Fossil Fuels’ Hidden Cost Is in Billions, Study Says

Reposted from the Washington Post

By MATTHEW L. WALD


WASHINGTON — Burning fossil fuels costs the United States about $120 billion a year in health costs, mostly because of thousands of premature deaths from air pollution, the National Academy of Sciences reported in a study issued Monday.

The damages are caused almost equally by coal and oil, according to the study, which was ordered by Congress. The study set out to measure the costs not incorporated into the price of a kilowatt-hour or a gallon of gasoline or diesel fuel.

The estimates by the academy do not include damages from global warming, which has been linked to the gases produced by burning fossil fuels. The authors said the extent of such damage, and the timing, were too uncertain to estimate.

Nor did the study measure damage from burning oil for trains, ships and planes. And it did not include the environmental damage from coal mining or the pollution of rivers with chemicals that were filtered from coal plant smokestacks to keep the air clean.

“The largest portion of this is excess mortality — increased human deaths as a result of criteria air pollutants emitted by power plants and vehicles,” said Jared L. Cohon, president of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, who led the study committee.

Nearly 20,000 people die prematurely each year from such causes, according to the study’s authors, who valued each life at $6 million based on the dollar in 2000. Those pollutants include small soot particles, which cause lung damage; nitrogen oxides, which contribute to smog; and sulfur dioxide, which causes acid rain.

The study lends support to arguments that society should pay extra for energy from sources like the wind and the sun, because their indirect costs are extremely small. But it also found that renewable motor fuel, in the form of ethanol from corn, was slightly worse than gasoline in its environmental impact.

Coal burning was the biggest single source of such external costs . The damages averaged 3.2 cents per kilowatt-hour, compared with 0.16 cents for gas. But the variation among coal plants was enormous.

The worst plants, generally the oldest and burning coal with the highest sulfur content, were 3.6 times worse than the average, with a cost of nearly 12 cents per kilowatt-hour (which is more than the average retail price of that amount of electricity).

The best plants carried a cost of less than a quarter of a penny. Natural gas plants also showed a large variation, but both the best and the worst costs were far smaller than for coal.

Such variation suggests that existing technology could be applied to make the electric system a lot cleaner, experts said. One of the study’s authors, Maureen L. Cropper, an economist at the University of Maryland, said the findings should be used not to raise the price of electricity based on an average of indirect costs but to measure the cost of cleanup on a plant-by-plant basis.

The study did not measure damage from pollution-control devices. “If you’re taking the output of a scrubber and dumping it in the Monongahela River, that’s not in our study, Professor Cropper said.

The study found that operating nuclear plants did not impose significant environmental costs, although uranium mining and processing did. But 95 percent of uranium mining takes place in other countries, the study said. Canada and Australia together account for 44 percent of world production.

The committee did not put a dollar value on the risk of a nuclear accident that would produce environmental damage. It also noted the uncertainty of the cost of long-term disposal of high-level wastes.

The committee said environmental damage from gasoline and diesel fuel cost 1.2 cents to 1.7 cents per mile. A co-author of the study, Daniel S. Greenbaum, president of the Health Effects Institute, said that would come to 23 cents to 38 cents per gallon. Still, Mr. Greenbaum said, “we were hesitant to make that a central part of our findings,” because pollution also results from manufacturing cars.

The study did not calculate the military cost of protecting fuel imports.

As for wind energy, the study said it killed birds but not enough to seriously affect populations. A possible exception was raptors, birds of prey that ordinarily eat species whose numbers are being reduced by spinning turbine blades.

The study was not kind to ethanol. A mixture of 85 percent ethanol and 15 percent unleaded gasoline, or E85, showed slightly higher damages to environment and health than ordinary gasoline, because of the energy required to raise the corn and make ethanol from it.

Electric vehicles and vehicles using synthetic diesel fuel, also ranked poorly. The electric vehicles might do better if emissions of heat-trapping gases had been factored in, because they have lower carbon dioxide emissions per mile than gasoline-powered cars. But the cars running on artificial diesel would look slightly worse in that analysis, the study said.

Congress Must Act Boldly on Global Warming: Sanders Cites Record U.S. Heat in 2012

January 9, 2013

BURLINGTON, Vt., Jan. 9 – Coming off the hottest year on record in the United States, Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said today that he will introduce legislation to move aggressively to reverse global warming.
“The scientific data is clear that global warming is real and significantly caused by greenhouse gas emissions from burning fossil fuels,” Sanders said.

“After the hottest year on record and extreme weather disturbances such as Hurricane Sandy, we must take strong action to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels and move toward energy efficiency and sustainable energy,” Sanders added. “I intend to introduce legislation in the Senate to do just that.”
Sanders’ legislation will include a transparent fee on greenhouse gas emissions from the biggest polluters. It will call for an historic investment in efficiency, sustainable energy, advanced transportation infrastructure, and clean energy research and development. The measure also would end fossil fuel subsidies and tax breaks.

The annual U.S. temperature last year was 55.32 degrees Fahrenheit, a full degree warmer than the old record set in 1998, the National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., announced on Tuesday. Scientists say the temperature increases are happening faster than they expected and that the warming trend is a result of climate change caused by man-made greenhouse gas emissions.

