happened, Gore had already made an impression on the electorate as a guy who didn’t know who he was.

Nobody could possibly say that now.  He is unleashed as an anti-war, pro-environment progressive.  His credentials and experience in economic and foreign policy would make him acceptable to moderates in ways that Barack Obama can’t be.  Gore is far from perfect, and those meanies in the media will continue to pick on his flaws (like the blatant hypocrisy about his personal energy use).  But now, it doesn’t seem to bother him.  He’s grown a layer of Teflon. 

He’s no longer the “old person’s idea of what a young person should be like” – the rap on him back when he first tried to run for president in 1988.  This month, he’ll turn 59.  He’s already won the gravitas primary, which I believe will prove to be the most important aspect of the 2008 contest — and is the big advantage Rudy Guiliani or John McCain would bring to the GOP ticket. 

I think a Gore/Obama ticket is the only sure winner available to the Democratic party in 2008.  A ticket headed by any of the three major announced candidates — Clinton, Obama or Edwards — would have to get a lot of breaks to win.  Gore is, by far, the best messenger for what the Democratic Party is about now, and because of his long experience, he can crowd out feckless characters like Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid, whose dithering has slid the party backward since last November’s win.  It would be good for the country, and great for the Democratic Party, if Gore decided to run.

So I say to his fans and defenders:  Stop being such wimps about the media!  You’re wrong about 2000, but even if you were right, it’s the wrong thing to be talking about.  Don’t talk about Florida either.  If Gore was robbed or if he wasn’t, it doesn’t matter now.  Gore-as-victim is a loser.  Gore is a leader now; stop babying him.  

Green Topsy Turvy

You will find this post from Treehugger.com startling, especially in light of the fresh round of attacks on Al Gore’s lifestyle. 

(Didn’t I warn people that the disconnect between Gore’s preachings and Gore’s sense of entitlement might blow up? Now environmentalists who live nothing like Gore are defending his energy gluttony with the same craven language that Communist sympathizers used 40 years ago to justify the palaces of the nomenklatura.) 

Anyway, back to Treehugger, a site about “mak(ing) sustainability mainstream”…

…is it possible that George Bush is a secret Green? Evidently his Crawford Winter White House has 25,000 gallons of rainwater storage, gray water collection from sinks and showers for irrigation, passive solar, geothermal heating and cooling.

And you will find the comments a riot of invective coming from both sides.  Like this one here:

Oh come on PEOPLE!!! What, do you think GWB chose the stone, geothermal system, rainwater harvesting system, and insisted on the southern orientation of the main windows? PUHLEASE!!! He happened to have a halfway enlightened architect who designed a house that pleased him aesthetically and happened to also have these features as a side note. This is what celebs and people of stature do: hire those who can make them look good in one way or another.

GWB doesn’t have a friggin clue, other than he can tell his friends how green ONE of his homes is.

Followed by this one:

Why does he need a clue? He hired someone who did. That counts too.

All I can say is, bring on more news like this!  (Or like this!)  

The left-right blogosphere divide is so 2006.  I want everyone who believes all that is good resides on their side and all that is evil and dishonest on the other to experience sudden and repeated attacks of vertigo that call their worldview into question. Today’s as good a day to start as any.

Environmentalists shouldn’t worry about any of this.  It’s a sign, maybe, that more people are taking environmentalism and global warming seriously.  Americans are not ideologues by nature.  They are questioners.  The embrace of environmental consciousness will mean many smart people of good faith will come to different conclusions as to what constitutes sustainability or good policy.  It won’t be dictated from above.

What’s So Funny ‘Bout Lightbulbs and Global Warming…?*

A year ago, I called attention to a British environmental activist’s campaign to ban the incandescent light bulb.  “Ban the Bulb” had a simplicity and elegance to it that appealed to this exiled PR man’s sense of how to communicate the imperatives of global warming. 

I’m not into finger-wagging on climate change, or attaching blame.  I’m into solutions, the less bothersome the better.  Getting people to switch to a source of lighting that uses dramatically less energy and thus is much cheaper over its lifespan makes more sense to me than 1,000 Al Gore “Inconvenient Truth” spinoffs or Arianna Huffington autograph sessions.

Just as I expected, a U.S. political leader has embraced the idea, and wouldn’t you know it, it’s a Californian, Assemblyman Lloyd Levine.  From the press release on his website:

“Incandescent light bulbs were first developed almost 125 years ago, and since that time they have undergone no major modifications,” Assemblymember Levine said. “Meanwhile, they remain incredibly inefficient, converting only about five percent of the energy they receive into light. It’s time to take a step forward – energy-efficient bulbs are easy to use, require less electricity to do the same job, cut greenhouse gas emissions, and save consumers money.”

According to the Rocky Mountain Institute (RMI), a nonprofit organization that focuses on energy policy, replacing a 75-watt incandescent light bulb with a 20-watt compact fluorescent would result in the same amount of light but would save 1,300 pounds of carbon dioxide and save customers $55 over the life of the bulb (while the life of one 75-watt incandescent bulb is roughly 750 hours, the life of a compact fluorescent is a whopping 10,000 hours). Meanwhile, incandescent bulbs use 750 kWh over 10,000 hours, while compact fluorescents use only 180 kWh.

Well, I hope Assemblyman Levine didn’t count on getting a lot of support for this idea based on my advocacy.  This idea is getting the California nuts and flakes treatment from some quarters.  Ann Althouse:

This is a California idea. If I lived there and faced this ban, I’d buy my lightbulbs in another state. It’s just too horrible to live in such an ugly glare. People who have no aesthetic sense don’t understand how a limit like this affects people. I’d be happy to make up for it by turning off more lights or using dimmers.

Why don’t you ban air conditioning?

Glenn Reynolds:

I’m quite interested in compact fluorescents — I’ve installed quite a few in my house, and I’ve been experimenting to see which ones suck (most of them) and which ones are okay. But banning incandescents? That’s just silly.

Now a ban on private jets? Much less intrusive, and there’s lots of reason to think that this sort of thing has gotten out of hand. Flying commercial — you can even fly First Class if you want — is a small sacrifice for our business and political and entertainment leaders to pay in order to fight the scourge of global warming. Plus, who knows, if the “jet set” starts flying commercial again, maybe commercial flying will get better . . . .

Certainly, Reynolds has a point about private jets — I’ve made the same point.  And, I get it that some compact-fluorescents are ugly, or flicker like office flourescents, and for some people can trigger migraines.  But let’s chill out here. Levine’s talking about 2012. If, as Reynolds says, there are some that are “okay,” why is it so hard to imagine further developments in the next five years to give consumers more good choices? It simply beggars common sense that the only alternative to a 125-year-old wasteful technology is an “ugly glare.”

