One of the most self-serving fallacies I've ever seen is the idea that a subsidy can only exist on the spending side of the ledger. I see this argument popping up more and more, and it annoys the crap out of me.
The fundamental definition of a subsidy is any form of government support that allows a firm or product to be sold at below the efficient, market-clearing rate. Exactly what that market clearing rate is can be up for debate, depending on how many externalities one takes into account. However, it's a decent proxy to say that a subsidy is any type of explicit government support, where one type of firm or product is intentionally favored where no favoritism existed before - this definition, at least, avoids any debate over what the market clearing price level is given that most goods and services are taxed, regulated, etc. away from an efficient market rate.
The argument I've heard from certain GOP* commentators is that a subsidy can only be a government payment, soft loan, or other type of spending support. Rather than engaging the economics directly, they tend to focus attention on one of two arguments.
Showing posts with label extremism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label extremism. Show all posts
Tuesday, May 21, 2013
Thursday, April 11, 2013
Reflections on Political Correctness and Israel
In my previous post, I briefly referenced not liking a meme rather unfortunately popular among the American right. In brief, it claims that the liberal media, in kowtowing to the desires of minority groups, left-wing causes (such as, for example, illegal immigration, gay rights, and the like) are mired in an atmosphere of "stifling political correctness" that prevents anybody who does not share the liberal views of said media from expressing themselves. Although the view is appealing to those with unpopular views, it has several problems.
The first problem is that in order for the thesis to be true, you would have to see editorial policy actively discouraging the publication of conservative viewpoints. Instead, conservative views are regularly aired in so-called liberal media.
Second, the entire idea of an atmosphere of political correctness as "stifling" implies that the media themselves are to blame, when in fact the media are simply covering their bases in response to criticism. This criticism comes not from the management of the media itself, but from the audience. In other words, crying foul at "stifling political correctness" smacks of whining about receiving criticism because one's words offend. It confuses the negative right to free speech - i.e., that no entity can stop one's words from being heard - with the positive right of preventing others from judging your words. It's not a cry for "freedom to," but for "freedom from."
I suppose it's been easy for me to hew to this opinion for much of my life because by and large, I've never been on the receiving end of such feelings of persecution. Recently, however, the incident with the BDS and Brooklyn college (and yes, I know I'm 2 months late) made me nuance this view.
The first problem is that in order for the thesis to be true, you would have to see editorial policy actively discouraging the publication of conservative viewpoints. Instead, conservative views are regularly aired in so-called liberal media.
Second, the entire idea of an atmosphere of political correctness as "stifling" implies that the media themselves are to blame, when in fact the media are simply covering their bases in response to criticism. This criticism comes not from the management of the media itself, but from the audience. In other words, crying foul at "stifling political correctness" smacks of whining about receiving criticism because one's words offend. It confuses the negative right to free speech - i.e., that no entity can stop one's words from being heard - with the positive right of preventing others from judging your words. It's not a cry for "freedom to," but for "freedom from."
I suppose it's been easy for me to hew to this opinion for much of my life because by and large, I've never been on the receiving end of such feelings of persecution. Recently, however, the incident with the BDS and Brooklyn college (and yes, I know I'm 2 months late) made me nuance this view.
Monday, April 8, 2013
The difference between skepticism and disbelief
One of the myriad subjects that's been bouncing around my cranium recently has been the nature of scientific skepticism. I suppose I should admit what brought this about: one of my housemates is an alumna of Bowdoin College, a liberal arts college in Maine, which recently came under attack by the Neocon pressure group National Association of Scholars for exemplifying what they believe has "failed" about modern liberal arts education. Reading the report is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes soul-crushing reminder of the non sequitors that build up in a movement that only listens to itself*. But rather than dismissing the entire report as simply another episode of "Those Neocons say the darndest things!" I found myself thinking about one point that was often (shrilly, bleatingly) raised. I am paraphrasing, but the report repeatedly implied that Bowdoin failed to teach students any sense of academic skepticism using two different examples: first, by proceeding from an unexamined assumption that gender is an inherently social construct (rather than being determined by "biology") and second, by not teaching any of the controversy over global warming.
