Quick Links

Some topics of interest I’ve run across, while I try to generate some real content:

Ok, so hexavalent chromium is carcinogenic when you ingest it in drinking water. Just what we need, another chemical we’ll find difficult to make decisions about. That needs a little bit of context, but it’s taking awhile to create.

Climate modeling goes local. This has a lot of promise – increasing the usability of climate modeling for decision-making; building more acceptance of the need for action to mitigate climate change. More details can be found here. The EPA grant seems to have run out, and hopefully these folks can find some more funding.

Huffington Post is exasperating because it’s 95 percent a waste of my time, but will produce gems like this the remaining 5 percent of the time, so it’s just marginally useful enough for me to keep checking into it. We’re going to need initiatives such as the Pileus Project because, according to Joe Romm, the mainstream media sure seem to be agents of disinformation when it comes to climate change issues.

Matt Nisbet must think that Monsanto needs help framing itself as a sustainability company.

DDT is really bad for human health and should be used sparingly. I was taught that was true for all pesticides, but I guess the lesson hasn’t sunk in yet. What’s surprising is how active health effects research is with DDT.

Have to run. The paper I’m overdue on isn’t going to write itself.

A Momentary Lapse of Reason?

An essay written by Dennis Perrin suggests that critical thinking is overrated, especially as practiced by the public intellectuals and other smart people around here. He argues that critical thought needs to occur within some distinct boundaries, if you want to remain relevant particularly within political and media circles:

To write for the New York Times, for example, you have to seriously believe that the United States is a force for Good in the world, sometimes mistaken, but always sincere. I've known or chatted up a smattering of Timespeople, and while privately they were some of the most cynical types I've ever met, none of their personal critiques would appear in the Times, simply because they'd never dare submit such nonsense. And these are supposedly the "smart ones," those who set the journalistic/critical/aesthetic standard.

An he's not terribly sanguine about things changing with the onset of the now-the-adults-are-here Obama administration. Though we seem to be on the precipice with environmental collapse, financial meltdown and a half of dozen other unpleasantries, he feels that "nothing substantial will change because too many people don't want substantial change" - and this is referring to educated people who presumably know better but are anxious to maintain whatever perks they enjoy:

Such degraded conditions are anathema to real critical thinking -- if anything, this inspires further devotion to the main narratives. Think all those reporters who've lost their jobs are gonna become an army of I. F. Stones? It's a nice idea, and if probable, I'd certainly champion it. But as you can see, there's no money or honor in such tawdry pursuits. If you want to eat using your words, become really good at selling shit. That's where critical minds are most needed.

Which doesn't bode well for our ability as a society to weather crises. NPR recently interviewed Jarred Diamond, author of Collapse, published back in 2005. Diamond concludes that a society’s fate in response to these crises is determined by how well its leaders and citizens anticipate problems before they become crises, and how decisively a society responds. In the NPR interview, he amplifies that one of the predictors of successfuly resolving a crisis is the role of the elite, the decision-makers, the politicians and/or the rich people within the society:

If the society is structured so that the decision-makers themselves suffer from the consequences of their decisions, then they're motivated to make decisions that are good for the whole society, whereas if the decision-makers can make decisions that insulate themselves from the rest of society, then they're likely to make decisions that are bad for the rest of society.

Uh-oh. We're so screwed, aren't we?

He observes that part of the foot-dragging in New Orleans about flood and disaster preparedness that led to the disaster following Hurricane Katrina occurred because the well-off people recognized that they lived on higher ground that wouldn't be flooded. In contrast, the Netherlands takes flood control more seriously because the rich folks are living below sea-level along with the proles.

So, if we're going to steer ourselves into making better choices, the rich and powerful need to feel more of the pain, so they become the agents of change.

Speaking of inability to feel pain and steer us in the right direction, the Senate is fighting the Obama Administration's plan to pass cap-and-trade legislation for greenhouse gas emissions. The opponents are bipartisan, and the dividing lines are betwen regions, depending on who's mining, generating or using a lot of coal-fired electricity. There isn't a lot of critical thinking going on here, since the longer we delay acting on climate changes, the slimmer our hopes are of resisting it.

Not that I think cap-and-trade is going to accomplish all that much in terms of addressing adverse climate change.

Even in places where you think paradigms whould be shifted, the critical thinking stays within its lanes. Worldchanging.com recently had a post about the spectrum of environmental thought, showcasing "bright green", "dark green" and "light green". It's interesting that Worldchanging offered no label for those who might be drawn to James Lovelock's pronouncements that planetary feedback mechanisms have been perturbed past a self-correcting point (i.e. we've killed Gaia), so that we're now the stewards of the Earth. Under this scenario, none of the shades of green offered here are meaningful environmental management strategies. No color scheme is offered for the combination of high technology projects for energy generation, transportation, agriculture and medicine, to hold civilization together while global geoengineering and bioenginering projects attempt to correct the climatic and biodiversity injuries we've created. What would that be, blue green?

I'm not confident that bright green will slow the trajectory of adverse changes in time, especially after reading the work of John Sterman at MIT (the "bathtub effect" guy). Dark green is Rapture for deep environmentalists; simply an invitation for death on a grand scale from war, disease and starvation. Light green is irrelevant on the scale of problems that need correcting.

Pres. Obama's stimulus package, as misguided as it is (particularly with spending on GM, the banks and fixing roads) at least gets people accustomed to spending money on a grand scale and to seeing something of the magnitude of the effort needed to turn this ship. It still needs to translate into the will to create the mother of all global scientific and engineering projects (one that makes the Manhattan Project and the Apollo Project combined look like entries at a junior high science fair) to make sure humanity has a future over the next few centuries.

Maybe I'm just not thinking critically enough about these matters.

Honest Brokers and Concern Trolls

While it’s not based on a systematic study, I get the sense that Roger Pielke, professor of environmental policy at the University of Colorado has been an annoyance to many environmentalists. See this somewhat contentious interview (which apparently was spiked, but which Pielke publishes here) with Brad Johnson with the Center for American Progress. At one point, Dr. Pielke makes allusions to McCarthyism in the interview process (you know, the “are you now or have you ever been a Communist” routine) which while a bit over the top, provided some amusement. I suppose it doesn’t help your environmentalist cred though to be interviewed by professional concern troll John Tierney.

Tierney complains that President Obama’s science advisors aren’t sciencey enough, and are injecting their personal agendas along with the science used to inform the government’s policy making. Not to put too fine a point on things, he asks, “[t]o borrow a term from Roger Pielke Jr.: Can these scientists be honest brokers?”

