Don't export US natural gas!

Also per the recent Wikistrat simulation, a weird alliance of environmentalists and the US chemical industry getting together to try and put a halt to ambitious plans to export natural gas as LNG (liquid natural gas), something that big buyers like Japan are lobbying to see happen.  The enviros don't want all the greenhouse gases released by fracking (mostly methane), and the chemical companies want all that cheap gas to be hoarded by the US economy to keep its feedstock flow as cost-advantageous as possible (ultimately allowing that export profit to be somewhat hoarded by the chemical industry).

If all the planned LNG export facilities were built, as much as 1/4 of US nat gas production could go abroad.

We are now 7 years past when Fed Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan warned Congress that America needed to build more import terminals.

Peak this!

How you pressure the Chinese into reforms

What Beijingers refer to (roughly) as "the man taking a dump" building, because it looks like somebody squatting over a toilet.US officials trying to get China to go public with genuinely accurate smog/pollution data, but Beijing refuses, despite the obvious nature of the extreme air pollution in the city and elsewhere.

So instead of a frontal assault, the US Embassy just starts posting its own readings on the web via Twitter.

Beijing now becomes the first Chinese city to publish hourly readings based on the preffered tight measurement standard of (PM2.5, which measures the tinier particles that go deep into the lungs). The presumptive new premier, Li Keqiang, gearing up for his own "Grandpa Wen" model, made a public plea for this three weeks ago.

Nicely done, US Embassy.

Chart of the Day: Isn't a coincidence that the two biggest energy consumers . . .

 . . . happen to own the world's two largest reserves of shale gas?

Nice timing, huh?

The trick, of course, is the environmental impact.  American companies don't want to reveal their techniques, but the public needs to know so we can judge the impact and enforce the necessary precautions.

How that works and what volumes that ultimately allows us to extract is a big variable going forward.

With China, one assumes the niceties are not observed - until the riots start.

The environmental cost of natural gas fraccing

Solid NYT piece that shows we're just beginning the Erin Brockovitch-style fights over the environmental impact of natural gas fracturing methods.  

I expect the news will get worse before it gets better, but that it'll be a good process of discovery that forces more careful extraction techniques and technologies.

So, bring on the lawyers, say I.

Chart of the Day: the much hyped Chinese lead on green technology investment

Bloomberg Businessweek story about America "sitting out the race" on green technology, noting that a lot of American venture capitalists are putting there money into China, where the market seems more "secure."

This is why:

If America had air like that, we'd have a bigger market.  If we had China's skyrocketing oil and electricity demand, things would be different too, but, frankly, I wouldn't want either.

China's combination of cheap labor and extreme need will make it hard for America to match, especially with a Congress that seems incapable of moving on such issues.  Will China get all these investments right?  Not by a long shot, but I expect a lot of pundits on our side to look at China's mad dash with a lot of envy.  China is expected to spent close to a trillion dollars over the next decade, which I would consider to be a pretty good use for its money.

No question we want to reduce our trade imbalance with China and boost our exports in general, but again, it gets awfully hard to compete with the sort of necessity China is facing, and all that cash, and all that cheap labor.

Chart of the Day: More acidic oceans

From The Economist. 

Basic chemistry:

As carbon dioxide levels go up, pH levels come down.  Acidity depends on the presence of hydrogen ions (the H in pH) and more hydrogen ions mean, counterintuitively, a lower pH.  Expose the surface of the ocean to an atmosphere with ever more carbon dioxide, and the gas and waters will produce carbonic acid, lowering pH on a planetary scale.  The declining pH does not actually make the waters acidic (they started off mildly alkaline).  But it makes them more acidic, just as turning up the light makes a dark room brighter.

Additionally, more hydrogen ions mean more bicarbonate ions and fewer carbonate ions, the latter of which is used by corals and shellfish.  So fewer carbonate ions means slower coral growth and thinner shells.