I don't want to discuss either of these issues in this post. Instead, I want to discuss how the nature of skepticism in each of these issues is different, and why it's impossible to apply the label of "skepticism" as expressed by the anti-AGW movement to scientific issues like climate change, the safety of GMO foods, or many other inherently technical controversies.
I don't want to discuss either of these issues in this post. Instead, I want to discuss how the nature of skepticism in each of these issues is different, and why it's impossible to apply the label of "skepticism" as expressed by the anti-AGW movement to scientific issues like climate change, the safety of GMO foods, or many other inherently technical controversies.
Monday, March 11, 2013
Thoughts on Feminism
There was a recent comment thread in Marginal Revolution (original post here) in which a guy (who goes by the handle Tom West) gave a very illuminating perspective on modern feminism and feminist politics that I felt compelled to share. I've reproduced the thread at the end of this post, so you can read it there first or find it on MR first. It's one of the first few comments. Either way, I really want to just jump into discussion here.
Let me preface all of this by saying that as the proud carrier of a Y chromosome with an expressed SRY region, I've never fully understood the underlying drivers for the modern feminist movement - nor will I. My introduction to modern feminist politics was the furor over Larry Summers' resignation in the early spring of 2006. Summers' speech didn't seem at all inflammatory to my eyes. To me, the budding scientist and researcher, what Summers suggested was (among other things) an extraordinarily simple, plausible testable hypothesis: that there exists some innate aspect women and men's intellectual capabilities that, statistically, predisposes either gender to have some level of over-representation in certain fields. Other things Summers mentioned were also proven statistical correlations, including that women with a certain level of education in the United States tend to marry men of an equal or greater level of education.
Yet, all of my feminist friends - even ones that were normally lukewarm about advocacy - seemed up in arms about the speech. I wondered why, and didn't understand, not least because I felt that the statements were very properly given with caveats and an emphasis that the correlations were a necessary but not sufficient condition for causation. Worse still, when I tried to defend Larry Summers' propositions as reasonable*, I was attacked - not criticized, but full-on ad hominem attacked - by people I considered my friends. In later years, in the rare instances the topic was brought up, the same situation repeated itself; eventually I learned to avoid the topic altogether.
All this, and other instances, led me to negatively categorize the behavior of the modern feminist movement as hypersensitive and too willing to allow ideology to trump any empirical evidence, especially if the hypothesis in question suggested any innate differences between men and women (beyond the physical, of course).
None of it quite made any sense until I read the refreshing explanation from the MR comment thread. "Tom West" sums it up quite succinctly;
That, in a sense, explains the visceral reaction that "nature" arguments tend to get, even from people like me that acknowledge the problems that the feminist agenda wants to solve. One of two misunderstandings will happen when someone with a well-grounded, empirically valid understanding of innate gender differences pitches an argument to a feminist: either a subtle distinction or clarification is lost in conversation, or, more likely, the argument will be functionally identical to one made by some clod who thinks that the underlying relative correlations with ability are closer to 0.9 to 0.1 than 0.5 to 0.5. Either way, the feminist assumes (not unjustifiably) that the underlying assumptions are sexist, and then proceeds to chew the other guy out.
The case of a cautious and well-versed proposer being chewed out is a good example of a type I error, in which the feminist response assumes that the proposer has wrongheaded biases where they do not exist. Unfortunately, the reason that it's so hard to dissuade people from making the assumptions that lead to type I errors in my case, and probably Larry Summers' case as well, is that most of the time the assumption is valid. Most people who make the innate differences argument are drawing fantastically wrongheaded conclusions from equally fantastically wrongheaded estimates of what the true statistical differences in ability are. These estimates are informed not by familiarity with the literature but by cultural and social biases. In other words, the type I error occurs because most people who propose this position just use the possibility of natural variation in intelligence between genders as a vehicle for their own preconceived notions of gender roles. A good portion of these people will also deny the existence of outliers who can perform just as well in non-traditional gender roles as they could in ones seen as the preserve of the other. Either way, it's disgusting and all-too-frequently the case.