It’s possible I’m reading too much into this, but trust Tierney to take a reasoned analysis of the interactions of scientists in policy making (Pielke’s book, The Honest Broker: Making Sense of Science in Policy and Politics) and make it into an indictment of science policy for the administration in power:

A scientist can enter the fray by becoming an advocate for certain policies, like limits on carbon emissions or subsidies for wind power. That’s a perfectly legitimate role for scientists, as long as they acknowledge that they’re promoting their own agendas.

But too often, Dr. Pielke says, they pose as impartial experts pointing politicians to the only option that makes scientific sense. To bolster their case, they’re prone to exaggerate their expertise (like enumerating the catastrophes that would occur if their policies aren’t adopted), while denigrating their political opponents as “unqualified” or “unscientific.”

Ok, it’s time to stop the hyperventilating. Dr. Pielke’s book is actually a very useful guide for scientists about the kinds of options they have in advising decision makers, when given the opportunity. The nature of scientific advice will depend on how politicized the issue is (i.e. is there values consensus) and how much scientific uncertainty is present. Depending on the circumstances, one could adopt the stance of a Pure Scientist, summarizing the state of knowledge in a particular field, to help reduce uncertainty and inform a decision, but not engaging in the normative or values debates. When engaged to consider specific policy options, one might adopt the role of a Science Arbiter, similarly focusing on a technical role (framing the problem and presenting the state of knowledge) but again staying above the debate.

However, problems with no values consensus cannot be resolved by reducing scientific uncertainty (Pielke’s context for this is “abortion politics”). The scientist can then choose to help reduce the range of options by becoming an Issue Advocate, aligning with a particular political agenda. If a scientist seeks to expand the range of options to be considered, they can become Honest Brokers of Policy Alternatives, clarifying existing options and identifying new ones. As described in a book review published in the journal Minerva:

Honest Brokers explicitly integrate stakeholder concerns with available scientific knowledge. The former U.S. Office of Technology Assessment, for example, produced reports that identified a range of policy options and showed how they related to disagreements over both science and policy (pp. 17, 95). Interestingly, because Honest Brokers must draw on diverse perspectives to integrate scientific knowledge and policy options in context of uncertainty, they usually take the form of interdisciplinary advisory bodies rather than individual experts (pp. 151, 154-56).

Dr. Pielke views all four of these roles as appropriate, but cautions that issue advocacy should be done transparently, acknowledging political values rather than asserting that the scientist’s preferred policy flows directly from their scientific evidence. This becomes Stealth Issue Advocacy, which politicizes scientific advice and undermines the credibility of science in the eyes of the public.

Seen in this light, Tierney’s use of the term “honest broker” in discussing Steven Chu and John Holdren provokes in me an Inigo Montoya moment. After reading this column, I can only be glad that John Tierney isn’t interested in borrowing any of my ideas. In addition, keeping in mind that Dr. Pielke’s book was published in 2007, I wonder if it occurs to Tierney that it could be referring just as much to the war on science waged by the Bush Administration as to John Holdren’s role as a stealth issue advocate in criticizing Bjorn Lomborg.

Alternative Futures in a Post-Stimulus World

There’s an air of unreality surrounding this week’s passage of economic stimulus legislation. I suspect that many are expecting things to “get back to normal”, if we just fix the foreclosure crisis, get the banks lending again, and get consumers buying stuff again. In the mainstream media I sample, I don’t get a sense that with the economic downturn we’ve turned a corner to a considerably different future.

One vision of that future is the crash of our energy intensive way of life, with scenarios that range from a post-Peak Oil collapse (the progressive version of the Rapture) to a sort of post-industrial feudalism as envisioned in James Howard Kunstler’s The Long Emergency. In this future, the Amish may be the epitome of high technology.

There’s a Green crowd which feels that if you shout “no clean coal” loud enough, this and a lot of hard work will create a vision where life is much better by moving to cleaner production, mass transit and renewable energy. These are the kinds of investments that should be made, because building windmills, weatherizing buildings and restoring strip-mined mountaintops are more useful ways to create jobs than building freeways, but I’m no longer convinced this path alone is going to save us, particularly from adverse climate change. Take John Sterman’s greenhouse gas simulator for a spin and see. You have to drag emissions down quite a bit, very quickly, to have a meaningful impact. However, we’re having a hard time even getting started – people still seem to be confused about the imminence and magnitude of the risk, and long lead time needed to produce any changes, with a significant fraction taking a wait and see attitude on greenhouse gas reductions.

And, according to Dr. Sterman, even smart people are kind of clueless about stock and flow kinds of problems in general (look at the wishful thinking many people engage in when trying to manage their weight), misjudging how feedback loops work with climate change – it seems that people expect climate change to abate quickly once emissions are reduced. The most recent evidence suggests otherwise – we’re stuck with adverse climate change. The challenge is to keep from making it worse.

In contrast to the hunker-down philosophy of getting through the next few centuries (see The Long Emergency), James Lovelock argues in a new book that preserving civilization in the face of adverse climate change will require a massive infusion of high technology. This is seemingly contrary advice from the author of the Gaia hypothesis, but it really is consistent with his message that we’ve now made ourselves stewards of the Earth – wish us luck. You can argue over the details (I think he overstates the effectiveness of nuclear power) but he does make me wonder if the Green crowd is thinking hard enough about what it takes to save us as a species.

This wanders away a bit from the economic stimulus package, but we shouldn’t fool ourselves about what it’s accomplishing. The economic stimulus is really focused on trying to regain our past rather than take us into the future, and the consequences of that choice aren’t pleasant to contemplate.

Geoengineering and Stewardship

Over on David Brin’s blog, there is some discussion of an interesting idea for greenhouse gas mitigation – modifying ocean chemistry to increase carbon sequestration:

Adding lime to seawater increases alkalinity, boosting seawater's ability to absorb CO2 from air and reducing the tendency to release it back again. The process of making lime generates CO2, but adding the lime to seawater absorbs almost twice as much CO2. The overall process is therefore 'carbon negative'. However, the idea, which has been bandied about for years, was thought unworkable because of the expense of obtaining lime from limestone and the amount of CO2 released in the process. Shell is so impressed with a newly developed approach that it is funding an investigation into its economic feasibility. (Note an added benefit. Increased alkalinity would also compensate for potential acidification if iron is added to seawater to boost plankton and foodchain productivity in “desert” sea areas, pulling out even more CO2.)

This is from the post for August 24th – scroll down because there’s no permalink.

