The environmentalist group 350.org takes its name after the 350 parts per million threshold that scientists say is the maximum atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide for a safe planet. In a statement on the parts per million number hitting 400, 350.org co-founder Bill McKibben said, quote, "The only question now is whether the relentless rise in carbon can be matched by a relentless rise in the activism necessary to stop it."

To find out more about the impacts of crossing the threshold, study the books of leading climate scientist Michael Mann, distinguished professor of meteorology at Penn State University, author of the recent book, The Hockey Stick and the Climate Wars: Dispatches from the Front Lines.

So, this number, 400 parts per million, what does it mean? It’s the number of molecules of CO2 for every million molecules of air; 400 of them are now CO2. Just two centuries ago, that number was only 280 parts per million. So if we continue to add carbon to the atmosphere at current rates, we’ll reach a doubling of the pre-industrial levels of CO2 within the next few decades.

We have to go several million years back in time to find a point in earth’s history where CO2 was as high as it is now and, of course, we’re just blowing through this 400 ppm limit. If we continue to burn fossil fuels at accelerating rates, if we continue with business as usual, we will cross the 450 parts per million limit in a matter of a couple decades. We believe that with that amount of CO2 in the atmosphere, we will all experience what can truly be described as dangerous and irreversible changes in our climate.

Click to embiggen.

And once again, the past 12 months have been the hottest 12 months ever in the contiguous U.S. So was the prior 12-month stretch, and the one before that.

The new law, the Renewable Energy Sources Act in English, will likely not take effect until early 2013.

The announcement was made by Poland's deputy minister, Mieczyslaw Kasprzak, at a press conference 27 July 2012.

Other former East Bloc countries have introduced feed-in tariffs for renewable energy with varying degrees of success and consistency, most famously the Czech Republic.

Poland, however, through its long association with émigré communities in the U.S., and its early rebellion against Soviet rule, became the poster child of neoliberal "reforms" following the fall of Communism. Thus, any move by the generally conservative Polish government to move away from its troubled system of Tradable Green Certificates and toward feed-in tariffs is potentially groundbreaking.

Perhaps it's not unrelated that the other conservative bookend of the European Union, Great Britain, had previously made a decision to scrap its Quota system (Renewable Portfolio Standard in US terminology) and introduce a form of feed-in tariffs dubbed Contracts for Difference. Britain had previously introduced a wildly successful feed-in tariff for microgeneration that resulted in the installation of more than 1,000 MW of solar photovoltaics.

Few details of the draft bill circulating within the Polish government are available in English. From news reports and partial machine translation, here's what little is known.

• Program expansion will be limited by a budget.
• Microgenerators will receive expedited interconnection.
• Reviews every three years.
• Wind, solar, geothermal, hydro, biogas, biomass, wave, and tidal power will be included.
• New renewable target of 15.5% by 2020
• Contract term: 15 years with the exception of co-firing.
• Exemption of excise tax on generation.

Currently there is only 2,000 MW of wind capacity installed in the country, generating 2.8 TWh per year or less than 2% of supply.

Most "renewable" generation in the country is through the questionable practice of "co-firing" coal-fired power plants with biomass. Co-firing allows utilities to trade in and profit from "green certificates" under the Polish renewable obligation system. Demand for biomass by utilities — some foreign owned — has become so great that it has exhausted domestic resources and led to rising imports. The proposed Renewable Energy Sources Act will be introduced in part to redress this imbalance.

The proposed act will limit the terms of co-firing to only five years.

European and Polish environmentalists had long criticized Polish reliance on "co-firing" as a means of meeting its renewable obligations. However, it was the foreign exchange costs of importing biomass to meet Poland's demand for "green certificates" that moved the government to action.

Poland is not part of the Euro currency zone, though it is a member of the European Union and consequently has a legal obligation to meet its renewables target.

“Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming,” wrote Muller, co-founder of the Berkeley Earth Surface Temperature project. “Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.”

Muller’s opinion is considered especially meaningful because his Berkeley project is heavily financed by the Charles Koch Charitable Foundation, a vehicle used by controversial petrochemical billionaire Charles G. Koch (who, along with his brother David make up the powerful “Koch Brothers” who are the sworn enemies of liberals across America) to back groups that deny the existence of climate change.

Muller called his current stance “a total turnaround.”

But Tonya Mullins, a spokeswoman for the Koch Foundation, said her organization puts no pressure on scientists to influence the outcome of their work.

“Our grants are designed to promote independent research; as such, recipients hold full control over their findings,” Mullins said in an email to Tribune reporter Neela Banerjee. “In this support, we strive to benefit society by promoting discovery and informing public policy.”

Climatologists say the conversion of Muller is important in the field.

Muller’s conversion might help shape the thinking of the “reasonable middle” of the population “who are genuinely confused and have been honestly taken in” by attacks on climate science, said Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University.

“There is a certain ironic satisfaction in seeing a study funded by the Koch Brothers—the greatest funders of climate change denial and disinformation on the planet—demonstrate what scientists have known with some degree of confidence for nearly two decades: that the globe is indeed warming, and that this warming can only be explained by human-caused increases in greenhouse gas concentrations,” Mann wrote on his Facebook page. “I applaud Muller and his colleagues for acting as any good scientists would, following where their analyses led them, without regard for the possible political repercussions.”

By Andrew Freedman

With widespread power outages still plaguing a multistate swath from Indiana to Virginia after the severe “derecho” event on Friday night, the late June heat wave continues to make headlines. Numerous all-time high temperature records were set on Saturday, with additional records expected to be set during the first few days of July.

Climate Central Record Tracker map showing some of the record temperatures set or tied on June 30, 2012.

Atlanta set an all-time high temperature record on Saturday of 106°F, beating the old record of 105°F set in 1980. Columbus, GA also set an all-time record, with 106°F, beating the record of 105°F set on June 29, and Macon, GA tied its all-time high of 108°F, which was last observed in 1980, according to the National Weather Service.

Several locations in Tennessee also set all-time record highs on Saturday. Knoxville set an all-time record high of 105°F, breaking the previous mark of 104°F set in 1930. Tri-cities broke their all-time high temperature record of 102 when the temperature reached 103°F.

Charlotte and Raleigh, N.C. both tied their all-time high temperature records as well.

It is unusual for all-time high temperature records to be set during June, since July and August typically feature more intense heat events than those that take place during early summer.

For the seven-day period from June 24-30, 1,924 daily high temperature records were set or tied in the U.S., along with 634 warm overnight low temperature records. Of these records, 565 set or tied monthly high temperature records, and 67 set or tied monthly warm overnight low temperature records.

Remarkably, 155 all-time record high temperatures were set or tied during this period, along with nine all-time record warm overnight lows.

For the year-to-date, there have been 40,113 warm temperature records set or tied, compared to just 5,835 cold records. (These figures, compiled by the National Climatic Data Center, are preliminary.) In other words, the warm temperature records have been outnumbering cold records by about 7-to-1.

In a long-term trend that demonstrates the effects of a warming climate, daily record-high temperatures have recently been outpacing daily record-lows by an average of 2-to-1, and this imbalance is expected to grow as the climate continues to warm. According to a 2009 study, if the climate were not warming, this ratio would be expected to be even. Other studies have shown that climate change increases the odds of extreme heat events and may make them warmer and longer lasting.

Meanwhile, in areas affected by Friday night’s fierce severe thunderstorm event known as a “derecho,” many people are still without power as crews work to restore service amidst downed trees and power lines. Power companies were warning customers to expect outages lasting several more days, as the widespread damage closely rivaled hurricane impacts in some areas. Governors of several states, including Maryland and Virginia, had declared states of emergency to be eligible for federal assistance. The storms are being blamed for at least 13 deaths.

March, April and May in the Lower 48 states beat the oldest spring temperature record by a full 2 degrees. The three months averaged 57.1 degrees, more than 5 degrees above average. That's the most above normal for any U.S. season on record. Meteorologists define those three months as spring.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration also reported Thursday that it was the second warmest May since records began in 1895. May averaged 64.3 degrees, just behind 1934.

The first five months of 2012 were the hottest start to a year in U.S. weather record history. The 12-month period starting last June is also the hottest on record.

"Everything that we need for our survival and well-being depends, either directly or indirectly, on our natural environment. Sustainability creates and maintains the conditions under which humans and nature can exist in productive harmony that permits fulfilling the social, economic and other requirements of present and future generations."

The challenge of course is achieving this balance. It can be argued that the end of many cultures over the ages was the result of not achieving such a balance. Today we are faced with a global problem so immense that most cannot grasp the issues, let alone the projected consequences. And it is unlikely that the majority of the world's population will voluntarily make the necessary lifestyle changes to establish this balance.

One looming reality of the end of the Petroleum Era is that the availability and rapid use of large quantities of petroleum has allowed the human population to radically overshoot the carrying capacity of the earth. Therefore as oil production declines, the earth's human population must be radically reduced by billions to bring humankind back into balance with nature.

The following is a brief history and explanation by one of the world's leading petroleum experts. He is a founder of the Association of the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO). After being awarded a Ph.D at Oxford in 1957, Dr Campbell joined the oil industry as an exploration geologist. His career took him to Borneo, Trinidad, Colombia, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the USA, Ecuador, United Kingdom, Ireland and Norway.

By Colin J. Campbell - Written in 2001

"The reality is that there is no real reprieve. Gradually the market – and not just the oil market - will come to realize that OPEC can no longer single-handedly manage depletion. It will be a dreadful realization because it means that there is no ceiling to oil price other than from falling demand. That in turn spells economic recession and a crumbling stock market, the first signs of which are already being felt.

The United States is perhaps the most vulnerable to the coming crisis having farther to fall after the boom years, which themselves were largely driven by foreign debt and inward investment. The growing shortfall in oil supply since its own peak of production was made good by soaring oil imports, now contributing more than half its needs, and a move to gas. The rate of import cannot, however, be maintained as other countries pass their own production peaks, putting ever more pressure on the Middle East. The North Sea is now at peak, with the UK being off 7% in 2000 and 16% off October to October, meaning that production is set to fall by one-half in ten years. For every barrel imported into the United States, there will be one less left for anyone else, a situation inevitably leading to international tensions.

The move to gas proved to be only a short-lived palliative. Gas depletes differently from oil. An uncontrolled gas well would blow it all away in one big puff. Production is, accordingly, capped by infrastructure and market, leaving a large, unseen balloon of readily available spare capacity. In a privatized market, trading on a daily basis, production becomes cheaper and cheaper as the original costs are written off and as this almost free spare capacity is drawn down. There were no market signals of the approach of the cliff at the end of the plateau. It accordingly came without warning, causing prices to surge through the roof, and bringing power blackouts to California. Canada is trying to make good the shortfall, but its stocks are falling fast too.