As Tom West put it in a later response:
* I have to emphasize here that my working assumption is that intellectual ability is roughly equal until proven otherwise. The values suggested by literature - even with statistically significant results - all point to differences that are too small in most categories of intelligence to justifiably change that assumption.
Full source thread after the jump:
Let me preface all of this by saying that as the proud carrier of a Y chromosome with an expressed SRY region, I've never fully understood the underlying drivers for the modern feminist movement - nor will I. My introduction to modern feminist politics was the furor over Larry Summers' resignation in the early spring of 2006. Summers' speech didn't seem at all inflammatory to my eyes. To me, the budding scientist and researcher, what Summers suggested was (among other things) an extraordinarily simple, plausible testable hypothesis: that there exists some innate aspect women and men's intellectual capabilities that, statistically, predisposes either gender to have some level of over-representation in certain fields. Other things Summers mentioned were also proven statistical correlations, including that women with a certain level of education in the United States tend to marry men of an equal or greater level of education.
Yet, all of my feminist friends - even ones that were normally lukewarm about advocacy - seemed up in arms about the speech. I wondered why, and didn't understand, not least because I felt that the statements were very properly given with caveats and an emphasis that the correlations were a necessary but not sufficient condition for causation. Worse still, when I tried to defend Larry Summers' propositions as reasonable*, I was attacked - not criticized, but full-on ad hominem attacked - by people I considered my friends. In later years, in the rare instances the topic was brought up, the same situation repeated itself; eventually I learned to avoid the topic altogether.
All this, and other instances, led me to negatively categorize the behavior of the modern feminist movement as hypersensitive and too willing to allow ideology to trump any empirical evidence, especially if the hypothesis in question suggested any innate differences between men and women (beyond the physical, of course).
None of it quite made any sense until I read the refreshing explanation from the MR comment thread. "Tom West" sums it up quite succinctly;
Feminism, in general, seems aghast at even acknowledging a lot of innate gender differences.Suddenly, a lot of things started to make sense. It makes sense, for example, that if I start talking about innate gender differences, I am suddenly mistaken for one of the gender-roles-are-hardwired crowd. I am aware that statistical differences in the intellectual ability of genders are smaller than is commonly believed, and that even these statistical likelihoods does not change the likelihood of extraordinary individuals existing from a group that might have a lower aptitude on average. In fact, I have firsthand experience (by virtue of my college) of extraordinarily talented individuals of both genders in roles seen as the preserve of the other. But my arguments largely appear the same as those who don't have this understanding, and routinely use "nature" arguments to pigeonhole women into their traditional roles.
Perhaps. But lets face reality. The fight for equality is a political battle on both sides. And most of us realize that acknowledging that ‘nature’ has any part in current inequality has historically and will continue to be used as a weapon to go *far* beyond that nature to try and force all women (and men) into roles that they might only statistically tend towards. Man likes to categorize, and we are continually insisting that any statistical correlation above 0 must be 1.
So, if you know that acknowledging that a given ratio might actually be 0.4 and 0.6 will be turned into a very politically effective argument that the ratios must be mandated as 0 and 1, you can be forgiven for claiming the ratio is 0.5 and 0.5 despite some evidence to the contrary. It also doesn’t help that in quite a number of cases, it turns out the accepted wisdom is pretty much wrong, and once we conduct experiments to eliminate the cultural component, results between genders are far closer than original experiments indicated.
That, in a sense, explains the visceral reaction that "nature" arguments tend to get, even from people like me that acknowledge the problems that the feminist agenda wants to solve. One of two misunderstandings will happen when someone with a well-grounded, empirically valid understanding of innate gender differences pitches an argument to a feminist: either a subtle distinction or clarification is lost in conversation, or, more likely, the argument will be functionally identical to one made by some clod who thinks that the underlying relative correlations with ability are closer to 0.9 to 0.1 than 0.5 to 0.5. Either way, the feminist assumes (not unjustifiably) that the underlying assumptions are sexist, and then proceeds to chew the other guy out.
The case of a cautious and well-versed proposer being chewed out is a good example of a type I error, in which the feminist response assumes that the proposer has wrongheaded biases where they do not exist. Unfortunately, the reason that it's so hard to dissuade people from making the assumptions that lead to type I errors in my case, and probably Larry Summers' case as well, is that most of the time the assumption is valid. Most people who make the innate differences argument are drawing fantastically wrongheaded conclusions from equally fantastically wrongheaded estimates of what the true statistical differences in ability are. These estimates are informed not by familiarity with the literature but by cultural and social biases. In other words, the type I error occurs because most people who propose this position just use the possibility of natural variation in intelligence between genders as a vehicle for their own preconceived notions of gender roles. A good portion of these people will also deny the existence of outliers who can perform just as well in non-traditional gender roles as they could in ones seen as the preserve of the other. Either way, it's disgusting and all-too-frequently the case.
As Tom West put it in a later response:
... my personal experience with teachers (teachers!) who took a certain Harvard president’s words as “proof” that women can’t do math made me pretty sensitive to the reality that people work hard to misinterpret tiny factoids to make them into giant edifices that can have profound effects on many, many others. It’s certainly left me sympathetic to those who want to err on the side of assuming more equality of nature, especially given the uncertainty in any claims as to what’s nature and what’s culture.)So like Tom West, I'm now much more sympathetic to feminist movement's tendency to discredit or attack gender-based intellectual ability claims. I have personally been hurt by the calculus that goes into making that decision, and at least partially because of that I disagree with the strategy. But I also recognize that introducing subtlety into arguments allows the opposition to claim that feminists actually agree with them, and agitate for the hell of it, or some other bullshit argument. Refuting that claim takes careful presentation of facts, and sound bytes count for far more than facts in politics.
* I have to emphasize here that my working assumption is that intellectual ability is roughly equal until proven otherwise. The values suggested by literature - even with statistically significant results - all point to differences that are too small in most categories of intelligence to justifiably change that assumption.
Full source thread after the jump:
Tuesday, March 27, 2012
Environmental Agitprop
There has been a distinct lack of posts from me lately. I'd like to say I had a legitimate excuse, but the real reason was that I decided to use my spare time over the past month and a half to replay through the first two installments of the Mass Effect series, in anticipation of the new release this past month. I also spent the entirety of the last two weekends in a mild depression because of how bad the ending to that one was. Totally killed the replay value there. Oh well.
In an attempt to redeem myself, I will try to return to my usual subjects. One of the organizations that I've been reading a lot of press on these days is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). On the face of it, it seems like an NGO I ought to really get behind on most issues. I consider myself an environmentalist, broadly agree with many goals of the environmental movement - especially in relation to climate change issues, emissions regulation, and long-term energy development - with the sole exception of nuclear power, which seems to have split environmentalists every which way. Although the NRDC has an anti-nuclear power stance, which I've blogged about before, that issue alone shouldn't stop people who hold my views from working with the NRDC.
Alas, I've found objective reasons to not support the organization.
In an attempt to redeem myself, I will try to return to my usual subjects. One of the organizations that I've been reading a lot of press on these days is the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC). On the face of it, it seems like an NGO I ought to really get behind on most issues. I consider myself an environmentalist, broadly agree with many goals of the environmental movement - especially in relation to climate change issues, emissions regulation, and long-term energy development - with the sole exception of nuclear power, which seems to have split environmentalists every which way. Although the NRDC has an anti-nuclear power stance, which I've blogged about before, that issue alone shouldn't stop people who hold my views from working with the NRDC.
Alas, I've found objective reasons to not support the organization.
