Category Archives: energy and the environment

Recycling wastes resources

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From an editorial in Investors Business Daily.

plenty of “recyclables” end up in landfills, in part because of “single stream” recycling. That’s where residents can put everything in the same bin — a switch designed to encourage more recycling. But it results in more stuff that can’t be recycled because it’s “contaminated.” One study found that about 30% of plastic collected in these “single stream” bins can’t be recycled.

Read the whole thing. In Specialization and Trade, I make the point that if recycling truly saved resources, then the market would pay you to recycle. Instead, the editorial notes that “the market for recyclable materials has collapsed as supply increases and demand subsides.”

The solar exponential

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In his regular email, Peter Diamandis writes,

Currently, the amount of solar installed each year increases by 35 to 40 percent.

…One megawatt of solar power is estimated to require 8 acres of land. U.S. solar capacity is on the order of 3,000 megawatts (only 0.65 percent of U.S. power produced)

Total electricity demand in the U.S. has been flat in recent years. So let’s play with a 40 percent rate of increase starting from a low base of 0.65 percent of U.S. power production. At that rate, it will take about 7-1/2 years for solar to account for 10 percent of U.S. power production. But then in another 7-1/2 years, it would be 100 percent.

Of course, the solar exponential might not be that high. Still, it is an interesting illustration of the potential of compound growth.

Renewable != Sustainable

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Benjamin Zycher writes,

there is nothing “clean” about renewables. There is the heavy-metal pollution created by the production process for wind turbines, along with their noise and flicker effects. There is the large problem of solar panel waste. There is the wildlife destruction caused by the production of renewable power. There is the land use both massive and unsightly, made necessary by the unconcentrated nature of renewable energy.

And above all: There is the increase — yes, increase — in the emissions of conventional effluents caused by the up-and-down cycling of the conventional backup generation units needed to avoid blackouts caused by the unreliability of wind and solar power.

(links omitted)

In Specialization and Trade, I make the point that sustainability is best measured by profitability at market prices. The attempt by environmentalists to second-guess prices is misguided. Recycling, if measured at market prices, is not sustainable. The use of renewable resources for energy, if assessed at market prices, is not sustainable. It is likely that from a strictly environmental point of view, practices like buying local and subsidizing renewable energy have adverse effects.

Bike Lanes and Fruitcake

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Dave Mabe writes,

If a cyclist doesn’t ride in the bike lane (for as simple a reason as making a left turn!) a lot of drivers view this as law breaking or just arrogance.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

I had a driver yell at me, including four-letter words, in exactly this situation. I was making a left turn, and I stayed in the street for about 100 yards with my left arm out in order to do so. I guess he thought I should have stayed in the bike lane on the right and not made my turn or cut somebody off to make my turn.

Humorist Jim Gaffigan has a joke that goes. “Fruit: good. Cake: good. Fruitcake: nasty cr@p.”

That is the way I feel about most bike lanes. The worst is when they paint a picture of a bicycle on a lane that is 99 percent used by cars. I feel like the painting says “you are welcome to smash bicycles on this road.”

In my opinion, the safest places for bikes are, in order:

1. Bike paths that have very few pedestrians (“rails to trails” tend to be like this).

2. Wide shoulders along roads.

3. Roads that have no bike lanes but few cars.

Bikes and cars are not meant to coexist. Bikes and pedestrians are not meant to coexist. And I will admit that bikers tend to be the offenders more often than the victims.

Urban bike lanes are green religious monuments.

Climate Science vs. Macroeconomics

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Climate change is much in the news. My view of climate science is that it shares a lot of the same problems as orthodox macroeconomics. Common features include:

1. Use of computer models in which there are a variety of parameter choices that can be used to fit historical data. There is no single model that is thought to represent truth. Instead, forecasts are made using a “consensus” of several models.

2. High causal density.

3. Some question about the use of aggregate data. Macro talks about “the” wage rate or “the” capital stock or “the” unemployment rate or “the” price level, but the divergencies and disparities are much more significant. Similarly, climate science talks about “the” average global temperature, when variations across seasons and locations is enormous.

Some differences include:

1. Macroeconomics clearly has some intrinsic political survival value. The Fed wants to be as powerful as it can be, so it sponsors a lot of research that deals with the importance of monetary policy. Politicians want excuses to run deficits, so Keynesian macro is attractive to them. Climate science has less intrinsic political value. Politicians do not really want to undertake the policies that would be needed to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

2. Keynesian macroeconomics notoriously contradicts what one would predict using microeconomic models that otherwise work well. Climate science has more reliable “microfoundations” in greenhouse gas theory, although the fact that carbon dioxide is a relatively minor greenhouse gas (compared with water vapor, for example) is rarely mentioned in the press.