A paper published last year in Environmental Science and Technology (linked here) provides a feasibility study of the technology. As with any sequestration technology, implementation could be decades off, even if funded appropriately (and we’re talking trillions of dollars, euros or whatnots, here). However, Shell is supposedly funding a company to develop this technology.

Shell Oil has funded a proposal by Cquestrate to investigate atmospheric carbon removal by adding lime to sea water. This process is heavily energy intensive, but could still be cost-effective near oil fields that have un-utilized natural gas resources. Instead of flaring the gas, it could be harnessed to create lime from limestone. Notably, the company developing this proccess plans to use an “Open Source” development process so that anyone can use the technology.

It’s a neat idea of trying to solve this problem by crowdsourcing it. David Brin has offered up other examples of increasing online public participation in creativity and problem solving. Currently these have the feel of gimmicks, but they may be the seeds of ways for harnessing smart mobs, particularly if you start adequately compensating the smart people. Maybe it will become a trend that produces some robust collaborative tools. Returning to Cquestrate, the sense I get from the website is that this initiative doesn’t exactly have the billions it needs driving it – not if we’re going to get ocean sequestration technology going any time soon (I’m not going to say “greennwashing”, but I did think it just for a moment. . .).

When the topic of geoengineering comes up, there is the accompanying handwringing over making drastic and possibly irreversible changes to the planet:

The idea of deliberately tampering with Earth's climate system raises the specter of unintended consequences, especially because the interventions would be imposed on a climate system already significantly perturbed by the unintentional consequences of human activity. Many scientists are averse to opening that Pandora's box, preferring to mitigate climate through emissions reductions and worrying that those reductions might be undermined by a premature faith in a technical fix.

I suspect it’s too late to have those conversations. As James Lovelock has argued, we may already have significantly perturbed the self-correcting mechanisms governing planetary processes, to the extent that we humans now have stewardship over those mechanisms. We’ll need all of the luck we can muster – along with trillions invested in research and engineering (an effort that will make the Manhattan Project look by comparison like a junior high school science fair project) to pull off climate change mitigation. Just something to think about during this Presidential election season – I don’t think either candidate really gets it.

An Update (09/05/08):

Speaking of the need for extreme measures, I ran across this article today:

Political inaction on global warming has become so dire that nations must now consider extreme technical solutions - such as blocking out the sun - to address catastrophic temperature rises, scientists from around the world warn today.

Figures it would be in the Guardian – you can’t get a US newspaper to cut through the fog like this. It refers to a collection of papers published by the Royal Society, which can be found here. More on this topic soon.

The Other Story About the Airline Debacle

Last year, I was on the road about 30% of the time. I grew to loathe airline travel, the cramped accommodations on planes, security theater, boredom, hurry up and wait, the nutritional dead zones called airports, the physical effects from disrupted sleep, eating and exercise habits, and that was before airlines started grounding their fleets to check the planes and make sure they aren't going to fall out of the sky. My sympathies are with the travelers inconvenienced by American Airlines. I may be one with you soon - I'm scheduled to fly towards the end of this month. However, one bright spot is that the present disruptions - grounded fleets and bankrupt airlines - might crystalize in peoples' minds just how broken air travel really is. Maybe they'll even start to think about how unsustainable air travel really is.

There's no way to sugar coat that last one. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution published an analysis of the impacts of air travel back in the dim past of 2002. That report raises concerns about air travel providing a disproportionate contribution to global climate change compared with other human activities and modes of transportation, in particular rail and marine. Global climate change is increasingly being viewed as a national security issue (here's the latest rumination from that corner), suggesting that matters such as air travel cannot solely be left up to CEOs; of course as events have shown in Iraq, it also may not be a good idea to leave such matters up to the national security technocrats, either.

With a new call for reducing carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere to 350 ppm (James Hansen's paper on the topic can be found here), it might be time to begin viewing air travel as something that becomes rare in our future. There are alternatives that can offset flying less, such as videoconferencing and high speed rail, but pressure needs to be applied, particularly to get high speed rail going in the US. Of course, this means airline executives will have to find something else to do, and probably see a decrease in their bloated standard of living in the process. Don't expect them to go down quietly, though.

Seven Ideas Lost on Americans

Americans aren’t stupid. I have come to the conclusion that we are either in a state of perpetual denial or in a fog of permanent confusion. Whatever the case, we are overlooking some pretty important ideas that contribute to the current environmental crisis.

Jerald Schnoor, the editor of Environmental Science and Technology and the author of those words is going pretty easy on us. A reasonable person probably couldn’t rule out the possibility that we Americans are stupid. However, he makes up for it in his list of seven ideas lost on Americans. I’ll summarize here, with my own perspective, but the article should be read on its own merits (go ahead, it’s not behind the firewall).

1. Our unsustainability is immense. It’s true. You have to be seriously deluded to believe otherwise. Unless you living at a subsistence level, you’re not really helping (spare me about how green you really are). We really don’t have a clue, and many of the solutions we’re working on, such as biofuels or hybrid cars, provide only little benefit, or actually make matters worse.

2. Tipping points are irreversible. His closing point is educational – people don’t really believe a severe storm or a fire is going to destroy their home, yet they invest in insurance against that possibility. Why can’t we do the same with climate change?

3. Time lag bites. Another thing we don’t get is that the atmosphere doesn’t turn on a dime, even if we summon the will to reduce greenhouse gases. The effects, even if we begin in earnest today, won’t be apparent for over a century.

4. Species matter. This doesn’t involve getting misty-eyed about endangered species. I think that people tend to forget that beyond being beautiful and wondrous, Nature is also FUNCTIONAL.

5. Free markets aren’t free. This should be tattooed mirror-wise on the foreheads of every idiot libertarian, neoconservative economist, nitwit pundit. . . and maybe all Republicans, for that matter. Ecosystem services cost something, even if you don’t want to acknowledge they exist.

6. Inaction can be more expensive than action. There’s money to be made in energy retrofits, carbon sequestration, building mass transit, restoring habitat, rehabilitating soils, etc. etc. Global warming deniers and uncertainty manufacturers are agents of chaos and disinformation in the service of those economic interests who will are fighting a rearguard action to avoid being the big losers in the climate change economy. The fact that a large fraction of us are listening makes us idiots by default.

7. Technology can’t do it alone. We’re going to need a new worldview for how we regard nature in addition to the mother of all Manhattan Projects. I wonder if we’ve got it in us – the current worldview in the US advocates human domination of nature.

Note to self: next time, write the post before cracking open the wine. You’ll sound less cranky that way.