The US has to somehow find a way to cut its demand by at least five percent a year. It won’t be easy, but as the octogenarian said of old age “the alternative is even worse”. Europe faces the same predicament as North Sea production plummets. Although it may draw on gas from Russia, North Africa and the Middle East to see it over the transition, assuming that new pipelines can be built in time, that creates a new and unwelcome geopolitical dependency.

All of this is so incredibly obvious, being clearly revealed by even the simplest analysis of discovery and production trends. The inexplicable part is our great reluctance to look reality in the face and at least make some plans for what promises to be one of the greatest economic and political discontinuities of all time. Time is of the essence. It is later than you think.

Oil was formed in the geological past under well understood processes. In fact, the bulk of current production comes from just two epochs of extreme global warming, 90 and 150 million years ago, when algae proliferated in the warm sunlit waters, and the organic remains were preserved in the stagnant depths to be converted to oil by chemical reactions. Natural gas was formed in a similar way save that it was derived from vegetal material. It follows that these are finite natural resources subject to depletion, which in turn means that production in any country or region starts following the initial discovery and ends when the resources are exhausted. The peak of production is normally passed when approximately half the total has been taken, termed the midpoint of depletion.

Oil has been known since antiquity but the first wells were drilled for it in the mid 19th Century in Pennsylvania and the on the shores of the Caspian. The Industrial Revolution was already in progress being driven by the steam engine, fueled by coal. But then in the 1860s, a German engineer found a way to insert the fuel directly into the cylinder inventing the Internal Combustion Engine, which was much more efficient. At first, it used benzene distilled from coal, before turning to petroleum refined from crude oil, for which it developed an unquenchable thirst. The first automobile took to the road in 1882 and the first tractor ploughed its furrow in 1907. This cheap and abundant supply of energy changed the world in then unimaginable ways, leading to the rapid expansion of industry, transport, trade and agriculture, which has allowed the population to expand six-fold in parallel. These remarkable changes were in turn accompanied by the rapid growth of financial capital, as banks lent more than they had on deposit, confident that Tomorrow’s Economic Expansion was collateral for To-day’s Debt, without necessarily recognising that the expansion was driven by an abundant supply of cheap largely oil-based energy.

The peak of oil discovery was passed in the 1960s, and the world started using more than was found in new fields in 1981. The gap between discovery and production has widened since. Many countries, including some important producers, have already passed their peak, suggesting that the world peak of production is now imminent. Were valid data available in the public domain, it would a simple matter to determine both the date of peak and the rate of subsequent decline, but as it is, we find maze of conflicting information, ambiguous definitions and lax reporting procedures. In short, the oil companies tended to report cautiously, being subject to strict Stock Exchange rules, whereas certain OPEC countries exaggerated during the 1980s when they were competing for quota based on reported reserves. Despite the uncertainties of detail, it is now evident that the world faces the dawn of the Second Half of the Age of Oil, when this critical commodity, which plays such a fundamental part in the modern economy, heads into decline due to natural depletion. A debate rages over the precise date of peak, but this rather misses the point, when what matters — and matters greatly — is the vision of the long remorseless decline that comes into sight on the other side of it. The transition to decline threatens to be a time of great international tension. Petroleum Man will be virtually extinct this Century, and Homo sapiens faces a major challenge in adapting to his loss. Peak Oil is by all means an important subject.

According to Dr. Campbell, the near future will be grim for humankind. Dr. Campbell is a petroleum expert and his perspective of petroleum, while absolutely accurate in today's society, may not be worth consideration within 20-25 years. Join the Migration - Article: U.S. Migration

The lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees above normal for March and 6 degrees higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, with both March and the first three months of the year far exceeding the country’s old records.(AP Photo/David Goldman)

WASHINGTON (AP) - It has been so warm in the United States this year, especially in March, that national records were not just broken, they were deep-fried.

Temperatures in the lower 48 states were 8.6 degrees (4.8 degrees Celsius) above normal for March and 6 degrees (3.3 degrees Celsius) higher than average for the first three months of the year, according to calculations by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. That far exceeds the old records.

The magnitude of how unusual the year has been in the U.S. has alarmed some meteorologists who have warned about global warming. One climate scientist said it is the weather equivalent of a baseball player on steroids, with old records obliterated.

"Everybody has this uneasy feeling. This is weird. This is not good," said Jerry Meehl, a climate scientist who specializes in extreme weather at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. "It's a guilty pleasure. You're out enjoying this nice March weather, but you know it's not a good thing."

It's not just March.

"It's been ongoing for several months," said Jake Crouch, a climate scientist at NOAA's National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C.

Meteorologists say an unusual confluence of several weather patterns, including La Nina, was the direct cause of the warm start to 2012. While individual events cannot be blamed on global warming, Crouch said this is like the extremes that are supposed to get more frequent because of man-made climate change. Greenhouse gases come from the burning of fossil fuels such as coal and oil.

It is important to note that this unusual winter heat is mostly a North America phenomenon. Much of the rest of the Northern Hemisphere has been cold, said NOAA meteorologist Martin Hoerling.

The first quarter of 2012 broke the January-March record by 1.4 degrees (0.8 degrees Celsius). Usually records are broken by just one- or two-tenths of a degree. U.S. temperature records date from 1895.

The atypical heat goes back even further. The U.S. winter of 2010-2011 was slightly cooler than normal and one of the snowiest in recent years, but after that things started heating up. The summer of 2011 was the second warmest summer on record.

The winter that just ended, which in some places was called the year without winter, was the fourth warmest on record. Since last April, it has been the hottest 12-month stretch on record, Crouch said.

But the month where the warmth turned especially weird in the United States was March.

Normally, March averages 42.5 degrees (5.8 degrees Celsius) across the country. This year, the average was 51.1 (10.6 degrees Celsius), which is closer to the average for April. Only one other time, in January 2006, was the country as a whole that much hotter than normal for an entire month.

The "icebox of America," International Falls, Minn., saw temperatures in the 70s for five days in March, and there were only three days of below zero temperatures all month.

In March, at least 7,775 weather stations across the nation broke daily high temperature records, and another 7,517 broke records for night-time heat. Combined, that is more high temperature records broken in one month than ever before, Crouch said.

"When you look at what's happened in March this year, it's beyond unbelievable," said University of Victoria climate scientist Andrew Weaver.

NOAA climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi compared the increase in weather extremes to baseball players on steroids: You can't say an individual homer is because of steroids, but they are hit more often and the long-held records for home runs fall.

They seem to be falling far more often because of global warming, said NASA top climate scientist James Hansen. In a paper he submitted to the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and posted on a physics research archive, Hansen shows that heat extremes aren't just increasing but happening far more often than scientists thought.

What used to be a 1-in-400 hot temperature record is now a 1 in 10 occurrence, essentially 40 times more likely, said Hansen. The warmth in March is an ideal illustration of this, said Hansen, who also has become an activist in fighting fossil fuels.

Weaver, who reviewed the Hansen paper and called it "one of the most stunning examples of evidence of global warming."

___

Online:

National Climatic Data Center: http://www.ncdc.noaa.gov

James Hansen's study on climate extremes: http://bit.ly/HQzxeq

WHEREAS the passage of history has recorded an increasing pace of change, such that the demand for energy has grown rapidly in parallel with the world population over the past two hundred years since the Industrial Revolution;

WHEREAS the energy supply required by the population has come mainly from coal and petroleum, such resources having been formed but rarely in the geological past and being inevitably subject to depletion;

WHEREAS oil provides ninety percent of transport fuel, is essential to trade, and plays a critical role in the agriculture needed to feed the expanding population;

WHEREAS oil is unevenly distributed on the Planet for well-understood geological reasons, with much being concentrated in five countries bordering the Persian Gulf;

WHEREAS all the major productive provinces of the World have been identified with the help of advanced technology and growing geological knowledge, it being now evident that discovery reached a peak in the 1960s, despite technological progress and a diligent search;

WHEREAS the past peak of discovery inevitably leads to a corresponding peak in production during the first decade of the 21st Century, assuming no radical decline in demand;

WHEREAS the onset of the decline of this critical resource affects all aspects of modern life, such having grave political and geopolitical implications;

WHEREAS it is expedient to plan an orderly transition to the new World environment of reduced energy supply, making early provisions to avoid the waste of energy, stimulate the entry of substitute energies, and extend the life of the remaining oil;

WHEREAS it is desirable to meet the challenges so arising in a co-operative and equitable manner, such to address related climate change concerns, economic and financial stability, and the threats of conflicts for access to critical resources.

NOW IT IS PROPOSED THAT

A convention of nations shall be called to consider the issue with a view to agreeing an Accord with the following objectives:

• to avoid profiteering from shortage, such that oil prices may remain in reasonable relationship with production cost;
• to allow poor countries to afford their imports;
• to avoid destabilizing financial flows arising from excessive oil prices;
• to encourage consumers to avoid waste;
• to stimulate the development of alternative energies.

Such an Accord shall have the following outline provisions:

• The world and every nation shall aim to reduce oil consumption by at least the world depletion rate.
• No country shall produce oil at above its present depletion rate.
• No country shall import at above the world depletion rate.
• The depletion rate is defined as annual production as a percent of what is left (reserves plus yet-to-find).
• The preceding provisions refer to regular conventional oil—which category excludes heavy oils with cut-off of 17.5 API, deepwater oil with a cut-off of 500 meters, polar oil, gas liquids from gas fields, tar sands, oil shale, oil from coal, biofuels such as ethanol, etc.

Detailed provisions shall cover the definition of the several categories of oil, exemptions and qualifications, and the scientific procedures for the estimation of Depletion Rate.

The signatory countries shall cooperate in providing information on their reserves, allowing full technical audit, such that the Depletion Rate may be accurately determined.

The signatory countries shall have the right to appeal their assessed Depletion Rate in the event of changed circumstances.

*This text, with slight changes in wording, has elsewhere been published as “The Rimini Protocol” and “The Uppsala Protocol.”

The second argument, a corollary to this one, is that eventually, left to compete for too long against Brazil, a domestic industry like U.S. steel might collapse completely, leaving the United States dependant on foreign steel. This, the argument goes, could be devastating if the United States suddenly went to war with everyone (a scenario that seems less and less implausible these days), as it would find itself unable to produce a badly needed resource.

The third argument favors protectionist policies for a slightly different reason. This argument postulates that a country's protectionist policies should be reciprocal to those of other countries - in other words, that our barriers have got to be as high as the other guy's. Governments that employ this theory use tariffs and subsidies as bargaining chips at the negotiating table with other countries.

This so-called "bargaining chip" theory is neither pro- nor anti-trade, but views protectionist politics as a game of give and take. For example, at a meeting of the World Trade Organization, U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick might tell Brazilian trade minister, "We're willing to lower our steel tariffs. But only if you eliminate your quotas on blond hair dye."

People who take this view usually focus on opening markets abroad while keeping their own markets as protected as possible, in the interest of maximizing exports and minimizing "harmful" imports.

The Costs of Protectionism

Each of these arguments may seem compelling. Take the first one, for instance, that protectionist policies are necessary to save jobs. Steel workers are indeed imperiled when their industry is mismanaged to the brink of insolvency; their communities often depend upon the jobs that the steel industry provides; and many have few other skills on which to fall back. To protect these workers, some argue, it is necessary to impose high tariffs on imported steel.

But what about those who work in factories that produce things made of steel? Take a factory that produces hubcaps.

Say this factory has been buying Brazilian steel very cheaply in order to make its rims available at a low price. But then lobbyists for the U.S. steel industry complain that they can't compete with Brazilian steel and that they will soon be forced to lay off a significant number of workers.

Realizing that the steel lobby is good at turning out voters on Election Day, the U.S. government slaps a 30 percent tariff on imported steel, making Brazilian steel 10 percent more expensive than U.S. steel.

Suddenly the American hubcap factory must start paying 20 percent more for the steel it uses to make its wheels. But the U.S. government hasn't put a tariff on dubs. So now Japanese hubcap factories, which can still buy steel at world prices, can make dubs more cheaply than the American factory.

The result? Americans start buying their dubs from Japan. Facing declining revenue, the American hubcap factory must lay off a significant number of workers, go out of business, or sign some sort of contract with the Cash Money Millionaires. In all seriousness, this is precisely what happened to many manufacturers when President Bush imposed new steel tariffs in March of 2002.

So the question, when times are tough for a particular industry, is not, "Should we save these jobs?" It is, "Should we save these jobs at the expense of other jobs, or should we let economic efficiency decide where people and resources are best employed?"

Even when the case is not cut and dry like with steel and hubcaps, domestic protectionism always has a domestic cost. Most of the time, however, the costs of protectionism go unnoticed, because protected jobs in one industry are concentrated and easy to see, while the costs throughout the economy are widely dispersed, over a hundreds of industries and millions of consumers.

In the case of the steel tariffs President Bush introduced in March of 2002, the cost was $732,000 in higher prices for each steel job saved, according to Dan Griswold of the Cato Institute.

Relying on Foreign Industry

The second argument for protectionism can also seem compelling. "Okay," one might say, "steel tariffs save steel jobs but cost others their jobs throughout the economy. But if we left the U.S. steel industry unprotected, it might collapse entirely, leaving us over-reliant on foreign steel. Isn't that bad?" This would indeed be bad if this were the way free trade actually worked. But this is not how trade works for the developed world or for developing countries.

In the developed world, competition from abroad normally has the effect of spurring needed reforms in domestic industries, making them stronger rather than weaker. But one could take a worst-case scenario and still show that it is unlikely that developed nations would lose the capacity to produce for themselves what they currently import.

Suppose that the U.S. steel industry really did collapse, unable to compete with cheap imports from, for consistency's sake, Brazil. Then suppose U.S. foreign policy alienated everyone on the planet, leading to a worldwide steel embargo on the United States.

The demand for steel in the United States would be so great, and Americans willing to pay such a high price for steel, that one of two things would occur: entrepreneurial Americans would finance the resumption steel production and make a fortune, or some foreign nations would cheat on the embargo. Supply will always find its way to demand, even though the chances of this scenario occurring are virtually nonexistent.

Industries in the Developing World Need to be Protected?

As for developing countries, many actually bought this argument wholesale a generation ago and only today are recovering from its folly. As they gradually won their independence from colonial powers such as Great Britain, many leaders in the developing world viewed imports as another form of dependence on their former masters.

They proposed what is called "import substitution" instead. Under this system, a command-and-control local government would dictate how the nation used its resources as it struggled to produce everything it formerly imported.

Needless to say, this strategy cannot lead to prosperity, and it did not. As detailed in Brink Lindsey's Against the Dead Hand:

The Uncertain Struggle for Global Capitalism, the Third World fell into a deep debt crisis as it borrowed and borrowed in attempts to produce enough of everything it needed.

Today the example of East Asia has demonstrated that the way out of poverty for many developing nations is to export things they can make easily and cheaply, in exchange for imports they cannot produce as easily.

Globalization is occurring because most of the world is realizing that economic growth occurs when a country focuses on producing what it's relatively very good at and exporting as much of that product as possible, in exchange for imported goods it cannot produce as well.

In this way, countries use their comparative advantages over other countries to create value - that is, if I have something you like but I hate, like mustard, and you have something I like but you hate, like a bleu cheese dressing and bologna sandwich, then we can trade and, although nothing new has been "created," we are both richer. Unless you hate mustard too. (For an explanation of this phenomenon that does not involve condiment metaphors, see Adam Smith's The Wealth of Nations.)

The principle of comparative advantage means that every nation, no matter how undeveloped or poor, has a comparative advantage in producing some good. To understand how comparative advantage works, take this example. Bill Gates is a good software designer.

He also happens to be a good typist. It makes sense for Bill Gates to spend most of his time working on software and not typing his memos. He employs an assistant to type his memos even if he is a better typist than his assistant. The same goes for countries.

Protectionism is a "Bargaining Chip"

Many people who understand this principle still advocate the third argument for protectionism: that it is a necessary evil because everyone else is doing it, and countries can only lower their trade barriers via a slow give and take. Otherwise, they argue, domestic industries would have to compete against protected industries in other countries.

U.S. proponents of this argument might say, "Why should our steel industry have to compete with Brazil's, when Brazil's steel mills receive millions of dollars in subsidies each year? Of course their steel is cheaper, because subsidies allow them to sell their steel for less than it costs them to produce it!" They would argue for a "level playing field," because to accept otherwise would subject domestic industries to "unfair" competition.

To counter this line of thinking it is necessary to return to the idea of comparative advantages. Comparative advantage can't work as a one-way street. In other words, keeping domestic industries protected while pushing other countries to open their borders is not only hypocritical, it is harmful to those in the domestic economy who are exporting what they are good at producing but are prohibited from importing what they need.

To expand on a previous example, I keep selling you mustard for cash, but my country places prohibitively high tariffs on bleu cheese dressing, leaving me with only enough money to buy bologna and bread. Sure, I can sell you as much mustard as you're willing to buy, but come on, how much mustard can one person eat? So I'll never have enough money to buy the bleu cheese dressing I need to make my sandwich.

This approach to trade policy protects a few special interests - steel producers and mustard salesmen, for instance - to the detriment of the country's economy as a whole. A country's economy grows in overall wealth when it is free to sell what it is best at producing and buy the cheapest and best goods - even if those goods are subsidized by other countries' governments - from all over the world.

If some countries sell subsidized goods on the world market, then countries with open borders get the benefit of buying those goods more cheaply than they could before. The taxpayers who are subsidizing the local industry are actually subsidizing consumers in open-market countries.

At the same time, the low costs these open-market countries pay for imports allow them to shift their resources to their most productive industries, increasing their economic power.

In this way, open-market countries lead by example. The powerful trend of trade liberalization started when countries began to realize that the most successful economies in the world were open-market economies.

"Protectionism" when used to describe a policy agenda of high tariffs and subsidies is a term that is apt and misleading at the same time. It gives the impression that the country's overall economy is being "protected" from harmful foreign competition. This is simply not the case.

Who Really Benefits from Protectionism?

When protectionist policies are enacted, certain domestic industries are protected at the expense of others. So in the end, it comes down to which industries can exert the most influence over domestic politics.

In the United States, the powerful steel, textile and agribusiness lobbies have kept those industries protected from foreign competition in ways that hundreds of other industries have not; and while unprotected industries have faced stiff foreign competition, they have also faced higher prices on steel, textiles and agriculture. One might look at the situation and decide that steel jobs are more important than other jobs, but to deny the connection between the two is to ignore evident economic principles.

Each argument for protectionism has merits: protectionism does save jobs in protected industries, can sometimes save those industries from financial catastrophe, and can be useful sometimes when it comes to negotiating trade agreements with other countries.

But in each argument, the government is placed in the role of making arbitrary decisions between which industries deserve protection, and which must inadvertently bear the costs of protection. The alternative is a government that does not pick winners but instead stands by principles and treats each industry the same, regardless of its political clout or well-connectedness.

The important thing to remember is that economic costs are unavoidable. The question is not whether an economy can avoid a cost, but who will bear it. Some believe the government is capable of deciding this question, and some believe that free individuals should decide it by their actions in the marketplace.

But economic costs must fall somewhere. Even if a wide array of protectionist policies could somehow protect every industry in the United States from the costs of foreign competition, then those costs would accrue to foreign countries, many in various states of destitution and, as previously mentioned, needing export markets as doorways out of poverty.

The conflict over protectionism, when all the rhetoric is boiled away, pits parochial interests against international ones. Picture the conflict as a factory laborer in a steel town in West Virginia arguing for tariffs to save his job and his community, versus thousands of workers all over the world who all have a small but important stake in being able to sell and buy steel at the lowest possible price: the consumer who will have to pay higher prices for anything made of steel; the autoworker in Michigan whose plant will lay him off due to higher steel prices; and finally, the Brazilian steel worker who will lose his job if the steel he makes is shut out of the United States.

In this case, it is important not to forget the pain of the steel worker who, because his industry has been mismanaged from the top, is facing the prospect of unemployment. But it is still important to ask, what about the average American? What about the autoworker?

What about the Brazilian whose only alternative might be a sort of poverty that has been largely unknown for decades in the United States? None of them really deserve to bear the cost. But protectionism almost always places the burden on those who deserve it the least.

Contributed by Stephen Spruiell, a graduate student in public policy at the University of Texas. Reprinted with permission from aWorldConnected.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The U.S. set a record for the most tornadoes within a month with April's deadly storms.

The final report for the month shows 753 twisters across the country, including a super outbreak on April 25-28 that killed more than 300 people in the South and Midwest.

While final death statistics are still being studied, the toll on April 27, being called the Dixie Outbreak, set a one-day record for tornado deaths since 1950. It topped the 310 deaths on April 3, 1974. Current estimates for the day range from 313 to 317 and could go higher, according to federal Storm Prediction Center data.

Follow-up studies that eliminated duplicate reports cut April's tornado total down from the preliminary count of 875 that generated widespread publicity. But the storm center says that still tops the former monthly record of 543 tornadoes in May 2003.

Atmospheric scientists noted that April had an active weather pattern across the 48 contiguous states, with strong storms moving through the center of the country, tapping into moisture from the Gulf of Mexico as they matured across the mid-Mississippi Valley. Contributing to the thrashing were the La Nina conditions in the Pacific Ocean, unusually warm ocean temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico and the increase of moisture in the atmosphere caused by the warming climate.

Thomas Karl, head of the National Climatic Data Center, has cautioned against focusing on any single cause for the unusual chain of events, saying "clearly these things interconnect."

