The Liberal-Socialist Micromanaging Approach to Global Warming

The Role of Ignorance and Misleading Use of Words in the Popular Media

The denials by some that global warming exists, is caused by human activity and is harmful to people and our environment is one roadblock in the path to solving this problem. The other is how most of the liberal media, activists and politicians promote government policies about global warming that just happen to be the most costly, wasteful, intrusive and ineffective.

The investigative reporters are good at discovering the lies in governments and business because they spend weeks or months investigating a single case. But the day-to-day news reporters have to get the news out quickly and are not specialists at any topics on which they report. That is why the daily news media (particularly television) suffers from bias, poor understanding of the facts and very poor ability to analyze them.

The environmental policies about global warming gain support largely due to statements in the popular media that reveal an abysmal ignorance of basic facts or use of misleading terms. Here are a couple of examples of these:

Ignorance of Basic Facts

If I had a nickel for every time I read or heard someone in the TV news saying that "electric cars do not produce emissions", I would be a millionaire. Have the people who say this been living in a cave, incommunicado for decades? Do they not know that electric car batteries have to be recharged from the electric grid that gets its electricity from power plants that burn fossil fuels that produce greenhouse gases, mainly carbon dioxide? Here is a small example of two internet sources asserting that electric cars have zero emissions: The Guardian, Electric future? Global Push to Move Away from Gas-Powered Cars and General Motors Press Release.

Tables 1 and 2 show how the electricity used in an electric car generated 63.3% of the carbon dioxide per unit or energy of a gasoline car during 2017 (the latest available year of this data). The US federal government has been subsidizing most electric cars by $7,500 per car since 2009 (1). And when this subsidy was passed electric cars must have generated much more than 63% in carbon dioxide, since a higher percent of of electricity was generated by coal instead of natural gas and there was much less of it generated by wind or solar systems.

In addition to the $7,500 subsidy per electric car, these cars do not pay gasoline taxes (most of whose revenues are used to build and maintain roads). These tax rates are 18.4 cents per gallon for the federal tax and an average of about 29.6 cents per gallon for the state taxes, according to a Wikipedia article. Assuming 12,000 miles per year and 25 miles per gallon for gas-powered cars, the average electric car fails to contribute to highway and street construction and maintenance by $143 per year.

Table 2 shows that electric cars achieve a 36.7% reduction in CO2 emissions compared to gasoline cars. Did anyone actually check that a 36.7% reduction in CO2 emissions is worth paying the $7,500 subsidies per electric car, compared to alternative ways of achieving the same CO2 reduction? Or could it be that frequent repetition of the phrase "electric cars do not produce emissions" by the popular media has convinced so many people that this is true and the politicians are responding to the people's demands to promote electric cars?

There may be some justification to subsidize wind, solar and nuclear electric power generation because they do not produce greenhouse gases and they would replace coal and natural gas with 100% reductions in CO2 emissions not just 36.7%. (though there is a more cost effective way to accomplish the reduction in greenhouse gases that I explain below).

Of course, as a higher percent of electricity is produced by methods that do not produce global warming, electric car subsidies become less cost-ineffective. But many years will pass before a high enough percent of electricity is produced by fuels that do not generate CO2 for this electric car subsidy make any sense.

Misleading Use of Words

The phrase "renewable energy" became popular in the period of high oil prices in the 1970's due to the scare about running out fossil fuels like coal, natural gas and oil. Many people believed that their supply is limited (though technological advances have kept increasing that limit) and we had to find renewable fuels, like ethanol from corn, to replace fossil fuels. But now the words "renewable energy" are being promoted as a way to reduce greenhouse gases. One frequently hears that “we need to use more renewable energy to fight global warming” (2). But a fuel that is renewable is not the same thing as one that does not contribute to global warming.

Extracting ethanol from corn biomass to burn in cars makes it a renewable fuel, since corn can be replanted and grows again each year. But it also contributes to global warming, since it produces carbon dioxide, just not as much as burning gasoline. And it is, by far, the most widely used biomass renewable due to regulations that require its use mixed with gasoline. Those that say that we need to use more renewable fuels to fight global warming are helping support a requirement that oil refineries mix at least 10% ethanol (3) with gasoline, which reduces miles per gallon by 3% to 4%, partially offset by a lower price of ethanol.

Studies on the effect of an ethanol-gasoline mix on CO2 emissions have lead to conclusions that are all over the map. Most of their differences are related to (1) how much additional land is needed for the additional corn cultivation required to produce ethanol, and (2) how much CO2 is absorbed by natural vegetation in that additional land, compared to corn. The latest official Environmental Protection Agency estimate is that mixing corn ethanol with gasoline reduces greenhouse gases by 21%. per unit of energy (4)

So here is why promoting “renewable energy” to reduce greenhouse gases leads to bad decisions. Switching from coal to natural gas in electricity generation reduces CO2 production by 44.4% (See Table 1) and this switch is happening due to falling prices of natural gas, with no government regulations requiring it. This is a much higher percent reduction, and 44.4% is a much more accurate figure, than the 21% that comes from mixing corn ethanol with gasoline.

But natural gas is an “evil fossil fuel” and corn ethanol is a nice green renewable fuel because it grows on plants. And it has the additional appeal that corn is grown by farmers not big oil and gas companies. So the media is not talking about promoting more of this coal to natural gas switch despite its superior ability to reduce CO2 over mixing ethanol with gasoline.

Public perception has considerable influence on what decisions politicians support. They want to get elected. So telling their constituents that they voted for something like requiring the use of “renewable energy” (which has been given such an exalted status in our lexicon) can only help them win an election. Plus, subsidies to ethanol increase the demand and the price of corn. So the power of the farm lobby also plays a big part in bringing about the government requirement to add ethanol to gasoline.

_____________

Footnotes

(1) The subsidy to electric cars comes in the form of a tax credit and is based on the following formula: $2,500 plus $417 for each kilowatt-hour of battery capacity over 4 kwh. The Nissan Leaf, the Chevrolet Volt and the Tesla plug-in electric cars qualify for the full $7,500. The Toyota Prius Plug-In Hybrid gets $2,500. Source is Wikipedia, Government Incentives for Plug-In Electric Vehicles, United States.

(2) See: Renewable Energy Is Key to Fighting Climate Change, https://www.nrdc.org/experts/noah-long/renewable-energy-key-fighting-climate-change and Importance of Renewable Energy in the Fight against Climate Change.

(3) See Ethanol fuel in the United States, EPA's estimated 2022 GHG reduction for RFS2 and Renewable Fuel Standard Program (RFS2) Regulatory Impact Analysis page 469

(4) From the U.S Energy Information Administration: “Most of ethanol blending into U.S. motor gasoline occurs to meet the requirements of the 1990 Clean Air Act (RFG Fuel) and the Renewable Fuel Standard set forth in the Energy Independence and Security Act of 2007. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) administers the requirements.” and “The ethanol content of most of the motor gasoline sold in the United States does not exceed 10% by volume.”