The problem is global. Record temperatures in Australia, for example, produced what the government called “catastrophic” fire conditions in the most populace part of the continent. The average temperature across Australia on Tuesday was the highest since statistics began being kept in 1911.

The United States in recent years has doubled electricity generation from wind and solar power sources and enacted fuel economy standards that will help our cars and trucks get to 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. “But we are not doing nearly enough,” Sanders said. “That is why I will be introducing legislation that would deal realistically with the crisis in a way that is aggressive but achievable.”

Everything you need to know about negotiating with the GOP in one paragraph

“Today’s Republican Party thinks the key problem America faces is out-of-control entitlement spending. But cutting entitlement spending is unpopular and the GOP’s coalition relies heavily on seniors. And so they don’t want to propose entitlement cuts. If possible, they’d even like to attack President Obama for proposing entitlement cuts. But they also want to see entitlements cut and will refuse to solve the fiscal cliff or raise the debt ceiling unless there are entitlement cuts.”

— Ezra Klein

Endless Wars

Repube Lie, Social Security Fact

Makes sense to me!

NRA Logic

Repube Iying Liars

From Jobsanger



The Republicans in Congress are still whining over spending by the federal government. What they won't tell you though is that President Obama has increased spending less than the last eight presidents did (and four of those eight presidents were Republicans). George W. Bush increased spending 5.5 times as much as President Obama has, and even the Republican idol (Ronald Reagan) increased spending 4.9 times as much as President Obama.

It seems the Republicans are not really against increasing government spending, unless it is being done under a Democratic administration. They don't mind at all when it is done by a Republican president. And the increase in spending under President Obama is a direct result of the incompetence of George W. Bush, who threw the nation into recession -- which made it necessary to spend more on unemployment payments, poverty programs, and Food Stamps.

But the real truth is that the small increase in spending under President Obama is not the real problem. The real problem is the cut in revenues made in the Bush administration. When Bush took office, President Clinton had wiped out the deficit (actually creating a surplus) and was starting to pay down the national debt. But Bush, in addition to increasing government spending, made huge cuts in revenues (taxes) -- mainly for the rich and corporations. Now the rich and corporations, both of which are making more money than ever, are paying less taxes than at any time since the Great Depression -- and this has caused the deficit to grow in spite of government cut-backs.

If we are really serious about cutting the deficit, then the government needs to get more revenues. The top tax rates on the rich must be raised at least to what they were in the Clinton administration. In addition, subsidies for corporations (which are no longer needed) should be eliminated. We don't need cuts to the meager payments to keep the poor and the elderly out of a dismal poverty. We just need the rich and the corporations to once again pay their fair share of taxes in this nation (which has given them so much).

Our current deficit is not a spending problem. It is a revenue problem.

Christian, Repube and Taliban!

Guns vs Voteing

Repubes Suck!

Christian Taliban

Reposted from Jobsanger

The religious right in this country is still trumpeting the idea that evolution is nothing more than a theory, and has yet to be proven to be true. That is an outrageous lie. Despite what fundamentalists want us to believe, evolution is a fact, not a theory. And that fact has been accepted in the scientific community for quite a while now. Evolution has been proven to have taken place for all living things, and if it is true of all other animals, then why would we think it has nothing to do with humans? Like it or not humans are scientifically an animal -- an animal with a higher functioning brain than other animals (thanks to evolution), but an animal nonetheless.

But far too many states in the United States have decided that religion must be taught in our schools instead of established scientific fact, or that some science should be ignored if it cannot be replaced by religion. The map above shows the states that teach or refuse to teach evolution. Note that only a handful of states bother to teach the whole scientific truth (those states in green). A passel of others, those in yellow, are listed as "satisfactory". But don't let that word "satisfactory" fool you, since some of those states (like Texas and Montana) don't mention human evolution at all, and others mar their teaching on evolution with "creationist jargon". Personally, I don't think that's "satisfactory" at all.

We are falling behind the rest of the developed world in education in general, and in science in particular. And the idea that we can't teach the truth if it conflicts with religious myths is a prime reason for this. We have failed to adequately fund our schools, and now we don't want the truth taught. It's just sad when a nation is afraid of the truth, and it's a bad sign for that nation's future.

Repube Lies

Reposted from Jobsanger

The Republicans are currently trying to float two lies about Social Security. The first is that the budget cannot be balanced, or the deficit reduced, with cutting Social Security benefits and raising the retirement age. That is not even remotely true, since Social Security is completely paid for out of FICA payroll deductions, and don't add as much as a single penny to the deficit or the national debt.

Even the most revered Republican president (at least for the right-wingers) knew this. Ronald Reagan was big on cutting the budget (in spite of the fact that he actually increased the deficit), but he was honest enough to admit that cutting Social Security benefits would do nothing to balance the budget, control the deficit, or lessen the national debt. In attacking Social Security in this way, modern right-wingers are ignoring the truth told by their own icon.