Turning the Corner on Coal-Fired Power?

Last month, Lowbagger had an article about the cancellation of 59 coal-fired power plant projects in 2007. The article, which links to an entry in Sourcewatch, lists several reasons including concerns about climate change, coal being taken out of regional long-range integrated resource planning (whatever that means), renewable energy playing a more important role in utility profiles, and plants cancelled due to market forces (community or regulatory objections, lack of demand, excessive costs or lack of financing).

Champagne corks may be popping at this news, but I prefer to wait until I start seeing carbon dioxide concentrations trending downward in the atmosphere before getting too excited about this outcome. Beyond compiling the list of projects, Sourcewatch didn’t provide a lot of commentary, which meant that if I wanted to read any further exploration on this topic, I was going to have to write it myself.

“Cancellation of 59 plants” isn’t a terribly significant fact by itself. It doesn’t directly reflect carbon emissions averted; after all, the power generation is going to come from somewhere, and the replacement sources won’t entirely be renewables. However, it might be an indication of a trend. Earlier this month, the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) published a report (actually, a wordy Powerpoint presentation) summarizing the status of new coal plant starts in the U.S.

One tidbit from this report is that 36,000 megawatts of coal-fired plants were commissioned in 2002, while only 4,500 megawatts of capacity were built by 2007. Project delays have shifted some plants out several years. Delays and cancellations have occurred due to regulatory uncertainty regarding climate change, or unfavorable economics brought on by increasing industry costs. The drought in power plant construction reduces the skilled labor available for engineering, procurement, project management and construction; if you can’t find work designing and constructing coal-fired plants, you find something else to do and therefore are less available if future projects are announced. The reduction in available human resources further reduces the viability of bringing more new coal plants on line.

The NETL report indicates that projected growth rate in electricity generation has been declining, which some parties (i.e. the North American Electrical Reliability Council) suggest that electrical generation capacity might become inadequate to maintain reliability and to keep electricity prices from rising. What do these folks (i.e. NERC and NETL) suggest? Why, build more coal-fired plants. The outcome if that doesn’t happen is an increase in the use of natural gas for electrical generation, and with concerns about natural gas resources, there might an increase in liquid natural gas imports.

And, while noone responsible for writing these assessments has said it, you might as well get ready for the climate change skeptics to chime in, “and then the terrorists win, because we’ve given them an opportunity to blow up Boston Harbor”.

In these reports, there hasn’t been any mention of renewable energy or conservation picking up the slack in electrical generation needs. But that’s perhaps because the NETL is oriented towards fossil fuel generation. It would be interesting to see what the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) says about all of this.

GEOblogging – an Introduction to the Global Environmental Outlook report

Natural resources and ecosystems underpin all our hopes for a better world.

These words, from the recently-issued UNEP Global Environmental Outlook GEO 4 report, should be tattooed mirror-wise on the foreheads of every politician and on every officer of suitably large corporations, so they can see them when they get up and look in the mirror every morning.

The forward to GEO 4, over the signature of the UN Secretary-General Bai Ki-Moon, strikes the familiar themes of dire events awaiting us if we as societies don’t come to grips with climate change, resource depletion and loss of biodiversity. For a lot of Americans, I’ll wager that the message is being received with all of the enthusiasm with being told to “eat your vegetables”, something else we in the US aren’t doing enough of either.

Issued on the 20th anniversary of the World Commission on Environmental and Development report “Our Common Future” (also known as the Brundtland Commission) which coined the term “sustainable development”, GEO 4 promises to be another in the series of “global integrated environmental assessment reports aimed at providing comprehensive, reliable, scientifically credible, and policy relevant assessments on the interaction between environment and society”, which scarcely anyone will read. Perhaps blogging about it will present GEO 4 in more digestible packets, disseminating a more nuanced view of the report beyond the monotonic and childishly simplistic “we’re doomed as a species” message which I’ve seen in more than one newspaper article.

Before the Brundland Commission’s report, development corresponded to industrialization and measured solely by economic activity and increases to wealth, with protection of the environment seen as an obstacle to development (Chapter 1, page 10). Today, with the emergence of concepts such as natural capital and ecosystem services, the linkage between environment and development is more strongly perceived. Indeed, it is possible to say with conviction that the voices who would oppose the message that we need to be stewards of natural resources and ecosystems are either speaking from ignorance or serving as agents of disinformation for stakeholders who would be required to relinquish wealth, status and power in order for our societies to provide this stewardship.

Don’t wait for me – go ahead, dig in, start reading, start blogging about this.

What Sense of Urgency?

The events of last month with the EPA denying the state of California’s application for a waiver from the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gas emissions from mobile sources should give pause to anyone interested in quickly implementing solutions to climate change.

The solutions are out there. Sandia National Laboratory is developing the Counter-Rotating Ring Reactor Recuperator (CR5), a device that uses solar energy to break the carbon-oxygen bond in carbon dioxide, forming carbon monoxide. Carbon monoxide can then be reacted with oxygen to form methanol. So, this might be a way to create renewable fuels while achieving some carbon sequestration. Sandia calls it the “Sunshine to Petrol” project. Here’s a description of an earlier version of the CR5 for trying to create hydrogen (which has been set aside for the current methanol version, which is apparently more practical). Then, there’s a group at Ohio State University who is developing a bioreactor with algae which uses photosynthesis to trap the carbon dioxide in a gas stream. The algae are then harvested for livestock feed or biodiesel production. A plant the size of a Walmart would be needed to sequester the carbon emissions from a power plant, but it sounds do-able.

However, there’s the tiresome and time-consuming process of overcoming the resistance of entrenched economic interests, of which Charles Stoss says hopefully that “[c]apitalism will clean up its own shit — once it acquires a new set of taste buds and realizes it's delicious,” and which David Brin characterizes not as free-market advocates but rather anti-market kleptocrats. The question which arises is whether or not we have the time for all of the bullshit which is part of the regulatory and political ground-clearing needed prior to actually start engineering changes in consumption patterns, manufacturing processes and infrastructure to achieve a lower carbon footprint, before the life-changing climate-change really kicks in.

