Gristmill

Feed-in tariffs, Chu off-message, MPG v. GPM, and the prospects for solar PV

I have about three months worth of unattended tabs open in my browser -- over 100, at last count. Ridiculous, I know. I figure now that comments are turned off on our site (it's weirdly quiet in here!), I'm going to do some speed blogging to get them all cleared away in anticipation of the torrent of news coming down the pike.

• In Florida, an odd-couple pair of legislators -- Rep. Keith Fitzgerald (D-Sarasota) and Rep. Paige Kreegel (R-Punta Gorda) -- are collaborating on a bill that would push Gainesville's innovative feed-in tariff program statewide. Fitzgerald wrote the bill; Kreegel is chair of the state's House Energy & Utilities Policy Committee. They view feed-in tariffs as an economic stimulus and jobs program. Naturally utilities oppose them.

• I know Chu Worship is the order of the day in green circles, but I'm sorry to say that most of what I've seen of our new Energy Secretary's communication with the public has been, IMHO, counterproductive. Like this. Does the Obama administration really want to be encouraging the myth that progress on climate is dependent on scientific and technological breakthroughs? Or this. Does the administration really want to be encouraging the notion that a recession is a bad time to pass a price on carbon?

• What's the deal with the MPG Illusion? The arguments for shifting to GPM (gallons-per-mile) seem compelling, but this doesn't seem to have taken off or spread at all.

• Climate change is threatening some of the world's most valuable archeological sites.

• Researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have produced a fascinating report on the installed costs of solar voltaics (PDF). Here are the main conclusions:

Always use WWII metaphors

RealClimate has an excellent post for aspiring climate bloggers, "Advice for a young climate blogger." It has some incredibly useful advice and warnings, including "Bad things can happen to good bloggers."

But there is one bullet point that I think is misleading:

Don't use any WWII metaphors. Ever. This just makes it too easy for people to ratchet up the rhetoric and faux outrage. However strongly you hold your views, the appropriateness of these images is always a hard sell, and you will not be given any time in which to make your pitch. This is therefore almost always counter-productive. This can be extended to any kind of Manichean language.

Silly. You should probably avoid Nazi metaphors, but in fact WWII is the only plausibly-close metaphor for the scale of effort needed to stabilize at or below 450 ppm and preserve a livable climate [see here or my book].

Indeed, at the press conference I participated in with Greenpeace and Sen. Sanders today (details to come), Sanders himself said that we have the technology to do this today (or will very soon) -- which is of course a central point of this blog, but what we most need to do is deploy, deply, deploy:

I think there is an enormous amount of technology out there ... Go back to December 1941. America had to completely retool its economy in two years. So don't tell me it can't be done.

And one of the most important scientific studies published last year (see here) concludes with this key paragraph:

Oprah to save Appalachia with her mighty army of suburban moms?

If Oprah does a segment on mountaintop removal mining, Big Coal is f**ked.

Is consensus on 'energy gap' enough to get past disagreement over climate change?

As you've likely noticed, comments are turned off here at Grist, as we transfer to our shiny new site. If you have thoughts on this post or anything else, email them to me at droberts at grist dot org.

I think Andy Revkin gets something importantly wrong in this post on DotEarth -- which gets back to one more point I wanted to make about the Eco:nomics conference.

Andy's post is about how the cranks at the ongoing Heritage climate "skeptic" conference agree with climate realists that there's an "energy gap" and a need for substantial energy innovation. So we can all move forward together!

Now, I think on a broad level this is true. You don't have to take climate change seriously to see the need for big changes in our energy situation -- you could be concerned about national security (quite common), concerned about dwindling fossil fuel reserves (less common), or concerned about stagflation brought about by high energy prices (weirdly rare). John McCain, back in his Reasonable Conservative phase, used to make the same point: even if we're wrong about climate change, we should do this stuff anyway.

But how far does this agreement get you? Far enough for a shared political or economic agenda?