The increasing acidification of the world’s oceans is referred to as global warming’s evil twin, because the rapid change is expected to wreak all sort of havoc with sea life.

Globalization’s most important politicians will be mayors—not presidents

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Increasingly, I view the globalized world as a network of interconnected coastal megacities.  Get that network right in all its complexity and security, and you’ve covered much of the flows that define globalization (energy, people, money, security, food, etc.).  Doing that in a sustainable environmental fashion and you’ve conquered so much more of the enduring challenges associated with globalization’s continued—and rapid—ramp up.

Here’s a Bloomberg BusinessWeek piece (and yes, the mag is a lot better with Bloomberg attached, I will say) that says major metros increasingly lead the way in the global fights against carbon emissions.  As Toronto’s mayor puts it, “We’re not going to wait for national politicians.”

I think this is true the world over—and a good sign.  Cities share new ideas more easily and faster than nation-states.  Mayors, as a rule, are far more pragmatic than national pols.

Why this especially makes sense on the environment:  major cities, over the past century, have already experienced temperature rises equivalent to what’s predicted for this century due to global warming.  This has happened because of the heat-sink effect created by all those buildings, infrastructure, operations, etc.  Cities are just unnaturally warmer than rural areas.

The variations here globally are profound:  70% of Tokyo residents make their way other than by car; in Houston it’s 95% the other way.

Let the experiments begin!

Why BP should go down

For the record, this is not a great photo op realized.

Bloomberg BusinessWeek pair.

In the lead editorial, Paul Barrett goes after Obama with some cause, saying he knows the president can’t do a whole lot about the spill but that he could make something larger out of it instead of bragging on TV that he talks to experts so he knows who’s ass to kick (when Obama talks tough, he summons his inner Mike Dukakis, spicing his language in oh-so-calculated a fashion).

The bit that caught my eye:  the characterization that the USG was basically unprepared for any deep-water blowout, expecting that the private sector would have such assets in the ready.  BP’s true guilt (as accidents and operational stupidity will happen) is not having those assets in its toolkit—CEO Tony Heyward’s explicit admission. 

That to me is enough for BP to be demolished—not by the government but by shareholders.  This is basic insurance thinking:  low-probability all right but stunning high impact, so you HAVE to carry the requisite insurance, especially when we’re talking the money involved, both upside and downside.  For BP to have taken a flyer on this is just inexcusably dumb.

And dumb companies should die.

But even more annoying than that, and here you have to think Obama could be doing more than just holding Oval Office confabs, is the way BP has hogged control of the response effort while exhibiting a “we’ll-get-back-to-you” mindset on all the ideas flooding their way.

The numbers, say BBW, run like this:  35k ideas submitted, with 800 making the first cut, and 4 ideas tried to date.  You’ve got 200 words to describe your approach to the 70 workers fielding call.  Close to four dozen engineers evaluate the incoming.  They come from BP, the US Coast Guard, and various USG agencies. 

The complaint of serious companies with seriously proven technologies for capturing oil in water?  Everybody comes out of the woodwork when disaster strikes, so the kooky drown out the credible.

But again, my point is, BP shouldn’t be fielding ideas for God’s sake.  That stuff should have all been filed over the past years, leading to action—not some sophomoric all-nighter effort (“Oh my God!  Get me ideas for soaking up oil—stat!”).

When you operate on that level of strategic brittleness, you, Mr. Dinosaur, deserve to die when the big meteor hits.

Pollution in China: the recovery trumps the reduction

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WSJ piece by always good Shai Oster.

Despite tougher government measures, pollution in China rebounds right along with the economy. There had been hopes that China turned a corner last year when emissions dropped, but thank the financial crisis for that.

Still, only the first quarterly rise in SOx emissions since 2007, so some props in order.

No surprise here:  reductions took a back seat to recovery.

Remember all the Great-Depression-leading-to-World-War-III nonsense in the BS-osphere?

Well, it was worth it.