Why I Need to Keep Writing About Light Bulbs Instead of Something More Profound

I ran across this post the other day, while scrolling through some of the searches that have brought people to IA. It’s an example of why I’ve had to keep up my meager efforts to counteract factoids about compact fluorescent light bulbs. This individual was writing on the “American Thinker” blog, which from the other posts, apparently pulls quite a bit to the right politically. The post was pretty much the standard logic-deficient talking point from the right (mercury from CFLs is bad, therefore environmentalist positions on global climate change are bankrupt), but this time, ornamented with some really bad math:

A quick calculation shows that the 5 mg of mercury in an energy-conserving CFL is enough to fill an average size room (100 cubic meters volume) with the 0.05 mg/cubic meter vapor concentration that is considered hazardous for long term chronic exposure. Since this is the rule for laboratories, it probably does not account for people who might be especially sensitive, including infants, small children and pregnant women. As with allergies, different people can have vastly different responses to exposures to toxins.

The admonition to open the window for 15 minutes after a CFL break does not account for the various sizes / shapes of rooms, placement of windows (or absence thereof) and whether there is adequate cross-ventilation. And of course, it is not so convenient to ventilate a room thoroughly with outdoor air during the dead of winter in a northern clime.

Far be it from me to fuel a scare, but CFL backers are the global warming alarmists, after all, who have much less science to back up their claims for concern about climate change. It might be instructive to review the OSHA regulations concerning handling of mercury employed at CFL manufacturing plants. I bet the precautions are quite stringent.

No, no, no, no and no. Going back to the anecdote “all models are wrong, some are useful” (attributed to statistician George E.P. Box), the flaws in this particular model are: first, all of the mercury doesn’t volatilize in an instant, and second, it doesn’t volatilize into a hermetically sealed box. A few months back, I created an indoor air model of the concentrations in air you might expect if you broke a CFL in a room. It provides a more realistic depiction of the mass transfer of mercury from shimmering pinhead blob on the ground to vapor in air, and accounts, in a simple manner, typical air exchange in a room. I’m not going to insist this model is right, but EPA did calibrate it a bit using actual air monitoring data from other mercury spill situations (thermometers and ritual uses). And, I did obtain air concentrations thousands of times lower than American Thinker’s, which are not in the range considered hazardous for long-term chronic exposure. American Thinker’s cartoon depiction of indoor air modeling (no, strike that, my version is a cartoon depiction – his is a stick figure) reminds me of the IH classroom problem used to teach Ideal Gas Law calculations and dimensional analysis: “a 1-pound chlorine cylinder falls off a table in a closed 12 ft by 16 ft room with a 10 ft ceiling. The cylinder breaks and releases its contents instantaneously into the room. The air temperature is 77 degrees F. What is the chlorine concentration in air, in parts-per-million?” You don’t really use that kind of model for assessing exposures and health risks.

Guys, if you want to beat up “global warming alarmists”, just keep writing editorials. Please don’t try to inject facts into the discussion. You’ll only embarrass yourselves.

More Mercury Factoids: Compact Fluorescent Lightbulbs, Part 3 – Stop Reading Steven Milloy and Go Buy the Light Bulbs

Note: this is part of a series: earlier posts can be found here and here. I hope this is the last post I have to write on this topic. It truly is a non-issue. But I doubt that I’m going to be done with this any time soon.

If you’ve come searching for information on CFLs and mercury because you read an article by Steven Milloy (notorious for coining the term “junk science”, and no I’m not dignify his effluvium with a link from Impact Analysis) or a news article which quoted him uncritically, I’m not going to warn you to “consider the source”. Head over to PZ Myers if you want an opinion about the quality of Mr. Milloy “journalism”. However, if Steven Milloy is the one who got you all worried about this, let’s face it, you got owned. Read on, and you might be able to change that.

Mr. Milloy quotes two facts in his article – that the Maine Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) detected a mercury concentration in air 6-fold higher than a tolerable level in the bedroom of Ms. Brandy Bridges’s home, and that the DEP recommended she contact a cleanup contractor to mitigate the spill; the problem with a cleanup contractor is that they quoted Ms. Bridges a price of $2,000. Let’s start with the second one. Now the Ellsworth American news article that was the original source for this story also says that the DEP inspector recommended to Ms. Bridges that she didn’t attempt to clean up the spill, and call a cleanup contractor. The state’s version of the story was:

The homeowner expressed particular nervousness about exposures to mercury even in low numbers. Based on that concern, the responder explained two ways to minimize exposures to mercury: one way was to wear respiratory protection and another way was to hire a clean-up contractor. Since the homeowner did not have any respirator protection, the responder referred her to a commercial clean-up contractor. The responder further suggested that the homeowner talk with their homeowner’s insurance company to see if her policy would cover the cost of a professional clean-up contractor.

The DEP inspector also encouraged her to speak with a state toxicologist, who said that the potential mercury exposure was low and of negligible concern. As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t feel that Ms. Bridges got the best advice here, with regard to mitigation. Respiratory protection (i.e. wearing respirators) clearly wasn’t the right answer. Respirators are only for limited-duration use, involve professional judgment to select the proper type for a particular hazard, and require user training and fit-testing to be effective. However, telling someone who’s concerned about chemical exposure to simply not worry about it is generally ineffective. It is better if you can recommend that they take some kind of tangible action; it may not be necessary to reduce risks, and it may not have high effectiveness. What it accomplishes is to provide some sense of individual control over the situation, which is a factor in reducing anxiety and outrage over a health risk situation. Taking into consideration the air monitoring data collected by the state, a course of action that could have provided some benefit, could have given the homeowner the sense of managing the situation and would have been much cheaper than calling a cleanup contractor, would have been to go out to a home improvement store, buying a box fan, sticking it in a window, open a second window to provide some draft, and ventilating the room for a day.

Citing data selectively to make your point is a time-honored tactic of deception, and Mr. Milloy used it effectively here. Recall what was said in his news story:

The DEP sent a specialist to Bridges’ house to test for mercury contamination. The specialist found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter.

Dang, and I had just said I wasn’t going to link to him either. Oh, 300 billionths of a gram corresponds to 300 nanograms and, as discussed in a previous post, 300 nanograms per cubic meter of air is EPA’s Reference Concentration (RfC) for elemental mercury. Milloy’s screed about CFLs, global warming and environmentalists and their fruitcake ideas about mercury, all spring from this “fact”. Of course, it’s inaccurate and misleading, and one wonders why he even bothered citing it. As Ronald Reagan once said, “facts are stupid things”.

Ok, so there’s a real story here. Returning to the Maine DEP’s report:

When a Department responder goes to the site of a spill, there are typically two types of instrument measurements that they would take. The first is an evaluation of the source of the spill. This is to identify any hot spots or areas of concern, to determine the extent of the spill, and whether it has been tracked extensively throughout the home. This helps determine the extent of the effort to clean up the spill, if any. This type of measurement is generally at the floor or point of impact. The second type of measurement taken are those readings that are more useful for homeowner exposure and are typically in the “breathing zone”, at an intermediate height for children and a higher height more appropriate for adults.