New breed of houses makes use of carbage

Guess what will save the economy and the environment? Buying a new car! Cadillac ranch? OK, maybe not save — but according to the folks at Oregon-based Miranda Homes, it can help. The automobile industry has lost some half a million jobs and $50 billion in revenue while we hang on to our old jalopies. […]

Popular fumigant found to be a potent greenhouse gas

Update [2009-3-14 16:17:10 by Tom Philpott]:The original version of this post, titled "Strawberry Surprise," contained errors that I regret. I had mistakenly read the below-linked account of an MIT study to mean that sulfuryl fluoride was registered for use by the EPA as a pre-planting fumigant for strawberries. Actually, the chemical is registered only for post-harvest use on food, as well as a structural fumigant for termites. I also reversed the phrases "methyl bromide" and "methyl iodide" on two occasions. Again, I regret these errors.

-----------------

Chemical fumigants are a staple of the industrial-food system. They're used to sterilize soil before planting large monocrops, and also to control pests in stored food like grain and dried fruit. The building industry, too, uses them, mainly to fight termites. In the past, fumigants have caused much environmental damage, and tend to be quite toxic for humans, too. Now comes news that the building industry's new favorite fumigant -- sulfuryl fluoride -- is a greenhouse gas 4,800 times more potent than carbon dioxide, according to a recent MIT study.

The false hope of a hydrogen economy is on its death bed

The ChiPs are down for the hydrogen highway cul de sac -- literally. The future Ponches and Jons of the California Highway Patrol won't be policing the hydrogen highway.

The false hope of a hydrogen economy is on its death bed. This dream was embraced and elevated by President Bush, who said in his January 2003 State of the Union address:

With a new national commitment, our scientists and engineers will overcome obstacles to taking these cars from laboratory to showroom so that the first car driven by a child born today could be powered by hydrogen and pollution-free.

I have explained at length many times why the first car of child born in 2003 -- or the last car, for that matter -- will not be a hydrogen fuel cell car, most notably in my best selling book, The Hype About Hydrogen [Note to a picky semantic people: The book was not a best seller, but it was the best-selling of all of my books]. Maybe my best (and certainly my most widely read) paper available online [PDF] is "The car and fuel of the future," published by Energy Policy back in 2005. It is still worth reading if you want to understand why plug in hybrids, not hydrogen fuel cell cars, are the car of the (near) future.

The last vestiges of a hydrogen economy are collapsing. First, we had Honda's new FCX Clarity, which the company optimistically billed as "the world's first hydrogen-powered fuel-cell vehicle intended for mass production." If so, the Clarity has demonstrated to the world how distant the whole enterprise is (see here, here and here).

Now Greenwire ($ub. req'd) has a long story on the collapse of another one of the few remaining pieces of the dream, "Has Schwarzenegger's hydrogen highway gone bust?" excerpted below:

Wolf Blitzer parrots right-wing talking points on global warming

Originally posted at the Wonk Room.

Last week on the Situation Room, CNN anchor Wolf Blitzer parroted right-wing talking points on global warming. His program emphasized that Monday's climate crisis protest took place in the cold -- a talking point pushed by Sen. Jim Inhofe's (R-OK) office and global warming deniers from Glenn Beck to Nancy Pfotenhauer. He then followed the Heritage Foundation's reasoning to challenge Tony Blair on the urgency of establishing a cap on carbon pollution, asking if it is "wise" to "effectively impose a new tax on consumers" instead of dealing with "bread-and-butter issues":

At a time of this extraordinary economic distress, not only here in the United States but around the world, why go forward right now as a priority with all of these global warming related projects? It seems there are so many other key bread-and-butter issues literally on the table. ... Is it wise to go ahead, effectively impose a new tax on consumers right now, an energy-related tax, this uh, uh cap-and-trade if you will, to try to reduce carbon emissions right now? In effect that's going to be higher costs on consumers who use either gasoline or other electricity, forms of energy. Is that wise at a time of economic distress?

Watch it:

Blitzer summarized: "You say do it now despite all the economic issues."

Blitzer is missing a few key facts:

Tom Vilsack shows you how to get to Sesame Street

Politico followed Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack on Tuesday as he made an appearance on Sesame Street with Cookie Monster. See the video for some shameless pandering to cookies, and a jab at beets: