Open Thread #3

… but you will note that in both posts I strenuously refrained from stating observations as conclusions and asked for that most dreadful of things, evidence
🙂

Three days to WUWT third anniversary. How shall we celebrate this outpost for enlightenment in a dark world? Here in Melbourne I intend to put on a fire works display.

Sort of peripheral to the CO2, but often comes up in debates with environmentalists is the whole “Factory Farm” issue. Here’s a reality check dealing with dairy farms:
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=1b861f28-ff0b-4ef5-b365-607270b90575
Quote:
Dear Readers:
When an environmental regulator speaks, you expect to hear statements like, “Manure is a long-standing, pervasive, persisting and vexing water-quality problem in Wisconsin.” You don’t expect to hear, “The largest livestock operators aren’t the primary sources of the problem.”
A group of folks attending the Society for Environmental Journalists’ annual meeting in October heard both from Gordon Stevenson.
Stevenson is Mr. Runoff at Wisconsin’s Department of Natural Resources. “America’s Dairyland,” as the state calls itself, has been plagued in recent years by manure-runoff problems — contaminated wells, dead fish and dead zones in rivers.
“We haven’t made the kind of progress we’d like to” in solving the runoff problem, Stevenson told a busload of the environmental journalists as they journeyed to Waterloo, Wis., for a tour of a 1,000-cow dairy.
But the cheese-head state’s 190 CAFOs — an acronym Stevenson says is short for Concentrated (not Confined) Animal Feeding Operation — aren’t the problem. “This runs contrary,” he admitted, “to the belief system of many people,” whose attitude is: “Aren’t CAFOs awful?”
Dairies and other livestock operations with more than 700 cows must receive permits, submit manure-management plans, hold discharge to zero and undergo state inspections. Wisconsin’s nearly 30,000 smaller livestock and poultry operations don’t have to do any of this.
If regulators don’t like one of these smaller operations’ manure-management practices, they can demand fixes. But the state must pony up 70 percent of the cost of the improvements. Stevenson said this would require an additional $900 million and 250 regulators. The state legislature isn’t likely to provide either.
“The political will to regulate ma and pa doesn’t exist,” he said.
These weren’t the only kind words about CAFOs the journalists heard this day:
— Cows at large dairies are more productive. Bruce Johnson, a University of Wisconsin ag economist, said annual milk production averages 30,000 pounds per cow nationwide, compared to a 20,000-pound average for all dairies.
— Large-dairy cows tend to receive better treatment — a better diet, soft bedding, good medical care and warm barns in winter. “If I’m a dairy cow, I hope to go to a CAFO,” Stevenson said. “I’m going to get proper housing and nutrition, because I’ll produce more.”
— Only a large operation can afford to spend $4 million on an anaerobic digester like the one on Crave Brothers Farm the journalists visited. Carl Crave, the son of one of the four Crave brothers and the operator of the digester, said only 25 farms in Wisconsin have the machines, and only 250 could support them. Digesters keep methane, a greenhouse gas, out of the atmosphere and produce electricity and a useful solid byproduct from manure without removing nutrients, leaving a valuable liquid fertilizer.
Amid all the happy talk, the journalists also heard some less favorable reviews. James Saul, an environmental lawyer, complained that CAFOs in Wisconsin are only inspected once every five years — and that some very large dairies that fall just below the 700-animal threshold aren’t inspected or regulated at all.
Saul said too little is known about how runoff reaches the water. He suspects slow leaching, which could mean CAFOs are causing problems that will only show up years from now. He urges CAFOs to consider filtering and treating their wastewater, which is what municipal sewage systems do. And he’d like a moratorium on new CAFOs until the environmental consequences of existing ones can be studied in more detail.
“Nutrient management planning can do a lot to remedy” slow leaching, Saul said, but “I’m not convinced yet that nutrient management is the solution.”
And, as some of the journalists noted afterwards, the day dealt mainly with dairies in Wisconsin. Cattle feedlots and large-scale hog and poultry operations may raise different issues.
Still, going into the tour, many of the journalists had equated all CAFOs everywhere with what Stevenson called “the double-F word” — factory farms. To them, FF meant animal-abusing, corporate-owned, pollution-spewing wastelands.
“There’s a general perception,” Stevenson said, “that CAFOs are owned by villains, people sitting on Wall Street dressed in three-thousand-dollar suits. The truth is, CAFOs are more often than not family farms.”
Whether the day changed any minds is open to question; when new information, however compelling, crashes into a wall of strongly held views, the wall doesn’t always give way. No matter. It’s enough if the environmental journalists took away a realization that the factory farms issue may be more complicated than they had realized. The organizers of the conference deserve credit for devising a program that offered journalists a more balanced perspective.
Urban C. Lehner
Editor-in-Chief
DTN/The Progressive Farmer — A Telvent Brand
Endquote

Here’s a good read on “Black Liquor” and a cool subsidy loophole courtesy of the biofuels lobby:
http://www.dtnprogressivefarmer.com/dtnag/common/link.do?symbolicName=/free/news/template1&paneContentId=5&paneParentId=70104&product=/ag/news/topstories&vendorReference=b88006fa-b53c-4980-88e5-e3a4e3a4d33e
OMAHA (DTN) — Thanks to a 2008 Internal Revenue Service ruling, American taxpayers will shell out at least $6 billion this year to subsidize an “alternative fuel” that has actually been the main fuel used in paper mills for decades.
In the first six months of 2009, payments to the paper industry for black liquor could reach $2.5 billion, according to the Congressional Joint Committee. (Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons)
“Black liquor” sounds like a trendy new drink, but in fact it’s a byproduct of the paper-making process, which paper mills use to run their boilers. Responding to inquiries from paper companies late last year, the IRS says black liquor could qualify for a 50-cent-a-gallon alternative-fuel subsidy Congress created in the 2005 highway bill and extended in the 2007 energy bill.
The provision’s intent seemed to be spurring the development of new fuels. It was only expected to cost $265 million over five years.
For the struggling pulp and paper industry, the subsidy is very good news, turning some money-losing operations into profit makers. It’s bad news for supporters of ethanol, biodiesel and other renewable fuels.
Tom Buis, the chief executive officer of renewable-fuels group Growth Energy, says unhappiness over the loophole could discourage Congress from expanding renewable-fuels subsidies or creating new ones. By his understanding of Congress’s intent, paper mills “would never qualify” to the degree they have. “The cost,” he noted, “is pretty significant.”
Indeed, owing to the black-liquor controversy, Congress may not renew the 50-cent credit, which is scheduled to expire at the end of this year. But even assuming the credit lapses, the controversy continues. A $24 billion cellulosic credit dubbed “son of black liquor” is in line to replace it.
EXAMPLE OF PAPER INDUSTRY’S PROWESS
The black-liquor maneuvers are just the latest examples of the paper industry’s growing prowess at cashing in on federal subsidies designed to promote the development of new kinds of fuels. As DTN indicated in the first story in this two-part series, old-line forestry companies are lining up to capitalize on a biomass subsidy written into the 2008 farm bill.
Boiling wood chips in caustic soda creates pulp, which is made into paper. As byproducts, the paper mill gets back caustic soda, which it recycles, and black liquor, which provides about two-thirds of the energy used in the pulp industry. The industry has used black liquor as a fuel since the 1930s, says Scott Milburn, a spokesman for the American Forest and Paper Association.
“So we’re darn near self-sufficient when it comes to energy,” Milburn says. “And this is a clean energy. It’s renewable. It’s carbon neutral, so it’s a lot better than if we were lighting up all of our facilities with fossil fuels.”
Milburn says black liquor creates more energy than all of the solar, wind and geothermal power produced in the country combined. “So that gives you a kind of vastness of the scale here.”
Paper mills lost $2.1 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to industry analysts. Earnings in 2008 fell 40 percent from 2007 levels. For some mills, the tax credit alone floated their operations this year.
To qualify for the 50-cent-a-gallon alternative-fuels credit, all companies have to do is add a splash of diesel fuel to the black liquor. The industry didn’t specifically lobby for the black-liquor provision in the 2005 highway bill, or the extension in the 2007 energy bill. Only late last year did industry officials ask the IRS if black liquor would meet the “alternative fuel” definition, Milburn says.
Earlier this year, the Congressional Joint Committee on Taxation stated that in the first six months of 2009, the payments for black liquor could reach $2.5 billion.
Private analysts from Deutsche Bank and Forestweb have put the forest and paper industry’s tax-credit windfall at $6 billion to $8.5 billion by the end of the year.
BOON OR BOONDOGGLE?
Some lawmakers have expressed outrage. Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and Committee Ranking Member Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, released a joint statement in June saying they were drafting legislation to eliminate the black liquor loophole. Stated Baucus: “This credit was not meant to provide a boon to companies for a process they’ve already been doing for several decades.”
Yet the promise of a fix has gone nowhere despite the continued outflow of billions. Lawmakers from forestry and paper-mill states have rushed to the industry’s defense. At a Senate Finance Committee hearing in April, Sen. Olympia Snowe, R-Maine, said: “The black liquor tax credit is crucial to the survival of the paper industry, and to maintain and create jobs.”
Backing Snowe is the United Steelworkers Union, whose members include forestry and paper employees. It has called efforts by Baucus and Grassley a “mockery of the intent of Congress around increasing the use of biofuels,” and a “slap in the face to the paper industry.” The black liquor tax credit keeps people employed, the union stated.
In June, the paper company Domtar reopened a pulp plant in Maine. Snowe stated in a news release that the tax credit was cited by the company as one of the primary reasons the plant reopened. Domtar has collected $299 million from the credit in the first nine months of the year.
In a quarterly report last week, International Paper reported it has collected $1.5 billion from the black liquor credit in the past 12 months. Other public companies report hundreds of millions collected from the tax each quarter as well.
Among those outraged by the black liquor provision are companies that make recycled paper. They don’t use black liquor and are thus at a competitive disadvantage to companies receiving the subsidy. The Institute for Scrap Recycling Industries has written Baucus stating the credit gives mills using virgin material an advantage that should be ended.
While there were few if any users of the 50-cent credit for making automobile biofuels, Buis says it would have been important for future biofuel efforts. If the credit lapses, which seems likely, it won’t be available.
BLACK LIQUOR: THE SEQUEL
But whether or not it lapses, “son of black liquor” could be the sequel. With a positive ruling from the IRS in June, the forest and paper industry is eyeing the $1.01-per-gallon cellulosic biofuel producer credit created in the 2008 farm bill. If the paper mills are allowed to use this credit, the Joint Committee on Taxation projects they’d collect about $21.9 billion between now and 2014, and $24 billion total.
Milburn doubts son of black liquor will come to fruition. Unlike the alternative-fuels credit, producers must also be approved by the Environmental Protection Agency for the $1.01 cellulosic credit. The EPA has said only fuels for vehicles would meet Clean Air Act requirements. Because the paper industry doesn’t use black liquor as a motor fuel, “We don’t think EPA would certify black liquor,” Milburn says.
Still, EPA hasn’t issued a legal opinion or memorandum. In its quarterly earnings news release last week, KapStone Paper and Packaging Corp. said it was evaluating whether it would qualify for the $1.01 credit for 2010.
In an odd twist, Democratic House members last week attached a provision to the health-care reform bill aimed at ensuring black liquor would not receive the cellulosic credit. The members then claimed the $24 billion “saved” as a way of helping to pay for health-care reform. Although some would see this as budgetary sleight-of-hand, on grounds the EPA would have saved the $24 billion anyway, critics of black-liquor incentives called it a victory.
Buis worries that allowing mills to use the cellulosic credit would harm the biofuel industry’s long-term progress. Growth Energy got involved, Buis says, because “There was an amendment that you couldn’t get a cellulosic tax credit for ethanol if it was mixed in any way with the production of corn ethanol. So that’s why we sprang into action and got that changed, and the leadership did change it.”

Thank you Andrew (21:11:07) :
Have bookmarked that site. Lots to read up there.

Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
Close eyeballing, it’s evident that such flatlining has NOT happened before at this time of year, at least not during the lifetime of this form of recording. Neither would I expect it in the season of most rapid cooling and refreezing. And don’t we know anecdotally that the Arctic has NOT been warm this last summer? The fact that the red line is now into “worse than expected” “worst ever” range does make me concerned. Now if you wanted to falsify data, you’d do it in little bits, running up to Copenhagen… but I cannot assert that this has happened here without some other clear evidence.
=========================================
Nice though the conspiracy theory is, there is no doubt the Arctic has been a bit warmer than normal this fall. Just check the DMI graph that Anthony provides at the side of the home page:
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/meant80n.uk.php

TonyB (00:19:16) :
It includes Ancient Greeks, Romans fighting Vikings
Did you know there is anecdotal evidence from sketches that seems to show Vikings had skirmishes on the Eastern coast of Canada during the Medieval Warm Period with soldiers from the Ming Dynasty? The dress of what was called Canadian Indians in the sketches looks more like Ming Period style of clothing than Canadian Indian. It is thought that Lief Erikson’s brother was killed in one of these skirmishes.

Dear moderators,
The New York Times has an appalling piece of science journalism about sea turtles and “climate change” today. If anyone has time to post a debunking (I don’t, relatives in town, etc.), that would be a good thing.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/14/science/earth/14turtles.html?_r=1&hp
Regards

Lucy Skywalker (02:42:09) :
…such flatlining has NOT happened before at this time of year, at least not during the lifetime of this form of recording. Neither would I expect it in the season of most rapid cooling and refreezing. And don’t we know anecdotally that the Arctic has NOT been warm this last summer?
I am thinking these same things. So what is going on?
Watts Up With That??
If you look at the DMi graph
http://ocean.dmi.dk/arctic/icecover.uk.php
you can see a similar flattening in 2006 and then it shoots up dramatically at the end of November.
What happened from October 1 until today to make the lower area?
Does anyone know?

anna v (04:51:52)
Thanks, Anna – I outed myself!