In Wake of JP Morgan Chase Debacle, Where is the Tea Party Again?

The fine folks at JP Morgan Chase continued to make unchecked bets (the same kind that A.I.G. made and got burned) and lost big: $2 Billion in the last 6 weeks.  A few of those folks have since lost their jobs.  But not the man who lobbied the hardest against regulations that would prevent Chase from making those bets – no, he still has his job.  The shareholders are doing what they’re supposed to be doing: asking tough questions.  Will Dimon keep his job?  Sure – crony capitalism rewards failures at the top.

What I want to know is where are the massive rallies by the Tea Party calling for Dimon to be fired and regulations to be imposed on gamblers masquerading as bankers?

The answer is easy: there aren’t any and there won’t be any.  The Tea Party was co-opted by the same folks who perpetrated the worst activities that led up to the Great Recession and our continued economic malaise.  No substantive changes were made in the way Chase or other banks do business – save the tens of Trillions of dollars they got for free from the Federal Reserve.

The co-opting included distracting the populists in the Tea Party with the supposedly scarier threat of a Black Man in the White House.

Meanwhile, speculators were allowed to run up the cost of oil and gasoline, which acts as a choke collar on the American economy, and other right-wing economic theories were imposed across Europe, which has led to what is likely to be another recession:

[h/t Bonddad]

The combination of high oil/gas prices, US corporations sitting on Trillions of dollars in cash (not hiring), and European economic weakness will not help the US economy.  Will our “recovery” be over soon; will we follow Europe into weaker and weaker economic conditions?  Don’t ask the Tea Party, they don’t truly care.

US States Facing Water Impacts from Climate Change Doing the Least About Climate Change

And if you’ve paid any attention to this topic in the past couple of years, it’s not difficult to guess which states those are.  If your state tends to vote Republican in general elections, your state is among those that have planned the least for climate change.  Unfortunately, those states are also characterized by large human populations, agriculture, or both.

Take Texas, for instance, a state that demonstrates how little actual human affairs matter in a governance regime.  Texas experienced the worst drought in its recorded history last year.  It got so bad, many towns had water shipped in by truck because they previously drained their aquifers.  In the pursuit of runaway capitalism and to stick it to the black President, Texas is among the states which has done the least to plan or prepare for additional climate change impacts in the 21st century.  Perhaps they think if the secede from the US or rough up states that adjoin the Great Lakes, they can take care of their current and future water problems.

So what are the rest of us supposed to do?  As red states continue to scream at reality regarding anthropogenic climate change, they’re running dry.  Once cities start running out of fresh water, how should the rest of the country respond?  With benevolence and assistance?  For what purpose – red states already siphon more resources from blue states – blue states are supposed to be alright with additional resource greed?  Once the agricultural center of the country collapses due to intense decadal droughts, what are other regions supposed to do?  There won’t be viable acreage to replace the land that was mismanaged for decades.  The rest of the country will literally suffer from food scarcity because of the intensity of red staters’ belief system.  There won’t be any mea culpas from red staters as the “liberal elite” bail them out from the manifestations of their rigid ideology.  No, red staters will simply demand that it’s the responsibility of those elitists to fix problems that were forced on everybody.

Put another way – how much of your fresh water will you be forced to give up in 30 years because so-called conservatives were overly skeptical regarding viable climate science?

Didn’t Environmentalists Cheer the Demise of the Keystone XL Pipeline?

Yes, yes environmentalists did cheer the demise of the Keystone XL pipeline.  By stopping a Republican amendment earlier this year, the decision on whether to build the pipeline from Canada through the central US was left in President Obama’s hands, which was “rejected“.

It turns out that both the “rejection” wasn’t really a rejection and the cheerleading probably happened too soon.  I say that because today, Obama pushed for the southern branch of the pipeline to be finished faster than originally projected.  Many of the same environmentalists who cheered the original “decision” (read: delay) are the same ones who are now decrying this latest call.