Saturday, November 12, 2011
Thought, and the lack thereof, in the dialogue
Immersion in the contentious world of energy policy and politics is, at times, profoundly depressing. When I first decided to specialize in energy and energy policy as my field of study, some 7 years ago, there were only a few grumblings in the English-speaking world that energy might be a problem at some point in the future. As I've studied and worked my way up into the field, I have been confronted with the reality that while the general level of knowledge of the population has gone up, the tone of the conversation has gone down.
Saturday, November 5, 2011
Of Cracked Tar and Crack Spreads
On the days it comes out, I usually review every article on The Oil Drum's Drumbeat series, a quarter-weekly roundup on energy-related news. Most every time, something comes up that ticks me off. There are fairly regular appearances in that from extremists on the petrofuels and environmentalist camps. More infuriating, however, are the articles that attempt to remain neutral but show a frustrating lack of analysis or understanding on relevant issues of the day. The two most recent of these are the buzz around Daniel Yergin and his recent book, The Quest, which I've blogged about before, and the debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, which I've also mentioned. It's the latter which really set me off today.
The general theme of my posts on the Keystone XL Pipeline have revolved around disagreeing that the extraction of the tar sands in Alberta will at all be affected by the blocking of the pipeline's construction. That, and the meme that the sands will simply be transshipped to China (which I've also addressed) are the two most commonly cited nationally relevant arguments against the pipeline; others, such as environmental contamination, are generally local issues. In this post, however, I'm going to try and show how the Keystone XL pipeline will bring a critical benefit to the US independently of energy security concerns.
The general theme of my posts on the Keystone XL Pipeline have revolved around disagreeing that the extraction of the tar sands in Alberta will at all be affected by the blocking of the pipeline's construction. That, and the meme that the sands will simply be transshipped to China (which I've also addressed) are the two most commonly cited nationally relevant arguments against the pipeline; others, such as environmental contamination, are generally local issues. In this post, however, I'm going to try and show how the Keystone XL pipeline will bring a critical benefit to the US independently of energy security concerns.
Monday, October 24, 2011
Climate Skepticism and Epistemic Closure
For some time now I've been regularly reading the postings of a blog called Bit Tooth Energy, run by a former professor at the University of Missouri. While I initially read for excellent descriptions of energy technology, I was also impressed by the way the guy has systematically gone through temperature data for different states in the US and investigated trends - running a weekly, independent analysis of temperature trends, which in the continental US are quite varied. What impressed me more was that it was (and still is) done in a very data-oriented, neutral and technocratic manner.
It's both a confirmation of my own biases and of my ignorance that I was surprised to recently find that he places himself in the camp of climate change "skeptics." I had simply assumed someone running the data on his own would at least feel that the jury is out, if not be leaning towards the climate change-is-real-wake-up crowd. I stand corrected.
But that's not really what this entry is about. Bit Tooth Energy's writer may be a climate change skeptic, but he has thankfully kept any hint of confirmation bias out of his analysis and (most of) his writing. Hell, in order to try and find a broader perspective, I've been trying to find an honest skeptic out there whose interests lie with data analysis, and who values civility and not ad homoniem attacks. Stephen McIntyre may have started out that way, but now he's a jerkwad. Anyway, upon reading this entry, it appears that I've found what I've been looking for, someone who deserves the title of skeptic - even though that post is one that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, it's at the very least reasonable. That's why my visit to the website of a book he recommended, a supposed expose of the IPCC in its relationship with the WWF, was all the more jarring.
It's both a confirmation of my own biases and of my ignorance that I was surprised to recently find that he places himself in the camp of climate change "skeptics." I had simply assumed someone running the data on his own would at least feel that the jury is out, if not be leaning towards the climate change-is-real-wake-up crowd. I stand corrected.
