Science & Environmentalism — VOICES for REASON

As an advocate of laissez-faire capitalism and a champion of America’s abundant oil use, it is rare that I get taken to task for being too tame in my defense of oil and in my expose of oil’s anti-industrial opponents.

But a superb letter to the editor in Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal by Paul Gilmour does just that. Responding to my point in my op-ed last week that oil spill hysteria ignores that “large amounts of oil enter the ocean every year through naturally occurring oil seeps,” he writes:

the situation is even more idiotic than the one Mr. Epstein describes.

Most of the oil in the Santa Barbara Channel and on nearby beaches comes from natural leakage of buried reservoirs, not man-made spills. Europeans who visited the area in the 16th century reported the sea was covered by a “sheen of oil, visible for as far as the eye could see,” and that local Indians waterproofed baskets and canoes with tar collected on beaches. It is estimated that, yearly, these seeps release the equivalent of one third of the oil spilled by Exxon Valdez.

Seeps of oil are common in coastal California, having given rise to such place-names as Oil Creek, Oildale, Brea (Spanish “tar”) and Coal Oil Point. By far the best known is the La Brea Tar Pits, located in downtown Los Angeles.

Wouldn’t it be nice if reporters actually told us this stuff, instead of only reporting things that reaffirm to them that oil is an “addiction”?

In the Wall Street Journal, my colleague Alex Epstein argues that overreaction to the 1969 Santa Barbara oil spill left the country dangerously vulnerable. The piece begins:

Which former president does Barack Obama most resemble? When it comes to handling oil spills, the answer is Richard Nixon. Like our current president, Nixon too presided over a major offshore oil blowout—the three million gallon Santa Barbara spill of 1969. And, like Mr. Obama, Nixon responded by whipping up anti-oil sentiment and passing a sweeping moratorium on drilling.

This parallel is important to keep in mind, because Nixon’s reaction helped cause the worst energy crisis in American history.

Read the whole thing.

My colleague Dr. Keith Lockitch recently spoke at the Fourth International Conference on Climate Change, held in Chicago, IL. The title of his talk was “The Roots of Climate Alarmism.” To view the video, follow this link, then scroll down to find the title slide for Keith’s talk.

Whenever you hear about the miracles of wind power, always keep in mind one thing above all: because the wind blows erratically, and sometimes doesn’t blow at all, wind power is inherently unreliable. As I wrote in a recent piece on “green energy,”

where coal, oil, and natural gas can be burned whenever power is needed, at the exact quantity needed, wind and sunlight can be harnessed only when the weather cooperates–and electricity can’t be stored [in significant quantities] for a rainy day. Thus, they are always used as supplemental, not primary, sources of power on electric grids.

An engineer friend of mine recently witnessed this fact firsthand while driving east of San Francisco. He sent me this still picture that is as good as a movie–because the windmills were not moving. As he wrote: “Good thing Californians have reliable coal and gas-fired power on the grid elsewhere; Gaia did not see fit to bless us with breeze-based power today. Hundreds of them, dead still.”

Following up on an earlier post, here’s another insightful challenge to the mythology of electric cars.

Considering the batteries we have today, and the trajectory of the technological development, I am pessimistic about the viability of a mass market for battery electric cars in the near to mid-term.

Our current battery technology simple does not provide the cost, durability and energy storage attributes that allow for the development of mass-market products. We can get around some of these issues with niche products or schemes like battery leasing, or subsidizing the products but none of these are solutions for the mass market.

Within Toyota, we’re working on a niche electric vehicle. At the North American International Auto Show in Detroit this year [2009], we showed a concept of what our current thinking is. A small, city car with relatively limited range, that’s reasonably affordable, targeted at non-traditional markets. But it’s not intended to be a mass-market car. We’re looking at sales volumes of thousands not millions. To produce an electric vehicle that’s truly intended for a mass market, a replacement for your current gasoline car, we’re going to need a battery chemistry that isn’t currently available.

Now, some readers might yet suspect that the person quoted is a shill of the oil industry. In fact, the statement is from Bill Reinert, one of the designers of the ultimate “green” icon: the Toyota Prius.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

Anytime you see an electric car you are likely to see a “zero emissions” sticker on it, implying that the driver of the car is driving without emitting CO2. Electric car companies are using this idea to market their cars, and to imply that those of us who drive gasoline-powered cars should feel guilty. For example, Coda Automotive, an electric car company, brags that its not-yet-existent sedan, once it exists, will be “An all-electric car to let you drive your way out from under the thumb of big oil. To help steer us away from climate change, polluted skies…”

It is true that electric motors do not emit CO2, and electric cars don’t have tailpipes that emit CO2 or anything else. But ask yourself (or Coda): Where does the electricity that charges the “zero emissions” car come from? Answer: It almost certainly comes from burning coal or natural gas, by far the leading sources of electricity production in America, because they produce the cheapest, most abundant power. Another question: What happens when you burn coal or natural gas to produce electricity? CO2 is emitted.