The tornado death toll for the year so far is 546, including 364 in April and another 177 in May, generally the two busiest months for twisters. That total ranks this year fourth overall in tornado fatalities, still well behind the record 794 deaths in 1925.

In addition to the high tolls in April and May, three people were killed by tornadoes in June and there was one death each in February and March.

They explain on their webpage:

"Las Vegas' largest dew point depression ever recorded was set on June 27, 2011 at 129 degrees. The dew point depression is the difference between the air temperature and dew point temperature. At this time the relative humidity was 1%. The previous record dew point depression was 120 degrees set on July 2, 2007. This makes June 27, 2011 the driest day ever recorded based on the dew point depression"

You can't see the maximum depression on the official data graph above, where data only updates once an hour, but they posted a picture of the 1-minute data on their Facebook Page:

Relative humidity readings below 10% were widespread over the Southwest on June 27th 2011, though the KLAS airport was the driest on the Mesonet map.

New-age technologies coupled with economical and ecological advances will further on play in favor of biodiesel market development and growth. Newer feedstock sources such as waste grease, algae, yellowhorn and jatropha are undoubtedly posed to spur the market too.

Nowadays China has reached the highest figures of automobile units sold thus becoming the largest automotive market leaving even the USA behind. Given the latest concern of the Chinese government in ecological security, biodiesel market boom is projected for the country along with vast investments influx.

Detailed review and forecast on global, regional and country markets of biodiesel can be found in the new market research report “Biodiesel World Market Outlook 2011” that covers present situation, historical background and future forecast and addresses comprehensive data showing biodiesel capacities, production, consumption, trade statistics, and prices in the recent years are provided (globally, regionally and by country).

Report Details:

Biodiesel World Market Outlook 2011
Published: January, 2011
Pages: 200
http://mcgroup.co.uk/researches/biodiesel

The report indicates a wealth of information on biodiesel producers and suppliers, covers biodiesel production in the respective country, major biodiesel producers, biodiesel consumption in the country market, biodiesel trade in the country, biodiesel prices. Biodiesel market forecast for next five years, including market volumes and prices is also provided.

The study on biodiesel has been completed by Merchant Research & Consulting Ltd, an internationally recognized market research agency, specializing in chemical industry. “Biodiesel World Market Outlook 2011” is included into the catalogue “Petrochemicals”, which also highlights Benzene, Caprolactam (CPL), Ethylbenzene (EB), Ethylene, Formaldehyde, Melamine, Methyl Ethyl Ketone, Orthoxylene, Phthalic Anhydride (PA), Styrene, Toluene markets.

Monthly report updates for “Biodiesel World Market Outlook 2011” are available at http://mcgroup.co.uk/periodicals/monthly

Image above: Cartoon by Ramirez focusing on food shortages.

By Tony C. Dreibus on 26 April 2011 for Bloomberg News -
(http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-04-26/food-costs-seen-reaching-record-by-year-end-as-world-inflation-accelerates.html)

Global food prices may rise 4.4 percent to a record by the end of the year, driven by demand for meat, oilseeds and grains used to make ethanol, adding to costs that mean inflation is accelerating from the U.S. to China.

The United Nations’ Food Price Index may climb to 240 points from 229.84 last month, said William Adams, a fund manager at Zurich-based Resilience AG, which has $22.2 million of assets. Global corn stockpiles are shrinking the most in seven years, inventories of nine edible oils will drop to the lowest since 1974 and U.S. beef stocks will be the smallest since 1999, the U.S. Department of Agriculture estimates.

“The stockpiles are being severely depleted,” said Adams, who correctly forecast gains in heating oil and gasoline prices last year. “Eventually it gets to the consumer. The U.S. government isn’t subsidizing pork chops like it is ethanol.”

The cost of living in the U.S. rose at its fastest pace since December 2009 in the 12 months ended in March. Chinese consumer prices rose last month by the most since 2008. The People’s Bank of China raised borrowing costs four times since October and the European Central Bank increased rates on April 7 for the first time since 2008. World Bank President Robert Zoellick said April 16 that the world is “one shock away” from a crisis in food supply and prices.

Price Report

The UN’s food-price index, which covers 55 commodities, reached an all-time high of 236.8 points in February, before dropping by about 3 percent in March. The next report is scheduled for May 5.

Costlier food contributed to riots across northern Africa and the Middle East that toppled leaders in Egypt and Tunisia. It also drove 44 million people into poverty in the past year and another 10 million may join them should the UN index rise another 10 percent, the World Bank said April 16. Consumers should get used to paying more because farmers will take years to expand production enough to meet demand, the International Monetary Fund said in a first-quarter report.

Wheat traded on the Chicago Board of Trade, a global benchmark, jumped 75 percent in the past 12 months, soybeans gained 38 percent and corn more than doubled. U.S. wholesale beef prices are up 13 percent this year and pork costs 22 percent more, USDA data show.

While the gains increase costs for consumers they also mean U.S. farmers, the world’s biggest agricultural exporters, will earn a record $94.7 billion this year, the USDA estimates. North Dakota, the largest wheat-growing state, has a jobless rate of 3.6 percent, the lowest of any state.

‘Their Moment’

“There are not a lot of opportunities like this for farmers,” Adams said. “Raw materials are actually at a premium, so this is their moment.”

U.S. Federal Reserve Vice Chairman Janet Yellen said April 11 that higher food and fuel costs will have only a temporary impact on inflation and the gains do not warrant a reversal of record monetary stimulus.