Besides, the likelihood of Levine’s proposal becoming law anytime soon is nonexistent.  It’s a publicity stunt — the good kind of publicity stunt, one that educates people and stimulates a more informed debate.  Maybe it will sell more energy-saving bulbs.  Maybe it will cause people to turn off lights when they aren’t using them.  Maybe we’ll figure out a tax incentive to accomplish the same thing.  The debate has to start somewhere.  

Right now, I hate all the rhetoric about global warming. It’s so apocalyptic, on both sides.  Let’s get down to the nitty gritty.  Assume there is at least a good chance there is man-made climate change.  Assume there is an opportunity to mitigate it through a reduction in pollution from greenhouse gases.  Look for the most cost-effective, least economically damaging ways to attain those reductions. Push the technology, fund the research.  Make things happen. 

Maybe the seas will rise.  Or maybe future scientists will conclude the panic was silly.  We can’t know the future.  But we can make changes.  Levine’s proposal is a practical contribution, and I’d like to see more of them.  

*Update:  Just noticed that Glenn Reynolds has a new post up about compact flourescents. As he finds more bulbs that give off a satisfactory glow, his tone shifts.  Given his huge readership and his reputation as a small-l libertarian, he’s doing a lot of good.  Obviously, a guy like him will never endorse a bill that mandates a change in the market — he calls regulatory intervention the “hair-shirt approach.”  But Glenn’s talking as if Levine’s bill has a prayer.  It doesn’t. 

Reynolds and Levine, together, are educating people based on their respective positions in the intellectual firmament.  I’m sure Levine’s proposal got a lot of liberals and environmentalists to say, oops, why haven’t I made the switch?  If they’re interested in a non-tree-hugging consumer’s evaluation, they can turn to Reynolds.  Blogecology at its finest.

Wal-Mart’s Compact-Flourescent Push

This story, and the new Wal-Mart policy concerning energy conservation it describes, undoubtedly has heads exploding all over Washington, D.C.  On the one hand, good for Wal-Mart to set an ambitous goal to overcome public resistance to a proven technology that will cut energy used for lighting by 75 percent.  On the other hand, this is Wal-Mart, and they do good things the same way they do bad things — like a two-ton gorilla:

In September 2005, (CEO H. Lee Scott Jr.) and Andy Ruben, Wal-Mart’s vice president for strategy and sustainability, drove 6,000 feet to the Mount Washington Observatory in New Hampshire with Steve Hamburg, an environmental studies professor at Brown University, and Fred Krupp, the president of the advocacy group Environmental Defense.

At the summit, where scientists measure climate change 24 hours a day, the men discussed global warming, acid rain, the hole in the ozone layer and what Wal-Mart could do about them.

“You need to look at what is being sold on the shelf,” Mr. Hamburg recalled telling Mr. Scott over a dinner of turkey and mashed potatoes. He began talking excitedly about compact fluorescent bulbs. “Very few products,” he said, “are such a clear winner” for consumers and the environment.

Soon after returning from the trip, Wal-Mart publicly embraced the bulbs with the zealotry of a convert. In meetings with suppliers, buyers for the chain laid out their plans: lower prices, expanding the shelf space dedicated to them and heavily promoting the technology.

Light-bulb manufacturers, who sell millions of incandescent lights at Wal-Mart, immediately expressed reservations. In a December 2005 meeting with executives from General Electric, Wal-Mart’s largest bulb supplier, “the message from G.E. was, ‘Don’t go too fast. We have all these plants that produce traditional bulbs,’ ” said one person involved with the issue, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of an agreement not to speak publicly about the negotiations.

The response from the Wal-Mart buyer was blunt, this person said. “We are going there,” the buyer said. “You decide if you are coming with us.”

In the end, as Wal-Mart suppliers generally do, the bulb makers decided to come with the company.

Philips, despite protests from packaging designers, agreed to change the name of its compact fluorescent bulbs from “Marathon” to “energy saver.” To keep up with swelling orders from the chain, Osram Sylvania took to flying entire planeloads of compact fluorescent bulbs from Asia to the United States.

“When Wal-Mart sets its mind to something with a narrow objective like that, they are going to make it happen,” said Jim Jubb, vice president for consumer product sales at Sylvania.

Last February, I wrote this post about “Ban the Bulb,” founded by Dr. Matt Prescott, who asked, sensibly:

If we cannot deny ourselves incandescent light bulbs, which would require minimal sacrifice, how are we ever going to do the really difficult things such as cutting our reliance on fossil fuels, buying smaller cars or reducing our use of finite natural resources?

“Ban the Bulb” seems to approve of Wal-Mart’s policies, but bemoans the fact that the giant discounter dismissed the idea of supporting a ban on energy-wasting incandescent bulbs as “too radical.”

Even if Wal Mart doesn’t want to be too radical, perhaps it could consider the implementation of programme which would allow it to phase out the sale of incandescents over the next 10 years…

This would clearly be a lot easier than tackling the carbon emissions associated with its supply chains, stores, shoppers and distribution network, and would allow the barriers to beneficial change to be seriously tackled.

Dinosaurs: Hard to Kill

It took a lot more than just one meteor slamming into Mexico to wipe out the big lizards, it turns out:

There’s growing evidence that the dinosaurs and most their contemporaries were not wiped out by the famed Chicxulub meteor impact, according to a paleontologist who says multiple meteor impacts, massive volcanism in India, and climate changes culminated in the end of the Cretaceous Period.

The Chicxulub impact may, in fact, have been the lesser and earlier of a series of meteors and volcanic eruptions that pounded life on Earth for more than 500,000 years, say Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller and her collaborators Thierry Adatte from the University of Neuchatel, Switzerland, and Zsolt Berner and Doris Stueben from Karlsruhe University in Germany. A final, much larger and still unidentified impact 65.5 million years ago appears to have been the last straw, exterminating two thirds of all species in one of the largest mass extinction events in the history of life. It’s that impact — not Chicxulub — which left the famous extraterrestrial iridium layer found in rocks worldwide that marks the impact that finally ended the Age of Reptiles.

“The Chicxulub impact could not have caused the mass extinction,” says Princeton University paleontologist Gerta Keller, “because this impact predates the mass extinction and apparently didn’t cause any extinctions.”

The climate changes, caused in part by greenhouse gases released from “prolonged and massive eruptions” of the Deccan Flood Basalts in India, were pretty extreme: Oceans 3 or 4 degrees warmer, and land temperatures 7 or 8 degrees warmer, 20,000 years before, and 100,000 years after, the Chicxulub meteor struck. Marine life was affected by growing smaller and reproducing more offspring — to increase the odds for survival. Tropical species were on the edge of extinction. Then there was another huge meteor impact, comparable to the first. Where did that meteor strike? Scientists don’t know, although some are suggesting a 500-kilometer-wide crater in India might be a remnant of it.