I would put more stock into those complaints if those environmentalists hadn’t spent so much time and energy earlier this year trying to convince me that Obama’s “decision” was really and truly final and Keystone wouldn’t get built.  I argued then, and was proven correct today, that Obama’s “decision” really was a delay – it was enough action to get the topic out of the headlines in an election year when he can’t afford to piss off elements of his base too much.

The pipeline was always going to be and in fact will be built in the US.  The part that people should be paying attention to is this: the fossil fuels the pipeline delivers will not be sold in the US – it will be sold overseas because it can fetch a higher price that way.  In return, the “environmentally conscious” President who “cares about the economy” will gladly oversee an increase in deliverable fossil fuels to a largely unregulated, subsidized marketplace which will result in higher fuel prices for every American.  Those fossil fuels will be burned faster than they otherwise would have been and the resultant global warming forcing will be left to future generations to deal with.

But please vote for President Obama in November because who knows what would have happened to the Keystone pipeline if a Republican was in office – it might have gotten built or something horrible like that!  It will be better to get just a little tiny bit of what you want instead of more of what you want if you stop voting for politicians who take your interests for granted.

Solar Power Gains Are Good; Much, Much More Needed

A couple of articles about solar power caught my eye this week.  To be very clear from the outset, I am a huge proponent of solar power via all the myriad technologies out there today as well as those under development.  I have a solar PV system on my house that generates more electricity than my family consumes on a monthly and yearly basis (by a decent margin).  Keep these facts in mind as you read my comments on the pieces I found.

The first article dealt with solar installations just in the state of Colorado, which “jumped in 2011″.  CO installed 91 megawatts (MW) in 2011.  Nationwide, according to the author, solar installations more than doubled to 1,885 MW or ~1.9GW – a not insubstantial number in and of itself.  California installed 542 MW, New Jersey 313 MW, Arizona 273 MW, and New Mexico 116 MW.  Additionally, the weighted average cost of installed systems dropped 20% – also a piece of good news.

While reading up on something unrelated, I came across a graphic from a post at CleanTechnica which was touting U.S. solar installations.  As you can see below, they point out that 17 nuclear power plants worth of solar peak power shipped in 2010.

I’m not sure what size power plants they use for comparison, but for now I’ll assume that it was the same size that I used for a class analysis last semester – 0.75GW.  Note further the key adjective: “peak power”.  That is the power that the solar systems can deliver on a clear day when the sun is as perpendicular to the arrays as is possible.  That value lasts for only a short period out of any day with current technologies.  This isn’t a criticism – my system had a peak power rating too but I know I can’t expect that power to be generated throughout the day and certainly none will be generated at night.

Okay, with those caveats out of the way, here is my take on all this information: those national numbers aren’t nearly enough to address our CO2 emissions.  From the same analysis I referenced above, I calculated that the U.S. needs a minimum of 25 0.75GW nuclear power plants installed per year to meet our stated 2020 GHG reduction goal of 20% of 2005 emissions.  That’s well more than the solar PV-equivalent that was installed in 2010.  If we instead want to hit our stated 80% GHG reduction goal by 2050, we need a minimum of 111 0.75GW nuclear power plants (or their equivalent) installed per year through 2050.  Those numbers include a very conservative increase of 0.32% energy demand per year through the same time frames.

The solar industry has made great strides in the U.S. – but I am convinced it is nowhere close to enough to address the magnitude of global warming that is likely to occur.  These numbers are good news, but we need a whole lot more great news.  Which means we need some serious policy work done to ensure that great news is reported someday soon.

Obama Administration: We Can Kill American Citizens Overseas Whenever We Want

The Obama administration says they have the Constitutional authority to kill American citizens overseas if they think those Americans are in the process of planning attacks on American soil.  No courts; no due process.  And most Democrats don’t bat an eye in response – which is troubling news for our “democracy”.  An obvious question: Would those same Democrats have voiced their displeasure if President Bush said the exact same thing?  Absolutely they would have been.  But see – it’s okay since Obama is a Democrat.  What Obama says goes.  Even though those same Democrats spent years insulting Republicans by calling them mindless drones for accepting whatever Bush said just because.

