Author: bill

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The EPA’s Mercury Madness – Investors.com

I was curious how much mercury comes out of compact fluorescent lights since the EPA was so concerned about electrical power plants and my power company was so insistent that I take some free compact fluorescent lights. It sure sounded strange to have my power company begging me to take the lights. The logic being used by the EPA to justify shutting down power plants is particularly perplexing. They seem to believe that I am at a greater exposure risk to mercury coming out of an electrical power plant thirty miles away from me than a broken compact fluorescent light in my living room. It actually gets worse. It is reasonable to assume that most of the non-functioning compact fluorescent lights are ending up in nearby garbage dumps and eventually being carried into our water supply. My inner engineer says this “science” does not pass the laugh test. I did find the AEI-Brookings article referenced in the quote below on the internet, http://www.joelschwartz.com/pdfs/AEI_Brookings_Mercury.pdf.

In a pamphlet extolling the virtues of the looming federal ban on traditional incandescent light bulbs, the EPA says it’s a “myth” that the mercury used in compact fluorescent lights is “dangerous in your home.”

“There’s no evidence,” the brochure says, that “brief exposure to the mercury in a broken bulb presents a health risk to you or your family.” Just air out the room, sweep up the debris into a jar and you’re fine.

Truth is there’s no meaningful health risk from either the bulbs or the power plants. As a 2004 paper published by the American Enterprise Institute and the Brookings Institution noted, “mercury exposure at current levels is unlikely to be causing harm.”

The EPA’s Mercury Madness – Investors.com

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Book Review: This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly

I have been reading This Time is Different: Eight Centuries of Financial Folly for the last month. It has been slow going since it reads like a text book and I have read my fair share of text books in my life. I would have given up except that the authors have some collected some important historical data about financial crises. The authors have methodically compiled approximately 800 years historical data base on financial crises and their causes. There are lots of tables, charts, and professorial comments about the causes of the crises.

A few days ago I was surprised when Henry Blodget wrote an article advocating more government spending in the article, Well, It Sure Seems Like Keynes Was Right, and based it partly on Reinhart and Rogoff’s analysis of prior financial crises. I was surprised since the authors did not comment directly about stimulus spending in the chapters I read but here is what Henry wrote:

And I’ve also looked back at history–namely, Reinhart and Rogoff’s analysis of prior financial crises, the Great Depression, Japan, Germany after Weimar, and so forth.

 

So I skipped to the end of the book and read the last two chapters. The closest I came to a comment on Keynesian stimulus spending is:

Debt sustainability exercises must be based on plausible scenarios for economic performance, because the evidence offers little support for the view that countries simply “grow out” of their debts. This observation may limit the options for governments that have inherited high levels of debt. Simply put, they must factor in the possibility of “sudden stops” in capital flow, for these are a recurrent phenomenon for all but the very largest economies in the world.

and

Our extensive coverage of banking crises, however, says little about the much debated issue of the efficacy of stimulus packages as a way of shortening the duration of the crisis and cushioning the downside of the economy as a banking crisis unfolds.

So although the authors are concerned about plausible debt sustainability scenarios since it may lead to “sudden stops” in capital inflow in smaller economies, their data has shown that large economies like the United States have been immune from these “sudden stops”. This leaves open the question of what would happen to capital inflows if the United States undertook another stimulus like Henry Blodgett is recommending.   At what level of debt does the rest of the world decide that the United States debt is not sustainable and they should invest their capital elsewhere. If that scenario occurs we can safely say this time is different.

As a back-handed complement I would like to thank Henry for making the “This Time is Different” book much more interesting than it would be otherwise.

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The Battle over Clean Air Standards

This week an American Lung Association ad, Red Carriage Advertisement III, caught my attention. This ad associates childhood asthma and to the pollution generated by power plants. In my life I have never seen an asthma attack triggered by pollution from a power plant so I am skeptical. Today I decided to check on their allegation. I found that the EPA site has a page on asthma triggers, http://www.epa.gov/asthma/triggers.html, and power plant pollution is not one of nine major sources listed on that page. The closet source I could find to power plant pollution was Outdoor Air Pollution so I followed that link. This category includes car exhaust, smoke, road dust, factory emissions, and pollen from plants, crops and weeds. From my limited experience around asthma sufferers, I suspect that power plant pollution would rank third or lower in this category at causing asthma attacks.