An Inconvenient Truth…but a Very Convenient Travel Schedule

What is it about the most prominent environmental activists? Especially those who speak out on climate change? Why do they need private planes? And so much air conditioning?

I realize this op-ed was written by someone who is hostile to liberals, so it’s fine to take it with a grain of sea salt. Maybe everything he says about Al Gore is a pack of lies, although I’ve yet to hear anyone refute it:

For someone who says the sky is falling, (Gore) does very little. He says he recycles and drives a hybrid. And he claims he uses renewable energy credits to offset the pollution he produces when using a private jet to promote his film. (In reality, Paramount Classics, the film’s distributor, pays this.)

Public records reveal that as Gore lectures Americans on excessive consumption, he and his wife Tipper live in two properties: a 10,000-square-foot, 20-room, eight-bathroom home in Nashville, and a 4,000-square-foot home in Arlington, Va. (He also has a third home in Carthage, Tenn.) For someone rallying the planet to pursue a path of extreme personal sacrifice, Gore requires little from himself.

Then there is the troubling matter of his energy use. In the Washington, D.C., area, utility companies offer wind energy as an alternative to traditional energy. In Nashville, similar programs exist. Utility customers must simply pay a few extra pennies per kilowatt hour, and they can continue living their carbon-neutral lifestyles knowing that they are supporting wind energy. Plenty of businesses and institutions have signed up. Even the Bush administration is using green energy for some federal office buildings, as are thousands of area residents.

But according to public records, there is no evidence that Gore has signed up to use green energy in either of his large residences. When contacted Wednesday, Gore’s office confirmed as much but said the Gores were looking into making the switch at both homes. Talk about inconvenient truths.

Eco-celebrities’ use of private planes was chided a bit more gently in this editorial in today’s LA Times:

In Hollywood, carbon offsets are the successor to the Prius: the hippest way for stars to flaunt their conspicuous non-consumption. Pearl Jam and the Foo Fighters offset tour emissions by protecting forests. Leonardo DiCaprio, Cameron Diaz and Brad Pitt invested in trees too. The producers of “Syriana” got into the act. This year’s Super Bowl was “carbon-neutral” — and so was the World Cup.

But why let the famous people have all the fun? Regular folks can buy carbon offsets too, using any of a number of Internet-based calculators to measure their own carbon footprints and purchase affordable mini-offsets, which might run anywhere from $30 to a few hundred dollars. Some websites will even send a decal or sticker suitable for the bumper of a Prius. Or Hummer, as the case may be.

It’s a nice idea, as far as it goes — a little consciousness-raising can be a good thing, and it certainly doesn’t hurt to get more windmills spinning on the grid. But as some environmentalists have noted, this kind of do-gooder consumerism doesn’t necessarily achieve an overall net reduction of greenhouse gas emissions (which is, after all, the ultimate goal).

That will take regulatory oversight and global coordination. Not to mention a dose of real sacrifice from all of us — including those of us who live in 15,000-square-foot estates in Beverly Hills and travel in private jets.

Unless you are travelling to extremely remote places, private planes are utterly dispensible. If you’re doing a PR tour to launch a movie in major metropolitan markets, you can probably get there on a commercial flight.

It seems bizarre to have to explain this, but in case Arianna Huffington, Al Gore or Cameron Diaz are reading: Commercial flights are like mass transit, except in the air. The idea is, for the same amount of fuel (and pollution) that your private plane uses to get you, your make-up artist, your flack and other members of your entourage from LAX to JFK, a commercial carrier can take hundreds of people!

“B-b-but what about carbon offsets? I’m cool if I use those, right?”

Well, as the LA Times says, yeah, I suppose, technically. But how about this idea? Calculate how much carbon offset you would have to buy if you took your private plane, and go buy it. Then, take a commercial flight anyway. That way, you haven’t just evened the score — you’ve actually made a difference.

More importantly, global warming skeptics won’t be able to dismiss your cause by pointing out what a big hypocrite you are.

Hear me now and believe me later: Celebrities who claim environmental leadership but take private planes hurt the environment. They hurt it. I’ll say it again: You’re hurting the environment. You might as well just vote for Republicans. You might as well be in a secret meeting with Dick Cheney. You might as well be BP, spending millions on the “beyond petroleum” PR campaign while skimping on Alaska pipeline inspections. You make the real environmentalists, the men and women who work for grassroots organizations for low wages, look foolish.

If you just have to take private planes, if First Class just isn’t first-class enough for you, that’s okay. There are plenty of other good causes to choose from. But stay away from the environment.

Now don’t get me started on the stars with multiple residences who keep all of them air conditioned like meat lockers….

Not-So-Tiny Bubbles and Global Warming: News from UCSB

A team of UC Santa Barbara scientists went diving one day in 2002 in an area of the Santa Barbara Channel called Shane Seep, when the earth did something alarmingly rude, though not unexpected.

She belched — a “massive blowout of methane,” that “sounded like a freight train,” as Science Blog relates the story.

“Other people have reported this type of methane blowout, but no one has ever checked the numbers until now,” said Ira Leifer, lead author and an associate researcher with UCSB’s Marine Science Institute. “Ours is the first set of numbers associated with a seep blowout.” Leifer was in a research boat on the surface at the time of the blowouts.

Aside from underwater measurements, a nearby meteorological station measured the methane “cloud” that emerged as being approximately 5,000 cubic feet, or equal to the volume of the entire first floor of a two-bedroom house. The research team also had a small plane in place, flown by the California Department of Conservation, shooting video of the event from the air.

Leifer explained that when this type of blowout event occurs, virtually all the gas from the seeps escapes into the atmosphere, unlike the emission of small bubbles from the ocean floor, which partially, or mostly, dissolve in the ocean water. Transporting this methane to the atmosphere affects climate, according to the researchers. The methane blowout that the UCSB team witnessed reached the sea surface 60 feet above in just seven seconds. This was clear because the divers injected green food dye into the rising bubble plume.

Atmospheric methane is 20 times more potent than carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas, and is the most abundant organic compound in the atmosphere. The ocean floor’s release of trapped methane hydrate — a form of ice that contains a large amount of methane within its crystal structure — in bubble form is both a symptom and a cause of global warming, according to UCSB geological science professor James Kennett’s theory.

When ocean temperatures rise, the methane releases are more likely to occur in the form of blowouts, like the one UCSB’s researchers saw. Those bubbles make a marked difference in the quantity of methane in the atmosphere, “thereby initiating a feedback cycle of abrupt atmospheric warming.”

