Real estate agents and shelter mags are full of advice about how much particular improvements will increase the value of your house. (I forget -- is a new bathroom the best investment?) You rarely recoup 100 percent of a capital improvement; the idea is that you get more of it back for certain projects than for others.

Anyway, researchers at UCLA and UC San Diego have tried to figure out the formula for solar panels. How much does going solar increase the value or your house? Is it as much as you spent for the system? Among their findings:

We find that solar panels add 3.6% to the sales price of a home after controlling for observable characteristics and flexible neighborhood price trends (see Table 4). This corresponds to a predicted $22,554 increase in price for the average sale with solar panels installed.

If you live in a neighborhood full of tree huggers and Prius drivers, the propensity to pay extra for installed solar is slightly greater, as you might expect. People in neighborhoods with Ford F-series pickups in the driveway, on the other hand, are not so inclined.

We estimate the solar premium to be 1% higher if other homes in the same census block have previously installed panels, but the coefficient is not statistically different from zero. We observe a decreasing return to additional system size, a positive relationship between the capitalization rate and Prius penetration, Green party registration share, Democrat registration share, median income, and education, as well as a negative relationship between capitalization and truck ownership.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Environment
        

Dear Jay: On Sunday, I read your column on NJ's withdrawl from the RGGI. Based on your past columns it is abundantly clear that you accept the scientific hypothesis of the man-made global warming.

Would you be kind enough to send me a detailed list of the sources you relied upon to reach your conclusion. Please provide the author's names, dates of publication and the titles of the relevant journals. All the best,

Hi Chris: Thanks for your message. It’s always good to be skeptical, but I believe the evidence and authority are on the side of those who believe in manmade global warming. Nobody argues about the physics – increased atmospheric CO2 will cause a greenhouse effect. Nobody argues about the levels. CO2 is rising. Nobody argues about the source of the CO2. It’s anthropogenic.

So you have a pretty good argument right there for paying attention and worrying about bad effects. But people a lot smarter than I am also believe that global temperatures are indeed rising and are connected to the CO2 increase, and I’m prepared to take their word for it. If you want a cite go to the 4th IPCC report, which I’m sure you already have. Given the weight of evidence and opinion, the onus is on skeptics to falsify the proposition that humans are causing global warming. And they haven’t done it. JH

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (37)
Categories: Environment
        

Shame Gov. Chris Christie is pulling New Jersey out of the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, calling it "gimmicky" and "ineffective." Is RGGI ineffective?

Well, it hasn't reversed climate change, if that's what he means. But it has made a small step in the direction of putting a market price on carbon emissions and financing alternative energy sources. It's Christie's decision that's gimmicky. Tim Wheeler blogs about Maryland Gov. Martin O'Malley's criticism of Chrisie here. And this is from a 2009 Hancock column explaining what RGGI is and why it's important:

The idea, hatched after governors became impatient with federal inertia on climate change, is to put a price on emissions that are expensive for the planet but had been free for energy customers.

Costlier carbon energy will push people to find clean alternatives. Auctioning the permits produces revenue to invest in clean energy and conservation. So far, Maryland has gotten $85 million for adding home insulation, subsidizing residential solar generators and cutting household electric bills.

Read the whole column here.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Environment
        

Environmental litigation can get incredibly complicated, and it's impossible to say how much liability Arcelormittal and Severstal will bear for the pollution at Sparrows Point. They were successive owners of the Sparrows Point steel mill and related properties after longtime owner Bethlehem Steel entered bankruptcy proceedings several years ago.

They didn't cause the pollution. Bethlehem did that. But they've inherited environmental liability as well as exposure to lawsuits, as demonstrated by the 1997 consent order and the lawsuit by the present owners of the Sparrows Point shipyard. The bottom line is that this is another challenge that Sparrows must deal with.

Of all the mill's difficulties, environmental liability is subsidiary to macro factors such as the value of the dollar, slumping demand for steel and excess industry capacity. But it's still a factor, especially amid reports that Severstal is shopping the plant around. Any potential buyer will look long and carefully at the environmental problems before writing a check.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Environment
        

Sun weather blogger Frank Roylance says a preliminary report from the National Weather Service makes this the hottest Baltimore summer since they began keeping records in 1871. And Thursday should set the record for the number of 90-degree-plus days in the region. And summer still has almost three more weeks to go. NWS:

THE METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER MONTHS...JUNE TO AUGUST...OF 2010 WAS THE WARMEST ON RECORD FOR BALTIMORE MD. THE AVERAGE NWSTEMPERATURE DURING THIS 92 DAY PERIOD WAS 79.3F...BREAKING THE PREVIOUS WARMEST SUMMER ON RECORD OF 79.1F IN 1943.

THE HIGH TEMPERATURE AVERAGED OVER METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER OF 2010 FELL JUST SHY OF 90 DEGREES...89.6F. THE PREVIOUS WARMEST SEASONAL HIGH TEMPERATURE FOR METEOROLOGICAL SUMMER WAS 88.7F IN 1995.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:49 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Environment
        

Ross Douthat publishes the fallback position of conservatives who oppose doing anything about climate change. This second-resort argument has been predictable since the 1980s, when Forbes magazine and Pat Michaels were trying to impugn science showing that global warming was a threat. OK, they were wrong, conservatives are saying. But it doesn't matter. Douthat:

But the evidence that carbon emissions are altering the planet’s ecology is too convincing to ignore. Conservatives who dismiss climate change as a hoax are making a spectacle of their ignorance.

But this doesn’t mean that we should mourn the death of cap-and-trade. It’s possible that the best thing to do about a warming earth — for now, at least — is relatively little.

Incredible stuff. The planet's ecology is being altered but we shouldn't do anything. By this logic we shouldn't have done anything about chlorofluorocarbons eating the ozone layer, either. The people who thought global warming is a hoax were wrong. So are the people who think we don't need to do something about it. Ross Douthat is young enough that I predict he will someday regret this column.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Environment
        

NYT's David Leonhardt notes a couple developments.:

According to NASA, 2010 is on course to be the planet’s hottest year since records started in 1880. The current top 10, in descending order, are: 2005, 2007, 2009, 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006, 2004, 2001 and 2008.

And:

Yet when United States senators and their aides file into work on Wednesday, on yet another 90-degree day, they may be on the verge of deciding to do approximately nothing about global warming. The needed 60 votes don’t seem to be there, at least not at the moment.

UPDATE: Sun weather blogger Frank Roylance says:

A 100-degree reading or higher on Saturday would be the sixth triple-digit day so far this summer. That's only happened three times since record-keeping began here in 1871. There were six 100-degree days in 1900, and seven in 1930 and 1988. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: The Intrade contract on whether 2010 will be among the top-five warmest years ever measured is trading around 95 (it pays off at 100), basically suggesting that bettors see it as a sure thing.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 3:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Environment
        

Insufferable smugness from BP Chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg in an interview with the Financial Times.

The US is a big and important market for BP, and BP is also a big and important company for the US, with its contribution to drilling and oil and gas production. So the position goes both ways.

This is not the first time something has gone wrong in this industry, but the industry has moved on.

Dude, they read the FT in the United States. And there is such a thing as "the Internet." Nice analysis of BP's PR and policy botches by Yves Smith, who states, in part:

This is simply stunning. First, the BP chairman essentially puts his company on an equal footing as the United States, implying their relation is not merely reciprocal, but equal. BP doesn’t even approach the importance of Microsoft in its heyday, a-not-very-tamed provider of a near monopoly service. And his posture “this is just one problem like others, no biggie” is an offense to common sense and decency.

Many readers have pointed to signs that BP’s order of battle in combatting the leak is seeking to maximize recovery rather than minimize damage, again a sign of backwards priorities. The widely cited gold standard for crisis management, Johnson & Johnson’s 1982 Tylenol tamperings, had the company immediately doing whatever it took, no matter how uneconomical it seemed, to protect the public. BP instead has been engaging in old school conduct: keep a wrap on information as long as possible, minimize outside input, and (presumably) contain costs.

What is worse is the complete lack of any apology or sign of remorse. Even if BP engaged in more or less the same conduct, it would be far more canny for its top officials to make great shows of empathy for all the people who are suffering as a result of the disaster, remind the public that they lost their own men too, and make great speeches about not resting until the leak is plugged, and then add the caveat” “but we have to proceed in a deliberate manner, rushing could make matters worse. We know this is frustrating, and we wish we could hurry the pace.”

Posted by Jay Hancock at 10:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Environment
        

Krugman's Monday column was on how insidious pollution such as increasing CO2 concentrations does not get on the public radar screen the way oil spills, smog and burning rivers in Cleveland did in the 1960s.

This decline in concern would be fine if visible pollution were all that mattered — but it isn’t, of course. In particular, greenhouse gases pose a greater threat than smog or burning rivers ever did. But it’s hard to get the public focused on a form of pollution that’s invisible, and whose effects unfold over decades rather than days.

I think CO2 emissions are a threat. Something should be done to tax and/or cap greenhouse-gas emissions. But to say baldly that greenhouse gases are a greater threat than carcinogens in rivers and drinking water, or than smoggy clouds of nitrogen oxides, sulfur dioxide and ozone, which have killed thousands of people, strikes one as an overstatement.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:56 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Environment
        

From the NYT:

Just as the heavy use of antibiotics contributed to the rise of drug-resistant supergerms, American farmers’ near-ubiquitous use of the weedkiller Roundup has led to the rapid growth of tenacious new superweeds.

“It is the single largest threat to production agriculture that we have ever seen,” said Andrew Wargo III, the president of the Arkansas Association of Conservation Districts.

The first resistant species to pose a serious threat to agriculture was spotted in a Delaware soybean field in 2000. Since then, the problem has spread, with 10 resistant species in at least 22 states infesting millions of acres, predominantly soybeans, cotton and corn.

The superweeds could temper American agriculture’s enthusiasm for some genetically modified crops. Soybeans, corn and cotton that are engineered to survive spraying with Roundup have become standard in American fields. However, if Roundup doesn’t kill the weeds, farmers have little incentive to spend the extra money for the special seeds.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 8:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Categories: Environment
        

The "prediction markets" at Intrade are saying that 2010 has a good chance of being the warmest year on record. A recent bid of 75 on the contract that pays off if the record is broken indicates an implied probability (at least in bettors' minds) of 75 percent that it will be broken, Intrade says. (The contract pays off at 100 percent if 2010 breaks the record.)

The graph says the closing price is 65, but Intrade's site indicates the more recent price is 75. In either case, that's a sharp increase from less than 30 a few weeks ago. Maybe the warm weather is influencing bettors. But no, this week's temperatures don't indicate that climate change is real any more than the recent snowstorms indicate it's fake.  

It's more or less random noise amid a long-term trend that data indicate is gradually upward. And Intrade's "predictions," while often intriguing, are far from infallible.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 11:09 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
Categories: Environment
        

Today's column: The carbon dioxide cap & trade program being debated with much rancor in Washington already exists from Maryland to Maine, and I'll bet you didn't even notice. Read the whole thing here.

UPDATE: Readers ask about the CRU emails at East Anglia. There was no room for mention in the column, but obviously I don't think they change the case for manmade climate change. See blog posts here and here.

A federal plan to limit carbon-dioxide emissions would cripple small business, subject Americans to "reckless taxes" and increase "wasteful Washington spending," contends House Minority Leader John Boehner.

Does he know that a similar scheme already operates in 10 states from Maryland to Maine? Today, the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative will auction off its sixth batch of permits in an effort to reduce power-plant CO2 emissions 10 percent by 2018.

So far, it's costing Maryland families maybe $1.50 a month, according to Baltimore Gas & Electric. It was approved by former Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., a Republican.

Can you feel the tyranny?

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
Categories: Environment
        

Carbon Fixated does a lovely job putting the global-warming emails stolen from the University of East Anglia in perspective. In exposing correspondence involving Issac Newton and other 17th-century researchers, he shows them to have been altering papers, shielding data from the public and agreeing to publish incorrect data.

Obviously the only conclusion to draw is that they foisted a giant fraud on a gullible public.

If you own any shares in companies that produce reflecting telescopes, use differential and integral calculus, or rely on the laws of motion, I should start dumping them NOW. The conspiracy behind the calculus myth has been suddenly, brutally and quite deliciously exposed after volumes of Newton’s private correspondence were compiled and published.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 5:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (6)
Categories: Environment
        

Climate-change deniers will make much of the hacked emails at the University of Anglia showing global-warming researchers deprecating their opponents and expressing frustration that data show planetary temperatures temporarily declining. Like anybody with a cause, scientists worried about climate change want to press their views as aggressively and persuasively as possible. Can't wait to see the image of (presumably) Pat Michaels and other skeptics stranded on an iceberg after the polar caps have melted. Couldn't find it on the Web so far.

For example, in one of the emails, not cited in the New York Times piece referenced above, Michael Mann, then at the University of Virginia, now at Penn State, says "we need to cover our behinds on what was done here, lest we be vulnerable to the snipings of the Idsos and co (i.e., that non-climatic influences on recent growth were nominally dealt w/, as in MBH99)." (Craig Idso and his relatives run the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change, which says: "Tired of alarmist global warming propaganda?")

To put this in a fair light, we should have somebody hack the deniers' emails. Of course their correspondence would show only honest and faithful guidance by the data, wherever it might lead, and dignified respect for their opponents!

Climate change is not a continuous upward curve. If temperatures showed a long, unbroken upward slope, that really would be proof of a conspiracy. There are fluctuations. Sometimes temperatures go down for a year or few, which gives fodder to the talk radio blabbers. For climate scientists to be frustrated that this hurts the case for political action against climate change is natural.

Continue reading "Shocker: Climate scientists are petty, vindictive" »

Posted by Jay Hancock at 9:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (35)
Categories: Environment
        

The exit line is getting longer at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. Recently three big power companies -- Pacific Gas & Electric, PNM and Exelon -- resigned over the chamber's opposition to regulating carbon emissions. Then Nike said it would quit the chamber board for the same reason. Now Apple is canceling its membership. From the letter of Catherine Novelli, Apple's lobbying vice president, to Chamber President Thomas Donohue:

As a company, we are working hard to reduce our own greenhouse gas emissions by relying on renewable energy at our facilities and designing more energy-efficient products for our customers. We have undertaken this unilaterally and without government mandate, because we believe it is the right thing to do. For those companies who cannot or will not do the same, Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort.

The chamber opposes regulating U.S. greenhouse gases unless all major carbon-dioxide-emitting nations promise to reduce their output, too.

Posted by Jay Hancock at 6:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)
Categories: Environment