To put a face on the problem with pollution politics here is a power plant we go by every time we go to Virginia Tech. Across from the plant is a gas station I have stopped at on several of my trips. This part of my trip is one of the most scenic parts of my trip. The air is clean, the nearby forests are lush, and the water in the New River is cold and fast.  It is no surprise that the gas station is full of hunting and fishing supplies. So where do we draw the line when you cannot see, smell, or taste pollution? Are we trying to fix a problem that does not affect this community? In this rural area there are probably only two sources of good paying jobs, this plant and the chemical plant a few miles away at the Narrows.  I suspect that the closing of this plant will be catastrophic for the community. I doubt that these employees will find jobs nearby. Although this plant is 92 years old, requires updated scrubber technology, and is probably getting their butts kicked by gas powered generators, it is probably still making money for its parent company, AEP. Despite its money making prowess AEP did not find it to be cost effective to install scrubbers or convert the facility over to gas. To make up for the lost generating capacity AEP appears to have decided to install gas powered generators in some place that is not close to Glen Lyn or its employees. The really big problem I have with pollution politics is that closing this plant will increase rates by 15% and the community will not see, smell, or taste any benefits. The air will still be clear, the forests will still be lush, and the New River will still be cold and fast. For these “improvements” they get dramatically higher unemployment. As a country with a variety of complex business and environmental problems, you would think we would be getting better at balancing the needs of the business, environment, and community. At the very least we should be trying to avoid lose-lose decisions like this. Instead it appears that AEP and the folks around Glen Lyn did not have a say in the matter. We seem to have constructed a political system that is particularly adept at making “good” environmental decisions that appear to be lose-lose decisions for businesses and communities. We seem to have lost our way on how to make decisions that balances the needs of most of the people. We may not be able to satisfy everyone but we not even trying to balance the needs of these different groups. The sad part is that when this plant is closed, asthma sufferers will still be suffering from the same old triggers of asthma attacks. Nothing has changed for them!

Appalachian Power customers could see up to a 15 percent increase in monthly bills as a result.

By Laurence Hammack | The Roanoke Times

 

The Roanoke Times | File 2003

American Electric Power announced today that the Glen Lyn Plant along the New River in Giles County will be closed by Dec. 31, 2014. The plant is one of 11 in seven states to be retired or modified by AEP to meet new regulations from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.

A coal-burning power plant in Giles County that has spewed carbon emissions for years faces a shutdown to comply with clean-air requirements ”” and consumers are facing the possibility of higher electric bills

AEP announces plan to close coal-burning Giles County power plant – Roanoke.com

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EPA Drills Monitoring Well into a Gas Reservoir and is Surprised to Find Gas

I read the article, Tainted EPA Report on Fracking Blasted by Gas Co., and just had to confirm the details. Could the EPA have been this incompetent? Here is an excerpt from the Encana web site discussing the EPA report. I thought Encana’s discussion of the two deep monitoring wells the EPA drilled to be particularly funny.

Numerous discrepancies exist in the EPA’s approach, data and analysis. A few of these discrepancies are:

  • The EPA report ignores well-known historical realities with respect to the Pavillion field’s unique geology and hydrology. (See BACKGROUNDER below)
  • The EPA drilled two deep monitoring wells (depth range: 783 – 981 feet) into a natural gas reservoir and found components of natural gas, which is an entirely expected result. The results in the EPA deep wells are radically different than those in the domestic water wells (typically less than 300 feet deep), thereby showing no connection. Natural gas developers didn’t put the natural gas at the bottom of the EPA’s deep monitoring wells, nature did.
  • There is unacceptable inconsistency between EPA labs’ analysis for numerous organic compounds reported to have been found in the EPA deep monitoring wells. Data is not repeatable and the sample sets used to develop these preliminary opinions are inadequate.
  • Several of the man-made chemicals detected in the EPA deep wells have never been detected in any of the other wells sampled. They were, however, detected in many of the quality control (blank) samples – which are ultra purified water samples commonly used in testing to ensure no contamination from field sampling procedures. These two observations suggest a more likely connection to what it found is due to the problems associated with EPA methodology in the drilling and sampling of these two wells.
  • The EPA’s reported results of all four phases of its domestic water well tests do not exceed federal or state drinking water quality standards for any constituent related to oil and gas development.

Encana – 2011 News Releases – Why Encana refutes U.S. EPA Pavillion groundwater report

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Police: Va. Tech officer, suspect shot by same gun (AP)

My sympathies go out to the family and friends of Deriek  Crouse. It appears to be another senseless killing as investigators struggle to identify a motive. However as an alumni and parent of a current student at Virginia Tech I was very concerned how the University handled this emergency. Our son told us that the University locked down the campus shortly after the incident. Although the details on the incident were still sketchy at the time I received several emails that night which appeared to convey as much information as they could publicly disclose about an ongoing investigation. Although parents’ expectations can never be met in incidents like this, the University had kept our kids safe and they were now trying to help everyone deal with the tragic event.

