Morning Fog

Jindal Channels Big Oil

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal has published an opinion piece in which he laments the efforts of the U.S. Government to declare a moratorium on deepwater drilling in the Gulf.  Jindal claims this will "add insult to injury" (the injury being the leak and its economic effects) by denying people in the region the well-paying jobs on those deepwater rigs. 

From Jindal's parochial point of view, it's clear:  Louisiana is hurting economically, and the loss of income from the deepwater wells (not just in jobs but in other ways) is going to extend the pain.  Also, there's a certain common-sense appeal about keeping things going as long as they appear to do no harm.  Morning Fog argued this point in connection with A Whale, whose status and effectiveness remained in doubt as of last week.  No reports since then, but at least there are no claims that it hurt anything.

On the other hand, it's unreasonable to suggest, as Jindal does, that shutting down drilling is equivalent to grounding all airlines after a single plane crash -- unlike airplanes, these wells operate 24/7; a failure in another one would almost certainly have far more serious and widespread consequences than the loss of a couple hundred more lives in a second air disaster.  And, while we can understand that Jindal's concern is his own state, the rest of us (and our government) might want to take into account the potential for a similar oil spill polluting other coastlines - Florida or Texas anyone?

So what's the answer?   I'd say, let drilling operations continue wherever they are currently in progress.  The government's moratorium sought to block both new AND ongoing operations, which seems too much of a reach.  There is risk, of course, but it is more sensible for companies to be required to check and test (is that even possible?) blowout preventers in the near term, perhaps within 90 days.  The only problem with that last part is that the companies which so like to complain of government slowness would howl that such a deadline is too short.  No doubt they'd file suits to prevent or indefinitely delay checks.

Which brings me to the real crux of the matter.  In all the resistance to a moratorium, or even to added safety measures, it's not the economy, stupid - it's the politics.  Here's an issue on which economically or technologically, different views are possible, but so are compromise solutions.  Politically, though, it's not that easy.  Jindal, and very possibly the judge who ruled originally against the first moratorium attempt, live in Louisiana, a state that can be plausibly argued to be an oil-industry-captive or, as Steven Mufson has put it, the "closest thing America has to a petro-state."  

Jindal's entire opinion article is based in the politics of the moment, garbed for decency in more saleable mantras about jobs and "human impact."  Although he begins with a complaint about "the pace at which the government has worked," but nowhere does he criticize BP - not for its faulty equipment that caused the spill, nor its failure to conduct effective safety tests, nor its pace of operation on the cleanup, nor its many efforts to disguise the truth about the extent of the disaster.  No, indeed.  Jindal conjures up an imagined conspiracy in which the federal government has launched a covert operation against the state of Louisiana and the defenseless oil companies that operate there. 

Costly cleanup or not, BP and its industry "competitors" still have plenty of money to spend.  They're spending it heavily again (after about a 30-day lull of mourning for the Gulf) for television commercials against new taxes on the industry (there's that pesky government conspiracy again!), and they'll spend it elsewhere to fight anything that could inconvenience them.  Jindal knows on which side his bread is buttered (or oiled?).

Environmental Cleanup

The tale of the tanker A Whale is an interesting one.  The giant ship has been modified to work as a super-sized oil skimmer and has arrived in the Gulf, ready to go to work.  The people of the Gulf, in fact all of us in the U.S., at BP, and around the Caribbean rim, ought to be grateful for the idea and action of the ship's Taiwanese owner.

This is good news, overall.  Let's hope it works.  But even if it doesn't work quite as advertised, it seems almost certain to contribute significantly to mitigating the effects of the disaster.

So I have to agree with the quoted "local officials," including Louisiana Governor Jindal, who question why the ship wasn't put into immediate operation.  Technically, it was because the EPA "hadn't signed off" on the quality of the water A Whale would pump back into the Gulf. 

But isn't this enough of an emergency that the EPA could suspend rules that weren't designed for this kind of problem anyway?  Couldn't the White House and Congress by now have ginned up emergency legislation that would make this step and others possible?  Possibly man-in-charge Thad Allen could be given authority to order such things at his discretion.

After all, it's hard to see how simply taking in polluted seawater and discharging it again could possibly make it worse than it already is.  Even if it didn't remove a drop of oil!

Oil, Coal, Canaries, Pelicans - And Dinosaurs

Hard on the heels of Obama's talk to the nation yesterday evening, regressives are busily criticizing him for trying to "exploit" the Gulf of Mexico oil spill crisis to advance "his" agenda.   

