Gaming the system

There is an article in today's _The Wall Street Journal_ (page A12, first column) entitled "The Black Liquor War".

In this case, "Black Liquor" refers to a material used in paper production.

Congress in 2005 wanted to encourage the use of alternative fuels by providing a fifty cent per gallon tax credit to a business when it used a mixture of fossil fuel and an alternative fuel.

The paper production industry took notice. The have been using "Black Liquor", a paper production byproduct to fuel their factories. Since this was an "alternative fuel", by regulation and law the paper industry noted that if they added a bit of diesel to this mix they would qualify for the tax credit. The tax credit for the paper industry amounts to $6 billion this year.

Why is this relevant to Cap & Trade?

This unintended loop hole was a $6 billion dollar mistake for this one relatively small industry.

Cap & Trade will apply to almost everything and while the "Cap" suggests a maximum for CO2 production, there is nothing in the "Trade" portion that provides any modest limits to the $$$.

When this insanity played out for electricity, what once cost $5 rose in price to $3,000.

A few months of smart careful work by Congress will never match years of work by everyone else.

Is "Cap & Trade" Obama's space program?

Some background:

I received the following:

A while ago, I think during the election, you said that if Obama got elected that you had hoped he would pass landmark energy bills, much like Kennedy did with the space program. Is this it?  Explain.


http://abcnews.go.com/m/screen?id=7937737

The short answer is NO. In fact, I'm concerned that this 1000+ page legislation will produce a disaster of national proportions because it is likely to provoke an industry and investor response similar to that of the California experience with electricity pricing (we do remember Enron and related companies). Our congress members will spend months trying to figure out how to do this in a stable way. Companies and investors will spend years working on how they can game the system. Which camp would you bet on?

But, even supposing that there will be no "Enron effect", Cap & Trade does not do for the nation what the space program did.

"Man on the Moon - why was that important?"

• Education - many, many science and engineering graduates. U.S. college and graduate education is the world leader. (High school and grammar school - not so much).
  
• Technology - its everywhere - computers, GPS, satellites, cell phones, microwave ovens.

These are just a few of the things that "fell out" of the space program needs and they have had a profound effect on the U.S. and our country's place in the world economy.

What is the potential benefit of Cap & Trade?

• Reduce CO2 emissions by whatever means is the most cost effective.
• more study of climate science
• more study of game theory and economic simulations.
  

How do we do that:

• Increase oil imports and decrease domestic coal use (more energy per ton of CO2 in oil than coal). While this might be a good thing from a pollution perspective, it definitely not helpful to our domestic economy and does nothing to decrease our dependence on countries and people who do not like us.
• Add some solar and wind power generation. While I like this technology and the percentage increases look impressive, the total amounts involved are small. If the amount of solar/wind ever became significant, I think the push back on the visible effects will make growth difficult.
• One possible technology area that could emerge here is technology that would allow us to store significant amounts of energy (so that the solar energy could be used at night and the wind energy could be available for use on a calm day). I don't see that as a focus area, but I might have missed it. Even so, this isn't the broad science/math/engineering effort that the space program generated.
• Nuclear Power - nah, that makes too much sense.

Is this necessary or even a good idea?

If you believe that "global warming" is caused solely or largely by the actions of humans and that global warming is bad, then, we should do something. Perhaps this is the correct approach to moderate those effects.

What if the actions of humans aren't a significant contributor to climate change? If that is true, then Cap & Trade is an unnecessary expense and a distraction from the real work to be done to respond to climate change.

Perhaps climate change is natural, possibly even necessary to achieve long term viability of life. We rotate crops for good reason.

There is significant historical evidence of natural climate change that wasn't influenced by humans. There have been ice ages and periods of warming. I thought that the evidence suggests that the earth is over due for an ice age and that the normal pattern is gradual warming followed by rapid cooling.

This could be driven by long term cycles in solar output. We know about sun spot cycles and have been following them since Galileo. The causes of this 22 year pattern aren't that well understood and there may be other longer cycles as well. We are near a long term minimum in sun spots (we only have about 400 years of data) but it would be a stretch to assert that humans are causing a decrease in sun spots (sun spots are colder areas on the sun surface - fewer sun spots - warmer sun - could that yield warmer earth?? - no - it is human CO2 production).

How do you answer your child's question?

You can turn off the TV.

You can control what programs you allow the children to watch.

Eventually they are going to be exposed to an advertisement for
one of the "E" "D" treatments.

How do you respond when they ask: "Mommy, what is E D?"

The Tractor Knew - Part 2

I didn't realize what lengths the tractor needed to go to so that it wouldn't start.

There is an emergency shut-off if the tractor looses coolant. This shut-off acts by intentionally blowing the fuse that controls the flow of fuel to the engine.

This part or failure mode isn't in the trouble shooting list for "engine won't start".

This part doesn't show up in the parts list or any of the tractor diagrams. I'm not sure how I'll find the right replacement.

But for now, disconnect the wire and replace the fuse and we're back in business (just watch out for complete loss of coolant...).