Has a perfect storm of events robbed advocates of a green economy the moral and tactical high ground?
It would seem so, at least temporarily.
The combination of an economy turned south, an unusually frigid winter, evidence of massaged climate data, the Wall Street meltdown, and alarming budget deficits has clearly chilled the plans of climate change activists and emboldened global warming deniers.
It’s fair to say the prospects for a stronger governmental role in shaping market incentives for alternative energy and industry-wide carbon mitigation appear to have significantly cooled.
In fact, the promises of green technology, a green jobs boom, reduced carbon dioxide emissions, and renewable energy for all, a kind of clean power Shangri-la, seem as far away from realization as ever.
Witness the deflation in Congress over cap-and-trade legislation, once thought to be possible economy-wide, is now only talked about in minimalist terms of a phasing-in over many years, with utilities being impacted first.
And then there’s the ideological counteroffensive of climate change naysayers who call the connection between man-caused emissions and potentially catastrophic warming patterns and other environmental impacts “one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated on the American people.”
This blog remains open to contrary views, so, against type, I picked up the latest issue of Newsmax, the cover story devoted to showing the IPCC has it all wrong, that we’re actually in a cooling phase, not a warming one.
The evidence for the contrarians is well-known: cloud science is too complicated to base predictions on, deep ocean currents may do more to counteract warming than is acknowledged, and sun spot activity may be helping plunge us into a new ice age.
Interesting points all, and they should prod us to redouble our efforts to understand and be careful about the science and scientific method undergirding our theories.
But let’s be clear: the reversal of fortune, and the change of public mood, have more to do with the bad economy, an upswing in anti-tax and anti-big government sentiment, and the politics of reaction than anything else.
Stakeholders in the status quo smell blood. And analogous to the health care reform debate, doing nothing about a subject as complex and controversial as climate change (and a scheme as difficult to understand as cap and trade) looks better than doing something.
They were wrong about health care reform, and they are wrong about the necessity of government devising strong market-driven incentives for a low-carbon economy.
The long lines forming (and long wait times) at the cable ride of Jade Dragon Snow Mountain is more proof that China's middle class is growing, getting flush with extra cash, and using it to see the world.
Maybe because I live in Florida, a giant sand bar, I am especially fascinated by the vertical.
You see them everywhere in China, ungainly water tanks jutting above the roof lines of homes and apartment buildings, the mark of a developing country where indoor plumbing has been slow to arrive. Or at least this is what I initially thought.
But solar hot water collectors, or evacuated-tube collectors in particular, are a fabulous solution to rising electricity costs, where hot water is responsible for as much as 30% of a domestic utility bill.
You see this thermosiphon version (above) of ET solar all over China, but particularly around Shanghai and south to Shenzhen along coastal China. There must be hundreds of ET solar hot water factories making these units, serving the large demand within China and now for the export market.
I took a factory tour once of a joint venture company, Sino-British, that made a basic unit for approximately the equivalent of $900. It couldn’t possibly supply enough hot water for an American family of four in a temperate climate like that in Shanghai. But in a clime as hot and with as much insolation as south Florida it probably could.
((For scientific verification of average solar resource by location go to: http://www.nrel.gov/rrdc/pvwatts/))
Flat-plate collectors are more familiar in south Florida for their simplicity and lower cost as a pool heating source. But evacuated-tube collectors, thought to be best for mild climates, are going to eat into market share as they get out into the marketplace, even though they cost more.
How ET technology works is simple: those long tubes are double-glazed glass (tube within a tube), at the very center of which is a black absorber plate and tube which carries a heat-transfer fluid into a manifold at the top. The insulation provided by a vacuum between the two tubes gives ET a greater efficiency curve, meaning that the difference between inlet temperature and ambient temperature causes less heat loss and thus greater efficiency in the ET over the flat-plate.
The ET may be easier to install than a flat-plate, all things being equal, because the tubes can be inserted last. And especially good for south Florida, they can be removed before an advancing hurricane.
The biggest problem I foresee with ET is the residential aesthetics: ET systems are ugly, no less in the U.S. than in China. All the better if the water tank can be burrowed within the envelope of the house, but shiny tubes are still not as pleasing to the eye as the dark sheen of a plate.