This photo released by Virginia Tech shows police officer Deriek Crouse, who was shot and killed Thursday, Dec. 8, 2011, during a routine traffic stop on the school's Blacksburg, Va. campus. Crouse, a 39-year-old Army veteran and married father of five, joined the campus police force about six months after the 2007 massacre, the school said. He previously worked at a jail and a sheriff's department. (AP Photo/Virginia Tech)AP – A gunman killed a Virginia Tech police officer Thursday at a campus parking lot and then apparently shot himself to death nearby in an attack that shook the school nearly five years after it was the scene of the deadliest shooting rampage in modern U.S. history.

Police: Va. Tech officer, suspect shot by same gun (AP)
Fri, 09 Dec 2011 07:10:06 GMT

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Green Technology that pays for itself

I just finished installing some green technology that pays for itself. Yes, I installed insulation in the ceiling of our house. In my case half of our electrical usage occurs in the months of December, January, and February so adding insulation should have an immediate impact on our electrical bill. In my case I could easily improve the existing insulation(R-15) in the ceiling by laying with a larger insulation blanket(R-30) on top of it. This would get us pretty close to the recommended value for this area of R-49. Installing insulation is a low risk, low reward project that almost any home owner can do. What I mean by low reward is that you will see a slightly lower annual electrical bill. The good news is that you will see these benefits for many years.  As an example I plotted our energy usage using data off of our bills and heating degree days from http://www.degreedays.net/. I included the degree day data so that I could identify significant differences in weather from one year to the next. From a heating and cooling view, 2010 and 2011 are very similar. Although I am missing my bills from early 2010 and the December bill will not be available for another 30 days we can see the impact of the insulation I installed last spring on my electrical consumption where it dropped between 150 to 300 KW-Hours. This amounts to only a $14 to $29 drop in the monthly electrical bill. Its not much but every little bit counts.

HomeEnergyUsage

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How To Never Bust Through Your Smartphone’s Data Cap Again [Data Caps]

I was curious whether this Gizmodo article, How To Never Bust Through Your Smartphone’s Data Cap Again [Data Caps], would come up with the idea I came up with, turn your 2G/3G/4G data access off. Since most of my awake hours is spent in two places where I have Wi-Fi access the lack of over the air data access should not be much of a problem to me. This also explains why I did it. How can I go over my 200 MB limit when most of my data transfers should be over Wi-Fi? This problem seems to be occurring every month now.

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A discussion about Occupy Wall Street

Here are two sources for those trying to understand the Occupy Wall Street movement. Representing the left side of the political spectrum is the show by Charlie Rose with with journalist Chris Hedges and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now!, Charlie Rose – A discussion about Occupy Wall Street. Representing the right side of the political spectrum is this blog post from Heritage Foundation, The Conservative’s Guide to the ”˜Occupy Wall Street’ Protests.

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Was our last economic boom due to consumer debt?

When I read the post, A Deep Look At Revolving Credit, And What It Means For Consumer Spending, the graphs inspired me to try my hand at answering some questions I have been about the importance of consumer debt to our last economic expansion.  So the first thing I did was to create a graph using FRED of the revolving debt versus the S&P 500. To avoid issues with scaling and different units, I told FRED to scale the graph using the latest available data as 100. From the graph I could see that there was a strong relationship between the two lines but I had some other questions. How much of the increased debt was due to the increase in population and inflation? My solution was to create a per capita revolving credit estimate by dividing the revolving credit by the population of wage earners and scaling it to 100 and adding a separate line for the inflation index. Here is the final result.

 

fredgraph_percapita

Now this is an interesting graph. We can see that the S&P 500 and the per capita revolving credit have a close relationship up until the internet boom of 2000. Then things go haywire. We can also see that the per capita rate of revolving debt started to accelerate after 1983. It continued to increase at a rate greater than the inflation rate until 2007 when it started a decline despite a much larger number of wage earners and inflation. This leads me to conclude that the wage earner’s debt was maxed out in 2007.

The next question I had was where does the per capita revolving debt go from here? One way we can make an intelligent guess at the answer is to go from the premise that per capita revolving debt should have grown at the rate of inflation. Using a regressed line of the CPI to provide us with the slope of the line, we would expect that per capita revolving debt still needs to drop another 10% to reach the point that inflation rate would have predicted. Since the wage earner was probably maxed out in 2007 I think the wage earner is unlikely to add more debt any time soon. They are still close to their max debt load. If we assume that wage earner’s tolerance for debt and inflation rates does not change dramatically then it make take another year or two for the wage earner to pay down enough debt and establish enough distance from their max debt level. On the negative side if the wage earner gets panicky about the future of their job and the economy,  there might be some debt repayment overshoot. The logical conclusion is that this new normal for revolving debt will be bad news for the companies whose sales are dependent on revolving debt and make if very difficult for this economy to expand for the next two years.