To call a car “zero emissions” because it generates CO2 at the power plant instead of the engine is intellectually indefensible–and dishonest. And it is a particularly dangerous form of dishonesty, because it promotes the idea that oil and other fossil fuels are dispensable to our standard of living. They are not.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In his latest piece, Wall Street Journal business columnist Holman Jenkins argues that today’s electric cars are “welfare wagons”–overpriced, underperforming novelty items that the rest of us will be subsidizing for upwards of $7,500 apiece. Of Nissan’s much-touted Leaf, he writes:

the Leaf is a car for a wealthy hobbyist, good for a trip of 100 miles after which it becomes an inert lump at the end of your driveway (or behind a tow truck) for the many hours it will take to recharge.

Read the whole thing.

For those inclined to believe that today’s electric cars are just going through the growing pains of any new technology, consider what a wise man told Henry Ford over 100 years ago, when electric cars were also considered the wave of the future.

Electric cars must keep near to power stations. The storage battery is too heavy…Your [gasoline] car is self-contained—carries its own power plant—no fire, no boiler, no smoke and no steam. You have the thing. Keep at it.

The wise man’s name? Thomas Edison.

Of course, we can’t and shouldn’t rule out the possibility that some brilliant company will overcome all the obstacles to practical electric cars–but that company must prove itself on the free market, not gorge itself on other people’s money.

Image: Wikimedia Commons

In a new editorial published on foxnews.com, Alex Epstein writes:

This Earth Day, Obama renewed his call for “comprehensive energy and climate legislation that will safeguard our planet, spur innovation and allow us to compete and win in the 21st century economy.” In lockstep with environmentalists, Obama has previously said the ultimate goal of legislation is “a hard cap on all carbon emissions at a level that scientists say is necessary to curb global warming–an 80% reduction by 2050.”

But this raises the question: What is going to replace the coal, oil, and natural gas that we use to heat our homes and offices, fuel our cars and airplanes, power up our computers, and light up the night? [Read the whole thing.]

Keith Lockitch is quoted in a National Geographic article on the history and meaning of Earth Day. He touches on the anti-capitalist ideas behind the environmentalist movement.

[update] On PajamasMedia.com, Alex writes: “This Earth Day, take a moment to thank the Greens’ biggest punching bag: Big Oil.” Read the whole post. Alex also appears with Keith Lockitch to discuss Earth Day on PJTV’s Front Page here and here.

For a unique perspective on the history, science, economics, and philosophy behind Earth Day, check out the resources listed in the post Cancel Earth Day, Stop Green Guilt.  And if you missed the Earth Day interview with Onkar Ghate and Keith Lockitch, here’s Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5

image: barunpatro

We are told that Earth Day is about enjoying nature, anticipating exciting green technologies, and promoting human health. It isn’t. It is about guilt for the very thing that makes enjoyment, technology, and health possible–our industrial, capitalist way of life. When environmentalists tell us to be “green” on Earth Day by turning out our lights, hand-washing our clothes, and not using our cars, they are saying that what we do every other day of the year is wrong–that it is destructive and “unsustainable.”

At the Ayn Rand Center, we believe that industrial life is something to be proud of and something billions around the globe desperately need to emulate. We condemn the 40 years of apocalyptic, pseudo-scientific environmentalist predictions–such as environmentalist hero Paul Ehrlich’s prediction that hundreds of millions of people would starve by 1980. We recognize the ability of free minds and free markets to make human life better and better, no matter what nature throws at us.

For a unique perspective on the history, science, economics, and philosophy behind Earth Day, we invite you to explore the following resources.

Read the rest of this entry »

Following the Climategate scandal, I commented that on the climate issue “there has been a consistent pattern of exaggeration and deception, of context-dropping claims, and of distortion of the facts and the scientific process”—and that this has been driven by “a widespread commitment to environmentalist ideology.”

Well since Climategate, there have been so many other scientific scandals that have emerged it’s hard to keep up with them all. As the Wall Street Journal put it:

It has been a bad—make that dreadful—few weeks for what used to be called the “settled science” of global warming, and especially for the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change that is supposed to be its gold standard.

First it turns out that the Himalayan glaciers are not going to melt anytime soon, notwithstanding dire U.N. predictions. Next came news that an IPCC claim that global warming could destroy 40% of the Amazon was based on a report by an environmental pressure group. Other IPCC sources of scholarly note have included a mountaineering magazine and a student paper.

Here’s a round-up of the growing list of scientific distortions from the Orange County Register’s Mark Landsbaum.  So much for “The debate is over.”

Photo credit: flickr/azrainman