3. The proponents of Keynesian economics, while they might seem a bit dogmatic to someone like me, are not out to suppress those who disagree. The vast majority of them are charitable enough to acknowledge that there are reasonable doubts about the subject. Of all macroeconomists, I can think of only one who regularly hurls snarling, ad hominem insults at those who disagree. The others stick to arguing substance. Proponents of climate change theory routinely derogate skeptics.

I am a macroeconomics skeptic. I think that my background in the subject is deep enough that my reasons for skepticism are legitimate. See, for example, my memoirs of a would-be macroeconomist.

I am a climate science skeptic, but not based on a similarly deep background. I just look at the superficial similarities with macroeconomics and infer that skepticism is warranted. It is plausible to me that the climate “consensus” is way off. However, it could be off in either direction–maybe the temperature increase will be faster and sharper than the consensus forecast.

When it comes to the differences between macro and climate science, points (1) and (2) favor climate science. However, point (3) leans against climate science. Good ideas are persuasive. If you need to excommunicate unbelievers, you are dealing in religion, not science.

Affordable Housing is a Supply Problem

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Ed Glaeser writes,

If demand alone drove prices, then we should expect to see places that have high costs also have high levels of construction.

The reverse is true. Places that are expensive don’t build a lot and places that build a lot aren’t expensive. San Francisco and urban Honolulu have the highest ratios of prices to construction costs in our data, and these areas permitted little housing between 2000 and 2013. In our sample, Las Vegas was the biggest builder and it emerged from the crisis with home values far below construction costs.

Pointer from Tyler Cowen.

Glaeser also writes,

No locality considers the impact that their local rules may induce more building elsewhere.

This suggests a new maxim: Environmentalists impose negative externalities. If construction harms the environment, then diverting construction elsewhere harms someone else’s environment. Along the same lines, when we regulate fossil fuels in the U.S., we probably shift production to other countries which have a higher intensity of fossil fuel use than we do.

Scientist Affiliation and Motivation to Find Truth

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Dan Kahan writes,

Well, “we all know” that conservatives hold university scientists in contempt for their effemenate [sic], elitist ways & that liberals regard industry scientists as shills. But here’s what GSS says about partisanship & industry vs. university scientists . . . .

He may be fair to liberals, but I do not think that his characterization of conservatives would pass an ideological Turing test.

If I may attempt to speak for those of us on the right, my views would be:

1. When it comes to public relations, industry scientists have an incentive to twist the truth. However, when business decisions are affected by scientific analysis, the incentive leans much more toward aiming for truth.

2. In academics, the incentive is to increase one’s prestige. Aiming for truth is not always the best strategy. In fact, based on my own bitter experience, in economics the best strategy is to surf the latest fads. In my day, it was rational expectations, and I was not on board (pun intended). More recently, we have had behavioral economics, natural experiments, and such. There are probably some current fads that I could willingly join, but not at this stage of my life.

3. In the particular area that most interests Kahan, which is climate change, I trust neither the incentives in industry nor in academics. Obviously, if you work for the coal industry, your incentive is to find low estimates for the environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions. But if you work in academia and you happen to find low estimates for the environmental impact of carbon dioxide emissions, good luck to you if you hope to win prestige.

Timothy Taylor on Christmas Trees

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He wrote,

One artificial tree used for one year has greater environmental impact than one natural tree. However, an artificial tree can also be re-used over a number of years. Thus, there is some crossover point, if the artificial tree is used for long enough, that its environmental effect is less than an annual series of trees. For example, the ellipsos study finds that an artificial tree would need to be used for 20 years before its greenhouse gas effects would be less than those of an annual series of natural trees. The PE Americas study offers a wide range of scenarios, and summarizes, but here is the situation “for the base case when individual car transport distance for tree purchase is 2.5 miles each way. Because the natural tree provides an environmental benefit in terms of Global Warming Potential when landfilled, and Eutrophication Potential when composted or incinerated, there is no number of years one can keep an artificial tree in order to match the natural tree impacts in these cases. … For all other scenarios, the artificial tree has less impact provided it is kept and reused for a minimum between 2 and 9 years, depending upon the environmental indicator chosen.”

I think that it is hopeless to try to do these sorts of estimates. For one thing, note that if everyone bought artificial trees, then there would be fewer Christmas tree farms.

Are there artificial trees that can pass a Turing test? Do they smell like a tree? Do they have interesting asymmetries? If not, then it would seem as though artificial trees would be less fun to decorate.

Nature Rebounds

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From the WaPo, an article on the findings of Richard Fuchs.

Fuchs’ fascinating conclusion: Forests and settlements grew at the same time and Europe is a much greener continent today than it was 100 years ago. A closer look at different regions and countries reveals Europe’s recovery from the deforestation of past centuries.

In Specialization and Trade, I cite Jesse Ausubel’s Nature Rebounds on this and other phenomena showing that resource scarcity is a problem addressed by markets.