For too many in this country, Party if more important than Principle.

Germany Installed More Solar PV In December Than The U.S. Did In All Of 2011

I’m so glad the U.S. has a more efficient marketplace than those socialist European countries.  That oft-parroted talking point must be the reason that Germany installed more than twice as much solar PV in December 2011 than the U.S. did in January through December 2011.  That’s right: twice as much in 1/12th the time at half the cost.

It’s a good thing we Americans have everything figured out already.  Otherwise, we would be trailing in installing technologies that we invented.  Oh wait, we are trailing.  The bottom line: feed-in tariffs work.

Wind Power Advancements Translates To More Competitive Energy Source

Past wind farm deployments and advances in the wind energy sector have worked to open up new areas primed for future deployment.  As tower heights rise from 50 meters to 80 meters above the ground, turbine can capture more wind captured at one time (higher wind speeds are usually present away from the ground) as well as during more parts of the day.

The result is that instead of 7.4-8.4 m/s wind speeds, new turbines can capture 8.5-10 m/s winds (see map below (gif source & pdf).  This translates to a 1.2 cent reduction per kilowatt-hour of wind energy: 10.8 cents, down from 12.0 cents.  My utility currently charges 4.6 cents per kilowatt-hour of energy.  The utility’s energy mix as of 2010 was: 61.31% coal, 26.88% natural gas, 10.26% wind, ~1% rest).  They are also filing for a 5.99% increase in electricity charges.

Unsurprisingly, the cost of wind continues to fall as deployment accelerates and R&D is performed.  This happens while corporate welfare for dirty energy still dwarfs the subsidies for clean energy.  It is remarkable that the renewable energy sector grew at the rate it has while it has faced a relatively hostile policy environment.  Imagine what the clean energy industry (and our environment) would look like if we were serious about it 40 years ago.

I’ll have more of my thoughts on this kind of news going forward.  Transitioning from 61.31% coal, 10.26% wind and 0.29% solar to a clean energy-dominant mix will prove incredibly difficult, for instance.  Some good policies have been implemented to help that happen, but I wonder if the scope of the problem has been accurately assessed.

2010: Largest Increase in CO2 Emissions On Record -> Actions To Date Insufficient

I wanted to share just a few brief words on an article I saw in the Denver Post (from the AP) today: Greenhouse gas levels rise. Somewhat surprisingly, a reference to the article appeared on the top of the front page of the print edition of the paper. The story, at the back on 11A, was a little too filled with various quotes from experts in the field for my taste, with no real context for readers to grasp why the news is so important.

This graph encapsulates the importance of this news item:

What this graph shows is the observations of emissions (as calculated by the IEA) represented by the black curve and 5 of the 6 emissions scenarios used by the IPCC AR4 in colored lines. The SRES begin in 2000, which was the starting year used for future simulations in the AR4. You can clearly see the effects of the partial collapse of the global economy in 2009 emissions: they went from higher than the worst-case scenario to the middle of the pack.

In 2010, however, emissions jumped back up to the top of the pack, almost as if 2009 never even happened. I would be willing to bet the 2011 numbers will demonstrate a further increase.

The simplicity of this graph should in no way distract from the deep problems underlying the data: we continue to emit more and more greenhouse gases. As a result, we are locking in more and more future warming and ensuring a cascade of resultant effects that we can’t envision today. In contrast to some of my earlier posts, I want to make sure I don’t convey that I think those effects will be apocalyptic because I don’t think they will be.

There will be changes forced on us and on ecosystems worldwide as a result of these emissions. But what I want to start spending more time on are the solutions to the grand challenges we’re facing instead of just the depths of those challenges themselves.

