Job Creation From The Energy Sector

The Wall Street Journal has an editorial pointing out the obvious - while billions have been poured into subsidies of green energy, it's traditional energy sources, principally oil and gas, that have provided thousands of jobs. If you have been traveling in northern West Virginia and needed a hotel room recently, you know the effect the Marcellus boom is having there.

None of this is to say that the federal government shouldn't have an energy plan.  But its efforts should be directed to basic research that helps bring better products, like batteries and more efficient engines, to the point where they can be marketed. After that, leave it to the market to decide what should survive and what should fail.  The federal government shouldn't be picking winners and losers through subsidies.

New Environmental Quality Board Members Appointed

There are two new members of the Environmental Quality Board, Dr. Charles Somerville , dean of the Marshall University College of Science, and Dr. Mitch Blake, coal program manager of the WV Geological and Economic Survey. I didn't find much written about Dr. Blake, although he has been quoted in a few newspaper articles and has been the author of several papers available on the web.

Drs. Somerville and Blake replace Ted Armbrecht and Dr. James Van Gundy, both of whom had been serving expired terms.  In fact, all five board members had been serving expired terms before the  most recent appointments. Now there are three members being carried over - Drs. Simonton, Snyder (chair) and Gillespie.  There has been no word as to whether they will be reappointed, or will continue to serve expired terms.

The EQB tends to have more academics serving on it than other environmental appeals boards, due to a requirement, originating in the Clean Water Act, that Board members only receive a certain amount of their income from organizations that hold NPDES permits. That prevents many person employed in industry from qualifying to serve on the Board.

Here is Ken Ward's article on the appointments.

Climategate 2 Is Breaking Now

Almost 2 years ago, before the Copenhagen Climate Change meeting, a large number of emails from East Anglia University and elsewhere showed that there was something rotten in the "science" of climate change studies.   It appears that a new release of emails has just occurred, which interested readers have begun to  be mine for information about the machinations of the global warming machine.

Try looking here and at TallblokesTalkshop blog.  Something is also now up on Watts Up With That, just posted a little bit ago.

I hate the tendency to add "gate" to everything to denote a scandal, but that's a fight  I lost a long time ago.

Why Durban Won't Result In A Greenhouse Gas Reduction Agreement

The nations are gathering in Durban, South Africa at one of their annual meetings to decry the continued havoc that they maintain greenhouse gases are wreaking on the world.  Leaving aside the question of whether the science supports their fears, nothing is going to be done to restrict GHG emissions.  National self-interest in developing countries will trump the science every day. 

The Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center has published the preliminary 2009 and 2010 global and national estimates of carbon emissions from fossil-fuel combustion and cement manufacture.  The data show huge increases in carbon emissions for the developing world, small reductions for much of the developed world. A chart based on the CDIAC data is in this article and easier to read.

Development isn't going to happen in the near term without fossil fuels.  Less developed nations aren't going to give up higher standards of living for the unproven benefits of reducing GHGs. 

David Brooks on Shale Gas Opportunities

David Brooks of the New York Times writes on the incredible opportunities represented by shale gas. Here's some of what he had to say:

John Rowe, the chief executive of the utility Exelon, which derives almost all its power from nuclear plants, says that shale gas is one of the most important energy revolutions of his lifetime. It’s a cliché word, Yergin told me, but the fracking innovation is game-changing. It transforms the energy marketplace. . . .

The U.S. now seems to possess a 100-year supply of natural gas, which is the cleanest of the fossil fuels. This cleaner, cheaper energy source is already replacing dirtier coal-fired plants. It could serve as the ideal bridge, Amy Jaffe of Rice University says, until renewable sources like wind and solar mature.

Already shale gas has produced more than half a million new jobs, not only in traditional areas like Texas but also in economically wounded places like western Pennsylvania and, soon, Ohio. If current trends continue, there are hundreds of thousands of new jobs to come.

A few weeks ago, I sat around with John Rowe, one of the most trusted people in the energy business, and listened to him talk enthusiastically about this windfall. He has no vested interest in this; indeed, his company might be hurt. But he knows how much shale gas could mean to America. It would be a crime if we squandered this blessing.