But that's not really what this entry is about. Bit Tooth Energy's writer may be a climate change skeptic, but he has thankfully kept any hint of confirmation bias out of his analysis and (most of) his writing. Hell, in order to try and find a broader perspective, I've been trying to find an honest skeptic out there whose interests lie with data analysis, and who values civility and not ad homoniem attacks. Stephen McIntyre may have started out that way, but now he's a jerkwad. Anyway, upon reading this entry, it appears that I've found what I've been looking for, someone who deserves the title of skeptic - even though that post is one that leaves a sour taste in my mouth, it's at the very least reasonable. That's why my visit to the website of a book he recommended, a supposed expose of the IPCC in its relationship with the WWF, was all the more jarring.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
Indian Points
One of the biggest issues coming around in New York these days is the relicensure of the Indian Point Nuclear Reactor by the NRC. Indian Point is coming under attack by the environmental movement in NYC, and they haven't been afraid to raise the Specter of Fukushima over and over again. The very fact that this license renewal is coming at a low-water mark for nuclear energy makes it one of the more hotly contested fights in recent years.
As part of the opening salvos, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection commissioned a study by Charles River Associates, an economics and management consulting firm, and the NRDC and Riverkeeper Inc. fired back with another by Synapse Energy Economics, an energy economics consulting firm, both of Cambridge, MA. Not trusting the news reports, whose science and economics journalism pretty much sucks, I went ahead and read both of them.
As part of the opening salvos, the NYC Department of Environmental Protection commissioned a study by Charles River Associates, an economics and management consulting firm, and the NRDC and Riverkeeper Inc. fired back with another by Synapse Energy Economics, an energy economics consulting firm, both of Cambridge, MA. Not trusting the news reports, whose science and economics journalism pretty much sucks, I went ahead and read both of them.
Monday, September 19, 2011
More on Keystone XL
I've posted before about the Keystone XL pipeline, but I wanted to emphasize one thing that hasn't been getting any coverage. While America dithers, the Chinese are heavily backing a project (Enbridge's $6.6 billion Northern Gateway) which will ship cracked bitumen to the west coast of Canada - as I mentioned before - where it will be shipped to East Asia.
Again, nothing wrong with selling oil to China, but it again goes to show that radical environmentalists who frame Keystone XL as a battle between "dirty" oil and carbon emissions vs clean energy and less oil dependence are presenting a false choice. Let me say this clearly: stopping Keystone XL will not stop the carbon emissions from bitumen extraction and cracking. It will simply send the oil to China instead of improving American energy security.
This. Debate. Is. Stupid.
I don't want to be against most of the environmental movement here. I really don't. I support their goals - most of them, anyway - and want to see a low-carbon, clean energy economy within my lifetime, even if that goal is ambitious. I want to cut our carbon emissions. I want to reduce dependence on oil in general, and foreign oil especially. And the way to do that is to encourage higher oil prices in America, and the most efficient way to do so is with a carbon tax. And that's that. Burning political capital on this will hurt the movement for years to come.
Furthermore, I'd have a lot of trouble believing that armchair environmentalists have really thought things through, particularly when what they are literally doing is an oblique method of supply disruption that will... uh... well, essentially change the flows of American money from Canada to enriching those lovely regimes in Venezuela, Gabon, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Who would you rather buy from? South Park lifestyle enthusiasts aside, I think I know the answer.
Again, nothing wrong with selling oil to China, but it again goes to show that radical environmentalists who frame Keystone XL as a battle between "dirty" oil and carbon emissions vs clean energy and less oil dependence are presenting a false choice. Let me say this clearly: stopping Keystone XL will not stop the carbon emissions from bitumen extraction and cracking. It will simply send the oil to China instead of improving American energy security.
This. Debate. Is. Stupid.
I don't want to be against most of the environmental movement here. I really don't. I support their goals - most of them, anyway - and want to see a low-carbon, clean energy economy within my lifetime, even if that goal is ambitious. I want to cut our carbon emissions. I want to reduce dependence on oil in general, and foreign oil especially. And the way to do that is to encourage higher oil prices in America, and the most efficient way to do so is with a carbon tax. And that's that. Burning political capital on this will hurt the movement for years to come.
