Environment

Powering Down

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Patrick Richardson:

Kansas is ranked second in the nation behind Montana for wind energy potential, a fact which should have environmentalists jumping for joy. Instead, they’re trying to block the construction of transmission lines to wind farms in south central Kansas and north central Oklahoma. Why? Well it all has to do with the lesser prairie chicken. According to a story by the Hutchinson News in February of this year, ranchers and wildlife officials in the area are teaming up with groups like the Sierra Club to block the construction of the lines, which would apparently run through prime breeding territory for the bird.

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Environmental groups, which are as quick to fang each other as they are dirty polluters, are lining up in opposition to the lines and to wind farms in general. In fact, they’re lining up against most current sources of renewable power: the Audubon Society hates wind farms because the blades kill birds and bats; hydroelectric covers up large swaths of land and releases “greenhouse gasses” when decaying material is exposed to the air; the Sierra Club has opposed solar plants in the Mohave. Apparently, even geothermal creates toxic waste no one wants.

Environmentalists tend to favor new energy technologies such as wind and solar as long as they’re purely theoretical. Once they start to become real, it turns out that these technologies, like everything else in the world, have drawbacks, and hence, while the in-theory approval may continue, practical deployments are fought.

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We Just Don’t Know

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Back in September I wrote a post that bitched because a certain law had a loophole that was being exploited.

I now have an update of sorts.

I will limit this discussion to residential A/C equipment to keep the discussion simple.

To review, the original intent of the law that was enacted as of January 1 of this year was to eliminate the manufacture of any residential A/C that contained the refrigerant R-22. Unfortunately the law was written poorly, and quickly the Chinese manufacturers flooded the market with air conditioners that were shipped dry, meant to be charged with R-22 in the field. R-22 is still available at relatively low prices.

Last week in Chicago I attended a lecture by the head of a large HVAC trade group. Apparently the DOE (Department of Energy) is frowning upon this loophole and may be doing something to not allow the dry units to be sold.

Meanwhile, several of the major manufacturers are (as of this writing) gearing up production for dry R-22 units.

So what to do. Jump in and risk the units being outlawed at a later date (as is what most think will happen) or sit here and let my competitors get a leg up on the thing?

This isn’t the only pending issue in my industry – there are a lot of credits available now for replacing your old heating and cooling system with one of a much higher efficiency – those credits are due to expire at the end of the year unless re-upped. This was expected to be done but Congress left town to campaign and it is tabled. They may or may not get on it with the lame duck session (like so many other items).

This is a very nervous and interesting time for my industry. I am sure there are many, many others who are also watching Congress like never before in this uncertain last few months of the year.

Prestigious Physics Professor Protests Politicization

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(Sometimes I can’t resist the opportunity for a little alliteration, even when the subject matter is very serious)

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a former member of the Defense Science Board; a former member of the Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards and the President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; also co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; and a former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board.

Here is his letter of resignation from the American Physical Society. Excerpt:

The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare.

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To Save the World, How Many Would You Kill?

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A thought experiment: Suppose you somehow knew, with absolute certainty, that a century from now some event would destroy the Earth, wiping out all life as we know it. Suppose you somehow knew, with absolute certainty, of an action you could take that would prevent that extinction of life. Suppose, however, that the cost of that action was billions of human lives. To save the world, how many people could you justify killing?

Could you not justify killing billions to ensure that humanity and life in general survived? What moral stance, what other good, could you balance against the death of all? Indeed, the refusal to murder billions to prevent the death of all would be, in itself, the most vain and evil act in all of history.

This abstract thought experiment hinges on something that in the real world we never have: absolute certainty. There is no way in the real world that we could know with absolute certainty that killing billions now would save all life 100 years from now. Without that certainty, these kinds of kill-a-few-to-save-the-many thought experiments lose validity and don’t provide any moral guidance or insight for the real world.

However, these kinds of thought experiments do demonstrate how absolute certitude makes it easy for anyone, no matter how humane and compassionate, to calmly rationalize the deaths of billions. At the extremities of events and the associated moral choices, the ends do definitely justify the means.

As a corollary, ideas that claim to predict extreme events with great certainty create the justifications for associated extreme acts. These types of ideas turn abstract moral thought experiments into concrete realities on which people feel compelled to act.

Advocates of the concept of Catastrophic Anthropogenic Global Warming (CAGW) are very, very certain that a great destructive event is bearing down on the Earth. They reiterate incessantly that science has absolutely proven that this future harm will occur unless we take significant action today to head it off.

Their absolute certitude in CAGW raises the obvious question: To prevent such massive and unprecedented absolutely certain harm, how many millions of people would they be willing to kill today?

From that perspective, the pro-CAGW propaganda shock videos in which people who don’t believe in CAGW are casually and gorily murdered suddenly don’t seem so funny and edgy.

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Bad Law Writing and Keeping You Cool

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Beginning on January 1, 2010, manufacturers in the US were not allowed to make any new refrigeration or air conditioning equipment that was pre-charged with R-22. Originally, the EPA had written in that not only would no new equipment be allowed to be manufactured with R-22 in it, but no replacement parts would be allowed to be sold for the existing systems.

This gave everyone in my industry (HVAC) a huge gasp – there are literally tens (hundreds?) of millions of systems installed across the United States that have R-22 in them – everything from your household window air, to a central air conditioner, to the reach in coolers at a convenience store, to a beer tap cooler, to industrial chilling processors. The industry had to (at much time and expense) heavily lobby EPA to get this part of the law written out. It was a huge sigh of relief for everyone when this part of the laws was written out. What were we (I run an HVAC wholesaler) to do for warranty if an R-22 unit took a dump? Replace the whole thing instead of a tiny component?

The major manufacturers all knew of the impending January 1, 2010 deadline and had fully converted their manufacturing processes to making units that were pre-charged with the new environmentally friendly refrigerant, R-410a (R-410a is used primarily for air conditioning purposes and I will limit this discussion to that to keep it simpler). This includes all manufacturers of hotel units, window air conditioners, and central air conditioners (I am certainly leaving out some).

Since R-410a involves higher operating pressures than R-22 (significantly higher), technicians were forced to have training to use the new chemical, and buy all new tools to handle the higher pressures. Many were also forced to buy new torch sets. With the old R-22 you could soft solder the joints – with R-410a and the higher pressures that it brings, everyone that wasn’t brazing with 15% silver was forced to do that. Distributors such as myself had to invest a lot of time, energy and money into training our customers so they would use the correct lubricants (those changed from mineral to ester oil), techniques and methods to selling and installing the new R-410a units. Part of the training was to show our customers (hvac contractors) how to educate homeowners about the new refrigerant, and why their broken down air conditioner would require a complete system change out since the old components were not compatible with the new R-410a components.

BUT…

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