The EPA Endangerment Finding
Posted by Heading Out on December 9, 2009 - 10:12am
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) on Monday made its long awaited announcement regarding greenhouse gases. In this post, I highlight a few of the sections of the announcement and findings that caught my attention.
Let's start with the announcement on Monday:
After a thorough examination of the scientific evidence and careful consideration of public comments, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) announced today that greenhouse gases (GHGs) threaten the public health and welfare of the American people. EPA also finds that GHG emissions from on-road vehicles contribute to that threat.
GHGs are the primary driver of climate change, which can lead to hotter, longer heat waves that threaten the health of the sick, poor or elderly; increases in ground-level ozone pollution linked to asthma and other respiratory illnesses; as well as other threats to the health and welfare of Americans.
It should be noted that the statement says that GHG “threatens” the public welfare, while it is “the primary driver of climate change.” The press release relates to two specific findings which were signed by the EPA Administrator today. Those findings are:
Endangerment Finding: The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six key well-mixed greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur hexafluoride (SF6)--in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of current and future generations.
Cause or Contribute Finding: The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and welfare.
The basis for this decision is given in three sets of documents: the findings themselves; a technical support document (TSD); and eleven volumes of comments (the list is here). I'm going to go through the first of these, a 284 page document, and pull out paragraphs that I have found of interest.
Within the findings, the EPA explains the legal framework on which it based its decision, the way it went about evaluating the evidence that it considered, and the resulting finding. In its opening statement it notes (page 8):
. . . the Administrator finds that greenhouse gases in the atmosphere may reasonably be anticipated both to endanger public health and to endanger public welfare.
And here the gases are specifically defined as “long-lived, well-mixed and directly emitted greenhouse gases.” The primary basis for the decision is given as assessments of the U.S. Global Climate Research Program (USGCRP), the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the National Research Council (NRC). Starting at page 9:
The Administrator reached her determination by considering both observed and projected effects of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, their effect on climate, and the public health and welfare risks and impacts associated with such climate change. The Administrator’s assessment focused on public health and public welfare impacts within the United States. She also examined the evidence with respect to impacts in other world regions, and she concluded that these impacts strengthen the case for endangerment to public health and welfare because impacts in other world regions can in turn adversely affect the United States.
The evidence concerning adverse air quality impacts provides strong and clear support for an endangerment finding. Increases in ambient ozone are expected to occur over broad areas of the country, and they are expected to increase serious adverse health effects in large population areas that are and may continue to be in nonattainment. The evaluation of the potential risks associated with increases in ozone in attainment areas also supports such a finding.
The impact on mortality and morbidity associated with increases in average temperatures, which increase the likelihood of heat waves, also provides support for a public health endangerment finding. There are uncertainties over the net health impacts of a temperature increase due to decreases in cold-related mortality, but some recent evidence suggests that the net impact on mortality is more likely to be adverse, in a context where heat is already the leading cause of weather-related deaths in the United States.
The evidence concerning how human-induced climate change may alter extreme weather events also clearly supports a finding of endangerment, given the serious adverse impacts that can result from such events and the increase in risk, even if small, of the occurrence and intensity of events such as hurricanes and floods.
Additionally, public health is expected to be adversely affected by an increase in the severity of coastal storm events due to rising sea levels.
There is some evidence that elevated carbon dioxide concentrations and climate changes can lead to changes in aeroallergens that could increase the potential for allergenic illnesses. The evidence on pathogen borne disease vectors provides directional support for an endangerment finding. The Administrator acknowledges the many uncertainties in these areas. Although these adverse effects provide some support for an endangerment finding, the Administrator is not placing primary weight on these factors.
Finally, the Administrator places weight on the fact that certain groups, including children, the elderly, and the poor, are most vulnerable to these climate-related health effects.
The evidence concerning adverse impacts in the areas of water resources and sea level rise and coastal areas provides the clearest and strongest support for an endangerment finding, both for current and future generations. Strong support is also found in the evidence concerning infrastructure and settlements, as well ecosystems and wildlife. Across the sectors, the potential serious adverse impacts of extreme events, such as wildfires, flooding, drought, and extreme weather conditions, provide strong support for such a finding.
And from page 14:
The most serious potential adverse effects are the increased risk of storm surge and flooding in coastal areas from sea level rise and more intense storms. Observed sea level rise is already increasing the risk of storm surge and flooding in some coastal areas. The conclusion in the assessment literature that there is the potential for hurricanes to become more intense (and even some evidence that Atlantic hurricanes have already become more intense) reinforces the judgment that coastal communities are now endangered by human induced climate change, and may face substantially greater risk in the future. Even if there is a low probability of raising the destructive power of hurricanes, this threat is enough to support a finding that coastal communities are endangered by greenhouse gas air pollution. In addition, coastal areas face other adverse impacts from sea level rise such as land loss due to inundation, erosion, wetland submergence, and habitat loss.
The increased risk associated with these adverse impacts also endangers public welfare, with an increasing risk of greater adverse impacts in the future.
While the impacts on net energy demand may be viewed as generally neutral for purposes of making an endangerment determination, climate change is expected to result in an increase in electricity production, especially supply for peak demand. This may be exacerbated by the potential for adverse impacts from climate change on hydropower resources as well as the potential risk of serious adverse effects on energy infrastructure from extreme events. Changes in extreme weather events threaten energy, transportation, and water resource infrastructure.
Vulnerabilities of industry, infrastructure, and settlements to climate change are generally greater in high-risk locations, particularly coastal and riverine areas, and areas whose economies are closely linked with climate-sensitive resources. Climate change will likely interact with and possibly exacerbate ongoing environmental change and environmental pressures in settlements, particularly in Alaska where indigenous communities are facing major environmental and cultural impacts on their historic lifestyles.
The above ends on page 15. Then beginning on page 16:
However, the body of evidence points towards increasing risk of net adverse impacts on U.S. food production and agriculture over time, with the potential for significant disruptions and crop failure in the future.
For the near term, the Administrator finds the beneficial impact on forest growth and productivity in certain parts of the country from elevated carbon dioxide concentrations and temperature increases to date is offset by the clear risk from the observed increases in wildfires, combined with risks from the spread of destructive pests and disease.
And moving on to page 21.
The concern now, however, is that the changes taking place in our atmosphere as a result of the well-documented buildup of greenhouse gases due to human activities are changing the climate at a pace and in a way that threatens human health, society, and the natural environment.
Some hint of future regulation may be discerned as the document progresses (page 22):
On September 15, 2009, EPA and the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed a National Program that would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel economy for new cars and trucks sold in the United States.
The combined EPA and NHTSA standards that make up this proposed National Program would apply to passenger cars, light-duty trucks, and medium-duty passenger vehicles, covering model years 2012 through 2016. They proposed to require these vehicles to meet an estimated combined average emissions level of 250 grams of carbon dioxide per mile, equivalent to 35.5 miles per gallon (MPG) if the automobile industry were to meet this carbon dioxide level solely through fuel economy improvements. Together, these proposed standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 950 million metric tons and 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles sold under the program (model years 2012-2016). The proposed rulemaking can be viewed at (74 FR 49454, September 28, 2009).
Much of the rest of the document is a justification of action relative to the host of comments that had been submitted. These 380,000-odd comments, on the proposed ruling, were described thusly.
A majority of the comments (approximately 370,000) were the result of mass mail campaigns, which are defined as groups of comments that are identical or very similar in form and content. Overall, about two-thirds of the mass mail comments received are supportive of the Findings and generally encouraged the Administrator both to make a positive endangerment determination and implement greenhouse gas emission regulations.
Of the mass mail campaigns in disagreement with the Proposed Findings most either oppose the proposal on economic grounds (e.g., due to concern for regulatory measures following an endangerment finding) or take issue with the proposed finding that atmospheric greenhouse gas concentrations endanger public health and welfare.
The recent publication of the e-mails and codes from the CRU is addressed on page 46.
Our response regarding the request to reopen the comment period due to concerns about alleged destruction of raw global surface data is discussed more fully in the Response to Comments document, Volume 11.
The commenter did not provide any compelling reason to conclude that the absence of these data would materially affect the trends in the temperature records or conclusions drawn about them in the assessment literature and reflected in the TSD. The Hadley Centre/Climate Research Unit (CRU) temperature record (referred to as HadCRUT) is just one of three global surface temperature records that EPA and the assessment literature refer to and cite. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) also produce temperature records, and all three temperature records have been extensively peer reviewed. Analyses of the three global temperature records produce essentially the same long-term trends as noted in the Climate Change Science Program (CCSP) (2006) report "Temperature Trends in the Lower Atmosphere," IPCC (2007), and NOAA's study5 "State of the Climate in 2008". Furthermore, the commenter did not demonstrate that the allegedly destroyed data would materially alter the HadCRUT record or meaningfully hinder its replication.
The document further notes (page 56):
First, the Administrator is required to protect public health and welfare, but she is not asked to wait until harm has occurred. EPA must be ready to take regulatory action to prevent harm before it occurs.
Section 202(a)(1) requires the Administrator to “anticipate” “danger” to public health or welfare. The Administrator is thus to consider both current and future risks. Second, the Administrator is to exercise judgment by weighing risks, assessing potential harms, and making reasonable projections of future trends and possibilities.
It follows that when exercising her judgment the Administrator balances the likelihood and severity of effects. This balance involves a sliding scale; on one end the severity of the effects may be of great concern, but the likelihood low, while on the other end the severity may be less, but the likelihood high. Under either scenario, the Administrator is permitted to find endangerment. If the harm would be catastrophic, the Administrator is permitted to find endangerment even if the likelihood is small.
The Administrator recognizes that the context for this action is unique. There is a very large and comprehensive base of scientific information that has been developed over many years through a global consensus process involving numerous scientists from many countries and representing many disciplines. She also recognizes that there are varying degrees of uncertainty across many of these scientific issues. It is in this context that she is exercising her judgment and applying the statutory framework.
The reason for the ruling is tied to the Massachusetts case (page 68):
As the Supreme Court made clear in Massachusetts v. EPA, EPA’s judgment in making the endangerment and contribution findings is constrained by the statute, and EPA is to decide these issues based solely on the scientific and other evidence relevant to that decision. EPA may not "rest” on reasoning divorced from the statutory text," and instead EPA’s exercise of judgment must relate to whether an air pollutant causes or contributes to air pollution that endangers. Massachusetts v. EPA, 549 U.S. at 532.
and (page 79):
The Administrator has determined that the body of scientific evidence compellingly supports her endangerment finding.
This evidence is included in a technical support document (TSD) including the assessment of the USGCRP. It imposes a standard on this information, and seeks to address some of the criticism that has arisen since the word on Climategate got out. Moving to page 86:
Fourth, these assessment reports undergo a rigorous and exacting standard of peer review by the expert community, as well as rigorous levels of U.S. government review and acceptance. Individual studies that appear in scientific journals, even if peer reviewed, do not go through as many review stages, nor are they reviewed and commented on by as many scientists. The review processes of the IPCC, USGCRP, and NRC (explained in fuller detail in the TSD and the Response to Comments document, Volume 1) provide EPA with strong assurance that this material has been well vetted by both the climate change research community and by the U.S. government. These assessments therefore essentially represent the U.S. government’s view of the state of knowledge on greenhouse gases and climate change.
But it does note
In addition to the significant reasons discussed above for relying on and placing primary weight on these assessment reports, EPA has been a very active part of the U.S. government climate change research enterprise, and has taken an active part in the review, writing, and approval of these assessments. EPA was the lead agency for three significant reports under the USGCRP, and recently completed an assessment addressing the climate change impacts on U.S. air quality—a report on which the TSD heavily relies for that particular issue. EPA was also involved in review of the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report, and in particular took part in the approval of the summary for policymakers for the Working Group II Volume, Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability.
Page 106
Thus, commenters misunderstand the role that international effects played in the proposal. The Administrator is not evaluating the impact of international effects on populations outside the United States; she is considering what impact these international effects could have on the U.S. population. That is fully consistent with the CAA's stated purpose of protecting the health and welfare of this nation’s population.
An additional parameter of the endangerment analysis is the timeframe. The Administrator’s view is that the timeframe over which vulnerabilities, risks, and impacts are considered should be consistent with the timeframe over which greenhouse gases, once emitted, have an effect on climate.
Thus the relevant time frame is decades to centuries for the primary greenhouse gases of concern. Therefore, in addition to reviewing recent observations, the underlying science upon which the Administrator is basing her findings generally considers the next several decades —the time period out to around 2100, and for certain impacts, the time period beyond 2100.
Together the six well-mixed greenhouse gases constitute the largest anthropogenic driver of climate change. Of the total anthropogenic heating effect caused by the accumulation of the six well-mixed greenhouse gases plus other warming agents (that do not meet all of the Administrator’s criteria that pertain to the six greenhouse gases) since pre-industrial times, the combined heating effect of the six well-mixed greenhouses is responsible for roughly 75 percent, and it is expected that this share may grow larger over time, as discussed below.
Warming of the climate system is unequivocal, as is now evident from observations of increases in global average air and ocean temperatures, widespread melting of snow and ice, and rising global average sea level. Global mean surface temperatures have risen by 0.74°C (1.3ºF) (±0.18°C) over the last 100 years. Eight of the 10 warmest years on record have occurred since 2001. Global mean surface temperature was higher during the last few decades of the 20th century than during any comparable period during the preceding four centuries.
There is this specific comment about recent discussion of the world no longer warming at an increasing rate (page 124).
Though most of the warmest years on record have occurred in the last decade in all available datasets, the rate of warming has, for a short time in the Hadley Center record, slowed. However, the NOAA and NASA trends do not show the same marked slowdown for the 1999-2008 period.
Year-to-year fluctuations in natural weather and climate patterns can produce a period that does not follow the long-term trend. Thus, each year may not necessarily be warmer than every year before it, though the long-term warming trend continues. The scientific evidence is compelling that elevated concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases are the root cause of recently observed climate change. . . .
Climate model simulations suggest natural forcing alone (e.g., changes in solar irradiance) cannot explain the observed warming.
The first line of evidence arises from our basic physical understanding of the effects of changing concentrations of greenhouse gases, natural factors, and other human impacts on the climate system. The second line of evidence arises from indirect, historical estimates of past climate changes that suggest that the changes in global surface temperature over the last several decades are unusual. The third line of evidence arises from the use of computer-based climate models to simulate the likely patterns of response of the climate system to different forcing mechanisms (both natural and anthropogenic).
The claim that natural internal variability or known natural external forcings can explain most (more than half) of the observed global warming of the past 50 years is inconsistent with the vast majority of the scientific literature, which has been synthesized in several assessment reports.
Interestingly, for the United States (page 127)
United States temperatures also warmed during the 20th and into the 21st century; temperatures are now approximately 0.7°C (1.3°F) warmer than at the start of the 20th century, with an increased rate of warming over the past 30 years. Both the IPCC and CCSP reports attributed recent North American warming to elevated greenhouse gas concentrations. The CCSP (2008g) report finds that for North America, "more than half of this warming [for the period 1951-2006] is likely the result of human-caused greenhouse gas forcing of climate change."
The finding also speaks to other evidence (page 128):
There is strong evidence that global sea level gradually rose in the 20th century and is currently rising at an increased rate. It is very likely that the response to anthropogenic forcing contributed to sea level rise during the latter half of the 20th century. It is not clear whether the increasing rate of sea level rise is a reflection of short-term variability or an increase in the longer-term trend.
Nearly all of the Atlantic Ocean shows sea level rise during the last 50 years with the rate of rise reaching a maximum (over 2 mm per year) in a band along the U.S. east coast running east-northeast.
Satellite data since 1979 show that annual average Arctic sea ice extent has shrunk by 4.1 percent per decade.
The size and speed of recent Arctic summer sea ice loss is highly anomalous relative to the previous few thousands of years.
It will be interesting to see how this prediction falls out (page 132).
All of the United States is very likely to warm during this century, and most areas of the United States are expected to warm by more than the global average. The largest warming is projected to occur in winter over northern parts of Alaska. In western, central and eastern regions of North America, the projected warming has less seasonal variation and is not as large, especially near the coast, consistent with less warming over the oceans.
And a related issue on page 137:
. . . the Administrator recognizes that black carbon is an important climate forcing agent and takes very seriously the emerging science on black carbon’s contribution to global climate change in general and the high rates of observed climate change in the Arctic in particular.
As noted in the Proposed Findings, EPA has various pending petitions under the CAA calling on the Agency to make an endangerment finding and regulate black carbon emissions.
And page 140:
EPA plans to further evaluate the issues of emissions of water that are implicated in the formation of contrails and also changes in water vapor due to local irrigation.
And they emphasize on page 151:
We received many comments suggesting global temperatures have stopped warming. The commenters base this conclusion on temperature trends over only the last decade. While there have not been strong trends over the last seven to ten years in global surface temperature or lower troposphere temperatures measured by satellites, this pause in warming should not be interpreted as a sign that the Earth is cooling or that the science supporting continued warming is in error. Year-to-year variability in natural weather and climate patterns make it impossible to draw any conclusions about whether the climate system is warming or cooling from such a limited analysis.
Historical data indicate short-term trends in long-term time series occasionally run counter to the overall trend. All three major global surface temperature records show a continuation of long-term warming.
They do note, however on page 153:
A number of commenters argue that the warmth of the late 20th century is not unusual relative to the past 1,000 years. They maintain temperatures were comparably warm during the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) centered around 1000 A.D. We agree there was a Medieval Warm Period in many regions but find the evidence is insufficient to assess whether it was globally coherent.
Our review of the available evidence suggests that Northern Hemisphere temperatures in the MWP were probably between 0.1 deg C and 0.2 deg C below the 1961-1990 mean and significantly below the level shown by instrumental data after 1980. However, we note significant uncertainty in the temperature record prior to 1600 A.D.
As one comes to some of the predictions that the literature has made on future climate effects the document paints a picture of a possible future. As such, in times to come it will be interesting to see how things turn out. But I will stop the abstracting here. At some future time I will go through some of the other documentation but these were the bits that most caught my eye on a first go through.
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Thanks, Dave, for going through all of this and pulling out some interesting sections.
A lot of people who are concerned about AGW (including James Hansen) have serious concerns about the approach being outlined in Copenhagen. I personally find cap and trade to be a problem, and by the time it is mixed in a bill with a lot of other stuff, am doubtful the sum will be particularly beneficial.
Perhaps the EPA is the one who should be looking at the issue. If the result of their rule changes is higher mileage requirements for private passenger autos, I think that would be a result most could live with. Higher mileage requirements would be a reasonable requirement, whether or not AGW is really an issue.
This is a serious turning point.
It will be interesting to see what sort of regulations EPA comes up with.
Tougher fuel economy requirements would be welcome of course.
Whatever other specific regulations will be put in place I can't even guess but I expect some of the regulars here will be better informed.
I'm one of the carbon tax crowd because I believe a tax, once passed, is less subject to lobbying and manipulation of the rules.In the last analysis I think a tax would also result in greater reductions of emissions and a faster transition to an economy geared toward lower energy consumption.
I don't doubt that cap and trade will result in some substantial reductions of emissions-down to a certain point- if well implemented.
There will be entire armies of bueracrats, lawyers, lobbyists, advertising men,editors,and talking heads constantly fighting for change or against change under cap and trade and the program will probably just stall like a car in deep snow after a while-unable to move at all or maybe only able to move a little but not enough to matter.
The real problem with the EPA and other regulatory agencies managing greenhouse gas regulations is that we are probably entering a period when politics are as volatile as the energy market and the economy.
If the White House and congress changes hands at the next election cycle, the EPA will get all new top administrators.Such rules as are made between now and then might be , probably will be, modified beyond recognition.
But I suppose the hand the democrats are holding right now is not strong enough to do any more than has just been done.Furthermore we should remember that the democrats talk a lot more about change than they act,being able thereby to harvest a lot of votes-witness the troops headed overseas and the bitter disillusionment of a lot of voters are with the difference between rhetoric and action.There are a lot of democrats in office that like to be seen as "green" and priogressive, and some of them actually are in fact-UNTIL actually doing something threatens to step on important toes in THIER districts and states.
Of course the republicans are no different in this respect but at the moment the democrats are in power.
The bottom line is that this is good news although it may not actually result in much change given the tendency of congress critters to defend thier do- er, excuse me, constituents.
One needs to place the Afghanistan decisions in context. As I see it, if Obama had rejected or significantly scaled back McChrystal's request for troops the Senate Climate Bill would have been either DOA or significantly weakened to arrive at the 60 votes needed for passage. So the compromise on Afghanistan was a political necessity to conservative Dems on board for the Climate Bill.
Furthermore Obama is being really smart in very thorough and inclusive reviews before making the Afghanistan commitment. We aren't seeing the usual second-guessing and leaks from factions within the US military that has accompanied previous announcements. This means that he's obtained a consensus view on the appropriate political and military course of action.
As for the Senate Climate Bill, it will be ugly in its final form. There will be some billion dollar subsidies on carbon-capture and renewed emphasis on nuclear power. But as everyone knows who read TOD, EROEI will win out in the end. I doubt that we will ever build a CCS coal plant beyond a multi-billion dollar demonstration project.
Jeff,
You make good points-which come right back to my points about cutting deals and protecting donors and coalitions.I'm not knocking OBama's decision to send more troops but merely pointing out the discrepancy between words and actions.
As I see ie we are so deeply involved that we cannot pull out of the ME quagmire now as a purely practical matter-I expect we would suffer an immediate collapse followed by a hot resource war that might go world wide or nuclear.My guess is that we can never pull out until the oil is gone, or until a renewables miracle occurs.We might pull out as the result of a collapse of our ability to supply and support our troops.
I didn't make myself clear on a key point-a law once pased by congress and signed if necessary by the president is much harder to repeal or subvert than regulations put into place by an agency such as the EPA.
A Palin type in the White House could throw a lot of monkey wrenches into regulatory rules that would bounce off of codified law .
If we once had a tax in place it would take an act of congress to revoke it.And It would go into effect when it is supposed to-not years later.
That gets into an issue that I wrote about over on Bit Tooth . Basically it says that Pakistan needs more natural gas, and it can get it from Iran or Turkmenistan. But to get it from the latter the pipeline has to go through Afghanistan. The U.S. would prefer that the sale not be from Iran, but how to protect a pipeline through Helmand is an issue that is worrying possible investors.
Pakistan and Iran are hardly on good terms, anyway. Iran for eg. has consistently supported India vis-a-vis Pakistan.
Infact for a long time there has been a "dream pipe" that connects Iran to India via Pakistan ... that is unlikely to ever materialize.
Interestingly if India finds more gas - they could possibly supply Pakistan.
Count me with Hansen and the two EPA lawyers: Cap and trade is the wrong solution in (alleged) promotion of the right goal. Its immense problems include the shenanigans in placing things under/outside the cap, offset fraud, and the yo-yo in permit prices with the economy which would benefit speculators but make investment in emission reductions far more difficult.
I had the privilege of listening to Jason Grumet, energy advisor to the Obama campaign, speak about climate and energy policy a few weeks ago. (I should repeat his statement that he in no way speaks for the administration.) It was very enlightening, and made me think in terms of "political reality". I'm a strong advocate of a carbon tax over a cap-and-trade system (seems to be the consensus), but he made it pretty clear that a carbon tax is impossible in the United States. He also said: "Our democracy is built for comfort, not speed."
I've heard that a lot - that carbon "fee" (not tax !) is not polictically possible. But I've also seen support for it on both left & right - about the same kind of support one sees for cap and trade.
Only thing I can see is that wall st is completely behind cap & trade. That is one more market to profit from.
Carbon tax will be too simple and transparent - making it unattractive to lobbyists and wall st.
You would think there would be enough popular anger at banksters and Wall Street to raise political capital by spiting them, but nooooo...
I tend to favor cap and trade over a carbon tax, but am not committed to either side. My view is that the value that a market provides in setting a dynamic (and thus "correct") price is worth more than the value of a stable price. At the end of the day, the volatile prices of indexes only reflect the marginal (or extreme) prices. I worry that legislators will set a price that is too low, and will never have the will to raise it (the same issue could apply to the size of the cap, but it is easier to address it through a formula of some sort).
I personally consider your "anger at banksters" argument to be a useless distraction that is based on emotional, rather than practical issues. If you could make an analytical or quantitative argument that shows that banks are actually substantive beneficiaries, it would be a strong start in convincing me. Without that, I have to treat this as hysteria, rather than analysis.
Trading fees on carbon credits will be tiny. I would guess that the entire industry at present offers profits far below what a big bank (say JP Morgan) makes in a quarter. While this will grow, it is still not that big. I recently worked in a large investment bank and can assure you that carbon trading is not on the list of top 20 things they are interested in. I do think it would be worthwhile for us to try to put some numbers together though.
At the end of the day, I think we need to go with whichever system is better for removing carbon from the environment. If the private sector can play a positive role in this, so what?
At the end of the day, analysis may well show that a tax is better than trading, but it would be a tragedy to taint discussion of such an important issue with arguments that are not based on facts.
I am addressing your comment specifically, because i have found you to be a reliable source of non-biased and rational points. But this seems like a deviation from that.
I am getting worried that this discussion is taking on ideological characteristics, rather than rational ones.
On further thought, I wanted to add that one of the key points that I am trying to make is that both a carbon and cap and trade are potentially excellent steps towards solving the immense problem of climate change. Both have strengths and weaknesses. I think it is essential that we discuss them on this basis. The devil is in the details, not behind one strategy or the other.
Once we get into a a fight amongst ourselves, with two factions of the "solve climate change" group, insulting each other and attacking solutions without grounds, we are really only benefiting those who want to do nothing.
Can we accept that the enemy are the active climate change deniers? They are the only ones who should be the targets of venom.
Cap and trade is indisputably one of the options that we should consider. Following analysis we may reject it. To my mind, the fact that some private sector players will benefit is an issue worth considering. But to say the whole thing is just a gift to Goldman Sachs is really a lie, and in that regard, not much different that the lies the deniers are spreading. Similarly calling cap and trade a "shell game" may have some basis in fact in so far as verification protocols do create a huge risk that offsets are worthless. But to pretend that it is "just" a shell game, or that there are no ways to mitigate this is just being negative and oppositional.
A carbon tax is also indisputably one of the options that we should consider. Again a clearheaded and analytical review may lead us to think this is the best solution. But it has problems too. Governments are not great at setting prices, they are likely to give breaks to politically connected entities, the tax is not going to produce the lowest cost solutions and to the degree that it gives funds to government to allocate to preferred solutions it opens it up to lobbying and corruption. I am sure that the Ethanol industry would be a primary beneficiary of a carbon tax.
I am asking commenters who support or oppose either scheme to provide an actual line of argument, rather than insults or slogans, and to the degree possible back these with facts and analysis. Finally, let's agree that proponents of both plans are part of the solution, not part of the problem - and stop shooting ourselves in the foot by providing deniers with ammunition.
Unfortunately, we have evidence from Europe that offsets, permits and everything else are gamed by the major players. The opposition of the Hansen et al. camp to cap-and-trade is based on experience.
This is all the more true when the price varies according to who is involved. A straight carbon tax on fossil fuel at the mine, well or port of entry doesn't have this problem; whatever is downstream pays the same.
A tax-and-dividend will cause political upset if the pols try to divert it from the public.
Actually, that's one of its selling points. A cap will leave zero incentive to improve anything which doesn't fall under the cap. A tax paid by everything which uses fossil fuel leaves no stone unturned.
This is much less of an issue if the tax is returned as a dividend. But even if government meddles, a tax only lets it meddle once; with a cap, favored players could receive exemptions or free permits as well as subsidies.
One of the reasons I want a carbon tax is because coal-fired ethanol plants are almost certain to be exempted from a cap, or receive free permits. A carbon tax will make radical changes in agriculture, probably replacing ethanol with biochar. Paying farmers to sequester carbon is far better than mining topsoil to make motor fuel.
After watching how non responsive our Canadian government is and our population is toward solving the GW crisis and the bickering that is going on I don't know how any meaningful agreement can be reached and implimented. My opinion is that Peak Oil will do our dirty work for us long before we ever do.
Right off topic but I've a funny story, (is to me)....
I bought a cheap Chinese dual sim phone for work so I only have to carry one cell with me.
It only cost $76 so what the heck, any way you should see the instructions, I'll type word for a word a short passage from the manual..............
"The indicator at the right- up will bicker circularly; the symbol of charging will occur to show charging just in execution under power off state. The symbol of charging will occur after a while if the phone is overspent when it is in serious lack".
Everything above is exactly as it appears in the manual, spelling and punctuation.
Well, is that disrespect, ignorance or disdain. The whole manual is similar and much worse in places.
Just wondering if our language is changing or something. I wonder if they would pay me if I translated into correct English?
Well your probably have about as good a chance of getting it correct as I do. Were you writing earlier about whaling in Wales or rather wailing about the whales? It is a tough language ?- )
That was the first mistake I've ever made.
in my case it is usually the first mistake this minute, I reread, edit post and then find errors about every time I read through what I wrote...just thought I'd play with the whales for a sec ?- )
Before, I wanted to think like you but in a scenario where oil is replaced by coal, global warming would still be catastrophic because stabilizing concentration of CO2 at 450ppm (if we want less than 3 degree increase) means we are only allowed to emit 250Gt of carbon which is far less than the remaining reserve of fossil fuel if you include coal and gaz.
I would aggree that if we do replace oil with coal it wouldn't help at all but replacing oil with coal wont work for most things and I think there will be a substantial amount of econimic distruction associated with the peaking of oil. Econimies in recession will likely inhibit the switching over of foscil fuel sorces from oil to coal and gas because the money would have dried up. Unfortunatly this would have the same efect on renewable development.
If governments do agree on some CO2 reduction targets that are assisted by the econimic destruction then we may get down to 350 ppm in time.
Fossil fuels with an EROI under some threshold (5:1?) are almost certain not to be produced. A carbon tax will push the point of breakeven further out and raise the minimum EROI, leaving more FF in the ground.
There is also the issue of sequestration. Those FFs (especially coal) which are mined are not a problem for the climate if the carbon is not released to the atmosphere. Creating a financial incentive to leave carbon in the ground (even if it is converted to CO2) will yield far more activity than is happening under today's government research grants.
For example, look at Linc Energy. The underground coal gasification process appears workable. Linc is currently emphasizing gas-to-liquids, but steam-reforming to hydrogen with injection of CO2 into deep saline aquifers is also possible and would yield energy with potentially zero emissions. Even if the hydrogen is fairly expensive, it might be economic as a replacement for natural gas in electric generation (esp. in compressed-air energy storage with wind power). A high enough carbon tax will tip the economics toward such solutions.
I also disagree with cap and trade. I think that, until we make the producers of these gases, from the source to the end users, especially those who are realizing the profits, pay directly for mitigation, I see little progress being made. Cap and trade is just another shell game.
Also:
Inundation/infringement of saltwater into fresh water aquifers and groundwater is already a big problem in areas (i.e. Southeastern U.S.), due to overpumping of these sources. Rising sea levels will only exacerbate this problem. A friend of ours had his well salt up several years ago, and he's 20 miles from the coast.
James Hansen (vehemently) opposes cap and trade as well. In addition to the NYtimes Oped yesterday, he had this piece Sack Goldman Sachs Cap-and-Trade.
To me personally, cap and auction or fee and tax make much more sense as they aren't regressive and may actually reduce consumption. Not to mention incorporating many more externalities other than greenhouse gases.... i.e. irrespective of the climate issue, current species extinction rates are 100 to 1000 times their prehuman levels with more than 10% birds and mammals threatened, about 8% of plants, 5% of fish and more than 20% of freshwater species (Millenium Ecosystem Assessment)
James Hansen (vehemently) opposes cap and trade as well.
It should be called Cap and Die.
That kind of comment puts you on an intellectual level with climate change deniers.
There are a lot of reasons to prefer a carbon tax over cap and trade (and the other way around), but to refer to one of the solutions this way is disgusting and counter productive.
To my mind this makes you an enemy of progress on the same level as Fox news.
And this comes from someone who is open to a carbon tax.
I agree, Cap and Trade is our best chance at this point in the juncture. Improvements can come with time, but the 60 vote hurdle in the Senate is now becoming a virtual impediment to any effective legislation.
I'd say the opposite. If we create a cap-and-trade system, with all its goodies for traders and granting of political favors, getting rid of it and replacing it with a straight GHG tax will be impossible due to the entrenched interests protecting their sinecures at the expense of everyone else.
I'd be for a carbon tax, but I'd like it to be high enough to get rid of income taxes. This would be fought by every conservative (and some moderates) as a "new" tax and those easily duped would fight it. When prices go through the roof on oil, there would be an immense push to 'get the government off the backs of the people' wrt oil prices, so it would be ditched anyway.
When prices go through the roof on oil tax can be gotten rid off. That would be fine. The whole idea anyway is to make carbon rich fuels more expensive by taxing.
Infact I think we should have a floor price for oil that raises yearly. When the market price of oil is below the floor, the difference becomes the tax.
I would suggest that if you want to see the downside of putting in very large energy taxes on fossil fuels, and using them to help run the government, watch Mexico in the next five years. (And an odd eye on the UK wouldn't hurt either).
Mexico's government relies upon revenues from State oil production, which is falling; quite a different story from taxing consumption. The UK's production is falling as well.
Mexico is also subsidizing petroleum consumption even as the nation's exports head toward negative values.
I disagree that a carbon tax should replace income taxes. Governments should have no reason to keep consumption and taxes up to fund its operations; such perverse incentives are the fast road to disaster. The whole point of carbon taxes is that the taxable base should head toward zero. Tax-and-dividend avoids that trap.
It seems somewhat ironic to me that various governments are talking about ways to try to reduce fossil fuel consumption, while they are at the same time desperately trying to increase our consumption, via various stimulus spending programs.
I couldn't agree more, westexas. I commented on the futility of addressing PO and CC without first dealing with the underlying problem of an economy that constantly grows in today's Drumbeat (based on Sharon Astyk's article: Jared Diamond Done Drunk the Kool-Aid).
We're treating the symptoms, not the disease.
It would be funny, if it weren't so tragic.
The problem is that no one (especially politicians) wants to be inconvenienced and do the hard work that actually makes a difference. Changing lightbulbs is great, but it's not going to make any serious dent in CC or PO.
Low tech magazine had an article about that a month ago. They argued that increasing the percentage of renewables does nothing at the rate power demand is increasing.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2009/11/renewable-energy-is-not-enough.html
I agree with your wish that fundamental changes be made...but...
I cannot concur with blanket statement that changing light bulbs won't make a dent, and by extension, that making numerous other non-sexy changes won't move the energy needle either.
Let us see here:
If every incandescent bulb was replaced by a fluorescent bulb of equivalent lumen capability, then the total electric lighting electricity demand would fall by 75% (60W IC bulb replaced by a 13 W CFL providing about the same lumens is an example of the scaling factor...)...this is insignificant?
If every car was replaced by a Prius or similar efficiency car, our gasoline consumption would fall by at least half, likely more.
If every roof of every structure in the U.S. which using refrigerated air or evaporation cooling were coated with a blinding white metal roof or elastomeric compound, the cooling electricity load would fall significantly.
If every 65%, 80% NG furnace were replaced with a 95% furnace, our alleged 100=-year NG supply would last much longer, all things being equal.
I could go on and on and on, but I think the thrust of my argument can be understood. All of these types of improvements will be derided as 'BAU-light' by many here, but if implemented, would dramatically drop our energy use.
One caveat: We all understand that this will be useless over longer terms if we do not achieve zero population growth.
Also, I anticipate the specter of Jevon's Paradox, and I don't buy it. If folks switch to a 95% efficiency NG furnace, they won't heat their house way warmer...switching to all-CFLs won't compel folks to run their lights 24 hours a day...driving 40 MPG+ cars won't compel folks to go cruising. And if J.P. is a factor? Then tax the gas, NG, and trons sufficiently to make the end-cost to the consumer with the new high-efficiency devices the same as it was with lower-cost (today's cost) energy while using today's efficiency devices...energy tax rates to compensate for increased efficiency will drive a stake through J.P.
It doesn't have to be a binary choice between BAU speeding humanity over a cliff or a voluntary conversion to Amish living. False dichotomy.
You don't concur with blanket statements, yet..........
"If every incandescent bulb"
"If every car was replaced by a Prius"
"If every roof of every structure in the U.S."
"If every 65%, 80% NG furnace were replaced with a 95% furnace"
Given mankind's refusal to acknowledge, control and reduce population overshoot, improving efficiency will result in more people consuming less. Yea, it does not have to be that way, but it will be that way because too many humans are dumber than yeast. Instinct trumps intellect on reproduction. Improving the efficiency of resource consumption lessens the negative feedback from constrained resources allowing population to increase further. For example, reducing gasoline consumption in the U.S. does not stop China from increasing theirs, but rather allows theirs to increase.