Studies of seabed seep features suggest such events are common in the area of the Coal Oil Point seep field and very likely occur elsewhere.The authors explain that these results show that an important piece of the global climate puzzle may be explained by understanding bubble-plume processes during blowout events. The next important step is to measure the frequency and magnitude of these events. The UCSB seep group is working toward this goal through the development of a long-term, seep observatory in active seep areas.

(Not to make light of this disturbing news, but there is a bright side. Here’s one big blowout in Santa Barbara that can’t be blamed on Wendy McCaw.)

Catching an Ancient Raindrop

They were after gold, these miners who shot streams of water through a cannon against Sierra Nevada mountain faces, cracking them open in hopes that treasure would spill out. Armed with these hydraulic hammers, miners could blast away “half a mountain in a few minutes,” according to a historian of the Gold Rush era. It was the kind of environmental assault that a fever for wealth often would inspire during this country’s first two centuries.

The crushing blows from the water cannons exposed soil and rock from the Eocene era — 40 to 50 million years ago. Embedded in those minerals are ancient raindrops. A team of geological researchers from Stanford University conducted chemical analysis of those raindrops, and concluded that the mammoth granite mountain range that cradles Yosemite Valley is much, much older than commonly believed.

From Science Blog:

(I)n a study published in the July 7 edition of the journal Science, Chamberlain and Stanford colleagues Andreas Mulch and Stephan A. Graham present strong evidence that the Sierra Nevada range has stood tall–7,200 feet (2,200 meters) or higher–for at least 40 million years.

“An elevation profile drawn across the northern Sierra Nevada 40 to 50 million years ago would not look much different than today’s profile,” said Graham, the Welton Joseph and Maud L’Anphere Crook Professor of Applied Earth Science at Stanford.

“Those mountains probably have persisted since the Mesozoic Era–more than 65 million years ago–until today,” Chamberlain added. Back then, according to many scientists, California was split by an ancient subduction zone–a region of constant geologic upheaval, where a plunging oceanic tectonic plate continuously pushed the continental North American plate higher and higher to create the Sierra Nevada range.

This version of events is in sharp conflict with the “recent uplift” scenario, which argues that the Sierra rose from sea level to 7,200 feet about 3 million to 5 million years ago after an enormous block of the Earth’s crust broke off and fell into the mantle. According to this hypothesis, the crust was then replaced by hot, buoyant mantle material that eventually raised the mountains. Although the Science study found no evidence to support this scenario, data revealed that a modest uplift of 1,100 to 2,000 feet (350 to 600 meters) did occur as recently as 3 million years ago.

How do you catch an “ancient raindrop?” How do you get that raindrop to tell you its secrets?

(T)he scientists used an increasingly popular research tool that combines geology and chemistry to create a record of prehistoric rainfall patterns dating back millions of years. This technique relies on the fact that in nature, hydrogen and other atoms occur in different sizes called isotopes. Deuterium, for example, is a slightly heavier form of hydrogen, and drops of rainwater that contain deuterium isotopes often fall at lower elevations.

“If you have a cloud coming in and dropping out water, as it climbs the mountain its preference is to first drop the heavy water that’s rich in deuterium,” Chamberlain said. “As you go up in elevation, the raindrops become lighter and lighter. Therefore, the rainwater becomes gradually depleted of deuterium the higher up the mountain range it falls.”

Over time, some raindrops are incorporated into molecules of clay and other minerals that form on the ground. These clays provide scientists with a geologic record of ancient precipitation, which can then be compared with samples of modern precipitation collected at the same altitude. If the comparison reveals similar isotopic ratios, then the elevation of the mountain must have been similar in ancient and modern times.

The Stanford researchers believe the crest of the Sierras was once the western edge of the Great Basin of Nevada and Utah — before it was a basin. It was a large plateau that “basically collapsed,” according to Chamberlain.

Can the study of ancient raindrops help us understand global climate patterns? Yes, and that’s one reason why the Stanford team is engaged in this research. To model future climate change, Chamberlain says,

“There are basically six large mountain ranges climatologists need to know the history of–western North America, the Himalayas, Antarctica, Greenland, the spine down Africa and the Andes,” Chamberlain noted. “To get an idea of what’s going to happen if carbon dioxide levels double in the future, you’d have to go back 20 or 30 million years in time. If you knew what the topography of these six mountain ranges was then, you could include that in your computer models and see how they respond when you double the carbon dioxide.”

Global Temperatures, Political Temperaments

The Washington Post’s Robert Samuelson is getting slagged all over the blogosphere for saying this:

From 2003 to 2050, the world’s population is projected to grow from 6.4 billion people to 9.1 billion, a 42 percent increase. If energy use per person and technology remain the same, total energy use and greenhouse gas emissions (mainly, carbon dioxide) will be 42 percent higher in 2050. But that’s too low, because societies that grow richer use more energy. Unless we condemn the world’s poor to their present poverty — and freeze everyone else’s living standards — we need economic growth. With modest growth, energy use and greenhouse emissions more than double by 2050.

Just keeping annual greenhouse gas emissions constant means that the world must somehow offset these huge increases. There are two ways: Improve energy efficiency, or shift to energy sources with lower (or no) greenhouse emissions. Intuitively, you sense this is tough. China, for example, builds about one coal-fired power plant a week. Now a new report from the International Energy Agency in Paris shows all the difficulties (the population, economic growth and energy projections cited above come from the report).

The IEA report assumes that existing technologies are rapidly improved and deployed. Vehicle fuel efficiency increases by 40 percent. In electricity generation, the share for coal (the fuel with the most greenhouse gases) shrinks from about 40 percent to about 25 percent — and much carbon dioxide is captured before going into the atmosphere. Little is captured today. Nuclear energy increases. So do “renewables” (wind, solar, biomass, geothermal); their share of global electricity output rises from 2 percent now to about 15 percent.

Some of these changes seem heroic. They would require tough government regulation, continued technological gains and public acceptance of higher fuel prices. Never mind. Having postulated a crash energy diet, the IEA simulates five scenarios with differing rates of technological change. In each, greenhouse emissions in 2050 are higher than today. The increases vary from 6 percent to 27 percent.

…and for concluding this:

The trouble with the global warming debate is that it has become a moral crusade when it’s really an engineering problem. The inconvenient truth is that if we don’t solve the engineering problem, we’re helpless.

Among the many responses to Samuelson’s argument, there was this from Charlie Cray on Huffington Post:

If Global Warming teaches us anything, it is that as a public policy tool we need a new type of economic way of thinking. Otherwise economics will become increasingly irrelevant to the facts as they exist. Key to this is the economists’ blind devotion to growth: Just as growth at all costs was the culture of corporations like Enron, so in living systems it is the ideology of the cancer cell. In a world of limits, it is a destructive paradigm.