The other lie they tell is that Social Security is going bankrupt unless benefits are cut and the retirement age is raised. The truth is that Social Security can continue to pay full benefits for another 25 years, and even after that it could continue to pay benefits at a 78% level. It is NOT going broke! And it could be easily fixed. Raising or removing the cap on the amount of income subject to the FICA deduction would easily fix Social Security far into the future.

The truth is that the Republicans have never liked Social Security. They voted against it when it was proposed, and regularly vote to harm the program -- in spite of the fact that it has worked exactly as it was designed to work, and has lowered poverty among the elderly from more than 50% to less than 10%. They have even tried to privatize it and let their buddies on Wall Street get their greedy hands on it.

This makes me wonder -- why do congressional Republicans hate Social Security? Why does it offend them that the elderly are now protected from a life of poverty after retiring? Is it because they are rich themselves and simply don't care about other people? Is it to protect their rich buddies in corporate America and on Wall Street (who don't need Social Security) from having to pay the small FICA tax? Is it because they consider ideology to be more important than the lives of ordinary Americans? I must admit, I am mystified.

DUH!

I was blind, but now can see

No Comment

Fail, Fail, Fail

Okay, so let’s try a little exercise in fill-in-the-blank:

Laws outlawing _____ are useless because criminals will ignore them. Thus laws outlawing _____ will never prevent a crime and are of no use.

Let’s put the word ‘murder’ in the blank first:

Laws outlawing murder are useless because criminals will ignore them. Thus laws outlawing murder will never prevent a crime and are of no use.

Hmm…. by that logic, laws outlawing murder are useless because they didn’t stop Jeffrey Dahmer from murdering. Well, actually, given that Jeffrey Dahmer got sent to prison for life (and shanked — killed — while in prison), those laws darn well *did* stop Jeffrey Dahmer from killing. Without murder laws, we would have had to put Jeffrey Dahmer back on the streets — and he *would* have killed again.

Now, fill in the blank above with “semi-automatic weapons” and you have the position of Mr. Wayne LaPierre of the NRA. By his logic we should not outlaw semi-automatic weapons because such laws won’t prevent criminals from using semi-automatic weapons. Well, maybe not… but they would give prosecutors another way to put those criminals in jail when they got caught for that or other crimes, and criminals in jail are criminals who aren’t threatening me and mine.

You have a right to throw a punch. That right ends at the tip of my nose.

You have a right to free speech. That right ends at the moment you threaten danger me or mine with your speech (yes, Virginia, threatening speech *is* illegal).

You have a right to keep and bear arms. That right ends at the moment that your right endangers me or mine.

Unfortunately the NRA has banned research here in the USA on how to keep your guns from making my life less safe. Is it any wonder that people are now talking about outright bans on entire classes of guns? If gun fondlers weren’t so busy trying to make sure that nobody could take their metallic penile enhancements away from them that they outlawed objective research on the subject of how to keep your guns from threatening the lives of me and mine, there wouldn’t be this outcry calling for bans on entire classes of guns, there’d instead be scientific research on the subject of what’s needed to protect me and mine from your guns. But because gun fondlers are so busy stroking their metallic penile enhancements that they sneer at little things like, well, science and public safety… well. Seems to me gun fondlers are just getting what they deserve with all this ban talk.

You have a right to keep and bear arms… up until the time that it makes me and mine less safe. Period. End of story.

Reposted - Badtux the Reality-based Penguin

Energy Subsidies

Anti-wind and anti-solar folks (yes, there are a few out there — mostly tied to the fossil fuel industry) love to bring up renewable energy subsidies. However, there are so many reasons why they really shouldn’t be eager to do so. For example, fossil fuel and nuclear subsidies dwarf renewable energy subsidies.



Subsidies in first 15 years of subsidies for various energy sources.

Additionally, many indirect subsidies never even get counted in most subsidy analyses — such as the tremendous extent to which we subsidize oil through our military and the tremendous health externalities not included in the price of fossil fuels (neither of which are included in the price of fossil fuels).

But there’s another point which gets even less attention. Here’s a reader comment that I thought was worth a repost:

Yes, we have supported oil, wind and solar with subsidies. Look how that’s played out.

Wind, 30 years ago, produced electricity at $0.38/kWh. Now it’s producing at $0.04/kWh to $0.06/kWh and on its way down to $0.03/kWh in the near future. (Already, we’ve seen a 9.5x drop.)

Solar panels, 30-40 years ago, cost as much as $100/watt. Solar panels are now being manufactured for prices approaching $0.50/watt.  (That’s almost a 200x price drop.)

Oil, in 1946, was $18.89 a barrel (2012/current dollars) and in 2012 it’s running about $100 a barrel. (More than a 5x increase.)

Support for oil might have kept prices from rising further, but it has not made oil cheaper.

Support for wind and solar have made them much cheaper. Our investments are returning massive dividends.

Wind has gone down to 1/6th its early price, solar to 1/100th, and oil has risen by more than 5x. Exactly how has that oil subsidy worked out for us?

Image Credits: Climate Progress

Reposted from Solar Insider's News

Entitled

Obama - barely acceptable