These critics are people whose attitudes about the environment appear to have been shaped back when dinosaurs roamed the earth and all that underground petroleum was being formed.  The basic premise is, "what good is the gol-durn environment anyway, if we can't exploit it however we want?" 

Many in this group would also put a religious spin on it, too: "Gawd gave us this environment to be exploited by man."  So of course God (whose name in Slavic languages, "bog," bears a clear relationship to the cradle of petroleum) must either have a plan (is he/she just trying to give us an on-the-surface pool of oil to make it easier for us to get at?) or is going to fix it for us in the end. 

Other critics don't have a "prophet" motive, but a clearer and more rational, if also more venal, $profit$ motive.  They are the oil/gas/coal industries and their well-paid representatives in Congress.  This group is working hard to paint BP as the only bad apple among them; and they're working hard against government efforts to tighten inspection of their activities, and to prevent even a temporary halt to drilling still more offshore wells.  This perception (or lack of perception) of the issues raised by is no less antediluvian.  It doesn't even seem reliably self-preserving, because one oil company (BP) is almost certain to disappear as a result of this spill and the same fate may stalk others.

In coal mines, canaries were used to detect the presence of deadly gasses. (Technology put the canaries out of work but that's OK, it was hard on the canaries.)  The pelicans might be seen as the equivalent messengers of catastrophe in the petroleum mines.  So, this little accident involving one underwater well and one oil company is a wake-up call.

Just as our last President "exploited" the terrorist attacks of September 11 to accomplish things he considered necessary to enhance our security in the longer term, our current President is entirely correct to try to "exploit" the current disaster to break us out of our uncritical reliance on fossil fuels.  Presidents' calls for action are not (or shouldn't be seen as) "their" personal agendas; they are trying to deal with issues that are (or should be) on "our" agenda.

By the way, it's worth noting that what Bush was able to do in anti-terrorism at the time was really only baby steps toward improved vigilance, more intelligence, and better focus on combating the problem.  Some of those steps were difficult and costly; some are only now bearing fruit; some never will; and the truth is that despite the lack of terrorist successes so far in bringing off another attack on the U.S., we can't really say we've eliminated the problem.  The same undoubtedly will be true of measures we take now to revamp our energy policies.  Change in this area will also be difficult, possibly costly, but a start needs to be made.

On The Edge Of The Oil Spill

Again today, news from the Gulf of Mexico is disappointing:  neither the "top kill" nor the "junk shot" has worked to stop the flow.  Once again I urge, let's face the truth and deal with it:  This is a catastrophic accident, made more apocalyptic by the fact that the end is not in sight, but it is an accident.   Call it an act of god, or if you prefer, an act of man, but cope. People of the Gulf Coast in particular can be forgiven for being emotional (James Carville, hysteria does not become you, take it down a notch!) -- but all the talk of blame, or of action not being taken fast enough, is empty and useless.

Meanwhile, some more random observations related to this calamity.

It's been said already, but if ever there were a compelling argument for effective government regulation of industry, this is surely it.  I stress "effective" since people who say there's no need for government or for taxes to pay for it are suddenly looking to government to handle this problem, or to blame government because of failings in oversight.  But oversight must be ongoing; and the setting of standards, the conduct of inspections, and similar functions cost money.  We can't starve regulatory agencies and rely on private enterprise to police itself in good times, then expect government after the fact to have done a job it wasn't given resources to do.  For conservatives: Ronald Reagan said, "Trust but verify."  Why shouldn't that apply to business?  Could effective oversight have prevented the blowout?  I doubt it, but I do believe operations managers are more cautious when they know someone's looking over their shoulder.

State and local officials have been ducking for cover too, hoping to blame somebody else.  But while there is a lot of talk also about the deleterious effects of the spill on the local economy, Louisianans and their politicians, from Governor Jindal on down, need to think about their own decisions, years ago, regarding the economic mix.  I have no doubt that when these rigs were built, local officials pushed strongly for approval of offshore drilling, just as Virginia's new governor, Robert McDonnell, who has no drilling but covets the prospective revenues, continues to do today.  Risks were downplayed, on the assumption the huge gains were worth the chance.  That may still turn out to have been true, in the long run, but in the short run, some parts of the region's economy will be hard-hit.  Lives were lost, too, but we aren't hearing a lot these days about those fellows who died when the platform exploded and collapsed. 