When the Lumex mercury detector was positioned inches over the spill, the concentration detected was 1,939 ng/m3. The state’s report goes on to characterize this finding as follows:

Moving the Lumex instrument six to eight inches in either direction or up toward the ceiling dropped the value significantly. To visualize the area of high readings, it could be covered by a dinner plate.

So, for Mr. Milloy’s “fact” to really be correct, that the Maine DEP found mercury levels in the bedroom in excess of six times the state’s “safe” level for mercury contamination of 300 billionths of a gram per cubic meter, someone would have to crouch down onto the floor and inhale air from an area within six inches from the broken bulb. And they would have to do this daily for their entire lifetime to be exposed to a level six-fold higher than the safe level.

The state of Maine’s inspector also made some “breathing zone” measurements, sampling room air at a 3 foot level, which provides a better indication of the concentrations in air which someone might be breathing on a regular basis. Those concentrations were 31 and 49 ng/m3, which are less than the 300 ng/m3 RfC. In fact, most of the measurements were below 300 ng/m3, and the state’s report said,

Based upon this information, the State Toxicologist assured the homeowner that the potential mercury exposure would be very low and likely of negligible health concern.

But you don’t hear any of this from Mr. Milloy. At this point there’s only speculation as to why his readers weren’t given a more complete rendition of the facts. Perhaps it’s as creationist Duane Gish said during the McLean vs Arkansas Board of Education trial when accused of misquoting geological data refuting the creationist notion of a “young Earth”, “you have to stop quoting somewhere”.

I guess so. But at some point, you also have to stop listening to claptrap. You probably shouldn’t look to anything Steven Milloy says as a reason to not buy CFL bulbs.

Getting Carbon Neutral Just Got a Bit Trickier

Awhile back, the non-profit group Clean Air-Cool Planet conducted an independent review of retail carbon offset providers. The goal of the report, is to encourage more transparency and quality across retail offset providers. Carbon offsets in concept allow an individual or an organization to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions by making payments for activities that overall mitigate emissions. Examples of offset methods include reforestation, investment in renewable energy or energy conservation projects, or purchasing emissions trading credits.

Offsets are controversial, in that it can be difficult to verify that they achieve real emissions reductions. Some providers offer certification to demonstrate that “their” offsets are reducing emissions. The Clean air-Cool Planet report discusses in further detail the intricacies and pitfalls of becoming carbon neutral. Some are frankly scathing of the process, damning it as a way of maintaining business as usual without making any real effort to reduce emissions. George Monbiot likens the process to the selling of indulgences in the Middle Ages, for people wishing to pay to redeem their sins without actually having to do anything to stop sinning (though there is something appealing about equating SUV ownership with sin. . . .).

Now, a new report from Integrated Sustainability Analysis-UK, a consultancy (what the British call “consulting firms”), raises more questions about the definition of the carbon footprint.

Despite its ubiquitous public use however, the scientific literature is surprisingly void of clarifications, let alone definitions of the term 'carbon footprint'. This report explores the apparent discrepancy between public and academic use of the term ‘carbon footprint’ and suggests a scientific definition based on commonly accepted accounting principles and modelling approaches. It addresses methodological questions such as system boundaries, completeness, comprehensiveness, units and robustness of the indicator.

It makes sense when you think about it. You’re plugging your airline miles into a web page, and it tells you how much more your ticket costs to be “carbon neutral”. That’s scarcely transparent. You can’t even be sure that the arithmetic is being done correctly, even before considering the more substantive methodological questions raised in ISA-UK’s report. Those who are truly interested in going the offsets route for reducing your contribution to greenhouse gas emissions need to get themselves more educated about these matters. Joel Makower over at WorldChanging has a good summary of the CA-CP report for those not sufficiently interested to wade through it. His take home point is:

You've got to ask good questions when buying offsets; the report suggests several questions to ask. Whether you'll fully grok the answers, of course, is a whole 'nother thing.

His article is informative, but he sort of leaves it up to you to figure out specifically what questions to ask. I’m ok with learning about it, but then again, I already know where to find the GHG Protocol.

More Mercury Factoids: Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs, Part 2

Note: part of a series. Other posts are here and here.

So, why aren’t you going to get mercury poisoning if you break a CFL bulb in your home? First, it’s going to release only a very tiny amount of mercury into the air for a fairly limited period of time (as was discussed in the previous post). Second, we’re comparing that tiny amount of mercury in air with a health-based level that is highly protective - the Reference Concentration (RfC).

From studies of exposed human populations, it’s been observed that the most sensitive effects of low level exposure to elemental mercury occur in the nervous system. The most sensitive neurobehavioral effects were observed at levels in air as low as 25 ug/m3 (that’s microgram per cubic meter of air) with exposure occurring over a period of several years, as confirmed in multiple studies of exposed workers. This lowest-observe-adverse-level (LOAEL) is further reduced with uncertainty factors to protect sensitive individuals and to address where we don’t know much about inhaling elemental mercury (such as effects to the fetus from exposure to pregnant women, or to young children). The value you then get as the RfC is 0.3 ug/m3, which is about 100-fold below the level at which the most sensitive adverse effects have been observed with long-term inhalation exposure to mercury.

In addition, the definition of the RfC further confirms it’s protective nature:

In general, the RfC is an estimate (with uncertainty spanning perhaps an order of magnitude) of a daily inhalation exposure of the human population (including sensitive subgroups) that is likely to be without an appreciable risk of deleterious effects during a lifetime. (see Note 1, below)

Recall that I had done some calculations of mercury concentrations in air that could result from the emissions from breaking a CFL bulb indoors. The modeled concentrations rose to 0.48 ug/m3 after a day, and drop below the RfC (i.e. below 0.3 ug/m3) after three days, and remain below it all times after that (see Note 2, below). After three days, the modeled concentrations in air continue to decrease. They won’t go to zero, because that’s the nature of a model with an exponential term in it. However, for the folks who believe they need to have zero exposure to be “safe”, the 5 milligram mass of mercury that’s been released will eventually volatilize completely, and at some point in the future, the mercury concentrations in air will become undetectable (which is a little different than “zero”; sorry about that). Things should remain that way until the next time you break a bulb, which should be fairly infrequently (for myself, I try to not break light bulbs because I don’t like taking the risk of stepping in the broken glass).