Therefore, pretending that global warming is merely an “engineering problem” is to ignore the failure of economics to address the systemic causes in the structure of the economy. I agree with Samuelson’s that we have to address global warming as an engineering problem, but it’s much more than that. The problem is unlikely to be solved merely by a series of drop-in technologies, like Thorium-powered nukes. That’s just a convenient excuse to dodge these dicier political questions about the structure of our economy and the significant consequences of its failure to account for the common good.

So I ask myself, of two possible solutions to global warming, which is more likely to actually occur? A solution to “an engineering problem?” Or addressing “these dicier political questions about the structure of our economy?” Cray goes on:

Global Warming is the great challenge to this generation of Americans, just as the challenge for the last one was the defeat of communism. Our ability to develop a renewed sense of collective security — a security that is almost fractal — i.e. replicable at the local and global levels — will require us to toss out the old ideas of unity around national purpose at the expense of local health and global citizenship — i.e. the enterprise of war.

This is a big challenge. One that we have yet to even define very well. And one that will require all of us — economists as well as everyone else — to be courageous enough to take strong action and stretch our imaginations much further than we have so far.

I would have to agree with Cray that “we” have yet to “define very well” what he’s proposing. The comparison with the “defeat of communism” suggests he’s looking for an overthrow of the current economic system. Here’s the difference: When communism was overthrown, there was another model ready to be plugged in — the economic philosophy of the victorious side in the Cold War, democratic capitalism. Looking ahead, if — in the name of preventing a global environmental catastrophe — we overthrow the “old ideas” about the necessity of economic growth without knowing how we’ll replace them, how can we be sure the next system will work any better at limiting CO2 emissions?

I don’t see why an intelligent person can’t embrace both Al Gore’s sense of mission to wake up Americans and the world to the dire potential consequences of global warming, and Robert Samuelson’s search for technological answers. Why must we take on the additional mega-challenge of developing an entirely new economic system, especially when no one can tell us what it will look like? This is a test that intellectual, political and economic elites have failed in the past, and there are lots of reasons to lack confidence in those who occupy elite positions now.

One of Cray’s commenters, “runninute,” hits the nail on the head. (He’s a better thinker than speller):

China and India are not part of Kyoto. That doesn’t mean they haven’t signed up yet (they have) it means that Kyoto places no restrictions on their emission of greenhouse gases. How can expect to reverse greenhouse effects if the two largest populated nations with fast-growing economies do not have to participate in reversing the effects of man? It is for this major oversight that the US , Russia, and Britain refused to sign the Kyoto treaty. If China and India had been covered, the US government pledged to follow the guidelines. Wouldn’t that be fair?

Should we ignore Kytoto and other nations (third world or otherwise) and take independent action while we lobby others to join us? Yes. And we are doing this. However, we have a large group of environmentalists that oppose US initiatives at every turn. They files lawsuits to halt construction of wind farms, solar farms, nuclearl power plants, geothermal power plants, hydro-electric power plants and tidal power generation. They halt construction of plants that produce materials for use in “alternative energy” (such as solar cell plants which can’t be built in the US because of environmental protection laws and so must be built overseas).

Where is Al Gore on alternative energy? He has opposed nuclear energy, but he hugs Kennedy who shut down wind farms off Nantucket. Al kisses up to the environmental groups who shut down wind farms in California and Nebraska. Al makes speeches to groups who closed hydro-electric power plants and who opposed new plants. So what alternative energy are we to use?

Don’t tell me fuel cells or electric cars (EV1). Those technologies require generation of electricity to make them operate (you need electricity to get hydrogen and you need electricity for your EV1). We have to construct power plants in order to use those “emmission-free” technologies. Problem is, the electrical generation plants that make the technologies possible burn fossil fuels and there is a net energy loss due to entropy and the law of thermodynamics (ask a physicist).

Can we conserve more? Yes. Can we use less? Yes. All of these require increased costs and less public choice. We can say “you can’t have an SUV and all cars must get 80 mpg and carry only 2 people”, but is that the decision we want to make? Do we want to restrict choice in that manner? We could all live in “honycomb” houses (large high-rises that recirculate energy and are build out of materials that are energy efficient) which would save energy. We could restrict floor space to 300 sq ft per person. But do we want to place such limits on ourselves and limit choice to that degree? We could turn out street lights and advertising after 10 PM and put curfews of 11 PM on people to conserve energy, but are we willing to restrict individual decision-making to that degree?

Bureaucrats at Kyoto came up with a politically unsustainable solution to global warming. Environmental groups take internally contradictory positions that both push and retard the growth of alternative energy. There is a romantic element to all political elites, right and left, who think the answer to everything can be found in the beauty of their philosophy. The flip side of that romanticism is that “compromise” becomes a dirty word.

The attraction of Robert Samuelson-style “engineering solutions” is they are ideology-neutral. Go ahead, Charlie Cray, work up a blueprint of a new economic system, and then we can put it up for a vote. But in the meantime, Al Gore and others say we can’t delay acting on global warming. Is your new economic system going to be ready first, or will a new technological/engineering fix?

My bet is on technology. That doesn’t make me the enemy of the planet.

Solar Power Meets Nanotechnology at Caltech

Cal-Tech and BP Solar will collaborate on a project to deploy nanotechnology to provide cheaper and more efficient solar energy. From a joint press release:

For an initial five-year period, researchers at Caltech and BP will explore a method of growing silicon by creating arrays of nanorods rather than by casting ingots and cutting wafers, which is the current conventional way of producing silicon for solar cells. Nanorods are small cylinders of silicon that can be 100 times smaller than a human hair and would be tightly packed in an array like bristles in a brush.

A solar cell made up of an array of nanorods will be able to efficiently absorb light along the length of the rods while also collecting the electricity generated by sunlight more efficiently than a conventional solar cell.

The Caltech solar nanorod program will be directed by Nate Lewis, the George L. Argyros Professor and professor of chemistry, and Harry Atwater, the Howard Hughes Professor and professor of applied physics and materials science. In addition, eight postdoctoral researchers and graduate students will work on the project.

“Nanotechnology can offer new and unique ways to make solar-cell materials that are cheaper yet could perform nearly as well as conventional materials,” says Lewis, an expert in surface chemistry and photochemistry.

Lewis’s group will investigate uses of nanotechnology to create designer solar-cell materials, from nanorods to nanowires, in order to change the conventional paradigm for solar-cell materials.

“Using nanorods as the active elements opens up very new approaches to design and low-cost fabrication of high-performance solar cells,” adds Atwater, an expert in electronic and optoelectronic materials and devices.

I’ve been joking with friends lately that the solutions to global warming are going to come from nanotechnology. But it looks like I might’ve been right!

Just on an intuitive level, look at it this way. All energy systems operate inefficiently to some degree. Some of that inefficiency translates into pollution. Inefficiency also stands in the way of conservation.