Furthermore, I'd have a lot of trouble believing that armchair environmentalists have really thought things through, particularly when what they are literally doing is an oblique method of supply disruption that will... uh... well, essentially change the flows of American money from Canada to enriching those lovely regimes in Venezuela, Gabon, Nigeria, and Saudi Arabia. Who would you rather buy from? South Park lifestyle enthusiasts aside, I think I know the answer.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Weighing in on the Keystone XL Pipeline
There's been an awful lot of fuss going on about the keystone XL pipeline in the last month or so. Dozens of environmental groups have latched on to the permitting of the pipeline, which is to carry syncrude from Canadian heavy tar oil to the United States, as the issue of their lifetimes. The New York Times carried an editorial by one of them, detailing their rationale and calling on President Obama to make the environmental decision of a lifetime.
I hope he walks out on the White House lawn and slaps this guy on the face.
The Keystone XL pipeline controversy is a farce. Extreme environmentalists have doctored the numbers to suit their propaganda needs and unnecessarily demonized Canadian producers. That editorial is an excellent example of their propaganda: "acidic crude oil" (all crude is acidic, and oil companies routinely handle more acidic and sour crudes), "highly sensitive terrain" (already traversed by multiple pipelines). Here's the alternative picture:
Syncrude from Canada emits 70% more carbon dioxide during extraction and refining than conventional oil does, its true. But then following extraction and refining, we burn it. Focusing on the extraction stage unnecessarily demonizes the process. Over the entire lifecycle of an oil product from syncrude, emissions are only 7-15% greater.
Will the blocking of the keystone XL pipeline stop syncrude operations in Canada? No. Oil prices are high enough that Canadian producers will simply find a different market, and that market is likely to be in East Asia - i.e. China. Were this pipeline initiative to fail, the most plausible alternative is a pipeline to Canada's west coast, where it'd be sold on the international market.
There isn't much wrong with shipping to China per se, except that shifting our main source of fuels from the middle east to Canada has probably been the single greatest energy security coup in American history. Some energy economists have contended that the building of the Keystone XL pipeline to Houston will still cause the oil to be shipped to China; there are some merits to that argument, namely that foreign producers with stakes in American refining companies will pressure for the purchase of their oil. To me, however, this seems less likely than it might seem to be. Saudi Arabia has recently quit targeting 30% of their exports to the US, and Venezuela has production problems of its own, to name two examples. And even then, this argument continues to ignore that as American energy consumption increases, we can take advantage of the captive supply provided by that pipeline. After all, all things being equal, Canadian producers' delivery point prices will favor American producers.
So, to summarize, blocking the keystone XL pipeline does a whole lot of nothing to the environment as extraction will continue, doesn't benefit the American economy or American energy security, and isn't as bad as it's made out to be.
"But wait," you might say, "it will extend America's dependence on oil!" Truth is, America is dependent on oil and will remain so for at least the next fifty years at least. Where we get it from won't matter. Stopping the supply of oil from Canada won't do anything to reduce American dependence on liquid hydrocarbons, sustained high prices will. The extent to which blocking a supply pipeline will impact American prices is the only mechanism by which this might act... and frankly, in a liquid global market for oil, it won't do much at all.
The only guaranteed effect I foresee from this pipeline is the mitigation of the price spread between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at Cushing, OK, and the global price for oil. As I've blogged about before, WTI has been going for cheap because it is landlocked and has had an influx of syncrude from Canada that it can't unload fast enough. The increased WTI prices aren't likely to have an effect on gas prices in the United States as a whole (probably only in Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas panhandle due to the limited overland transport radius) and will increase profits for the companies that deliver to that location, including Canadian syncrude manufacturers. I suppose that's why they're doing it.