So what about those couple of days where exposures are over the RfC? There isn’t a published health effects level covering that situation According to the ATSDR as with EPA, the LOAEL for less serious effects (i.e., the most sensitive effects) in humans were neurobehavioral effects such as tremors and poor performance in neurological testing observed at exposures ranging from 14 to 25 ug/m3 over a period more than half a year to 41 years (sorry it can’t be more precise, but that’s the nature of observational data). There’s lot’s of information about neurological effects in humans with high-level short duration inhalation exposure, but no exposure information. However, the levels in air producing adverse neurological effects in lab animals such as rats or rabbits typically are around 1,000 ug/m3 in air or higher for a period of days or weeks. Taking these things into consideration, along with the underlying philosophy that occasional exposures above the RfC don’t imply adverse effects are going to occur, it doesn’t appear that a few days of slightly elevated exposure to mercury vapor from breaking a CFL bulb would produce the shakes. This isn’t really a reason to not buy CFL bulbs. (For more information about mercury-related health effects, here’s the ATSDR public health statement).

As mentioned before, the RfC includes uncertainty factors to address what we don’t know yet about developmental effects to a fetus. This is prudent – in the ATSDR profile, there is one study with laboratory animals in which pregnant rats were exposed to 50 ug/m3 in air for a few hours a day over seven days, where the offspring exhibited neurological impairment. This is different from the other developmental studies in animals, in which short term exposures of ranging from 500 to 1,800 ug/m3 in air were producing neurobehavioral effects in the offspring, which is a thousand-fold higher than the short-term levels potentially associated with breaking a CFL bulb. As before, it doesn’t seem that a few days with slightly elevated exposures constitutes “appreciable risk of deleterious effects”. Not enough to require hiring a cleanup contractor if a bulb breaks in your house, and not enough to deter a reasonable person from buying CFL bulbs.

Note 1: the RfC isn’t a fixed line – above it you’re risking your health, below it you’re safe. It doesn’t work that way. Levels below it are unlikely to be associated with adverse health effects, and are considered protective and of no concern to regulatory agencies. However, as the magnitude and frequency (both are important) of exposure to levels above the RfC increases, the probability of adverse effects occurring increases. However you can’t say categorically that all levels of exposure below the RfC are safe, and that all levels above the RfC are associated with adverse health effects. Welcome to the real world of toxicology.

Note 2: no, I don’t know why the Ellsworth American and Steven Milloy said that the Maine DEP finding was the mercury level was in excess of six times the "EPA standard" in Ms. Bridges home. As typically occurs with the media reporting environmental stories, they didn’t provide enough information. Maybe the inspector made the measurements at carpet-level, while the EPA’s study (and the model) evaluated general room air. Maybe it’s because the inspector was making a measurement with a real-time instrument, and the level represents a short-term peak concentration, while the EPA’s study (and the model) are calculations of time-weighted average concentrations. I won’t speculate about quality control, instrument calibration or operator experience because that’s pointless, but these are also factors that affect the reliability of the measurements.

More Mercury Factoids: Compact Fluorescent Light Bulbs

Note: part of a series. Other posts on CFLs are here and here.

So I’m online getting some consumer information about compact fluorescent light (CFL) bulbs, the latest weapon in the war on carbon dioxide, and I happen to run across this tidbit published last month from the Junkman himself, Steven Milloy. Mr. Milloy has used the misfortune of one Maine woman, who broke a mercury-containing CFL bulb in her home and got a raft of really bad advice for what to do about it, as a springboard for bashing all environmentalists about reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

The news media had taken up the chase on this issue, and from them we find that the facts in this matter were as follows: According to an article in the Ellsworth American, Brandy Bridges dropped one of about two CFL dozen bulbs she was installing in her home, which broke on a shag carpet. Alert to the potential hazards of mercury exposure, Ms. Bridges called Home Depot, where she had bought the bulbs. Home Depot warned her not to vacuum the glass and directed her to a poison control hotline, which in turn referred her to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention and the Maine Department of Environmental Protection. The DEP sent a specialist to test the mercury vapor levels in her home.

Here’s where the story starts to become fact-free: In her daughter's room near the broken bulb the mercury level was in excess of six times the EPA standard. This is completely accurate as far as the journalist knows – but at the same time, an utterly useless piece of information for trying to understand if there is a real health risk associated with a release of mercury from a broken CFL. Mr. Milloy gratuitously adds that the “safe” level for mercury is 300 billionth of a gram per cubic meter of air, a framing that tells you he really isn’t that concerned about the mercury exposure, but this was just too good an opportunity to pass up to beat up again on the folks who are concerned about global warming. I guess he doesn’t own any Philips stock.

Back to our story. DEP specialist told Ms. Bridges not to clean up the glass herself, but to call an environmental clean-up firm. The firm gave Ms. Bridges an estimate of $2,000 to clean up the broken bulb. Keep in mind this advice was completely inconsistent with the recommendations that EPA and many other regulatory agencies provide for disposal of broken bulbs. If anyone should be scraping together the money to deal with this, it should be the state of Maine, not Brandy Bridges.

The final irony in this misfortunate episode is that there probably was no real risk to begin with. Think about it for a moment. Mercury is a substance that requires cumulative exposure over a period of months or years to produce its adverse effects. And, a CFL contains around 5 milligrams of mercury, scarcely a pinhead’s-worth. No doubt that it will volatilize into a room, but how much mercury could that produce in the air, and for how long?

Quite a number of investigators have examined the problem of indoor air pollution from elemental mercury resulting from breaking mercury-containing thermometers, ritualistic uses and just playing around with mercury beads. In 2005, EPA published a series of studies examining mercury emissions and indoor concentrations under controlled conditions. I used the empirical model published in that report to estimate the air concentrations potentially associated with emissions of the 5 mg of mercury that would be released from breaking a CFL light bulb in a small bedroom under “average” air exchange conditions. The modeled mercury concentrations slightly exceed the “EPA standard” (the Reference Concentration, or RfC – which is not a standard, but that’s a story for another day) for a couple of days, but then drop below it, and fall well below it within two weeks. I hear the objections now, “but that’s not what the news story said”, but the factoid “six times higher than the EPA standard” is so poorly described and poorly informed, as to not even qualify as a factoid, and scarcely the basis for making environmental health decisions around CFL light bulbs. It’s certainly not persuading me to avoid using them.

Part 2 of this post coming to a blog near you discusses why being exposed for a couple of days to mercury concentrations in air higher than the RfC isn’t a public health problem, certainly not one warranting scaring people off from using CFL light bulbs. In addition, we can further discuss the matter of the choices we make to optimize environmental health and climate protection. But until then, don’t be afraid of CFL light bulbs because of the mercury in them (particularly if you’re getting the news from the Junk Science guy himself; consider the source).

So Perhaps Now We’ll Take Global Climate Change Seriously?

It has always easy for our current Administration to ignore global climate change as long as it remained an environmental problem. When the realization began to grow that it was becoming an economic problem and a business driver, the Bushies needed to at least acknowledge it, because major corporations were getting more involved. Not that acknowledgement meant they had to address it, because climate change still wasn’t the hot button national security was.

Apparently that’s beginning to change. Tomorrow, the CNA Corporation will release a report written by several retired military officials concluding that global climate change presents a serious national security threat that could affect Americans at home, impact U.S. military operations and heighten global tensions.

No kidding.

Nearly ten years ago, Thomas Homer-Dixon began studying the relationships between environmental stress in poor countries, particularly scarcities of cropland, forests, and fresh water, and outbreaks of violent conflict, such as insurgency and ethnic strife. Those studies can be accessed at the Project on Environment, Population, and Security and at the Project on Environmental Scarcities, State Capacity, and Civil Violence. In 2003, Peter Schwartz and Doug Randall wrote a paper for the Pentagon discussing the national security implications of “abrupt” climate change which could potentially destabilize the geopolitical environment, leading to skirmishes, battles, and even wars due to resource constraints including food shortages brought about by decreases in net global agricultural production, decreased availability and quality of fresh water in key regions through changing precipitation patterns, causing more frequent floods and droughts, and disruptions in transportation of energy supplies due to extensive sea ice and storminess (the report can be downloaded from Grist). Environmental causes such as drought and desertification may be contributing factors to the war in Darfur.

So the only real news here is that important people in government have been able to resolutely ignore years of warning signs.

The CNA report explores ways projected climate change is a “threat multiplier” in already fragile regions of the world, exacerbating conditions that lead to failed states which are the breeding grounds for extremism and terrorism.

As part of its five specific recommendations for action, the Military Advisory Board stated that “the path to mitigating the worst security consequences of climate change involves reducing global greenhouse gas emissions.” According to retired General Gordon R. Sullivan, former Army Chief of Staff, “There is a relationship between carbon emissions and our national security”.

Others put it a little more starkly:

“We will pay for this one way or another,” stated retired Marine Corps General Anthony C. Zinni, former commander of U.S. forces in the Middle East. “We will pay to reduce greenhouse gas emissions today, and we'll have to take an economic hit of some kind. Or, we will pay the price later in military terms. And that will involve human lives. There will be a human toll.”

The report identifies the potential impacts from environmental threats, including massive migrations, increased border tensions, increased need for humanitarian relief operations, and conflicts over important resources, including food and water. It discusses the military and national security implications on a region-by-region basis.

The report includes several formal findings:

- Projected climate change poses a serious threat to America's national security.
- Climate change acts as a threat multiplier for instability in some of the most volatile regions of the world.
- Projected climate change will add to tensions even in stable regions of the world.
- Climate change, national security and energy dependence are a related set of global challenges.

The report also made several specific recommendations:

- The national security consequences of climate change should be fully integrated into national security and national defense strategies.
- The U.S. should commit to a stronger national and international role to help stabilize climate changes at levels that will avoid significant disruption to global security and stability.
- The U.S. should commit to global partnerships that help less developed nations build the capacity and resiliency to better manage climate impacts.
- The Department of Defense should enhance its operational capability by accelerating the adoption of improved business processes and innovative technologies that result in improved U.S. combat power through energy efficiency.
- DoD should conduct an assessment of the impact on US military installations worldwide of rising sea levels, extreme weather events, and other possible climate change impacts over the next thirty to forty years.

These come from the Military Advisory Board that is composed of eleven of the nation's most senior former officers and national security experts. It’s going to be interesting now to watch the Bush Administration beat the drums for the Global War on Terror and not talk about mitigating greenhouse gas emissions.

Greenhouse Gaseous Thinking

Tim Carney, fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and contributing editor to Human Events, must have clicked on the wrong link when he started blogging on Thursday, because he was spewing this stuff over on The Huffington Post. According to Tim, environmentalists, such as Al Gore, are shills for big industry. They are advocating environmental policies that will help big businesses and their Washington lobbyists rake in billions.

I found some of the reasoning tortured. According to Tim, energy companies like carbon taxes because they’ll just pass the costs onto their customers. I thought that was the idea – higher costing electricity from coal could create markets for wind and solar technologies, and promote energy-efficient consumer products. Carbon taxes and carbon trading could turn into an opportunity for some companies to start raking it in – this is why Enron was so enthusiastic about carbon trading. But there are correct ways to use carbon taxes, if policy makers are interested in using them.

Besides, complaining that someone is going to make money because of a market change is so. . . uncapitalistic, and a bit out of character for someone who works for the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

According to Tim, Archer-Daniels-Midland is just lovin’ policies promoting ethanol production from corn. However, ethanol as a gas additive won’t do anything for the environment because:

In brief: ethanol evaporates more than gasoline, releasing more smog-causing hydrocarbons; also, the energy intensity of producing ethanol, plus the potential damage to soil from single-crop farms, pose environmental threats in themselves.

I don’t think he’s got that first part right – ethanol won’t do much to reduce ozone formation according to the National Academy of Sciences, but where’s the data showing that ozone would increase with ethanol use? So I have to read the freakin’ book, on the off chance the answer might be in there? (That’s what it’s all about, he’s got a book to sell.) As for the rest of it, where have I heard this before? However, as I’ve mentioned previously the problem isn’t with farming to produce ethanol, it’s with farming in general. Biofuels production is just the symptom.

Of course, teeing off on environmentalists over these problems is misguided:

These three environmental proposals are typical of Washington policy and the exemplify the Ripoff: Politicians push rules that they say are for our own good. But Washington lobbyists raked in $2.28 billion in 2005, with about $2 billion of that coming from business lobbyists--you can bet they don't invest that much for nothing. Because small business and the average American don't have that sort of access, the policies tend to enrich big business while driving up costs for consumers and taxpayers and choking off entrepreneurs.

So what else is new? But if Tim is really interested in getting something done about it, why not get behind campaign finance and voting reforms to help jackhammer the lobbyists and entrenched players out of Congress? Nah, it’s more fun to bash environmentalists using grey propaganda, instead. HuffPo’s spam filter must have been down that day.