If only the rest of the NY Times writers could see it that clearly.

EPA Announces Plan For Studying Gas Well Fracking Effects

EPA has announced its plan for studying the effects of gas well fracking. While there will be some interim release of information, it is interesting that the final report won't be issued until sometime in 2014.  By that time, I predict that concerns about fracking largely will have disappeared.

WASHINGTON - The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) today announced its final research plan on hydraulic fracturing. At the request of Congress, EPA is working to better understand potential impacts of hydraulic fracturing on drinking water resources. Natural gas plays a key role in our nation’s clean energy future and the Obama Administration is committed to ensuring that we continue to leverage this vital resource responsibly.


In March 2010, EPA announced its intention to conduct the study in response to a request from Congress. Since then, the agency has held a series of public meetings across the nation to receive input from states, industry, environmental and public health groups, and individual citizens. In addition, the study was reviewed by the Science Advisory Board (SAB), an independent panel of scientists, to ensure the agency conducted the research using a scientifically sound approach.

The initial research results and study findings will be released to the public in 2012. The final report will be delivered in 2014. To ensure that the study is complete and results are available to the public in a timely manner, EPA initiated some activities this summer that were supported by the SAB and provide a foundation for the full study.

The final study plan looks at the full cycle of water in hydraulic fracturing, from the acquisition of the water, through the mixing of chemicals and actual fracturing, to the post-fracturing stage, including the management of flowback and produced or used water as well as its ultimate treatment and disposal. Earlier this year, EPA announced its selection of locations for five retrospective and two prospective case studies.

This administration continues to take steps to ensure that we can rely on this abundant resource for decades to come, including taking steps to fully understand any impacts related to the development of this resource. This study is in line with the priorities identified in the president’s Blueprint for a Secure Energy Future, and is consistent with the Secretary of Energy Advisory Board recommendations on steps to support the safe development of natural gas resources.

More information: www.epa.gov/hydraulicfracturing

BEST Evidence Not So Good?

Richard Muller, a  well-respected physicist and former MacArthur Foundation grantee, put together BEST, the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project, to try to establish reliable temperature data sets that could be used to evaluate the extent of global warming. The idea was that at all parties in the debate over the cause of global warming could use the same sets of temperature data, even if they disagreed on how they should be interpreted.

Earlier this month Dr. Muller took the unusual step of publishing his results without going through any sort of peer-review process. The lack of peer-review doesn't really bother me, because an important (and public) project such as Dr. Muller was engaged in will be peer-reviewed eventually by any number of interested and talented professionals and amateurs. But in this case, he would have been well-advised to seek some sort of review before he published his initial reports.

The first opinions from the mainstream media were that the BEST  findings settled the global warming debate by showing late 20th century warming.  That, of course, would not be the case, since the warming that has occurred in the temperature record has not been widely rejected among skeptics.  It is the cause of the warming, and whether it is a bad thing, that is at the heart of most skeptics' arguments.

Today we learn that Judith Curry, a well-respected climatologist and co-author of the BEST report, is taking Muller to task for his premature release of two of the four BEST reports.   Steve McIntyre, who operates the  Climate Audit website, has posted on the subject, and noted several problems with the BEST analysis.  Mr. McIntyre also believes the data may confirm the end of the Little Ice Age, which in turn suggests the Medieval Warm Period occurred, a time during the Middle Ages when the world was warmer than today. Anthony Watts, who cooperated with Dr. Muller in evaluating the effect of urban heat islands on the temperature record, has objected to Muller using 60 years of data to compare with Watts' 30 years of data. Jeff Id notes that there is a significant error in the calculations Muller used.  Whether these folks are right or wrong, Dr. Muller probably would have been well-advised to listen to them before going all-out with the press release first.

And to top it all off, the  BEST data show that the last 10 years have shown no warming.  That has seriously puzzled the climate alarmists, according to a report that was on Greenwire.

It will be interesting to see how this plays out.