Finally, I'm surprised that so far, no one has raised the specter of terrorism related to this incident.  Is that a possible explanation for this?  Probably not -- no one has claimed responsibility. It does however, raise the question of the security of these oil platforms, largely unprotected, in mid-ocean.  Look for the movie soon, if not the reality.   

Follow-Up On BP

It's always nice when today's news and views dovetail neatly with yesterday's blog. 

For one thing, I stuck tongue in cheek to suggest that, while assessing blame should be left to a later time, there might be some inclination on the part of the public, if not of their duly unelected corporations, to think about the real need for regulation.  Steven Pearlstein makes this point very convincingly today (and without tongue in cheek), in "Time for Industry to End its War on Regulation."

I had also mentioned the possibility that some politicians would stop calling for unlimited oil drilling, noting that Sarah Palin had in fact ceased (presumably, only temporarily) taking a pause in order to suggest that Democrats (but not Republicans!) received too much in the way of political contributions from big oil.  On that question and a broader assessment of Palin, I recommend Ruth Marcus's "Sarah Palin's Fact-Free Commentary..." today.

The British Petroleum Way

Like most of us who stay informed on current events, I have followed the continuing saga of the big oil drilling platform that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico, and the subsequent daily reports on the movement of the slick and the efforts to stanch the flow.  But I hadn't seen anything that prompted me to blog about it until now.

A couple days ago I was astonished to hear the President pressuring BP to move faster or "move aside" so the federal government could take over.  Then his Secretary of the Interior, Ken Salazar, repeated pretty much the same thing.  Not long after, Louisiana state officials, including Governor Bobby Jindal, announced that both BP and the USG had better hurry up or the state would push them aside to mount its own containment effort. 

What were all these people thinking?  What, did they think, was the alternative to BP?  It's possible the federal government has some experts in the control of underwater oil wells run amok, but what physical and financial resources would they be able to deploy?  The state? Even more of a joke.  Other private concerns?  They'd surely do the same things BP is doing.

Luckily, yesterday evening at least one administration official, Coast Guard Admiral Thad Allen (who is actually in charge of the government's piece of the effort) had the good sense to see --and say -- that BP's stepping aside really wasn't an option:  "To push BP out of the way would raise the question of: Replace them with what?"  Well yes, exactly.

No, unfortunately I think we have to accept that the current situation is one of those events it was impossible to plan for; a perfect storm in which not only did a disaster occur (the original explosion) but the safety mechanisms that were supposed to prevent it from getting out of hand failed to function.  There will be investigations; there will be recriminations; but we should remember that underwater drilling has been going on for many years; the well that exploded wasn't new. 

All the elements of this disaster were in place years ago -- the wells, the policies, the regulation or lack thereof, the poor organization that had the same government agency responsible for overseeing the industry also being partly funded by it.  And for years no one had thought to go looking for a problem where none seemed to exist, when there were so many glaring problems that needed attention.  Accidents happen.  Blaming Obama, (or Bush!) or the current BP corporate leadership, or the Interior Secretary, won't help a bit.  After all, we don't really even know yet what caused it to blow.

Priorities should be getting the leakage stopped, of course; but along with that, somebody -- and this might be a good government role -- should be looking right now at what needs to be done to prevent the next blow-out.  How many of those potentially malfunctioning shut-down valves are out there?  We may survive one disaster like this every twenty years or so, but not one every year.

The only silver lining I see is that this event may drive home some of the unforeseen risks to which our continued reliance on fossil fuels subjects us.  Much the same could be said of the two mining disasters in the past year. 

• Maybe the advocates big oil will stop telling us it's too costly, or just plain unnecessary, to invest in renewable energy.
• Maybe the "People of the American Petrolum Institute" will stop running those annoying ads about how just one oil platform on the ocean surface can run octopus-like conduits to as many as eight or ten wellheads. Do they realize now, as any reasoning being did long ago, that it's not about the visibility of the platforms? (Actually, I think they did stop running those - I haven't seen one in a week or two.)
• And maybe (though I doubt it) oil-state politicians will think twice about preaching that the answer to our energy needs is more oil, and more oil again. Earth to Sarah Palin: How's that "drill, baby, drill" thingy workin' out for ya?

