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Coal Lobbyists Are Taking a Hatchet to the Natural Gas Industry
After my year in the White House Press Corps, I vowed never to return, and took a really long shower, hoping to scrub every last spec of prejudice, self interest, and institutionalized dishonesty off of my battered carcass. But sometimes I see some maneuvering that is so unprincipled, crooked, and against the national interest that I am unable to restrain my fingers from the keyboard. For shorthand, let’s call them lies.
I’m talking about the absolutely merciless hatchet job the coal producers are inflicting on the natural gas industry. Coal today accounts for 50% of America’s 3.7 trillion kilowatts in annual power production. That’s a lot of vested interest. Chesapeake Energy’s (CHK) Aubrey McClendon says correctly that if we just shut down aging conventional power plants that are over 35 years old, and replace them with modern gas fired plants, the US would achieve one third of its ambitious 2020 carbon reduction goals. The share of relatively clean burning natural gas of the national power load would pop up from the current 23% to 50%. Even the Sierra Club’s Carl Pope says this is the fastest and cheapest way to make a serious dent in greenhouse gas emissions.
So what do we get? The press has recently been flooded with exaggerated or untrue reports of widespread well poisonings and forest destruction caused by the fracting processes that was used to recently discover a new 100 year supply of ultra cheap CH4. While the coal industry has had 200 years to build a formidable lobby in Washington, the gas industry is a neophyte, their only public champions being McClendon and T. Boone Pickens.
But memories in Washington are long, and Obama & Co. recall all too clearly that this was the pair that financed the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth that torpedoed Democrat John Kerry’s 2004 presidential campaign. What goes around, comes around.
Whose hands are dripping with blood here? Peabody Energy (BTU), which ripped 200 million short tons of the black stuff out of the ground in 2008, followed by Rio Tinto (RTP) at 140 million tons, and Arch Coal (ARCH) with 134 million tons, poured millions of dollars into Washington to lavishly finance lobbyists. Their mission is to render toothless Cap & Trade legislation, block subsidies for natural gas which both parties seem to agree on, dilute environmental legislation, and promote the myth that the whole global warming thing is nothing more than a leftist hoax, thus keeping hands off King Coal.
Senators and congressmen from the top three coal producing states have been the eager facilitators: Wyoming at 467 million short tons in 2008 (Thanks Dick Cheney!), West Virginia at 157 million tons, and Pennsylvania at 65 million tons. That dinosaur of a union, the United Mine Workers, is another guilty party. You might even blame Warren Buffet’s Burlington Northern (BNR), which earns 70% of its revenues from shipping coal across the country for export to China. This is the wellspring for the money that is financing all those conservative initiatives, energy related, or not.
This will be unhappy news for the 23,000 the American Lung Association expects coal emissions to kill this year. How many will clean burning natural gas bump off? None. Can’t the coal industry be happy selling everything they rip out of the ground to China? If you are lacking an ounce conscience and are willing to turn a blind eye to where your trading profits come from, then use the current sell off in all hard assets to pick up BTU, RTP, and ACI. China’s demand for our coal remains insatiable, and domestic demand isn’t about to go up in smoke overnight either. You can always donate your profits to the Sierra Club. After all, I recommended Russia, why not King Coal.
There! I’ve had my say. Now I’m going to go have another long shower.
For more iconoclastic and out of consensus analysis, you can always visit me at www.madhedgefundtrader.com , where the conventional wisdom is mercilessly flailed and tortured daily, or listen to me on Hedge Fund Radio at http://www.madhedgefundtrader.biz/ .
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madhedgefundtrader,
You just had to do it, didn't you. You just had to ruin a good piece about energy lobbying with reference to the absolute nonsense that is global warming theory. I mean honestly, how anyone could think that a rapidly industrializing, fossil fuel dependent world of 6 Billion people and counting could have any effect on the climate and biosphere whatsoever is beyond me. It's not like humanity hasn't already been transforming the environment since the dawn of agriculture or anything. C'mon, get real, we are nothing more than ants, people!
So please stop dragging the name of good King Coal through the slurry. Global warming is a vast left-wing conspiracy concocted by a cabal of secret bankers with the intention of profitting from your breath, and Al Gore is the godless false prophet selling lies to the masses. I can't think of another enterprise that is more shameless in its focus on deception, control and profit. Thank god the world still has its share of freedom fighters to unmask all the lies and defend the honour of King Coal, who has ruled with such selflessness and compassion and yet finds himself under siege by this vast and vile global "warming" conspiracy. My god people, it was snowing this winter, the world is getting colder, wake up! Next thing you know, they are going to start claiming that mountaintop removal is destructive, or that towns don't look nicer flooded knee-deep with tailing pond waste. When will this madness end?
From here on the oregon coast it looks different. Personal observation is neccessary when you cant trust the science or politics.
We are still waiting for winter! Theres been no frost this year and it only froze once so far in the bird bath. Our tulips are coming up too early.
None of this means a thing to the folks 25 floors up and far , far removed from nature.
People in ivory towers dont think like a farmer and are not in tune to nature.
This has been a very warm winter so far.
Which is interesting because as i undestand it we are still in an unexpected solar minimum
Am beginning to think there maybe a relationship to the galactic cycle we are in and our consequential pass truh the 7 year edge of our own blackhole.
We often fail to see the bigger picture, i am still seeking out info re the 25,000 year cycle .
If my theory is correct we will have more earthmovements of greater severety until 2012
By july 2015 we will have passed truh it and hopefully there will be many survivors.
Historical information regarding this cycle is scant, cave drawings from that time are found in france. Also flash frozen material was found from that time period.
If this is as serious as i think all this money/value trouble is no trouble at all.
If i find out more i will post it.
There are plenty of frozen bird baths in the midwest, at any rate even a bird brain understands that natural gas burns cleaner than coal. The whole "green" movement loses credibility just by the fact that natural gas is a natural replacement for all the coal and it is not happening.
Heard of El Niño?
"how anyone could think that a rapidly industrializing, fossil fuel dependent world of 6 Billion people and counting could have any effect on the climate and biosphere whatsoever is beyond me."
Well, that's clearly the right standard to employ. If one could think that global warming exists, then it must exist. I think that's the same rigorous critical thinking employed by the Goracle.
Anthropogenic Global Warming is inescapably occurring. Individual scientists, from around the globe, started documenting this beginning in the 1980s.
Just begin to consider the numbers, and China is just one number, going from 10 quadrillion BTUs of energy consumption to 55 quadrillion BTUs, from 1975 to 2007. The world population, those cooking, heating, driving, consuming human beings, has gone up by billions!!
There used to be the "conspiracy" when I was a kid, that 500,000 Red Chinese troops were massed at the Mexican border, and no one was doing anything about it! Same thing about the "climate change deniers" today as those "red scare" people in the 1950s. No facts, just grand sweeps of meaningless words. You deniers sound like Hitler calling forth his lost divisions in 1945, oblivious to their annihilation years before. Simply invoking something without any facts doesn't make it true. Instead of denouncing AGW, why not advocate for reducing energy consumption? Steam trains of the 19th century operated at 3% thermal efficiency. Cars operate at less than 19% thermal efficiency. We have a long way to go to have a cheaper, cleaner society. Why not be positive instead of conspiratists? The conspiratists who insist there is some sort of concerted, covert plan to promote AGW to satisfy some top secret agenda, yet insist no one can run a single-payer health plan with the same concerted, covert methodology.
The first calculation by a scientist about what would happen to the climate with a doubling of CO2 was by nobel prize winner Svante Arrhenius in . . . 1896.
This isn't new science boy's.
We are talking about "clean coal" though, right?
I hope that's a tongue planted firmly in cheek.
. China, in particular, has the highest number of coal mining related deaths in the world, with official statistic 6,027 deaths in 2004.[
Those are documented, named deaths from coal mining alone.
This article has a lot of presuppositions, but that doesn't mean it is all wrong.
Coal has a long history of political positioning and attacking competitors. They were leading the charge of "no nukes" in the 70's when it became apparent that nuclear was a serious threat. You can thank coal for funding that.
follow the money.
I have my serious doubts about AGP. The dog don't hunt so well.
Clearly, we need to figure out better ways to mine for coal without killing 5-10 thousand Chinese a year. More radiation comes from coal plants than nuclear. This is fact.
I say do it all, and do it well.
Spoken like your typical liberal.
The biggest fraud with global warming isn't whether or not it is going on but rather "the sky is falling" bokum consequences being ginned up. Warmer is better.
We are talking about "clean coal" though right?
Do you think you've uncovered something here? Really? Way to go deep cover. Is it just remotely possible that all these competing industries do "hatchet" jobs on one another one way or another? I'm close to both the coal and natgas industries, and I can tell you that neither is perfect. You can certainly argue coal is "dirtier" when used, but if you like using your computer or heat, well, it will have to do for now. And have you ever seen natgas dewatered? Specifically some of the tight gas found in coal and shale? Well, that aint too pretty either and has implications for aquifers as well. The real hatchet job has been done on the nukes, at least that tide appears to be turning for now...
amen, on nuclear. Folks should read Gwyneth Cravens "Power to save the world"
The notion that man controls the climate, aka Global Warming, is a hoax... Really hate to break that to you, buddy. Also, Al Gore did not invent the internet.
Score one for the good guys... America has over 200 trillion tons of coal; enough for 200 years of energy. Don't hate the player, hate the game.
I think we should just keep burning this 200 year supply. Not being able to see the sun and blue sky through an enormous mass of air born particulate is a small price to pay.
We already are and have been for nearly 100 years. Yet the skies are blue and the sun is shining... What flavor koolaide you sippin?
What color are your lungs? Never saw the pictures of buildings in London, NYC, Warsaw etc. black from all the coal burning residue?
People like yourself who assume political inclination from a one line post are generally assholes.
So what kind of asshole are you? A stupid fucking asshole. Ar just a run of the mill jerkoff asshole?
Global warming is bullshit spewed by the same folks that brought you quantitative easing, TARP, Goldman, etc etc...control is that they want and they are extending their tentacles into every facet of our lives to gain it.
http://green-agenda.com
Environmentalists tend to be alarmists and overstate the case by exagerating what will happen, but i would bet anyone here that in the next 20-30 years everyone will come to accept this science, just as we now accept that cigarette smoking causes cancer.
In 20 years, people that deny anthropogenic climate change will appear to everyone like people who claim the earth is flat do now. I have no doubt.
wow - blaming cheney reduces your credibility.
For majority of Americans it increases his credibility.
It shouldn't, regardless of your politics. The implication from the text is that Cheney had something to do with a lot of coal being mined in Wyoming in recent years. The logic behind that suggeston is kind of puzzling. The last time Cheney was in Congress was 1989. He never served in the Senate or any Wyoming state office. How exactly would he be the one to thank for Wyoming's role in coal mining? If the claim is that the Bush administration's policies have something to do with coal mining, then why place the parenthetical after Wyoming?
+10
If the coal lobby's attacks on nat gas means that Cap and Trade fails, I guess I'm a supporter of those mean and terrible conspirators.
I'm actually a big supporter of a greater use of nat gas, but the idea of passing on 40% to 50% greater energy taxes and bills to consumers via Cap and Trade is crazy. When all of the major oil and nat gas producers suddenly start investing in carbon credit trading divisions I begin to understand that this doesn't have anything to do with improving the environment or making energy cheaper, it just creates another sophisticated market for trading....ala Enron. When Enron created a market for broadband there was not a need, it was simply a manufactured market so skim dollars away from folks. Seems very similar to this situation where we create "carbon offsets" to benefit whom?
Long live coal lobbyists!
Great! So the price of Nat Gas goes up, then what do I use to heat my home, coal?
"Their mission is to... and promote the myth that the whole global warming thing is nothing more than a leftist hoax."
"at www.madhedgefundtrader.com , where the conventional wisdom is mercilessly flailed and tortured daily,..."
Seems to me Mr Mad you are having a problem trying to walk and chew gum at the same time.
Anthropogenic global warming is a crock of bull.
Why are you so surprised that humans could change the climate? Did you miss all the impacts we have on land, water and air? Isn't it obvious we have the power to influence the environment?
Pull your head out and take a look around.
With all these other obvious effects it's not hard to imagine we could affect the climate system. The difficulty with climate is no one can observe the effect based on personal experience. Any extreme effect such as Katrina could have occured without climate change. Climate change changes the odds of observing extreme events, but it is impossible to observe any extreme event and claim climate change as the cause. We can only see the climate change signal statistically over time, by observing how the odds have changed.
As are you, my bag-headed comrade.
Ok....Let us simplify all of this....
.............
The US overhauls its political and tax structure....
Both individual and corporate taxes are eliminated....and
replaced by a simple 15% consumption tax....
All expenditures and major legal changes are voted by category by each township localized govt. which reports to each state....all via internet local vote....
Thus the lobbyist system ie thereby eliminated....
The lobbyist system should not be legal because only the largest companies/groups that have the MONEY can afford them....
Burn it down....
"Their mission is to... and promote the myth that the whole global warming thing is nothing more than a leftist hoax."
I hate to break it to you but man-made global warming is a load of BS. One large volcanic eruption emits more 'global warming gases' than all of the planes, cars, factories, etc.. (combined) that have ever operated in the last 110 years. One cow emits as much 'global warming gases' as an SUV driven 15,000 miles. The warming and cooling of this planet is nearly entirely driven by the sun's activity. Period.
When 'every' scientist agrees, as Gore likes to claim, that global warming is our fault; chances are it's propaganda. Gore claimed Katrina was because of 'global warming', and that we'd have many more Cat-5 hurricanes because of it. Still waiting on that (or any significant number of hurricanes for that matter).
It was about 35~ years ago that the media was just as emphatic over the coming Global Ice Age. Funny how quickly that pendulum swung. Me thinks Gore and his cronies have an agenda. But what do I know? Wonder why they decided to call it Climate Change not too long ago? Your claim looks like it might be wrong, change the way you define it.
Volcanoes emit on average 1/200th of the human emissions each year. On geologic timescales this is absorbed in the weathering of rocks and precipitates at the bottom of the ocean.
Just repeating the deniers myths does not exhibit intelligence.
If you want the whole story find sources that will give you both sides of the story. The one way to identify the denier sites is that they never, and I mean never, provide the scientific response to their claims (many of which are plausible, they have to be at least plausible otherwise nobody would ever be convinced).
But look at a website like realclimate.org Here you can find all the latesst science in layman and professional terms, all with links to the actual published articles in any dispute. The scientific response to each climate "hoax" myth is available.
So you have to ask yourself: which would you trust more, a website that only gives you one side of the story or a website that provides both sides of the story.
(Gore is a popularizer and not always scientifically accurate, take a look at the science itself.)
What I cannot figure out is how there are so many people here on zero hedge who easily recognize political games when it comes to finance and banking, but are straight up f#kin6 ret@rded when it comes to climate change.
Would you not admit that if you poured a gallon of oil in your swimming pool that it would be polluted? Would you not admit that if you sat in your running car in your garage with the door closed that you might be breathing tainted air? (If you do not believe me, I recommend you try it out for some darwin effect.) So the question of climate change is not a matter of if; but how much? How much pollution does it take to have a real impact?
I am not 100% confident that climate change is occuring due to human activity. I am 100% confident that you are f#kin6 ret@rded if you dismiss with the evidence cited by anon 250763.
For those that claim climate change is simply a conspiracy drummed up by cap and trade folks, I would suggest you separate the two. There are plenty of people that are strong advocates of climate change policy that do not believe that cap and trade is anything more than a game to benefit the likes of GS.
I am 100% confident that photosynthesis is the solution! Cut down trees so people can write checks to get rid of CO2? I like the time square count down clock, gives climate change that 2012 feel. we should actually start 2012 legislation, 5% tax to stop the end of the world, it is less than 2 years away!
Pollution is a problem, fossil fuels... smoke stacks and muffler exhaust, I get that. When people call it a scam they are not saying pollution is not happening, maybe the earth is heating or cooling?
The solution is the tell... paying a tax, or creating hidden taxes when companies pass those climate costs onto the consumer is not a solution, pollution still occurs... solar, geothermal, wind, bla bla, that is the solution.
I live on the east coast and have shovelled a lot of snow this year, is global warming the cause of massive snowfall?
Who funds climate change research and what do they own? It is not what science says it is who pays for the research.
The political games almost all come from the climate change deniers. Political ideology trumps science. They don't want to believe the humans could have caused this issue (only the province of God) or the don't want companies to be regulated. I've never met one climate change denier that understands the scientific response to any of the "hoax" myths that are regularly regurgitated without any thought.
I've got bad news for you:
CH4 + 2O2 => 2H2O + CO2
Plant Chlorophyll + Sunlight + CO2 ---> O2
How sweet it is! Think first, no Garbage. Moderation is good,but coal tar sucks large.
Didn't you hear, the science is settled!!!
-University of East Anglia e-mails that exposed data destruction, attempts to hide contradictory data, and conspiracies to sabotage the work of skeptical scientists
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/20/do-hacked-e-mails-show-global-warm...
-The East Anglia CRU threw out their raw data, undermining any effort to check their work
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/29/weird-science-east-anglia-cru-thre...
-NOAA/GHCN “homogenization” falsified climate declines into increases
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/09/east-anglia-homogenization-falsifi...
-East Anglia CRU’s below-standard computer modeling
http://hotair.com/archives/2009/12/16/video-east-anglia-crus-below-stand...
-No rise in atmospheric carbon fraction over the last 150 years: University of Bristol
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/04/no-rise-in-atmospheric-carbon-over...
-IPCC withdraws claim that AGW will wipe out Himalayan glaciers by 2035
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/17/oops-ipcc-to-withdraw-claim-that-a...
-IPCC chief Rajendra Pachauri knew Himalayan claim was bogus for months before exposure
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/30/ipcc-chief-hid-glacier-information...
-Amazonian rainforest conclusions not based on scientific research but on advocacy group claims
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/26/more-bogus-agw-information-in-ipcc...
-Mountain glacier claims based on unsubstantiated student theses and anecdotes from climber magazine
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/01/31/ipcc-based-claims-on-a-student-dis...
-Search of IPCC report footnotes exposes ten more student dissertations presented as peer-reviewed research
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/07/even-more-problems-found-in-ipcc-r...
-Medieval Warming Period temperatures may have been global, undermining entire AGW case
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/14/former-cru-chief-admits-warming-ma...
-Measurements used for AGW case were influenced by urbanization, poor location, bad data sets
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/14/was-there-any-actual-warming-to-be...
-African-crop claims exposed as false
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/15/ipcc-warnings-about-african-crops-...
-IPCC researchers excluded Southern Hemisphere data to exaggerate effects of warming on hurricanes
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/02/16/did-the-ipcc-fudge-the-hurricane-d...
-Hurricane claims further exposed as false by actual peer-reviewed research — including by some AGW researchers
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/01/ipcc-science-on-hurricanes-no-long...
-Major scientific group concludes IPCC-linked researchers “complicit in the alleged scientific malpractices“
http://hotair.com/archives/2010/03/02/another-american-media-failure/com...
Yes, I did hear the science is settled. 95-97% of the scientists studying the issue come to the same conclusion some do not.
Did you hear that some people still think the Earth is flat, that astronauts did not land on the moon, and that cigarettes do not cause cancer?
Yes, Mr. Politician, you might want to check out some of the actual science at places like American Thinker, for example, as it sounds like you skipped those courses in school. Do you get a cut from Al Gore's fraudulent offset sales?
Ideology is not proof. Educate yourself before you start spouting off.
Google "Detection and attribution" and you will learn something about how scientists actually detect the changing climate signal and then attribute climate change to human causes. If you've never read the detection and attribution literature or even heard of the term, you don't know what you are talking about.
Or wattsupwiththat.com
Regarding the 23,000 Americans killed by coal this year,
a) Mr Racist, how many Chinese are being killed? Why are Chinese deaths so unimportant?
b) Could you please post the 23,000 names? I'd like to know who they are so I can check that you are not just, you know, making things up.
On account of, I see these billboards all the time saying that 23,842 Americans will die from 2nd-hand smoke this year. But nobody seems to know their names...Makes a fellow suspicious that the data is not all the solid.
Does smoking kill people? Do you have all their names? How can you know which ones smoking kills when its probabilistic (i.e. not everyone who smokes gets cancer, not every cancer is from smoking)?
Here's the report that details the impacts of coal with scientific references.
http://www.catf.us/publications/reports/Power_Plant_Emissions.pdf
It's the fine paticulate matter from coal that causes the problem, mostly in the elderly, average loss of life 14 years.
Dear Duck:
AGW is to date, an unproven hypothesis.
1. So far, the AGW models have made a few predictions that can be tested. In each case, the predictions are inconsistent with reality. If you used an equivalently accurate model to invest in the market, you would be broke today, having invested everything on high margin in a temperature increase ETF in 2000.
2. The AGW modelers do not and have never published confidence intervals with their predictions, always a bad sign. Either they don't know what the confidence intervals are (bad modeling) or they don't like what they tell you (results cherry-picking).
3. The models have a bunch of parameters and the parameters are backfit to some window of past data right up to the present. The AGW community has never figured out the concept of out of sample testing.
4. There is now non-trivial evidence that the processing of the raw data has been accomplished by the use of deeply suspect adjustments to temperature. The adjustments are still not public. But statisticians have now looked at several temperature stations and reverse engineered the adjustments climate researchers have made to the raw records by comparing the adjusted values to the raw values. The results are appalling and appear indefensible. In addition, there is now a good deal of evidence that the temperature record itself is not compiled properly and biased over time as a whole. Did you know that the early records are compiled from over 6,000 stations and that the current temperature records from only 1,500. Would it concern you that the 4,500 stations that have been dropped over the years from the temperature record are heavily biased toward high-elevation stations? Or that the researchers did not (after dropping a station from future use) bother to go back and recompute the earlier temperature record without using the dropped station station? Frankly, it concerns me that the entire data set we are about to make trillions of dollars of decisions on is may be puppy chow.
When I started looking into AGW several years ago, I assumed the science was good but hoped there were better solutions available than the statist solutions being proposed. I was quite surprised to learn how shoddy the science itself was.
That said, if I see properly collected data and properly built and validated models (that is, they make good predictions about the future, not just the past) that provide actual confidence intervals and that make better predictions than alternative hypotheses (eg the solar spots model), I'm open to the AGW hypothesis. But right now, it is an unproven hypothesis that has not made very good predictions.
Obviously, you've never seriously looked at the science. Almost every modeling study I've looked at includes confidence intervals (or error bars); this is basic science that you learn as an undergraduate.
The uncertainty of climate change (magnitude and not whether it's happending) is what got me interested in it. How do you make good decisions in such a situation where the climate and economic systems are so complex that there is substantial uncertainty in both temperature changes, the physical impacts of climate change and the cost of doing something? Do you wait until the uncertainties are resolved even though there may be catastrophic consequences? Or do you hedge you bets? Make decisions based on the best available assessments of the probabilities? What should probably drive policy more than anything is taking actions that avoid the real potential catastrophic outcome, a form of insurance if you will.