Nanotechnology, in particular molecular manufacturing, has the potential to produce products at a minuscule fraction of the energy required to make those products today. (Look at this video for a sense of what the molecular manufacturing gurus think is coming in the next 20 years or so.) Or, assuming we continue to rely on fossil fuels, nanotechnology could be used to filter out greenhouse gases at power plants, trapping them for disposal. It can also be used to greatly reduce the inefficiency of transferring energy from its natural source into its end use — by changing, say, the molecular structure of what we use to transmit energy.

Some potential exists, perhaps, for nanotechnology to be applied directly to reducing the existing, dangerously high levels of carbon dioxide in Earth’s atmosphere. Many scientists believe we are already “past the point of no return” to avoid the dramatic effects of global warming — that in fact we are already seeing them.

If so, it won’t be enough to cut future emissions, even at dramatic levels, although it is no less vital that we do so. The logical consequences of such a view is that we need to focus more attention on getting carbon dioxide that is in the air now, stripped out of the air. Nanotechnology would surely play a role in this admittedly outlandish idea, because of the large amounts of energy required. But wouldn’t it be just too elegant if the Caltech/BP research project resulted in an applicable solar solution to the energy needs of an air-stripping project?

I don’t want to sound like P.T. Barnum or Jimmy Swaggert about all this. Nanotechnology sounds many alarm bells, even among its advocates. For all its potential to shift our economy away from its reliance on high-energy manufacturing, this magic genie poses a host of other environmental, economic and global security threats. But it often surprises me how low on the news media’s radar screen the march of nanotechnology appears.

For example, the story at the start of this post about Caltech, a major local university, and BP, the successor-by-acquisition to LA’s own Arco? Big news here, here, here, and here. But in Caltech’s hometown media? This story in the LA Times, buried on the bottom of page 2 of the Business section. Nothing in the Daily News. Nothing in the Pasadena Star News.  Nothing in the San Diego Union Tribune, in the city where the announcement was made.  From what I can tell, both Caltech and BP Solar put out a news release on this yesterday, and paid PR Newswire to distribute it. The editors saw it and said “ehh.”

But there was lots and lots of room for this. Nothing like Hooters, puppies and an outbreak of prudish hypocrisy to distract our media from what we used to call news. Maybe Caltech should talk to Hooters about setting up a foundation for global warming research.

(I’ll run a pilot program right here. I’ll tag this post “Hooters” (along with the more appropriate tags) and see how many extra hits I get.)

Mush From the Wimps*

"Mush from the Wimp" refers to a famous journalistic gaffe — a headline placed atop a Boston Globe editorial about President Jimmy Carter's 1980 economic plan, which was supposed to be replaced with "All Must Share the Burden."

What made this episode funny and memorable was that the editorial was supposed to be an endorsement of Carter's plan. The accidental headline gave up the game. The Globe's editorial board didn't think the Carter plan was any good, but they felt compelled to instruct their poor readers to support it.

The public intuitively recognizes there is a gap today between what supporters of a politician or political party really think and the elaborate bows of fealty to political correctness that they make in public. In my opinion, it's the key reason why both Republican and Democratic approval ratings are so low right now. People don't sense that the parties and their standard-bearers are committed to the things they claim to stand for.

In this morning's New York Times, columnist David Brooks gives a clue as to why this gap has grown so large. (You'll have to either buy the paper, pay the Times for its TimesSelect service, or trust me, because I can't link to it.) Brooks suggests that if the legacy parties didn't exist, our politics would be divided between a party of "populist nationalism," (PN) and a party of "progressive globalism" (PG)

Per Brooks, the PNs stand for: America and Americans first; conservative social values; generous social welfare; universal health care; and closed borders. They are against the war in Iraq, for the wall to keep illegal aliens out, against outsourcing, and against gay marriage.

The PGs stand for: Free markets and free trade; liberal social values; an aggressive but multilateral interventionist policy in foreign affairs; reform of entitlements. They are for the war in Iraq, against continued oil dependence, for strong international institutions, against restrictive immigration policies, and for a woman's right to choose.

The PNs are suspicious of all elites: Government, corporate and cultural. The PGs are suspicious of populists who think they can create an America that is militarily, economically and culturally a fortress.

Brooks' realignment isn't so neat and tidy in the real world, but it has a ring of truth. If nothing else, it explains why all our politicians, from George W. Bush, to Hillary Clinton, to John Kerry, to John McCain, all sound like mushy wimps nowadays, as they try to straddle both the PG and PN camps.

I saw Al Gore on Larry King the other night. He was there to discuss his global warming documentary, but then Larry reminded him of the famous debate on his program, in which Gore defended NAFTA against Ross Perot — and did it so effectively that Perot was discredited and NAFTA was passed.

This trip down memory lane made Gore palpably nervous. Free trade, a PG issue, is highly controversial among Democrats now. Gore might want Democratic votes again someday, and the pro-free-trade contingent is a distinct minority. (Global warming is also a PG issue, but that's partly because no one's seen a price tag yet.)

But this kind of thing happens all the time. A couple of weeks ago, the Bush Administration was supposedly pushing for a constitutional amendment to ban gay marriage, a classic PN issue–and an issue PGs tend to dismiss. The vote was timed to coincide with several primary elections, including California's. Everyone knew it was going to lose. Bush spoke up for it on his Saturday radio speech, which no one listens to.

And, according to Newsweek, Bush wasn't entirely sincere:

Though Bush himself has publicly embraced the amendment, he never seemed to care enough to press the matter. One of his old friends told NEWSWEEK that same-sex marriage barely registers on the president's moral radar. "I think it was purely political. I don't think he gives a s–t about it. He never talks about this stuff," said the friend, who requested anonymity to discuss his private conversations with Bush.

(snip)

Whatever Bush's motivation, his actions aren't likely to quiet his critics. (Southern Baptist leader Richard) Land says he's happy Bush is speaking out, but he'd like to see signs of real commitment to the issue. "We know what a full-court press looks like when we see one," Land says.

Bush needed anti-gay marriage voters to get elected in 2000 and 2004, and he'll need them again to maintain Republican congressional majorities in 2006. But, for Bush, the significance of a GOP majority is to maintain support for the war in Iraq.  This unpopular war draws most of its remaining support from PG's, who are acutely sensitive to the global consequences of failure in Iraq, not PN's, who believe secure borders are the key to winning the war on terror, not  planting democracy in faraway countries. It's an arbitrary–and perhaps temporary–thing that the pro-war and anti-gay-marriage constituencies are in the same political party.

Bush is a little more open about his PG position on illegal immigration. The press has identified a split in Bush's party between the globalists and the nationalists on that issue. The Democrats, however, are also split on illegal immigration. Democratic PGs recoil at the idea of a wall between America and Mexico, and the cultural intolerance that such a wall implies. But many key Democratic voters are PNs, especially labor union members and African Americans, who tend to be less tolerant of this flood of workers willing to work for low wages.