Casting Dispersions - The Gulf of Mexico BP Oil Spill

As a footnote to the ongoing saga of the giant petroleum disaster in the Gulf of Mexico, government officials and BP technicians seem to have different concepts regarding the chemicals being used to "disperse" the oil in the ocean.  The government says they could be as environmentally destructive as the crude oil itself; BP says not, that they're only doing what's prescribed in existing protocols for oil spills, and that safer chemicals aren't available in the massive quantities needed.

I'm uncertain.  I've read that the chemicals, called dispersal agents or dispersants, are really a lot like dishwashing detergent.  If that's the case, I submit that it doesn't matter much whether we're using chemical A or chemical B.   Although all parties seem to agree "dispersants" are a good thing, I'm still waiting for the article that would explain why. 

From my (layman's) point of view, I wonder why it's good to break the goop into smaller and smaller particles.  A video widely shown by all the media suggests that that's what's happening underwater.  In your kitchen sink, dispersants may make sense -- they help the grease flow down the drain without clogging it.  Where's the drain in the Gulf of Mexico?  And if there isn't one, aren't small drops just harder to clean up than big globs?

Why Buy Wind Turbines In China?

ABC TV reported yesterday that a lot of the economic activity funded by new federal money for "green power" has actually gone to China and certain other foreign countries, creating new jobs there rather than in the U.S.  In particular, an upsurge in demand for wind turbines is being met in large part by non-U.S. producers.

What did surprise me was the way ABC reported the situation, especially in the video version featuring reporter Jonathan Karl and news anchor Diane Sawyer.  Because they basically stopped there, gnashing and wailing (and ol' Diane perpetually looks as if she's about to burst out crying) - gosh, new jobs in China, isn't that just awful?

I'm quite sure the report as given is true, but I'm not at all surprised by it.  The part ABC missed was that it's predictable, and that it probably couldn't have been prevented by anything in the legislation passed last year.  (Incidentally, legislation specifying "buy-American" is rare anyway because it runs against our international trade obligations.)  The real problem is long-term and multifaceted: 

For decades, economic policies (both private capital and to a lesser extent government)  have encouraged sending manufacturing jobs offshore so Americans could do cleaner work (like opening nail salons and flogging dubious investment instruments). 

A combination of forces has operated, also over decades, to shackle attempts to broaden our energy sources beyond fossil fuels. 

Finally, companies focused too narrowly on the short term have often been unwilling to invest in newer technologies if they could not see a very large and immediately developing market -- for example, that's why Applied Materials effectively sidetracked its solar energy division -- so I think we'll find that at the moment, there's nobody in the U.S. ready to produce turbines except on a relatively small scale.  (Those small U.S. producers, as was reported also in the ABC segment, are getting some orders, so some American workers are being hired or rehired.) 

So we've made our own bed, and we've lain in it so long it won't be easy to get out of it.  In the long term, federal support for the growth of this market may help American firms to jump in and compete for it.  Meanwhile... well, most people are familiar with the response notorious bank robber Willy Sutton gave when he was caught and some reporter asked why he robbed banks:  "Because that's where the money is."  Why buy wind turbines in China?  In large part, because that's where they build them.   

The Canary, The Coalmine, And Human Ingenuity

The title sounds like the title of one of those three-years-behind-the-curve books that Thomas Friedman keeps writing, doesn't it?  Probably that will be the title of his next one (go for it Tom, I'll be glad to lend it to you).  But seriously, I want to address several aspects of the misinformation and misunderstanding that infests our current public discussion of climate change and environmental factors. Today, specifically, how technology might avert some of the catastrophes being predicted.

Anne Applebaum suggests in "Anti-climate-change, Anti-human" that all the talk coming out of the Copenhagen conference about the end of the world is alarmist exaggeration because it ignores the human factor.  We humans, she says, are intelligent and adaptable and will surely come up with solutions to little nuisances like rising sea levels, or water shortages that threaten crops and populations.  Along the way, Applebaum commits her own alarmist exaggeration by insanely distorting the meaning of some statistics produced by the Optimum Population Trust, but that doesn't  detract from her main argument, that mankind's ingenuity will save us from having to worry.   

Also, I like that in trying to strike down "alarmism," she concedes what others do not, i.e., that the problems we face are man-made.  Her examples of human ingenuity of the past laud human innovations - like electrical power, for example - that are a cause of the issues we now face.  And, she sees that solutions will have to come from human innovation; if "climate change" were not manmade, why wouldn't we just sit around and wait for nature to improve things for us? 

So -- will human ingenuity rescue us?  It might.  In fact, I'd say it has to.  Where else would solutions come from?  And while Ms. Applebaum's cheery faith in human solutions is commendable, I think she'd have to admit that technological innovation doesn't just happen.  Someone needs to see a problem and set out to address it.  Tesla and Edison with electricity, Ford with transportation, etc.   What disturbs me, if not Applebaum, is that there is less reason today to hope for innovation.  Where are today's inventors and pioneers?  We have always relied on the benefits of free enterprise and competition -- are those concepts as strong as they once were, or are they myths?  I have to wonder, when I see the American Petroleum Institute's high-profile lying campaign about "four-dollar gas" and the frantic efforts of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to knock down the climate bill pending in Congress.  These bastions of enterprise and competition, on which we rely to deliver the vaunted (and not altogether illusory) benefits of technological innovation, are on the hustings feverishly denying a problem exists, rather than trying to solve it.  

Can they (or other innovators we haven't seen yet) be relied on to solve problems?  Only if their complacency can be shaken; only if they can be pushed to admit a problem exists will they be motivated to address it.   I believe in the value of the human factor, as does Applebaum -- but it's an engine that may need a jump-start from time to time.  So let's not deride the Copenhagen crowd, or Al Gore, for efforts to publicize the problems.  They're the canaries in the coal mine, alerting us that there's a danger we need to deal with.  How apt that this allegory should come from deep within the heart of the carbon culture. 

Climate Change Gets No Respect

To a psychologist, climate change looks as if it was designed to be ignored. It is a global problem, with no obvious villains and no one-step solutions, whose worst effects seem as if they'll befall somebody else at some other time. In short, if someone set out to draw up a problem that people would not care about, one expert on human behavior said, it would look exactly like climate change.

That's an excerpt from an interesting piece by David Farenthold in the Washington Post yesterday (December 7).  The article goes on to explore the tendency in human behavior to ignore problems that don't seem immediate or that don't have direct, immediate effects on their lives.  Even as people may realize intellectually that climate change could be cataclysmic, they fail to deal rationally with that prospect by taking action.  This is one of those social-science research projects that turns up "findings" that we knew anyway.  But less intuitive is the finding that people react best (i.e. change behavior) when they know that others are doing so. 

The theme continues with an article today about the well-documented and rapidly progressing drought in Australia's Murray River basin.  Here again, it's a problem of human psychology:  It's difficult to get the local farmers and shepherds to change their ways of water usage (when there is any) because, despite the evidence of a river almost completely drying up, they refuse to believe it's a long-term trend.  To be fair, it's always possible that they're right -- 20 years is no time at all in climate-change terms, and rainfall trends might turn around in a generation or so.  But available data argues against this optimism, and even if it didn't, wouldn't it be rational to take steps to mitigate the drought where possible?  And as I've suggested before, shouldn't that same rationality extend to our overall approach to the future climate of our planet?

Not according to Sarah Palin, who argues just the opposite in an op-ed piece today:   Never take a long-term view of a problem, she seems to say, just deal with what's immediate.   But while Palin complains that the Copenhagen agenda is "politically driven," so of course is her own reasoning:

She jumps predictably on the recent revelations about data-fudging on the part of some pro-climate scientists as a reason to back away from efforts now under way in Copenhagen.  (Not surprisingly, "backing away" comes up frequently in the policy recommendations of regressives.)  Yet she fails to condemn the same actions by the Bush administration - manipulating data, destroying records, and trying to silence critics -- and those were actions of our government, not of a few misguided individuals.  She's right about one thing - the issue has become far too politicized on both sides.  Nevertheless, her claim to believe in "sound science" is not credible; on issues from abortion to climate, Palin's party is anti-science, and she's no exception.

Palin also says that we don't know "with assurance that man's activities cause climate change."  We may concede that this statement is possibly true (though to me most of the scientific evidence militates against it).  But her reasoning falls apart when she goes from that to this:  

We can say, however, that any potential benefits of proposed
emissions reduction policies are far outweighed by their economic costs.

Wow.  No, we can't.  Because if we don't know with assurance that the changes we observe are really caused by human activity, we must be equally uncertain about the potential benefits of emissions reductions; and in that case, how can we possibly compare them to their economic costs, which are also unknowable with any exactitude?  Ridiculous.  And thereby Palin proves herself to be one of those who, like the Australian farmers, refuse to acknowledge the evidence of their own eyes and shy away from thinking about the ogre they can see in the forest ahead, as long as he's not attacking them just now.