One Size Does Not Fit All When it Comes to Generating Power

I was reading this article earlier today and came across this little quote from Eicke Weber, director of the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems: "The impact of a nuclear disaster [like the one in Japan] is simply too great for the government to continue its support for nuclear [power]." I don't think the situation in Japan should drive every country to pull their support from efforts to produce nuclear power. Japan doesn't really need to have nuclear power plants. The country is located on a fault line, so they are especially prone to earthquakes and attacks by giant, fire-breathing lizards. The densely populated east coast of the United States probably doesn't need to have large-scale nuclear power production either, the cost of a meltdown is just too high. But if nuclear power was just a little less expensive to start producing on a small scale, rural communities in areas without major faults and less than regular monster attacks could build their own plants. The mistake I think this article's writer, along with many other people make, is they assume they can come up a blanket plan that works for the whole country. A country as big as ours with so many diverse ecosystems needs to be able to tailor power options to the areas where the power is being produced and consumed.

Mr. Toads Wilderness Lawsuit, Part I: An Economic Perspective

I've got nothing to do today. I'm waiting for a sensitivity analysis to finish on a genetic algorithm I'm working with for my research (what?); I started it last night at around 5:30 PM and when I got here at 9:30 this morning, it was only 25% complete. So, while I wait for this thing to finish running, I figured I'd play around on my new laptop and translate the most recent post by raftercm into economics.

Mr. Toad's Wilderness Lawsuit: Part I

When I worked at Frontier Pack Train, George Hay and I spent a good amount of my time putting up ugly electric fences in mountain meadows to protects the Yosemite Toad from our grazing livestock. Any spots in our grazing pastures that were wet had to be surrounded by the gaudy white electric tape so that our horses and mules wouldn't skoosh them. I wasn't defacing the back country because I love the look of electric fencing. A court had found that our livestock were smooshing the life out of these endangered toads, and so we had to take steps to save these poor toads. Eventually the court forced the Forest Service to stop issuing grazing permits, because that would save the toads from the hooves of death.

The court said that there was "sufficient evidence to link commercial packstock to... a reduction in the population" of these wretched toads. The only problem with this statement by the 9th Circuit is that there was no evidence at all that grazing livestock were causing a decline in the number of these toads. It would be about five years before the results of any study on the effect of livestock on toads would be published, and that study said that the toads were unaffected. The toads weren't being skooshed, smooshed, or even frightened to death by grazing animals. The study points out that the toads and livestock weren't even hanging out in the same places. The toads, being toads, hang out in the wet parts of High Sierra Meadows. Grazing livestock, animals that get all their calories from grazing off of grass, were eating the more nutritious grass from the drier parts of the meadow.

The Ninth Circuit, in all their wisdom, needed no study to show what effect the grazing animals were having on the toads. It was enough for them that the toads were in the meadow, the livestock were in the meadow, and the toad numbers were declining. They didn't need evidence, they simply knew what was happening in the High Sierra. As a result they totally stopped grazing in the High Sierra. This decision cost the packers in that area an untold amount of money because they had to pack in feed. And it put more animals on the back country trails because they needed to pack in that feed, or it forced the packers to take fewer trips because they needed more animals for each trip. This kind of arrogance is what distances the court from normal people, and in this case an environmentalist court was willing to believe whatever it was told without any proof, and without considering what the results of its actions would be.

My next post will examine what I think should happen next.

"'Cuz I got high, 'cuz I got high, 'cuz I got high": the story of corn prices in 2011

Farmers this season have seen insanely high prices for their corn grain. Although a new higher-than-expected estimate of corn acreage has driven corn prices down from their high of $8 per bushel in June to around $6.20, corn producers are still sitting pretty. (For comparison, when I started writing my thesis a year ago, corn was at around $4.80 per bushel!)

This is certainly great news for farmers, and they deserve it after a rough, wet spring that saw countless acres of good farmland underwater from record-breaking flooding. However, with corn prices nearly doubling, maybe this is a little too good, especially considering the amount of money farmers pull in every year from government coffers. TIME Magazine recently published an article aptly titled "Want to Make More than a Banker? Become a Farmer!" which discusses the resurgence in agriculture in terms of its profits. The article cites various experts who claim that these high prices are not an anomaly; with increasing wealth and preference for meat in countries like China and India, farmers can count on high prices from here on out.

A new Farm Bill is currently being written. In part, these bills help determine how much money goes to farm price supports such as counter-cyclical payments and direct payments. These high corn prices beg the question: how much do tax payers owe to farmers? Especially in this time of fiscal crisis, should we as a nation be handing over our dear government revenues to farmers who, by all accounts, are doing fine on their own?

A new poll has been started; you can see it on the top right portion of the main page. Feel free to vote and let us know the extent to which Uncle Sam -- and, by extension, you -- should be supporting our agricultural producers.

Cap-and-tirade: A look at Mitt Romney's environmental policy record

It's been awhile since I last wrote anything. I have the excuse that I've been busy, it's been a holiday, etc. But, really, I've just been watching James Bond movies.

Now it's time to get back on the horse and continue on with our current feature: Cap-and-tirade: A look at GOP candidates' environmental policy records. Last time, we took a look at Jon Huntsman, the younger, greener, less spray-tanned counterpart to today's superstar, Mitt Romney.

Just like last time, I find that I can't do a better job of outlining Romney's environmental bona fides than a real journalist, so once again I'll be pulling heavily from the analysis done by Andrew Schenkel from his blog on the Mother Nature Network.

Stupid Toads

So I will be doing a more in-depth analysis of this, but I would like to get this out as soon as I can. I had to put up so many miles of stupid, ugly electric fences in the back country to protect these wretched toads that were never in danger of being skooshed by our livestock. Screw you hippies.