The longtime chairman of the Cato Institute, William N. Niskanen, passed away last week at age 78. We shared the podium a few times on energy issues, and I admired his Enron project at Cato that resulted in two books, Corporate Aftershock: Lessons from the Collapse of Enron and Other Major Corporations (2003) and After Enron: Lessons for Public Policy (2005).
Like virtually everyone else who knew him, I remember Bill as a scholar and gentleman. He had one tone of voice and reliably imparted insightful logic. He was what I like to call a scholar’s scholar, role model for the rest of us.
Career
William Arthur Niskanen Jr. (1933–2011), born in Bend, Oregon, graduated from Harvard University with a degree in economics in 1954. He earned his economics doctorate in 1962 from the University of Chicago.…
Continue Reading“… the total is 0.00476°C (0.0086°F) of global warming avoided by the California cap-and-trade program for reducing greenhouse gas emissions out to the year 2050. Such numbers strain the limits of detectability within our current observing systems, not to mention environmental significance.”
With the California Air Resource Board’s (CARB) recent announcement that they have finalized their greenhouse gas cap and trade regulations, California becomes the first state to have, according to the CARB’s chairperson Mary Nichols, “done something important” on the issue of climate change.
Ms. Nichols couldn’t be further from the truth. While CARB may have done “something important” for many things in California (not all of which may prove positive), climate change isn’t one of them.
If the emissions targets under the CARB cap and trade program as it is scheduled to the year 2020 are met, the total amount of global temperature rise that would be avoided amounts to 0.00015°C (or for those who prefer English units, 0.00027°F).…
Continue ReadingFor two researchers at Cornell University, it’s turning out to be a very tough year.
Robert Howarth and Anthony Ingraffea released a study this past Spring that found emissions from natural gas produced from shale are worse than coal, based on the global warming potential (GWP) of methane. Since it was released, numerous institutions have weighed in and come to a fairly uniform conclusion: The Howarth/Ingraffea paper simply has too many errors to be credible.
New University of Maryland Study
Nonetheless, ideological opponents of shale gas have continued to wield the Cornell paper as a major weapon against this game changing source of energy. But a new study released by the University of Maryland, The Greenhouse Impact of Unconventional Gas for Electricity Production, suggests that Cornell’s paper has been intellectually superceded.…
Continue Reading