On the war, on immigration, on social issues like gay marriage and abortion, both parties oversee constituencies that are divided on the hottest issues. As the parties zig and zag to please these different interest groups, more and more Americans are just letting go of politics altogether, and pressing for their goals in places where they don't hear mush: Churches, union halls, the streets, talk radio–and the Internet.

Joe Trippi and others have pointed out that, because of the Internet, the barriers to creating new political organizations to replace the existing parties are falling. Trippi sees the evolution of a "unity" party that transcends partisanship. But that idea–a third party "above politics"–might even be too traditional (see Perot, and in 1980, John Anderson). The coming realignment might happen more quickly and dramatically than anyone predicts, and it might divide us even more.

*Revised, 6/15/06, 3:30 p.m., 10:30 p.m.

They Call it Issue Advertising. We Call it Boob Bait.

If you live in Washington D.C., you might want to check in on the Competitive Enterprise Institute. They've been saying some strange things lately. Maybe someone up there took the wrong medication.

The CEI has started a new issue advertising campaign to counter former Vice President Gore's global warming documentary, "An Inconvenient Truth." I'm not opposed to the energy industry or the business community having its say on global warming. The scientific consensus that the earth is getting warmer doesn't answer all, or even most, of the policy questions this "inconvenient truth" poses. We need a robust, informed conversation about it.

Based on the CEI's ad campaign, however, I have to assume industry fears this conversation and wants only to derail it.

"Carbon Dioxide. They call it pollution. We call it life," has to be the most embarassing tagline I've seen since the "Join the Coffee Achievers" campaign celebrating caffeine overdose.

The two ads carrying the CEI slogan, which you can see here, attempt to bolster their challenge to the science of global warming by saying, essentially, that carbon dioxide should not be considered a pollutant, since we breathe it.

Out. We breathe it out. For us and our fellow animals, carbon dioxide is a waste product. Using the CEI's logic, we're wasting an awful lot of money on sewer systems, since the stuff that runs through those things is also, uh, natural. Plants use carbon dioxide. Plants use poop, too. But that doesn't mean we should all go s***ting in the forest like we used to.

Anyway, the theory of global warming doesn't equate carbon dioxide with smog. It's all about how earth's climate — which geological history shows to be inherently unstable already — is being transformed by the heat-trapping effect of excessive carbon dioxide.

Who are these ads for? Until now, I always thought of CEI as a conservative, free-market think tank, a respectable vehicle for scholars of that persuasion. No more. These disgraceful ads are "boob bait for the bubbas" of the right.

Zero Tolerance for Anti-Wind Energy NIMBYism

Has it only been a couple of years since environmental groups wrestled states and public utilities into making commitments to significant boosts in renewable power?

When notoriously conservative utilities said yes, it was largely because their experts were telling them that wind-energy was becoming viable and cost-competitive. Now, the environmental community is very excited about wind power projects — excited about killing them off, I mean.

From Anne Applebaum's column in Wednesday's Washington Post:

Already, activists and real estate developers have stalled projects across Pennsylvania, West Virginia and New York. In Western Maryland, a proposal to build wind turbines alongside a coal mine, on a heavily logged mountaintop next to a transmission line, has just been nixed by state officials who called it too environmentally damaging. Along the coast of Nantucket, Mass. — the only sufficiently shallow spot on the New England coast — a coalition of anti-wind groups and summer homeowners, among them the Kennedy family, also seems set to block Cape Wind, a planned offshore wind farm. Their well-funded lobbying last month won them the attentions of Rep. Don Young (R-Alaska), who, though normally an advocate of a state's right to its own resources, has made an exception for Massachusetts and helped pass an amendment designed to kill the project altogether.

The brand-name environmental groups seem fearful of taking on well-funded local anti-wind energy organizations that are systematically destroying the potential of an energy source that is the very definition of renewable. The environmental community needs to change course. Their credibility is at stake. The environmental community earned its way to the adults' table in making energy policy, but there's still a high-chair open at the baby table; and that's where they're headed if this nonsense doesn't stop.

Capturing energy from renewable sources will be land-intensive. There are a limited number of suitable areas. Wind power needs to be harvested where it's windy. Solar power needs access to the sun. Geothermal power is here and there, but not everywhere. To secure and distribute enough of this energy to replace fossil fuels at the percentages contemplated in Renewable Portfolio Standards will require building structures that most would deem less attractive than, say, a rustic old bridge or a weeping willow tree.

But if you want to seriously tackle the oil economy and make a dent in global warming — get over it, and let them build windmills.

Talk About Zen P.R.!**

I know I was going to shut up for most of April, but this is too interesting to overlook:

At first glance, the video looks like a typical 30-second car commercial: a shiny sport utility vehicle careers down a country road lined with sunflower fields, jaunty music playing in the background.

Then, white lettering appears on the screen: "$70 to fill up the tank, which will last less than 400 miles. Chevy Tahoe."

The commercial is the product of one of the advertising industry's latest trends: user-generated advertising. On March 13, Chevrolet introduced a Web site allowing visitors to take existing video clips and music, insert their own words and create a customized 30-second commercial for the 2007 Chevrolet Tahoe.

In theory, the company was hoping that visitors to its Web site would e-mail their own videos around the Web, generating interest for the Tahoe through what is known as viral marketing. By the measure of Chevrolet Tahoe videos circulating the blogosphere and the video-hosting Web sites like YouTube, that goal was achieved. But the videos that were circulated most widely like the commercial that attacked the S.U.V. for its gas mileage, may not be what Chevrolet had in mind.

Nor was the ad using a sweeping view of the Tahoe driving through a desert. "Our planet's oil is almost gone," it said. "You don't need G.P.S. to see where this road leads."

Youtube.com is full of examples of these user-generated Chevy Tahoe ads that attack the whole idea of Chevy Tahoes as responsible for global warming or imminent oil shortages. But they're not all environmental lectures. This one takes a Freudian perspective on the whole notion of conspicuous consumption, as does this one, albeit more crudely.

A couple of months ago, I wrote a post about the potential for a Maybelline cosmetics site to be hijacked by those who hated the product. It appeared to me that the Maybelline people had probably accounted for that possibility, and figured that since negative comments were going to be made anyway, why hide from them? Chevrolet's advertisers have apparently come to the same conclusion, according to the New York Times:

A spokeswoman for Chevrolet, Melisa Tezanos, said the company did not plan to shut down the anti-S.U.V. ads.

"We anticipated that there would be critical submissions," Ms. Tezanos said. "You do turn over your brand to the public, and we knew that we were going to get some bad with the good. But it's part of playing in this space."