In short, it is clear that actions taken to date with respect to emissions clearly have been unsatisfactory. That is because the approach to developing policies that could affect emissions have been woefully inadequate. I have solidified my opinion that the IPCC is not the best approach to dealing with the adaptation or mitigation strategies. Neither do I think that the Conference on Parties, which is set to meet in a handful of weeks to discuss roles and responsibilities for developed and developing countries, is suitable for the task. I’m not sure what the best approach is, but neither of these two primary tacks have proven themselves capable of dealing with the problem to date.

Idiotic Analyses

It’s been slow posting as I’ve headed back to school to combine my meteorological experience with some exposure to policy.  I’m buried under tons of reading, most of which is good and will spawn plenty of posts in the future when I have more time.  In the meantime, I wanted to point out a piece of writing that is absolute trash.

From the “Science and Public Policy Institute” (a D.C. “think tank”), I found a piece entitled 2011 U.S. Temperature Update: Alarmism Not by Chip Knappenberger.  The purpose of this paper is to convince policymakers that temperatures in the U.S. aren’t noteworthy and evokes the frame of global warming alarmism.  The methodology of the paper is the bothersome aspect.

Chip starts by showing a graph of U.S. surface temperature data from 1895-1997.  Any guess why?  Because the most intense El Niño in recorded history occurred in 1998 and denialists like to use data since 1998 to try to show that global warming is not occurring.  Count Chip among this crowd, as his next graph includes surface data up to 2007 in an attempt to set up people who thought a new phase of temperatures across the U.S. had started as alarmists.  He does this by showing his next graph of surface data up to 2010.  Since 2008-2010 was cooler than the 1998-2007 period, Chip states that “the warm period was starting to look out of place”.

All of this is an introduction to his goal, which is to predict that 2011 will continue to be cooler than the aforementioned warm period.  How specifically does Chip try to do this?  By looking at a distribution of the difference between the annual temperature anomaly and the temperature anomaly observed during the first 6 months of the years 1895-2010.  What does his distribution show?  Supposedly, the mean of the data is 0°F.  Then, even though it’s not, he claims the data is close enough to having a normal distribution that he can use the data as he pleases.

More egregiously, Chip does something that makes absolutely no sense.  He uses that anomaly distribution to predict what 2011′s average U.S. temperature will be by combining the distribution alongside the same time series he used before.  In other words, he is saying that based on the past 100+ years’ of data, 2011 is likely to be no more anomalously warm than 2008-2010.  Put yet another way, he is claiming that climatology is the best predictor of this year’s average U.S. temperature.

Beyond the nonsensical use of statistics to prove an ideological point, allow me to provide additional information regarding our year-to-date temperature.  Through June (the same data Chip used), the U.S. had recorded “Above Normal” temperatures: 79th highest out of 117 years.  Giving Chip the benefit of the doubt that he wrote the paper in the middle of the year and conditions might have changed one way or the other, I will politely point out that through August, the U.S. had recorded the 92nd highest temperatures out of 117 years.  Despite the Pacific Northwest and northwestern states recording below-normal temperatures, almost the remaining 2/3 of the continental U.S. were above normal, with 8 states at much above normal and 1 state recording the hottest year-to-date on record (Texas).  Despite a cool start to the year, the number of heat records broken are outpacing cold records broken year-to-date by an incredible 3.4 to 1 ratio.  Those kinds of things don’t happen in non-anomalous years.  But it’s really the shoddy use of math that irks me.

As a side note, a paper by one of Chip’s colleagues read for one of my classes.  Written by the President of the “think-tank”, it was filled with so many spelling and grammatical errors, the writer needs to do some serious thinking before publishing another paper.  Or as some undergraduates are learning this semester, Word comes with a spelling and grammar check.  Use it or you look like you don’t know or don’t care what you’re doing.  These guys are trying to influence public policy?!