International competition in the original Space Race was necessary to get space exploration started, but commercialization is what will really expand it.

Over the past three years, a series of increasingly urgent reports—from the Royal Society, in the U.K., the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center, and the Government Accountability Office, among other places—have practically begged decision-makers to begin planning for a world in which geoengineering might be their only recourse. As one recent study from the Wilson International Center for Scholars concluded, “At the very least, we need to learn what approaches to avoid even if desperate.”

The most environmentally sound approach to geoengineering is the least palatable politically. “If it becomes necessary to ring the planet with sulfates, why would you do that all at once?’’ Ken Caldeira asked. “If the total amount of climate change that occurs could be neutralized by one Mt. Pinatubo, then doesn’t it make sense to add one per cent this year, two per cent next year, and three per cent the year after that?’’ he said. “Ramp it up slowly, throughout the century, and that way we can monitor what is happening. If we see something at one per cent that seems dangerous, we can easily dial it back. But who is going to do that when we don’t have a visible crisis? Which politician in which country?’’

Writing today at PJMedia about Merchants of Despair, Zubrin provides a powerful summary of his argument.  Read the whole thing.

On balance, the evidence does not support the claim that a sudden explosion in commodity trading tectonically shifted historical precedent: Global demand remained the primary driver of oil prices from 2000 to 2009. That said, one cannot completely dismiss a role for speculation in the run-up of oil prices of the past decade. Speculative demand can and did exacerbate the boom-bust cycle in commodity prices. Ultimately, however, fundamentals continue to account for the long-run trend in oil prices.

Indeed, the data analysis in this paper concludes that no more than 15% of the overall price rise since 2003 can be attributed to speculation.   Fifteen percent, if correct, is a significant contributor, but other researchers cast doubt on that figure.

More recently, Bassam Fattouh and Lavan Mahadeva of Oxford’s Institute for Energy Studies and Lutz Kilian at the University of Michigan’s Center for Economic and Policy Research examined the same topic.  In a review of recent research on speculation and financialization in the oil markets, Fattouh, Kilian and Mahadeva found that

the existing evidence is not supportive of an important role of speculation in driving the spot price of oil after 2003.  Instead, there is strong evidence that the co-movement between spot and futures prices reflects common economic fundamentals rather than the financialization of oil futures markets.

Now, a 15% price cut would be a significant savings for most drivers, to be sure, but attempting to ban oil market speculation would simply move the practice off shore.  There are bigger and better ways to attack the price of oil – primarily by attacking the cartelization of supply by leveraging other liquid fuel substitutes, as we have noted many times in the past.

At the same time, however, I have long been a fan of distributed wind and solar – small scale projects developed by landowners for their own local use, with the ability to sell excess power into the larger grid (and, eventually, it would be nice if small scale local producers could sell directly to their immediate neighbors).

Bloomberg Markets has a good story up about how micropower is revolutionizing the third world, and how large corporations – especially mobile phone providers – are finding ways to enable and profit from it.  Distributed power can eventually break the power of energy utility monopolies, kill (or at least radically transform) the subsidy-dependent failures of Big Solar and Big Wind, and, of course, enhance personal freedom.  Win-win-win.

I must note, however, that I disagree with Jeremy Rifkind’s contention that distributed power is causing carbon based energy systems to “sunset.”  Distributed power is an additional input into  global energy consumption, but solar and wind still lack the potency and portability of carbon fuels.  Distributed power will lessen some demand on fossil fuels, and thus extend their life expectancy (another reason why Peak Oil is a zombie theory).