Environmental short-sightedness like opposition to Keystone XL will only hurt the American economy and our short-term energy security. And as a final, more general comment, it's immature activism like this in the energy arena that makes me want to puke. If you really want to help the environment, reduce dependence on oil and decrease carbon dioxide emissions, then work to build smart grids or build a renewable energy infrastructure. Or spend the money you devoted to going to Washington to retrofit your house with better insulation, double or triple paned windows, or (if it makes sense) small scale solar thermal water heaters or solar PV panels. Handcuffing yourself to the White House fence might be easier and more dramatic, but being a publicity whore is more damaging to the environment than hundreds of other things you can be doing.
I hope he walks out on the White House lawn and slaps this guy on the face.
The Keystone XL pipeline controversy is a farce. Extreme environmentalists have doctored the numbers to suit their propaganda needs and unnecessarily demonized Canadian producers. That editorial is an excellent example of their propaganda: "acidic crude oil" (all crude is acidic, and oil companies routinely handle more acidic and sour crudes), "highly sensitive terrain" (already traversed by multiple pipelines). Here's the alternative picture:
Syncrude from Canada emits 70% more carbon dioxide during extraction and refining than conventional oil does, its true. But then following extraction and refining, we burn it. Focusing on the extraction stage unnecessarily demonizes the process. Over the entire lifecycle of an oil product from syncrude, emissions are only 7-15% greater.
Will the blocking of the keystone XL pipeline stop syncrude operations in Canada? No. Oil prices are high enough that Canadian producers will simply find a different market, and that market is likely to be in East Asia - i.e. China. Were this pipeline initiative to fail, the most plausible alternative is a pipeline to Canada's west coast, where it'd be sold on the international market.
There isn't much wrong with shipping to China per se, except that shifting our main source of fuels from the middle east to Canada has probably been the single greatest energy security coup in American history. Some energy economists have contended that the building of the Keystone XL pipeline to Houston will still cause the oil to be shipped to China; there are some merits to that argument, namely that foreign producers with stakes in American refining companies will pressure for the purchase of their oil. To me, however, this seems less likely than it might seem to be. Saudi Arabia has recently quit targeting 30% of their exports to the US, and Venezuela has production problems of its own, to name two examples. And even then, this argument continues to ignore that as American energy consumption increases, we can take advantage of the captive supply provided by that pipeline. After all, all things being equal, Canadian producers' delivery point prices will favor American producers.
So, to summarize, blocking the keystone XL pipeline does a whole lot of nothing to the environment as extraction will continue, doesn't benefit the American economy or American energy security, and isn't as bad as it's made out to be.
"But wait," you might say, "it will extend America's dependence on oil!" Truth is, America is dependent on oil and will remain so for at least the next fifty years at least. Where we get it from won't matter. Stopping the supply of oil from Canada won't do anything to reduce American dependence on liquid hydrocarbons, sustained high prices will. The extent to which blocking a supply pipeline will impact American prices is the only mechanism by which this might act... and frankly, in a liquid global market for oil, it won't do much at all.
The only guaranteed effect I foresee from this pipeline is the mitigation of the price spread between West Texas Intermediate (WTI) at Cushing, OK, and the global price for oil. As I've blogged about before, WTI has been going for cheap because it is landlocked and has had an influx of syncrude from Canada that it can't unload fast enough. The increased WTI prices aren't likely to have an effect on gas prices in the United States as a whole (probably only in Kansas, Oklahoma, and the Texas panhandle due to the limited overland transport radius) and will increase profits for the companies that deliver to that location, including Canadian syncrude manufacturers. I suppose that's why they're doing it.
Environmental short-sightedness like opposition to Keystone XL will only hurt the American economy and our short-term energy security. And as a final, more general comment, it's immature activism like this in the energy arena that makes me want to puke. If you really want to help the environment, reduce dependence on oil and decrease carbon dioxide emissions, then work to build smart grids or build a renewable energy infrastructure. Or spend the money you devoted to going to Washington to retrofit your house with better insulation, double or triple paned windows, or (if it makes sense) small scale solar thermal water heaters or solar PV panels. Handcuffing yourself to the White House fence might be easier and more dramatic, but being a publicity whore is more damaging to the environment than hundreds of other things you can be doing.
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