The Scars of Top Marks

Yeah, I get that the top-of-page story on today's Rhode Island section is more of a departing profile than report on the state's conservation efforts — even if the title is "Federal conservationist gives Rhode Island Top Marks" — but a word about the costs of some of what Roylene Rides at the Door applauds in Rhode Island would have been justified:

Now, as she prepares to move on to another post, as conservationist in Washington state, Rides at the Door, 39, says she has been pleasantly surprised by Rhode Island and its people. She says Rhode Island is a national leader in land conservation and in supporting local farming.

She was amazed to see 450 people at a Save the Bay meeting. Back in Montana, she said, an environmental group would be lucky to attract 30 people.

Last summer at the dedication of a new fish ladder at the Rising Sun Mill in Providence, which her federal agency helped pay for, more than 100 people, including much of the state's congressional delegation, were in attendance. She says she has not seen such political and popular support for conservation in many other states.

A few weeks ago, in the face of staggering state deficits and a recession, Rhode Islanders voted overwhelmingly for a $2.5-million bond issue to preserve open space and farms.

"It's a bad economic year, with high unemployment, yet everyone is willing to tax themselves for conservation. I think Rhode Island could teach a lot of other places how to do it," said Rides at the Door.

Religious fanatic that I am, I treasure the many reminders of God's creation that one may find throughout Rhode Island (including, incidentally, as it is expressed in human history). On Saturday, we took our children for the annual trip down Main Street into the country to cut down our Christmas tree, and the contrast of the rows of trees to the temporarily forested parking lots of my Northern New Jersey childhood is clear.

That said, the fact that they approved the bond issue that Rides at the Door lauds is proof enough that Rhode Islanders need to hear about the costs of going too far. The state is suffocating, and we're breaking out the public credit card to charge some open space. The government structure is strangling the private sector, and we're making it even harder to lower the taxes that are driving out thousands of productive citizens every year.

Young adults are having to look elsewhere for homes, if they wish to fly from the nest at an appropriate age, because the scarcity of suitable residences has driven prices beyond their reach, even as the market deflates. The young and the working do not want "affordable housing," they want housing that's affordable, and if Rhode Island's efforts against sprawl push them (their productivity, and their tax and retail dollars) out of state, that's where they'll go.

Conservation is an important goal, but it doesn't so outweigh human suffering that we should allow ourselves to forget the latter when patting ourselves on the back for the former.

Hot Off the Press and Fully Cooked

Back in my proofreader days, I happened to catch a major error simply because the graphs didn't make sense. According to the document handed to me that day, the United Arab Emirates ranked much more highly than the United States in various measures of freedom. As it turned out, a row had been transposed on the spreadsheet, rearranging the scores of every nation studied, and we kicked the document back to start.

The point is that these things are bound to happen (especially as companies increasingly decide to forgo professional editors), but it would be nice if they were promoted as highly in error as in statement:

So what explained the anomaly? GISS's computerised temperature maps seemed to show readings across a large part of Russia had been up to 10 degrees higher than normal. But when expert readers of the two leading warming-sceptic blogs, Watts Up With That and Climate Audit, began detailed analysis of the GISS data they made an astonishing discovery. The reason for the freak figures was that scores of temperature records from Russia and elsewhere were not based on October readings at all. Figures from the previous month had simply been carried over and repeated two months running.

Carrots Down the Rabbit Hole

The range of protected groups continues to, umm, grow:

For years, Swiss scientists have blithely created genetically modified rice, corn and apples. But did they ever stop to consider just how humiliating such experiments may be to plants?

That's a question they must now ask. Last spring, this small Alpine nation began mandating that geneticists conduct their research without trampling on a plant's dignity. ...

Many scientists interpret the dignity rule as applying mainly to field trials like Dr. Keller's, but some worry it may one day apply to lab studies as well. Another gripe: While Switzerland's stern laws defend lab animals and now plants from genetic tweaking, similar protections haven't been granted to snails and drosophila flies, which are commonly used in genetic experiments.

It also begs an obvious, if unrelated question: For a carrot, is there a more mortifying fate than being peeled, chopped and dropped into boiling water? ...

Seeking clarity, Dr. Poirier recently invited the head of the Swiss ethics panel to his university. In their public discussion, Dr. Poirier said the new rules are flawed because decades of traditional plant breeding had led to widely available sterile fruit, such as seedless grapes. Things took a surreal turn when it was disclosed that some panel members believe plants have feelings, Dr. Poirier says.

Frankly, the highest purpose in a vegetable's life must be to be eaten, although I can't say but that those called upon to serve mankind in the world of science, rather than be served to mankind at the dinner table, find their own callings meaningful, as well.

Captain Cook's Books Show Climate Change

British maritime historians are discovering that the information held in ye olde ships' log can help shed light on the "climate change" of the past.

Captain Cook and Lord Nelson seem unlikely figureheads in the fight against climate change alarmists.

The two British sea heroes have been dead for more than 200 years.

But their ships’ logs, and thousands more like them, have revealed that recent global warming is not so unusual after all....Maritime historian Dr Sam Willis says: “Ships’ officers recorded air pressure, wind strength, air and sea temperatures and other weather conditions...From these records, scientists can build a detailed picture of past weather and climate.”

The findings are startling. They show we went through a similar period of global warming in the 1730s that could NOT have been man-made.

And freak storms like the ones experienced recently also occurred in the 1680s and 1690s.

They were the coldest decades in what is known as the Little Ice Age — so could not have been caused by global warming.

Many doom mongers have pointed to freakish patterns in modern hurricanes as more “evidence” of the effects of man’s environmental damage.

Hurricanes that form in the eastern Atlantic normally track westwards.

So weathermen were shocked in 2005 when Hurricane Vince headed north east and hit Spain and Portugal.

But we now know exactly the same thing happened with a hurricane in 1842, thanks to logs left by our seafaring ancestors....

Geographer Dr Dennis Wheeler, of Sunderland University, said: “British archives contain more than 100,000 Royal Navy logbooks from around 1670 to 1850 alone. They are a stunning resource...Global warming is a reality, but our data show climate science is complex. It is wrong to take particular events and link them to carbon dioxide emissions...These records will give us a much clearer picture of what is really happening.”

ADDENDUM: Apparently NOAA has now decided that the "Medieval Warm Period" actually did exist, according to medievalist blogger Richard Noke's, who observes this is

a big change from back when they were disparaging reliance on contemporary accounts and archeology, darkly hinting that the Medieval Warm Period had some kind of political agenda behind it.

They didn't have much choice, as Noke's points out, for how else to explain how "this viking dock must have been constructed under the ice."

A Small Correction, Mr. President (or maybe not)

From the Telegraph (UK); h/t Mark Steyn filling in for Rush Limbaugh.

Departing the G-8 Summit yesterday, President George Bush

who has been condemned throughout his presidency for failing to tackle climate change, ended a private meeting with the words: "Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter."

He then punched the air while grinning widely, as the rest of those present including Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy looked on in shock.

Of course, China surpassed the United States in the category of carbon dioxide emissions a year ago.

In a way, though, the president is not wrong. With all aspects of anthropogenic global warming, the facts are secondary to perception and feelings. "It feels like the US is the worst polluter." "It looks like we are causing global warming." "It feels like we can stop global warming (if we are even causing it)." "It feels like we can cut 50% of our greenhouse gas emissions by 2050 (even though the magical fuel source has not been identified and more countries are well down the road of fossil fuel consuming development)."

All of this despite the current scientific status of the supposed scientific theory of AGW; i.e., flat lined. Every component proven wrong and all alleged unprecedented facts - oops - with historic precedents. No one wants to call the M.E. and make it official, though, which, in the world of facts and real science, has rendered AGW a joke.

President Bush's jocularity on the subject and apparent mistake in naming us the world's worst polluter, then, is very much in keeping with the spirit and current state of affairs of AGW.

Population Bomb? Or Population Dud?

Want to keep abreast of the important subjects of the day and prepare yourself for the leading topics that the mainstream media will soon be discussing? Then remember to listen to the Anchor Rising spot on the Matt Allen show on WPRO radio (630 AM) Wednesdays, around 6:50 pm; a few weeks ago, Matt and I discussed the problems with conventional, elitist Malthusian wisdom about population growth. This Sunday, the New York Times Magazine picked up on the same topic in a long article by Russell Shorto (h/t Instapundit)...

In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to “low” or “very low” levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: “lowest-low fertility.”

To the uninitiated, “lowest low” seems a strange thing to worry about. A few decades ago we were getting “the population explosion” drilled into us. The invader species homo sapiens, we learned, was eating through the planet’s resources and irretrievably fouling and wrecking its fragile systems. Has the situation changed for the better since Paul Ehrlich set off the alarm in 1968 with his best seller “The Population Bomb”? Do current headlines — global food shortages, climate change — not indicate continuing signs of calamity?

They do, as far as some are concerned, but things have changed somewhat. For one thing, around the world, even in developing countries, birthrates have plummeted — from 6.0 globally in 1972 to 2.9 today — as populations have shifted from rural areas to cities and people have adopted urban lifestyles, and the drop has perhaps lessened the urgency of the overpopulation cry....

To many, “lowest low” is hard evidence of imminent disaster of unprecedented proportions. “The ability to plan the decision to have a child is of course a big success for society, and for women in particular,” Letizia Mencarini, a professor of demography at the University of Turin, told me. “But if you would read the documents of demographers 20 years ago, you would see that nobody foresaw that the fertility rate would go so low. In the 1960s, the overall fertility rate in Italy was around two children per couple. Now it is about 1.3, and for some towns in Italy it is less than 1. This is considered pathological.”

The Times article proposes an explanation for observed population growth patterns sure to generate protests from the government-planning-is-always-best crowd…

Last year the fertility rate in the United States hit 2.1, the highest it has been since the 1960s and higher than almost anywhere in the developed world. Factor in immigration and you have a nation that is far more than holding its own in terms of population. In 1984 the U.S. Census Bureau projected that in the year 2050 the U.S. population would be 309 million. In 2008 it’s already 304 million, and the new projection for 2050 is 420 million.

“Europeans say to me, How does the U.S. do it in this day and age?” says Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. According to Haub and others, there is no single explanation for the relatively high U.S. fertility rate. The old conservative argument — that a traditional, working-husband-and-stay-at-home-wife family structure produces a healthy, growing population — doesn’t apply, either in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world today. Indeed, the societies most wedded to maintaining that traditional family structure seem to be those with the lowest birthrates. The antidote, in Western Europe, has been the welfare-state model, in which the state provides comprehensive support to couples that want to have children. But the U.S. runs counter to this. Some commentators explain its healthy birthrate in terms of the relatively conservative and religiously oriented nature of American society, which both encourages larger families. It’s also true that mores have evolved in the U.S. to the point where not only is it socially acceptable for fathers to be active participants in raising children, but it’s also often socially unacceptable for them to do otherwise.

But one other factor affecting the higher U.S. birthrate stands out in the minds of many observers. “There’s much less flexibility in the European system,” Haub says. “In Europe, both the society and the job market are more rigid.” There may be little state subsidy for child care in the U.S., and there is certainly nothing like the warm governmental nest that Norway feathers for fledgling families, but the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: “In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.” An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe.

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

Population Bomb? Or Population Dud?

Want to keep abreast of the important subjects of the day and prepare yourself for the leading topics that the mainstream media will soon be discussing? Then remember to listen to the Anchor Rising spot on the Matt Allen show on WPRO radio (630 AM) Wednesdays, around 6:50 pm; a few weeks ago, Matt and I discussed the problems with conventional, elitist Malthusian wisdom about population growth. This Sunday, the New York Times Magazine picked up on the same topic in a long article by Russell Shorto (h/t Instapundit)...

In the 1990s, European demographers began noticing a downward trend in population across the Continent and behind it a sharply falling birthrate. Non-number-crunchers largely ignored the information until a 2002 study by Italian, German and Spanish social scientists focused the data and gave policy makers across the European Union something to ponder. The figure of 2.1 is widely considered to be the “replacement rate” — the average number of births per woman that will maintain a country’s current population level. At various times in modern history — during war or famine — birthrates have fallen below the replacement rate, to “low” or “very low” levels. But Hans-Peter Kohler, José Antonio Ortega and Francesco Billari — the authors of the 2002 report — saw something new in the data. For the first time on record, birthrates in southern and Eastern Europe had dropped below 1.3. For the demographers, this number had a special mathematical portent. At that rate, a country’s population would be cut in half in 45 years, creating a falling-off-a-cliff effect from which it would be nearly impossible to recover. Kohler and his colleagues invented an ominous new term for the phenomenon: “lowest-low fertility.”

To the uninitiated, “lowest low” seems a strange thing to worry about. A few decades ago we were getting “the population explosion” drilled into us. The invader species homo sapiens, we learned, was eating through the planet’s resources and irretrievably fouling and wrecking its fragile systems. Has the situation changed for the better since Paul Ehrlich set off the alarm in 1968 with his best seller “The Population Bomb”? Do current headlines — global food shortages, climate change — not indicate continuing signs of calamity?

They do, as far as some are concerned, but things have changed somewhat. For one thing, around the world, even in developing countries, birthrates have plummeted — from 6.0 globally in 1972 to 2.9 today — as populations have shifted from rural areas to cities and people have adopted urban lifestyles, and the drop has perhaps lessened the urgency of the overpopulation cry....

To many, “lowest low” is hard evidence of imminent disaster of unprecedented proportions. “The ability to plan the decision to have a child is of course a big success for society, and for women in particular,” Letizia Mencarini, a professor of demography at the University of Turin, told me. “But if you would read the documents of demographers 20 years ago, you would see that nobody foresaw that the fertility rate would go so low. In the 1960s, the overall fertility rate in Italy was around two children per couple. Now it is about 1.3, and for some towns in Italy it is less than 1. This is considered pathological.”

The Times article proposes an explanation for observed population growth patterns sure to generate protests from the government-planning-is-always-best crowd…

Last year the fertility rate in the United States hit 2.1, the highest it has been since the 1960s and higher than almost anywhere in the developed world. Factor in immigration and you have a nation that is far more than holding its own in terms of population. In 1984 the U.S. Census Bureau projected that in the year 2050 the U.S. population would be 309 million. In 2008 it’s already 304 million, and the new projection for 2050 is 420 million.

“Europeans say to me, How does the U.S. do it in this day and age?” says Carl Haub of the Population Reference Bureau in Washington. According to Haub and others, there is no single explanation for the relatively high U.S. fertility rate. The old conservative argument — that a traditional, working-husband-and-stay-at-home-wife family structure produces a healthy, growing population — doesn’t apply, either in the U.S. or anywhere else in the world today. Indeed, the societies most wedded to maintaining that traditional family structure seem to be those with the lowest birthrates. The antidote, in Western Europe, has been the welfare-state model, in which the state provides comprehensive support to couples that want to have children. But the U.S. runs counter to this. Some commentators explain its healthy birthrate in terms of the relatively conservative and religiously oriented nature of American society, which both encourages larger families. It’s also true that mores have evolved in the U.S. to the point where not only is it socially acceptable for fathers to be active participants in raising children, but it’s also often socially unacceptable for them to do otherwise.

But one other factor affecting the higher U.S. birthrate stands out in the minds of many observers. “There’s much less flexibility in the European system,” Haub says. “In Europe, both the society and the job market are more rigid.” There may be little state subsidy for child care in the U.S., and there is certainly nothing like the warm governmental nest that Norway feathers for fledgling families, but the American system seems to make up for it in other ways. As Hans-Peter Kohler of the University of Pennsylvania writes: “In general, women are deterred from having children when the economic cost — in the form of lower lifetime wages — is too high. Compared to other high-income countries, this cost is diminished by an American labor market that allows more flexible work hours and makes it easier to leave and then re-enter the labor force.” An American woman might choose to suspend her career for three or five years to raise a family, expecting to be able to resume working; that happens far less easily in Europe.

So there would seem to be two models for achieving higher fertility: the neosocialist Scandinavian system and the laissez-faire American one. Aassve put it to me this way: “You might say that in order to promote fertility, your society needs to be generous or flexible. The U.S. isn’t very generous, but it is flexible. Italy is not generous in terms of social services and it’s not flexible. There is also a social stigma in countries like Italy, where it is seen as less socially accepted for women with children to work. In the U.S., that is very accepted.”

Environmental Mania Claims Jobs

Something has seemed forced — in a "just a bit too perfect" way — about the promise of "green jobs" as some sort of savior of our economy. Ben Lieberman suggests that, even if such jobs do proliferate, they don't match up with the number of jobs lost to the larger ecological zeitgeist:

According to a study conducted by the Heritage Foundation, the bill would cost half a million manufacturing jobs by 2018, 1 million by 2022, and more than 2 million by 2027. Of course, most of these displaced workers will eventually find something else to do, but often at lower wages.

Some proponents claim that new "green collar" jobs would make up the difference. For example, there will be more work at solar-panel manufacturers and other industries helped by the bill. But these jobs will be swamped by the number of those lost. The Heritage figures are net of any manufacturing jobs gained, and also exclude blue-collar jobs likely to be lost for reasons unrelated to the global-warming bill. ...

To add insult to injury, as many households struggle with layoffs and shifts to lower-paying jobs, they also will have to endure higher prices for electricity, natural gas and gasoline thanks to this bill — a costly double whammy.

All for the promise of an ultimately minor benefit to the environment, if any. As some of us have been unable to avoid noticing, however, "green" is more of a religion than a considered reaction. It brooks no dissent and tabulates no costs, but permits the insertion of all manner of prior political preferences.

Ignoring a Force of Market

Here's a statement that I've read multiple times with reference to "alternative energy", specifically the bills to provide incentive to National Grid to buy it that have just passed the RI House:

Matt Auten of the advocacy group Environment Rhode Island denied that renewable energy would drive up electricity costs, describing the bill instead as a "prudent response to skyrocketing prices for electricity [and natural gas] because it will lock in a fixed price not tied to polluting fossil fuels for a portion of Rhode Island’s electric needs."

What am I missing in the provision of "alternative energy" that makes it free from market forces? As far as I can tell — letting legislators mandate what they will — the price of any energy will ultimately be "tied" to non-alternative energy prices, among other things. (One can foresee future conversations about the lack of wind in a given year.)

And that doesn't take into consideration the side effects of solidifying National Grid as a state monopoly through mandates and regulations.

A Developing Theme on the Environment

I was going to note that Colin Flaherty shows that there's at least some truth to every paranoia:

I am an ecophobe: I imagine environmentalists creating catastrophes all the time all over the world. I see great floods, famine, disease and death, and behind each is the same thing: a grinning environmentalist reveling in the mayhem as if it were magic. Before you commit me, hear me out. Then I'll go quietly.

Be the motivation what it will, Flaherty mounts a case that, if not convincing, ought to be cause for some reflection among the greens. Surely there's a balance to be struck (rearing its head even in book reviews concerning foreign nations' growth relative to the U.S.A.), but it seems to often to be the case that comeuppance isn't acknowledged as the foreseeable consequence of prior decisions.

With his inimitable way, Mark Steyn explains a recent example:

"It shall be illegal and a violation of this Act," declared the House of Representatives, "to limit the production or distribution of oil, natural gas, or any other petroleum product... or to otherwise take any action in restraint of trade for oil, natural gas, or any petroleum product when such action, combination, or collective action has a direct, substantial, and reasonably foreseeable effect on the market, supply, price, or distribution of oil, natural gas, or other petroleum product in the United States."

Er, okay. But, before we start suing distant sheikhs in exotic lands for violating the NOPEC act, why don't we start by suing Congress? After all, who "limits the production or distribution of oil" right here in the United States by declaring that there'll be no drilling in the Gulf of Florida or the Arctic National Mosquito Refuge? As Congresswoman Wasserman Schultz herself told Neil Cavuto on Fox News, "We can't drill our way out of this problem."

Well, maybe not. But maybe we could drill our way back to three-and-a-quarter per gallon. More to the point, if the House of Representatives has now declared it "illegal" for the government of Saudi Arabia to restrict oil production, why is it still legal for the Government of the United States to restrict oil production? In fact, the government of the United States restricts pretty much every form of energy production other than the bizarre fetish du jour of federally mandated ethanol production.

Of course, as Flaherty reminds us:

Warning: Misguided faith in the ability of markets to produce food and energy is just one of the early signs of ecophobia. So is using the term "market."

Newsflash: Human Heaviosity & Inertia Contribute to Global Warming

So say two unknown medical types in the Lancet magazine.

By way of reference, this is the same magazine which published the discredited claim of 600,000 civilian deaths in Iraq - a number which proved to be four times too high. The Lancet requires a subscription or registration or something (sorry, no patience for a "science" magazine that seems to award contributing authors extra points for creativity) so this excerpt is courtesy of TierneyLab, a New York Times blog:

Compared with the normal weight population, the obese population consumes 18% more food energy. Additionally, more transportation fuel energy will be used to transport the increased mass of the obese population, which will increase even further if, as is likely, the overweight people in response to their increased body mass choose to walk less and drive more.

Urban transport policies that promote walking and cycling would reduce food prices by reducing the global demand for oil, and promotion of a normal distribution of B.M.I. [Body Mass Index] would reduce the global demand for, and thus the price of, food. Decreased car use would reduce greenhouse gas emissions and thus the need for biofuels, and increased physical activity levels, would reduce injury risk and air pollution, improving population health.

If man even is causing global warming by his meager contribution of 6% of total greenhouse gas emissions, the margin represented by higher than average body mass indices is not at or near the top of the list of his impactful activities. Of greater concern is the understandable desire of less developed countries to acquire such "luxuries" as electricity, cars, heat, cooling, wider selection of food, etc, evidenced by China surpassing the United States in 2006 as the biggest producer of carbon dioxide.

While I am a great believer in exercise and doing errands on foot and bicycle as feasible, I am heartily sceptical of 1.) man's role in global warming; 2.) man's ability to reverse his impact, if any, without literally ending civilization as we know it; 3.) the adviseability of reversing global warming at all; and 4.) our obligation to the cute, cuddly polar bear. The propounding of this silly theory in Lancet, therefore, delights me because it vividly encapsulates the larger theory of anthropogenic global warming: it eschews scientific proof while attempting to make man feel guilty for his unproven role in a not unprecedented phenomenon.

Making the Bad Worse

Deroy Murdock is unremittingly critical of government subsidization and mandates related to ethanol:

Poor Haitians rioted last week outside Port-au-Prince's presidential palace, forcing Prime Minister Jacques Edouard Alexis's April 12 ouster. Haitians are sick and tired of food prices that are 40 percent higher than last summer's. Some have resorted to eating cookies made of salt, vegetable oil, and dirt. That's right: Dirt cookies.

Developing-world denizens are taking it to the streets with growling stomachs. In Bob Marley's words, "A hungry man is an angry man."

Climbing corn prices have ignited Mexican tortilla riots. Enraged citizens in Egypt and Pakistan — potential Muslim powder kegs — have also violently protested premium prices for basic staples. Similar instability has erupted from the Ivory Coast to Indonesia. Resurrecting the defeated "import substitution" model of yore, India and Vietnam are among the nations that lately have prohibited grain exports and imposed government price controls. Kazakhstan, Earth's No. 5 wheat source, just halted wheat exports, hoping to hoard local supplies. One third of the global wheat market is now closed.

High oil prices and growing global food demand fan these flames, but government lit the match. Atop the European Union's biofuels mandate (5.75 percent of gasoline and diesel by 2010; 10 percent expected in 2020), America's 51-cent-per-gallon ethanol tax subsidy (2007 cost: $8 billion) and Congress' 7.5-billion-gallon annual production quota (rising to 36 billion in 2022, including 15 billion from corn) have turned corn farms into cash cows. Diverting one quarter of U.S. corn to motors rather than to mouths has boosted prices 74 percent in a year.

In keeping with Monique's post yesterday, I'd observe that environmentalism has become a mania, and as with other manias in history, it has the potential to cause grave harm to humanity. A food crisis is not a solution to the world's problems... unless one believes that human beings are the problem.

Out of the Mud

Although the details are sparse, thus far, I hope the pending settlement of all lawsuits related to the soil pollution down the hill from me brings the matter to a close that protects everybody involved, and helps those whose health has suffered. It's certainly been a tragedy of history's reach into the present.

I continue to think that the effort could have been handled better, and more expediently. Word around town was that the depositions and other suit-related events have been grueling, and I can't believe otherwise than that the goal of a more cooperative human society is harmed more than hurried by the storyline of government as the people's protector against evil corporations (which is to say, other people).

Re: Green Gingrich (& Global Warming Generally)

That Newt Gingrich's participation in the discussion on anthropogenic global warming has taken this form is disappointing. By appearing in an ad with US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and looking around for solutions (even market based ones), Gingrich has lent his credibility to the erroneous propositions that 1.) man has caused this phenomenon and 2.) man can stop this phenomenon with just a little effort.

1.) It has not been scientifically proven, despite all of Al Gore and James Hansen's protestations, that man is causing global warming. Mann's hockey stick has been broken. The precious computer models are problematic, to say no worse. And the fall-back argument - that temperatures have never risen so quickly in such a short period of time, namely, three quarters of a degree over the course of one hundred and twenty years - is not provable. Not only is this is an absurdly short span of time in Earth's 4b+ year history by which to prove such a potentially impactful hypothesis but temperature charts covering periods prior to one hundred and fifty years ago are based on inferred measurements. It is not possible for such an imprecise gauge to reveal all micro spikes and dips in temperature that have occurred in Earth's history. How can it be definitively stated, therefore, that the micro spike we are experiencing (then again, perhaps we are not) is unprecedented?

2.) Man only generates 6% of the greenhouse gases on the planet. Mother Nature contributes the other 94%.

In the remote event it were true that man was causing global warming with his 6%, the solution would not be to hinkle-pinkle around with carbon trading, carbon taxes (are we to believe that these will not simply be more pointless taxes for ever more pointless pork barrel spending?) and twirly lightbulbs that give you nerve damage if they break. If man is causing global warming, the actions required to reverse it would be draconian. Not only would we have to demand that India, China, Africa and other countries stay in their current state of low development - actually, China would have to go backwards a good twenty years - and discomfort, we in "first world" countries would have to join them in that condition.

Item #2 constitutes perhaps the most scandalous aspect of the theory of AGW. Scientists and advocates who promote the theory of AGW are careful not to mention how small man's contribution to greenhouse gas generation is because the extreme measures that would be required to reverse the hypothesized effect would immediately be thrown into high relief. Nor, even more importantly, can these scientists and advocates say what amount of reduction of man's greenhouse gas generation will either slow or stop global warming (again, if man is responsible). We do know, because man only generates 6% of these gases, that it would have to be a considerable, even drastic, reduction.

Suppose somehow we stop half of all of our activity. We reduce our driving, our manufacturing, our food, our beef, our lights and our HVAC by half. Africa, India, China and other countries stop aspiring to cars, heat, better availability and distribution of food, etc. So. Now man's activity only contributes 3% of greenhouse gases. Will that do the trick? Will global warming be slowed? Stopped? No one can say for sure. We're just supposed to go along with the program, whatever it is, in blind faith, preferably without asking questions and certainly without noticing the traffic jams which AGW advocates get embroiled in.

Green Gingrich

Two interesting quotes from a Newt Gingrich chat session yesterday with Slate Magazine on the subject of green conservatism, from his opening statement...

I want to start by saying that I believe we need an entrepreneurial, science and technology oriented approach to the environment, and that most Americans agree with that. If you go to www.americansolutions.com, and pull up the Platform of the American People, you will see that a majority of Democrats, independents, and Republicans all agree that entrepreneurs can do more than bureaucrats to solve environmental challenges.
I think the tragedy has been that conservatives have been unwilling to spend the time and energy to debate the left on which will produce the better outcome.

For example, if you are really worried about carbon loading of the atmosphere...if the United States produced the same percentage of our electricity from nuclear power as the French, we would take 2 billion, 200 million tons of carbon out of the atmosphere a year, and that one step would be 15 percent better than the total Kyoto goal for the U.S.

…and from his answer to the question "Didn't a cap-and-trade system work well in reducing sulfur dioxide emissions in the 1990s"...

That cap and trade system involved a very small number of players and a very specific product. A carbon cap and trade system would be massively more complex. It would lead to corruption, political favoritism, and would have a huge impact on the economy.

I think that tax credits for reducing carbon loading would work faster in a much more decentralized way by rewarding people for doing the right thing.

Thomas Wigand: Camouflage Green

As reported in the Providence Journal on March 13: "A coalition of labor unions, environmental advocates and antipoverty groups are collaborating to promote legislation that would help spark new renewable-energy industries in Rhode Island. The group, which calls itself the Green Jobs Alliance, says it has come together to promote a 'green economy' that improves the environment while at the same time creates middle-class jobs."

Neither the advance press release announcing the press conference regarding the rollout of this "Green Jobs Alliance," nor the subsequent Providence Journal story, made mention of the national and international roots and affiliations of this alliance. So it is fair to posit that there was a deliberate attempt to make it appear that this is some sort of homegrown, spontaneous effort within Rhode Island. But as we shall see, this seems unlikely — which in turn begs the question as to why the organizers sought to downplay those affiliations.

The Sierra Club, which was at the Providence news conference, has been engaged in a "partnership" with the United Steelworkers of America called the "Blue-Green Alliance" since 1996. This alliance, on March 13–14 hosted a conference called "Good Jobs, Green Jobs: A National Green Jobs Conference" in Pittsburgh. The speakers list includes representatives from various labor unions and the leadership of the AFL-CIO, which certainly was known to another attendee at the Providence news conference, George Nee of the Rhode Island AFL-CIO [who, with the local Sierra Club, co-authored a commentary piece calling for building wind farms in Rhode Island that appeared in the Providence Journal on February 20th].

The Blue-Green Alliance is sponsoring green jobs initiatives that appear identical to the Rhode Island "wind energy" effort in various of the "rust belt" states (arguably Rhode Island is one of the leading states in the expansion of the "rust belt" to encompass not just the upper Midwest, but the Northeast, as well). While an expansion of wind and solar powered energy generation is probably a good thing, it is fair to presume that the "green jobs" that they propose to create will actually be in the nature of taxpayer financed public works projects rather than incubating new private sector industries. After all, not every state can become a "leader" in a new "green" manufacturing sector, though it appears that this is how it is being marketed in each state.

Organized labor loves public works projects because they are de facto "corporate welfare" for unions. This is done through what are called "prevailing wage laws" and "project labor agreements." What these do is require public works projects (or private projects that get tax breaks) to pay union wages, the effect being that unionized contractors don't have to compete in a true competitive bidding process, so the playing field is shifted in favor of the unions … while the taxpayers are locked in to paying a higher-than-market price for the projects.

It is not a stretch to believe that the unspoken agenda here is to push new taxpayer financed public works projects, albeit labeling them as "good for the environment" and "fostering new industries with good paying jobs." After all, the Providence Place Mall and Route 95 projects are completed, so organized labor is no doubt on the hunt for new projects to fill the void.

Query whether Mr. Nee and the rest of organized labor would be willing, for the good of the environment, "to exempt such" green" projects from "prevailing wage" and "project labor agreements" so that they can be done at lesser cost, and so more of them can be completed. I think we all know the answer.

There is an international angle to this, as well. A group called the International Trade Union Confederation has involved itself with "global warming." This group declares on its Web site that "together with its affiliates, its regional organisations, the Global Union Federations, as well as with non-governmental organisations, the ITUC carries out ongoing campaign action for the universal respect of trade union rights, as guaranteed by the Conventions of the International Labour Organisation (ILO)." The ILO is an affiliate of the United Nations.

The Blue-Green Alliance and the ITUC are advocating for the use of trade agreements and treaties to advance a "green" agenda, including "protections" for "workers rights." To the ITUC and ILO, "workers rights" is a euphemism for the government's actively promoting union organizing and otherwise using its power to subsidize organized labor, such as eliminating workers rights to a secret ballot election by enacting statutory requirements allowing union organizers to collect "voluntary" signatures from workers (e.g., you can just imagine Teamster organizers collect "voluntary" signatures), and once a simple majority of employees have signed, imposing a union on the entire workforce. (Note that a simple majority of signatures would not be allowed to later decertify a union; rather, a secret ballot election would still be required for that.)

In fact, the 2007 ITUC "Annual Survey of Trade Union Rights" criticizes the United States for preserving an employer's rights to demand a federally supervised secret ballot election for employees contemplating unionization and to conduct meetings with employees (on paid time) to explain to workers the employer's position on unionization (otherwise known as First Amendment rights). The AFL-CIO's single biggest legislative goal is to have enacted an Orwellianly named statute called the "Employee Free Choice Act" that would strip workers of secret ballot election protections (at least when bringing unions in).

It is not a stretch to imagine that organized labor simultaneously seeks to bypass the legislative process and advance this special-interest agenda by burying it within trade agreements and treaties marketed to the public as "green." Ironically, the presence of such labor union special-interest terms might discourage emerging countries from entering into such trade agreements and treaties, thus actually inhibiting the "green" initiatives that are supposedly being advanced.

Certainly, advancing a "greener" economy is desirable. And there is nothing wrong with organized labor pushing its agenda, although it is a special interest. But neither is it wrong to recognize that there is much institutional self-interest going on here, and that organized labor's green initiatives are predominately "camouflage green" intended to mask its pursuit of its own self interests under the halo of environmentalism.

Cost of Living Seek and Find

There may be a bit of the old chicken and egg between the push for renewable energy and the Rhode Island government's lust for power. Whatever the case, when one sees Senate President Joseph Montalbano's name attached to a legislative initiative claiming to "spur economic development" by "sparking" environmentally friendly energy development, a game of cost-increase seek-and-find is surely available. Most obviously, the culprits are the second and fourth bills in the package:

The second bill resulted from a collaborative effort with environmental advocacy groups, renewable energy developers, and National Grid. The bill would help to promote private financing of large renewable energy projects through a long-term commitment that the energy output would be purchased by National Grid. It would be privately managed, through National Grid, with state oversight by the Public Utilities Commission to ensure ratepayer protection.

The program would work as follows: National Grid would issue requests for proposals to purchase electricity for at least five percent of their overall load from large renewable energy projects for terms of 10 to 15 years. Their project selections would have to be approved by the PUC.

Energy developers would build their projects, using private investment, and sell their output to National Grid, which in turn would sell the output on the energy market.

So, in the final analysis, what is going to spur the private investment? The presigned long-term contracts from National Grid to purchase the energy harvested. Intelligent readers will wonder what would lead the energy giant to take these 10–15 year risks; according to the Providence Journal:

National Grid has opposed such a provision in the past because it saw these commitments as risky. If the market price of electricity fell below the cost it agreed to pay a renewable-energy developer, customers might opt to buy power from another supplier. That would leave National Grid stuck with a commitment to buy power but fewer customers to sell it to.

"There've been instances in the past where we have been burned," said Michael F. Ryan, president of Rhode Island distribution for National Grid.

The bill essentially shifts that risk to ratepayers by allowing National Grid to spread out any extra cost to buy the renewable energy among all its customers through a distribution rate surcharge. Conversely, National Grid would have to credit customers if the market price rises above the renewable-energy contract price.

So the general public, via electric bills, is the guarantor. It's almost like a renewable-energy tax. Of course, that's not the most explicit way in which our tax dollars will be dedicated to this initiative. The legislation's text doesn't appear to be online, yet, but it wouldn't be surprising if the "renewable energy grant funds" that bill number one places under the purview of the Economic Development Corporation are to be dedicated to enhancing (so to speak) the vaunted "private investment."

The fourth bill, meanwhile, seems intended to guarantee to National Grid that at least one sizable market won't go looking elsewhere if the price keeps climbing:

The final bill in the package would require existing state buildings to purchase a percentage of their energy from renewable sources at a rate that directly coincides with the state’s current renewable energy standards. Like the rate of renewable energy required to be produced in the state, the rate at which state buildings would be required to utilize renewable energy would gradually increase to 16 percent by 2019.

Senate Minority Leader Dennis Algiere (R, Westerly-Charlestown) is correct that "our economy and the environment are interrelated," but he stops short of looking to the laws of economics for guidance in managing the two. If it were profitable to create a green energy market, somebody would do it. The government's appropriate methods of expediting that process would be to seek out and eliminate regulatory obstacles and to offer seed money, preferably in the form of tax incentives.

Trying to guarantee a market, on the other hand, is a typically Rhode Islandish way of introducing the opportunity for corruption and further incompetent government meddling.

Joint Audacity

As the budget clock ticks, the General Assembly has been taking its precious time figuring out how to resolve the mess. One imagines the legislators hiding in dark corners awaiting a miracle. What they need to be doing, at the very least, is making the sorts of noises that would show their comprehension of the problem — noises soundly rejecting audacious overtures such as that put forward jointly by the Sierra Club's Chris Wilhite and the AFL-CIO's George Nee:

If we are going to re-energize the Ocean State's economy, we must start working today. We re-commend that all new publicly funded projects involving building construction have a requirement for a meaningful percentage of clean energy technology and transit-oriented design as part of the plan. Once the building is operational, this will result in ongoing savings to the taxpayers and an overall reduction in costly energy imports.

I'm all for making Rhode Island a leader in the newest energy technologies, and I'm certainly for investments in our economy, but those investments must not bring with them the taints that have helped to bring Rhode Island to its current state. Requiring all projects to incorporate a new layer of expense will simply drive up costs unnecessarily, with an unnecessary layer, also, of indirectness in the encouragement of the inchoate industry. George Nee lets slip his motivation, and the fatal attribute of the proposal, when he writes:

It would generate many new good union jobs and move us toward energy independence.

If we're looking to race ahead with the future of energy, it makes little sense to charge the unions with the task of building the industry. Better to loosen the government's hand, rather than tighten the union's. If anything, legislation requiring environmentally conscious energy provisions should also exempt such projects from the requirement to go union at all.

I fear that, whatever the merits of forward-looking proposals, Rhode Island will manage to squander its opportunities for the benefit of the four horsemen of its apocalypse.

Environmentalists Mugged by Reality

This article would have been noteworthy based simply on pure irony:

The rush to grow biofuel crops -- widely embraced as part of the solution to global warming -- is actually increasing greenhouse gas emissions rather than reducing them, according to two studies published Thursday in the journal Science.

One analysis found that clearing forests and grasslands to grow the crops releases vast amounts of carbon into the air -- far more than the carbon spared from the atmosphere by burning biofuels instead of gasoline. ...

Even converting existing farmland from food to biofuel crops increases greenhouse gas emissions as food production is shifted to other parts of the world, resulting in the destruction of more forests and grasslands to make way for farmland, the second study found.

But comments by University of Minnesota economist and ecologist Jason Hill (whose political persuasion I do not know) transform it into an emblematic text:

"We're rushing into biofuels, and we need to be very careful," said Jason Hill, an economist and ecologist at the University of Minnesota who co-authored the study. "It's a little frightening to think that something this well intentioned might be very damaging."

Yes. It's a frightening road between where you want to arrive and how you have to get there.

Four Reasons to Stick to Coursework

Sadly, it seems unlikely that Brown philosophy professor Felicia Nimue Ackerman's attitude is the majority one on American (at least New England) campuses. Here are four reasons that she didn't "devote a portion of class time" on a particular week "to teach about climate change":

Reason 1: Climate change is not what students signed up to study in my courses. ...

Reason 2: I am unqualified to teach about climate change. ...

Reason 3: My students can have better opportunities to learn about climate change. ...

Reason 4: I do not think climate change is the most important social problem in the world.

No doubt Ms. Ackerman and most Anchor Rising readers would have strong disagreements about any number of things, but her attitude certainly establishes a shared principle on which to build further discussion.

Whitehouse's Actions Commensurate with Danger

RI Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D, Ocean Drive) has personal experience with the dangers of global warming:

Scientists say the world needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 80 percent by 2050 to avoid the worst consequences of global warming.

Repeating the mantra of frustrated environmental advocates across the world, Whitehouse told a supportive audience that President Bush should "lead or get out of the way."

Whitehouse said he has seen the evidence of rising temperatures locally.

The senator said he was alarmed to see the cherry tree at his Providence home bloom in January, and expressed concern over the warming of Narragansett Bay, and how even just one degree can throw the delicate ocean ecosystem off balance, often with dire consequences.

The good Senator is so alarumed that he's going to sell all but one of his properties and split his profits between scientists and all of the people who will experience economic harm from stringent policies aimed at reducing the damage.

Sorry; couldn't keep a straight face. The Senator's actual course of action is to make high-profile speeches and work toward the election of "a president that will lead the nation, and complement the Democratic majority in Congress." No word on whether such a leader would pressure the hoities on Martha's Vineyard to accept the terrible inconvenience of windmills in their views and perhaps even in some areas in which they like to pleasure cruise.

Panic! Panic! Pay No Attention to the Scientist Behind the Curtain!

Paul Driessen's op-ed in the first Providence Journal of the year is certainly worth a read. Regarding the U.N. Bali meeting on global warming:

Meanwhile, respected climate scientists were barred from panel discussions, censored, silenced and threatened with physical removal by polizei if they tried to hold a press conference to present peer-reviewed evidence that contradicts climate disaster claims, such as:

• Climate change is natural and recurrent. The human factor is small compared to that of the sun and other natural forces. ...
• The best approach is to adapt, as our ancestors did. ...

Other inconvenient arguments:

Even a 25 to 40 percent reduction over the next 12 years would impose huge sacrifices on families, workers and communities, especially poor ones — while leaving no room for population or economic growth.

Fossil fuels provide 85 percent of the energy we use. Slashing emissions by even 25 percent means slashing the use of these fuels, paying vastly more to control and sequester emissions, and radically altering lifestyles and living standards. Families will do so voluntarily, or under mandatory rationing systems, enforced by EPA, courts, climate police and "patriotic" snitches. Getting beyond 25 percent would require a "radical transformation" of life as we know it.

But here's the possibility that glares as the symbolic crux of the debate:

Perhaps newly unemployed workers could find jobs in China and other developing countries, where the tough emission standards won't apply ... China is adding the equivalent of another Germany every year to global greenhouse emissions, says climatologist Roger Pielke.

Whether or not the West's voluntary self-restrictions will ultimately enable global dominance of those oppressive regimes that simply refuse to play by the rules of panic isn't really the point. One gets the impression that the allure of climate-based jeremiadry is that it offers an overarching concern that excuses activists for ignoring all of those complicated considerations that wind up advising the allowance of practices that they dislike, such as consumerism, big business, freedom, and so on.

The Pitchman Cares More About the Sale than the Benefit

Speaking of the solutions that politicians dubiously "favor," I note that Rhode Island's blue-blooded, old-money Senator Sheldon Whitehouse would support climate-related legislation even if the "average American household" suffers in both the short and long terms:

Landmark legislation to combat global warming will also be a long-term boon to the U.S. economy, Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse predicted yesterday, but in the short term it will disrupt and cost jobs in some industries.

However, "if we do it right," he said of the legislation that passed a key Senate panel yesterday, the average American household budget will not suffer. ...

He had supported a more sweeping plan to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and the other so-called greenhouse gases thought to cause global warming but supported the more modest bill that passed yesterday. ...

Whitehouse depicted himself as an enthusiastic adherent of the theory that — after some sharp economic dislocations in the near term — the new system of cutting greenhouse-gas emissions will do more than curb global warming. He said it should also force the marketplace to create cleaner energy sources and conservation tools that will be a long-term economic boon. ...

Further, Whitehouse said, "There's no doubt that costs are going to rise" for gasoline and other carbon-based fuels, which is why he and other advocates of a campaign against global warming have also put mechanisms in the bill to cushion the blow on the poor.

But Americans will more than recoup what they lose from the short-term price hike in coal- and petroleum-based fuels, Whitehouse predicted, if the final legislation includes the proper mixture of tax credits for energy conservation, energy subsidies for poor people and other forms of government aid. ...

But Whitehouse would not commit himself to opposing a bill that does not contain the subsidies and other cost-offsetting mechanisms that he favors. He reasoned that the cause of fighting climate change is too important.

Read the whole article. It's edifying to hear the good senator express his confidence that the government can "blunt" the blow to regular families "really from the very beginning" and to realize that even the most wildly unblunted outcome would hardly affect his family. That sort of perspective affects how much weight one gives to points such as Ed Achorn's:

One of the people driving the fundamentalists nuts is Danish author Bjorn Lomborg, notwithstanding that he is a True Believer himself ("Global warming is real and man-made," he writes). Mr. Lomborg, who once headed Denmark's Environmental Assessment Institute, argues in his new book Cool It (Knopf, $21) that alarmism and emotionalism, global treaties and energy rationing are not the best ways to deal with the problem.

Mr. Lomborg contends that, rather than strangling economic growth with costly "solutions" that will do little to alter CO2 emissions, the world would be much better off using its wealth to fight AIDS, malaria, malnutrition and poverty, while radically increasing research and development of fossil-fuel alternatives.

He dares to note such politically incorrect facts as that far more people die from cold than from heat; that the number of polar bears (the poster children of the alarmists) is actually growing, and that hunting presents a far greater threat to them than warming; and that the United Nations estimates that sea levels will rise by only about 5 inches by 2050, no more than what we have experienced since 1940 — and a small fraction of the 20 feet that Al Gore projects by the end of the century.

Except inasmuch as he's worried that his waterfront Newport summer-mansion isn't sufficiently high above sea level, Senator Sheldon hasn't much personal investment in the accuracy of the fashionable environmental hysteria du jour. Whitehouse elides much when he argues that the economic impact is akin to "the problem that carriage-makers had when Henry Ford became successful." As energy and fuel prices increase because of regulation, everybody within a certain margin from the economic tide (as opposed to the oceanic tide) must fear the erosion.

If Mr. Whitehouse had more on the line, perhaps he'd be more inclined to seek solutions that might indeed cause only "industry-by-industry problems," such as what Cliff May calls the "alcohol solution":

... in his new book, Energy Victory, Dr. Zubrin does not just complain. He proposes a way to break free of dependence on a resource controlled by those who have declared themselves our mortal enemies. The technology already exists. It’s not expensive. All that is lacking is for voters to make this a priority — and to communicate that to the political class.

Right now, 97 percent of the cars on America's roads run on gasoline. Only three percent are Flexible Fuel Vehicles (FFVs) — automobiles that can be powered by either gasoline or alcohol fuels, or any mixture of the two. The additional cost to make a new car an FFV is only about $100 per vehicle

For the sake of individual security, the government mandates that all cars have seat belts. For the sake of national security, Dr. Zubrin proposes, the government should mandate that all new cars be FFVs.

In three years, the change would put 50 million FFVs on the road. The free market would then mobilize to do what it does best: Entrepreneurs would compete to produce alternative, non-petroleum fuels for these potential customers.

According to May, Zubrin's solution would have international political benefits (taking power from America's enemies), environmental benefits (less CO2 and less damage resulting from spills), and economic benefits (the energy source would play to areas of U.S. strength, such as agriculture). Somehow, though, I suspect that the excuse to sacrifice the first and third benefits is part of the attraction for Sheldon Whitehouse's elite pals of the fashionable stances that they take toward the second.

Have You Hugged Your Local Tree Today?

I know America is often regarded as an overstressed society, but I hadn't realized just how far the stress problem had spread until I read this story in today's Warwick Beacon by John Howell…

If you feel this has been an especially drab fall, you’re not alone.

Warmer and drier than normal conditions have dealt a double whammy to trees and shrubs and robbed them of the bright reds, yellows and oranges considered so much a part of a New England autumn….

What’s happened, explained [Brian Maynard, a professor of horticulture at the University of Rhode Island], is that trees and shrubs are “stressing out” and dropping their leaves while they are still green.

Have You Hugged Your Local Tree Today?

I know America is often regarded as an overstressed society, but I hadn't realized just how far the stress problem had spread until I read this story in today's Warwick Beacon by John Howell…

If you feel this has been an especially drab fall, you’re not alone.

Warmer and drier than normal conditions have dealt a double whammy to trees and shrubs and robbed them of the bright reds, yellows and oranges considered so much a part of a New England autumn….

What’s happened, explained [Brian Maynard, a professor of horticulture at the University of Rhode Island], is that trees and shrubs are “stressing out” and dropping their leaves while they are still green.

The High Priority of Rising Sea Levels...100 Years from now?

Today's ProJo contained this story about the latest warnings from the enviro-Henny Pennys:

This fall, the state agency that regulates coastal development in Rhode Island plans to become one of the first local regulatory agencies in the country to officially recognize the likelihood of sea-level rise and write policies and regulations to prepare for higher water.

The rising waters will require that new buildings in flood zones be constructed at higher elevations, says Grover Fugate, executive director of the Coastal Resources Management Council. He says there should also be changes in the state building code for coastal development and different rules for septic systems. Sewer outfalls and bridges may be affected.

The CRMC website contains an explanation, too:

Climate change refers to fluctuations in the Earth’s climate system – a result of natural and manmade causes – and is evidenced largely by rising global temperatures, increasing weather extremes which result in more frequent floods and droughts, and rising sea level. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate change (IPCC) 2007 report states a potential rise in sea level of 18-59 centimeters by 2100 (depending on the scenario chosen). State experts have agreed that for planning purposes, Rhode Island should expect a minimum rise of 3-5 feet by 2100. The actual sea level rise may be higher than that, however, if greenhouse gases are not reduced far before that time.

Set aside that we're talking about yet more onerous regulations and bureaucracy being imposed on the citizens of the state. That's nothing new around here. But now we're gonna spend tax dollars--and force citizens to devote portions of their paychecks to abide by these new regulations--based on what might happen 100 or so years from now. I'm all for scientific research and forecasting, but imposing government regulations based on a 100 year out forecast seems to be kinda low priority right about now.

This is the sort of misplaced prioritization that Bjørn Lomborg writes of in Cool It: The Skeptical Environmentalist’s Guide to Global Warming .

Stephen Hayward reviewed the book in the latest National Review:

Notwithstanding Lomborg’s major concession that “global warming is real and man-made” and is “beyond debate,” environmentalists will not be happy. Lomborg questions “whether hysteria and headlong spending on extravagant CO2-cutting programs at an unprecedented price is the only possible response.” Any competent economist can tell you that deep CO2 reductions fail every cost-benefit test; this is true even of economists, such as Yale’s William Nordhaus, who accept the catastrophic-global-warming scenario.

Environmentalists, along with most liberals, snort at cost-benefit analysis...The virtue of Cool It is that Lomborg effectively translates the aseptic language of cost-benefit analysis into persuasive plain English...

...As Lomborg states, “the benefits from moderately using fossil fuels vastly outweigh the costs.” If anything, Lomborg understates this point. The tradeoff for arguably increasing the average global temperature by 0.8ºC in the 20th century has been nearly a doubling in life expectancy, a huge decline in infant mortality, and the steadily increasing spread of middle-class prosperity across the planet’s population. Does anyone outside the tiny ranks of environmental extremists really wish we had not made this progress, which depended vitally on cheap energy? Acknowledging this calculus is environmentally incorrect, but it is the silent ground upon which practical policymakers will build policy. There simply is no near-term, large-scale alternative to fossil fuels. Deal with it.

...Lomborg thinks we should aim at modest reductions in greenhouse-gas emissions, invest heavily in energy research, and devote resources to adapting to changing conditions. Eventually, policymakers throughout the world are going to come around to Lomborg’s point of view (indeed they already are, if the tenor of the recent APEC meeting in Australia is any indication), though they will do so kicking and screaming and with multiple genuflections toward the alarmist totems.

In short, Lomborg advocates an adaptation strategy. Another review by Jonathan Adler further explains Lomborg's thinking:

The proper approach, according to Lomborg, is not to focus on emission cuts to the exclusions of all other policy options. Rather it should be to identify the major economic and environmental problems facing human societies, including those that could be augmented by an increase in global mean temperature, and to dedicate resources where they can do the most good. This, in turn, means adopting policies other than controls on greenhouse emissions. He explains: “Even though CO2 causes global warming, cutting CO2 simply doesn’t matter much for most of the world’s important issues. From polar bears to poverty, we can do immensely better with other policies. This does not mean doing nothing about global warming. It simply means realizing that early and massive carbon reductions will prove costly, hard, and politically divisive and likely will end up making fairly little difference for the climate and very little difference for social impacts.”

One of the primary reasons to fear global warming is that it could exacerbate other problems, from the spread of disease and water shortages to flooding and extreme weather events. Like others before him, Lomborg stresses that it is far more cost-effective to address these concerns directly than to seek greater protection through emission controls. If we care about controlling the spread of malaria or fresh water supplies — two problems that could be worse in a warmer world — direct interventions are far more cost-effective than climate change policies; “in the short and medium term we can help real people much better through alternative policies. We can cut diseases, malnutrition, lack of access to clean drinking water, and sanitation while improving the economy with much cheaper policies that will have much greater impact.” Building infrastructure and improving access to health care are far less costly than controlling the consumption of fossil fuels.

On one hand, I suppose the new regulations being proposed by CRMC could be viewed as government's way of forcing the sort of adaptation that Lomborg advocates. But maybe not...

The proposed regulations will authorize the CRMC to develop and adopt policies and regulations needed to manage the state’s coastal resources and property and protect life and property from hazards resulting from the projected sea level rise. The Council, under these regulations, would also be authorized to work with the State Building Commissioner and to adopt freeboard calculations to determine new development guidelines.

The actual regulations aren't available, so all we're left to is conjecture. Who trusts that the CRMC won't overreach? Not me.

A Dark Cloud Down the Hill

Such stories are terrible to hear:

Gail Corvello figured that if she and her neighbors held out for about five years, they would be able to get out from under the nightmare of the soil contamination in the Bay Street neighborhood that has had a stranglehold on their lives since 2002.

She was wrong.

On Friday, Corvello will say an emotional goodbye to the last of innumerable children she has nurtured in her home-based child-care center on Bay Street over the last 13 years. ...

Now both Corvello and her daughter, Becky, 23, have auto-immune connective tissue disorder. They suffer from severe joint pain and must take steroids and pain killers. Last spring, illness forced Becky to drop out of graduate school at the University of Rhode Island, where she had been studying molecular biology. ...

They’ve cashed in their retirement savings, losing 30 percent of the net value, and making settlements with creditors. ...

Her husband was working two jobs until he got hurt and was out for 10 weeks, she said.

The family has applied for an Environmentally Compromised Homeowner (ECHO) loan — a program established last year with the Tiverton neighborhood explicitly intended to benefit, and I hope it's sufficient. I still can't help but wonder, though, why concomitant infrastructure wasn't set up for private donations. Why the emphasis on government aid to citizens rather than government's facilitation of citizens' helping each other?

As I've previously suggested, other approaches to the problem would likely have yielded better results.