The use of some crops is also gaining because of demand for alternative fuels after oil traded on the New York Mercantile Exchange rose 33 percent in the past year. Denatured ethanol, which contains additives to make it unfit for human consumption, rose 65 percent on the CBOT over the same period. That's why it's important to note where corn prices are today. You see, for much of the past 20 years, corn has traded in the $2-$3 per bushel area. But due to recent weather trouble, historically low stockpiles, and the emergence of Asia as a big buyer of corn, prices are skyrocketing.

Demand for U.S. corn from ethanol producers including Archer Daniels Midlands Co. will rise 9.5 percent to 5 billion bushels this year, equal to 40 percent of the national crop, USDA data show. U.S. lawmakers introduced legislation last month to scrap a 45-cent-a-gallon tax credit for producers.

‘Minor’ Factor

“Biofuels, including ethanol, are a factor, but a relatively minor one” in food costs, Michael Baroni, vice president of economic policy at Decatur, Illinois-based ADM, said in an e-mail.

U.S. ethanol makers use 3 percent of global grain supply and produce 38 million metric tons of distillers grain and gluten used in animal feed, according to the Washington-based Renewable Fuels Association, which represents the industry.

U.S. corn stockpiles will fall to 675 million bushels by Aug. 31, from 1.7 billion bushels, the USDA estimates. Again, the price of corn has more than doubled over the past 12 months.

“Ethanol producers may be confronted with a squeeze on corn supplies during the late summer months,” F.O. Licht, a commodity researcher based in Ratzeburg, Germany, said in a report this month.

This paper appears in: Image and Signal Processing (CISP), 2010 3rd International Congress on
Issue Date: 16-18 Oct. 2010
Volume: 4
On page(s): 1937 - 1941
Location: Yantai
Print ISBN: 978-1-4244-6513-2
INSPEC Accession Number: 11676775
Digital Object Identifier: 10.1109/CISP.2010.5648095
Date of Current Version: 29 November 2010

^† Embrapa Instrumentao, Rua XV de Novembro, 1452, So Carlos, SP, Brazil, 13560-970

^‡ Instituto de Qumica, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Campus do Valonguinho, 24020-150 Niteri, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Abstract:

The transesterification reaction used to produce biodiesel was monitored with ¹H high-resolution nuclear magnetic resonance (HRNMR), conventional low-resolution NMR (LRNMR), and unilateral NMR (UNMR) spectroscopy. HRNMR was used as a standard method to compare with the methods of LRNMR and UNMR. A Carr–Purcell–Meiboom–Gill (CPMG) pulse sequence was used in both LRNMR and UNMR experiments. In LRNMR, the CPMG signal was used to measure the transverse relaxation time (T₂), which depended on sample viscosity; it showed a good correlation (R = 0.994) for the concentration of biodiesel in the oil/biodiesel mixture. These measurements could only be used when the samples contained less than 1% of methanol. In UNMR, the CPMG decay of the biodiesel/oil mixture strongly depended on molecular diffusion because of the intrinsic high magnet field gradient (G) associated with the magnetic. The T_2eff had a good and negative correlation (R = −0.997) with the biodiesel concentration in the biodiesel/oil mixture. The UNMR measurements were insensitive to the methanol contamination up to 50%, which was contrary to the LRNMR method. As methanol diffused rapidly, its magnetization lost coherency quickly in the presence of strong G and it was not fully refocused by the CPMG sequence. Therefore, the use of the fast, portable, and low cost UNMR sensor to monitor transesterification reactions was demonstrated ex situ. Now, the UNMR sensor has been adapted to monitor the transesterification reaction in situ, in a biodiesel pilot plant.

AMSTERDAM (AP) - Global warming is a looming threat to stability and national security around the world, and militaries should spend some of their ever-expanding budgets on reducing carbon emissions to avoid "climate chaos," the U.N.'s top climate official said Tuesday.

Christiana Figueres, head of the U.N. climate secretariat, warned of the destabilizing effects created by growing water stress, declining crop yields and damage from extreme storms in some of the world's poorest countries, which could set off mass international migration and regional conflicts.

Figueres said the world's military budgets grew by 50 percent in the first nine years of this century. Rather than continue that growth in weaponry, she said, the generals should invest in preventative budgets to "avoid the climate chaos that would demand a defense response that makes even today's spending burden look light."

She was speaking to Spanish legislators at the national defense college in Madrid. Her remarks were distributed by her office in Bonn, Germany.

Scientists and defense think tanks have warned for years of the heightened military risks created by global warming. In 2007, the U.N. panel of climate scientists said hundreds of millions of Africans will face persistent drought and food insecurity over the next decades that could prompt many to abandon ancestral homes.

Other U.N. academics reported last year that in 2008 alone 20 million people were displaced by sudden climate disasters, at least temporarily, and gradual climate changes over the next 40 years could cause 200 million people - and perhaps up to 1 billion - to migrate.

Figueres said much of the funding that pays for the growth of armies today could help curb carbon emissions that fuel global warming. It also could help poor countries in the most vulnerable and unstable parts of the world to protect themselves from the most devastating effects of climate change.

Militaries should pursue their historic role as technology innovators, she said. "This is an opportunity for the military industry to become the cutting edge of clean technologies that are urgently needed."

She cited estimates by the U.S. Defense Department that it costs $400 per gallon to supply gasoline to NATO military forces in Afghanistan, and protecting the fuel convoys is a major cause of casualties. Some military bases have begun using solar power to help cut the need to truck in liquid fuels, but the experiments are limited.