Booming coal use cancels US reductions, Tiffany D. Thomas on the podcast, Summer Tanagers

Jul 01, 2022

Global coal boom negating US reductions, 1,000,000 words checked, Tiffany Thomas on the podcast, and Summer Tanagers

I’ve been home this week, catching up on podcasts and writing and prepping for more travel this summer. It has been quite a week. On Tuesday, BP released its Statistical Review of World Energyand it had some remarkable numbers, particularly when it comes to electricity. I will publish a longer piece on the BP data next week, but the headline number is that global electricity generation grew by a record 1,577 terawatt-hours last year, with more than half of that growth coming from China. It was also a record year for coal-fired generation, which is the topic of the first item in today’s “news” letter. The other big news this week, of course, was Thursday’s Supreme Court landmark ruling in the West Virginia v. EPA case. There were lots of takes on the decision, but my friend Joel Kotkin had one of the best in Newsweek. His point, in short, is that Congress cannot abdicate its responsibility on major issues like carbon-dioxide emissions to the administrative state. The key line: “Major policies should have approval from elected representatives rather than being handed down from the bureaucratic Olympus.” That is a key point when it comes to environmental policies and helps explain why California’s energy and housing costs are so high: Legislators in the state have given too much authority to the state’s massive bureaucracy. (I’ve been commissioned to write a long piece on California that will be published soon.)

I had several media hits this week. I was on the Empowerment Alliance’s Empowering America Podcast, with Matt Hammond, talking about energy markets. I was on the Power Line podcast with my old pal and debate partner, Steve Hayward. We talked about how small declines in America’s refining capacity are having big effects on the motor fuel market, EVs, and more. Have a listen. Finally, I was on The Phil Ferguson Show, the first podcast I’ve heard of that covers investing and atheism. It gave me a chance to recount my long-ago coverage of the disappearance and murder of Madalyn Murray O’Hair and her children, Jon and Robin. Back in the late 1990s, while reporting for the Austin Chronicle, I interviewed one of the murderers, David Waters, in his apartment in North Austin. (Of course, I didn’t know at the time that Waters was guilty of the crimes.) Waters and his accomplice, Gary Karr, robbed, murdered, and dismembered the O’Hairs and buried their remains on a ranch in west Texas. The two also murdered and dismembered one of their accomplices, Danny Fry. The case was ultimately broken by my friend and ace reporter, John MacCormack. This Wikipedia entry has a good recounting of the events.

Four times this week:

RCE: Booming coal use obliterates US CO2 reductions
Grammarly counts 1,000,000 words
Podcast: Houston City Councilmember Tiffany D. Thomas on “heir properties”
Birding by ear and Summer Tanagers

(The photo of the Summer Tanager above was taken by Tony Castro in 2021 on South Padre Island, Texas.)

Last Sunday, Real Clear Energy published my piece on global coal use and carbon emissions. I began:

The global energy crisis has resulted in a spasm of energy realism and plain talk. Last week, Vaclav Bartuška, the Czech Ambassador-at-Large for energy security, told a group of reporters that “If there is a gas cut out this winter, we will burn anything we can to keep our people warm and to make electricity.” Bartuška said aloud what has become obvious over the past few months: climate change concerns are taking a backseat to economic considerations. Indeed, all around the world, countries are turning back to coal to produce power and the resulting emissions from increasing coal use will obliterate all of the emissions reductions that have been achieved in the United States over the past decade and a half.
Here are the numbers. In April, China announced it will increase coal output by 300 million tons this year. In May, India said it aims to increase domestic coal production by more than 400 million tonsby the end of next year. According to the Energy Information Administration, burning a ton of coal releases about 2 tons of carbon dioxide. Thus, the 700 million tons per year of new coal consumption in China and India will result in an additional 1.4 billion tons of carbon dioxide emissions. According to BP, that’s about the same volume of emission reductions that were achieved in the U.S. between 2005 and 2020

I concluded:

The punchline here is clear: Although the U.S. has been leading the world in cutting its greenhouse gas emissions – in fact, no other country even comes close in terms of absolute reductions -- other countries are not following suit. Furthermore, I’m not arguing that we should quit trying to reduce our emissions. What I am saying is that we must be realistic about the scale and cost of our emissions-reduction efforts and the extent to which those efforts are making a difference in the global scheme.
I’ll end by repeating the same point I have been making for more than 12 years: renewable energy cannot, will not, be able to meet soaring global energy demand. If the countries of the world are serious about reducing coal use and the emissions that come from burning that carbon-heavy fuel, they need to get serious about N2N: natural gas to nuclear. Both sources are low-carbon, relatively low-cost, scalable, and deployable.
The good news is that the U.S. is well-positioned to lead on both natural gas (via LNG exports) and in the development and deployment of the next generation of nuclear reactors. But if the U.S. is going to lead on N2N, we will need long-term support from both Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. That seems like a tall order given the deep political divides in Washington. But the choice is clear. N2N is the best no-regrets policy for reducing global coal use. The Biden administration and their counterparts on the Republican side of the aisle need to work together to make it happen.

Again, here’s a link. Please share it.

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Grammarly: 1 million words checked
A few years ago, Jacob told me about Grammarly, the online grammar and spell checker. Since then, I’ve been an avid user of the free version. In fact, I run the text of every piece I write, including the versions of this “news” letter, through Grammarly before I publish them. I often run the text of the same piece through it two, three, or more times before publication because I want to make sure I’m not making any dumb mistakes. This week, I got an email from Grammarly saying I had checked 1 million words over the past 26 months or so. That was kind of nice. If you aren’t using Grammarly, I highly recommend it.

Tiffany D. Thomas on housing in Houston and the "permanent rental class"

Back in April, When I heard Houston City Councilmember Tiffany D. Thomas speak at the Urban Reform Institute event in Houston, I knew that I wanted to have her on the podcast. Tiffany has a double dose of Elvis and a 12-megawatt smile and personality. Tiffany has represented District F on Houston’s west side since 2020. At the Urban Reform event, she spoke about housing in Houston, and the problem of “heir properties” the term for homes occupied by descendants of a family member but who don’t have clear title to the property. Without clear title, the occupants of the house aren’t able to get grants or do major improvements to their homes. Tiffany explains how the city is trying two work through the “heir property” challenge, “why the west side is the best side” of the Bayou City, the problems faced by the “permanent rental class,” and for a lagniappe, a few of her favorite restaurants in Houston. Listen to our conversation here. And as always, the episode is on YouTube.

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Summer Tanagers and birding by ear

Some of my birdwatching friends are good at identifying birds by ear. Me, I’m far more of a visual birder. Maybe it’s because my hearing is declining in my dotage, or maybe it’s because I haven’t spent much time listening to recordings of bird calls. Whatever the reason, I’m paying more attention to bird sounds and how they can help me identify birds. That happened earlier this week at Barton Springs. It was just after dusk when Lorin and I saw a red bird fly over our heads and land in the tall pecan tree behind us. I didn’t get a good look at it, but given its general size and shape, I sensed that it was not a Northern Cardinal. After listening to its call for a few more minutes, and not seeing it, I listened to the song of the Summer Tanager (Piranga rubra) on the iBird app. That’s when I deduced that we must be hearing a Tanager. (The image above is from Audubon’s Birds of America.) Wikipedia says this about the Summer Tanager:

a medium-sized American songbird. Formerly placed in the tanager family(Thraupidae), it and other members of its genus are now classified in the Cardinal family (Cardinalidae) The species' plumage and vocalizations are similar to other members of the Cardinal family... Adults have stout pointed bills and measure 17 cm (6.7 in) in length and 29 g (1.0 oz) in weight. Wingspan ranges from 28 to 30 cm. Adult males are rose red and similar in appearance to the Hepatic Tanager, although the latter has a dark bill; females are orangish on the underparts and olive on top, with olive-brown wings and tail. As with all other birds, all red and orange colorations are acquired through their diet...has an American Robin-like song, similar enough that novices sometimes mistake this bird for that species. The song consists of melodic units, repeated in a constant stream. The summer tanager's song, however, is much more monotonous than that of T. migratorius, often consisting of as few as three or four distinct units. It is clearer and less nasal than the song of the Scarlet Tanager...These birds are often out of sight, foraging high in trees, sometimes flying out to catch insects in flight. They mainly eat insects, especially bees and wasps, and berries.. will forage in human-altered habitat...they may well be attracted to bird feeders. Summer tanagers build a cup nest on a horizontal tree branch.

Have a great Fourth of July weekend.

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