Drew Neisser, the president and chief executive at Renegade Marketing, a New York agency specializing in nontraditional marketing that is part of Dentsu, said companies had such a strong desire for user-generated advertising that they were willing to accept the risks. "There's this gold rush fever about consumer-generated content," he said. "Everybody wants to have consumer-generated content, and Chevy Tahoe doesn't want to be left behind."

Is it just that they're "willing to accept the risks?" Or are marketers finally deciding to participate in the real conversations about their products, the ones that say "yes, but…?"

Wouldn't it be great if political ads were opened up this way? Where, instead of shoving a message down your throat, a candidate would allow voters to express themselves about their platforms? And why are only advertisers of consumer products taking this alleged "risk?" Wouldn't a smart PR campaign also make room for critics and for, y'know, reality?*

I'm confident the people at Chevrolet are aware that some consumers will never buy an SUV strictly due to environmental concerns, and that others are conflicted and would appreciate some respect being given to their hesitancy. Letting customers joke about it shows the company is in touch. Going a step further would be to say, "We hear you" and respond in a way that treats these concerns thoughfully.

*(The best example is, of course, Amazon. If you put your product on Amazon, customers can review it. Many people, before buying a product, will check to see if it's on Amazon — not only to buy it there, but to see what other consumers think. Consumer reviews on Amazon have been decisive in many purchases I have made, both positively and negatively. Marketers obviously think it's worth "the risks" of having their products trashed in exchange for having them sold through Amazon. So why shouldn't you take the next step, and let consumers have their say on your own site…and then get into a conversation with them?)

**A few additions and edits made on 4/5/06.

Blame it on the Asteroid

Another good post on Science Blog, which I just stumbled across today: A report on a controversial new theory to account for global warming.

On June 30, 1908, there was a cataclysmic event in Siberia that is still not completely understood. According to one eyewitness, a Shanyagir tribesman:

We had a hut by the river with my brother Chekaren. We were sleeping. Suddenly we both woke up at the same time. Somebody shoved us. We heard whistling and felt strong wind. Chekaren said, “can you hear all those birds flying overhead?” We were both in the hut, couldn’t see what was going on outside. Suddenly, I got shoved again, this time so hard I fell into the fire. I got scared. Chekaren got scared too. We started crying out for father, mother, brother, but no one answered. There was noise beyond the hut, we could hear trees falling down. Me and Chekaren got out of our sleeping bags and wanted to run out, but then the thunder struck. This was the first thunder. The Earth began to move and rock, wind hit our hut and knocked it over. My body was pushed down by sticks, but my head was in the clear. Then I saw a wonder: trees were falling, the branches were on fire, it became mighty bright, how can I say this, as if there was a second sun, my eyes were hurting, I even closed them. It was like what the Russians call lightning. And immediately there was a loud thunderclap. This was the second thunder. The morning was sunny, there were no clouds, our Sun was shining brightly as usual, and suddenly there came a second one!

Me and Chekaren had some difficulty getting under from the remains of our hut. Then we saw that above, but in a different place, there was another flash, and loud thunder came. This was the third thunder strike. Wind came again, knocked us off our feet, struck against the fallen trees.

We looked at the fallen trees, watched the tree tops get snapped off, watched the fires. Suddenly Chekaren yelled “Look up” and pointed with his hand. I looked there and saw another flash, and it made another thunder. But the noise was less than before. This was the fourth strike, like normal thunder.

Now I remember well there was also one more thunder strike, but it was small, and somewhere far away, where the Sun goes to sleep.

This was the “Tunguska event.” The scientific near-consensus is that it was caused by the airburst from a meteorite, comet or asteroid hurtling toward Earth, exploding 6-10 kilometers above the surface. It destroyed, among other things, 60 million trees. But it left no crater, which indicates the object exploded into flaming dust before impact, releasing 10-15 megatons of energy into the air. The skies above Europe glowed at night for several evenings afterward — bright enough to read by.

Vladimir Shaidurov from the Russian Academy of Science now believes this cosmic event might be responsible for the pronounced climate change that began early in the 20th Century– global warming.  According to Shaidurov’s theory, “changes in the amount of ice crystals at high altitude could damage the layer of thin, high altitude clouds found in the mesosphere that reduce the amount of warming solar radiation reaching the earth’s surface.” This effect could be the result of the Tunguska event. From Science Blog’s post:

(T)he most potent greenhouse gas is water, explains Shaidurov and it is this compound on which his study focuses. According to Shaidurov, only small changes in the atmospheric levels of water, in the form of vapour and ice crystals can contribute to significant changes to the temperature of the earth’s surface, which far outweighs the effects of carbon dioxide and other gases released by human activities. Just a rise of 1% of water vapour could raise the global average temperature of Earth’s surface more then 4 degrees Celsius.

(snip)

Water vapour levels are even less within our control than CO2 levels. According to Andrew E. Dessler of the Texas A & M University writing in ‘The Science and Politics of Global Climate Change’, “Human activities do not control all greenhouse gases, however. The most powerful greenhouse gas in the atmosphere is water vapour, he says, “Human activities have little direct control over its atmospheric abundance, which is controlled instead by the worldwide balance between evaporation from the oceans and precipitation.”

As such, Shaidurov has concluded that only an enormous natural phenomenon, such as an asteroid or comet impact or airburst, could seriously disturb atmospheric water levels, destroying persistent so-called ’silver’, or noctilucent, clouds composed of ice crystals in the high altitude mesosphere (50 to 85km). The Tunguska Event was just such an event, and coincides with the period of time during which global temperatures appear to have been rising the most steadily – the twentieth century.

Shaidurov’s theory, of course, flies in the face of the more widespread view that the Industrial Revolution of the past 200 years, during which human society unleashed tons of carbon dioxide from the burning of fossil fuels, has triggered the global warming that most scientists believe is underway. Shaidurov says, however, that global temperatures were trending downward prior to a period between 1906-09, a few years before the explosion.

It seems strange to me that an event of this magnitude is mostly known only to science fiction and “X Files” fans. Undoubtedly, this is due purely to the remoteness of this part of the world. If such a thing had landed in Ohio, or Paris, our society would be very different. The memory of such a trauma would reverberate across generations.

Whether or not Tunguska can be blamed for global warming, the event demonstrates that nothing can change history faster than a random chunk of debris from outer space.

I’ll leave to another day the policy impact of Shaidurov’s theory. If this is the cause of global warming, can it be reversed? Will the earth’s upper atmosphere “right” itself, given time? Will Kyoto-type programs help? Geological history certainly suggests that the 5,000 years or so of Earth’s history during which mankind established civilizations and evolved technology has been a period of atypically good weather. Is our luck about to run out? Can our technology help us adjust to what might be an inevitably transformed environment?