Lets see what comes out of Copenhagen first, although I'm not expecting much. I think they would need to make some serious emissions caps to put a dent in the Keeling curve but that will scuttle the world economy.
I agree. Therein lies our Scylla and Charybdis.
What chance of success has a conference with so many different countries and stakes attending? Doesn't history show us that these conferences yield next to nothing (yes, the Kyoto protocol is next to nothing)? I predict that the politicians will claim massive progress but that no real hard measures are being taken and that follow up conferences are needed so that the whole circus can keep on moving under BAU.
It has no use waiting for our political leaders to start attacking the problems of humanity topside down. It is much easier to achieve real change from the bottom up and build a momentum that catches other countries as well. Something like the German EEG which is in effect for almost 10 years now and has been (partially) copied to numerous other countries in the last years. Or the plans for carbon neutral cities etc.
Here is my "Severance Pay" analogy: Let's assume a man is laid off from his job, and he has to get by on $500,000 of severance pay and savings. He was spending $100,000 per year, so he decides to cut his spending at $10,000 per year, while he continues to hold out for a job that would support his old lifestyle. Over a three year period, his spending would be $90K + $80K + $70K, or $240K in total. His spending fell at 12%/year, from $1000,000 to $70,000, but--and this is the key point--he depleted his Severance Capital at 22%/year, as his capital went from $500,000 to $260,000.
In this analogy, the spending rate is analogous to the global net export decline rate, while the Severance Capital depletion rate is analogous to the Cumulative Net Oil Export (CNOE) depletion rate.
The Indonesia, UK and Egypt (IUKE) case history is a prime example of this phenomenon. Their combined production peak was 1996, and their initial (1996-1999) net export decline rate was only 3%/year, but their initial post-1996 CNOE depletion rate was 25%/year. At the end of 1999, their annual volume of net exports had only fallen by 9%, but their post-2005 CNOE were more than 50% depleted.
I estimate that the global post-2005 CNOE depletion rate is around 5% to 7% per year. At a 7%/year depletion rate, in just the past four years, 2006-2009 inclusive, oil importers worldwide will have burned through about 25% of post-2005 CNOE, or 25% of all the oil that will be (net) exported after 2005.
This is my key point. World oil importers are depleting our global Net Export Capital--our post-2005 CNOE--at a ferocious rate that is far higher than the slight decline in the volume of world net oil exports would suggest. In effect, we are consuming far beyond what we can maintain, even in the near term, over just the next few years, while world governments are generally doing everything they can to increase our consumption, via various stimulus spending programs. To the extent that we have stimulus spending programs, IMO they should be targeting electrified rail transportation programs.
I think your analogy points out the disease quite clearly, westexas, and shows very simply why our consumption is not sustainable. Thanks for sharing it again.
Amen, brother.
The thing that strikes me about the various proposals (international as well is US), is that nobody really understands where we are headed in terms of fuel supply and minerals supply, and they have a very poor grasp of the interrelationship between the different segments of the economy.
I think there is a real possibility of unintended consequences on almost any approach that is tried. If we spend a lot of resources (government support, additional debt, scarce metals, oil) on one potential "solution", it by definition means less is available for other solutions, and the additional debt has serious implications for later generations.
Most of the plans we see today are for ways to extend BAU with less CO2. It seems to me our focus needs to be where we should be headed next (relocalization etc) and how to train people to live in a very different world. But this takes a different focus than stimulus or cap and trade or even CO2 reduction.
MT
This is why I insist on reminding everybody about real conservatism -any govt that is big enough to run and fund two diametrically opposed programs silmantaneously is too big for the citizenry to keep a jaundiced eye on it.
When things go too far down a given path they become locked into dead ends -there is no way to back out.
If the banking industry had not been permitted to consolidate until thre was virtually no real competition left, and there had been no fannie and freddie to unload on, there would have been no real estate bubble-not if a loan officer knew he was going to be held responsible for his loans not for just the few months needed to get rid of them but for years and years to come.
Fannny and Freddie were creations of Washington, not loan officers. That fish rotted from the head.
Mac, I agree. Yet, we are a lazy species, too tired to police ourselves as a coherent group. Our self interest always blinds the faithful eye we keep on the government. I fear that ability perished when the first City Council convened.
Nate -
I myself am very dubious about this whole cap-and-trade scheme. It's a perfect vehicle for all sorts of big players gaming the system to make megabucks by extracting even more value out of the 'real' economy while not actually causing much physical change to take place.
Nor do I feel terribly inspired by having the EPA getting involved. I am painfully familiar with the whole process by which EPA promulgates regulations, going all the way back to the air and water pollution control initiatives of the early 1970s. It is bureaucracy and politics cubed.
By the time the lawyers get done lawyering, the consultants get done consulting, and the lobbyists get done lobbying, probably at least five years will have passed and the final result will be an incredibly complex stew of unnecessarily cumbersome requirements than will generate a lot of work for the same lawyers, consultants, and lobbyists while actually accomplishing relatively little in real physical terms. There will of course be loopholes big enough to drive a tar-sands mining truck through.
Further making this an exercise in futility is the international political component to the whole thing. I think it would be far more fruitful on many level to expend that time, effort, and aggravation on getting our energy house in order.
The problem with a carbon tax would be how much each country would charge for the tax. If the US charges $115 per ton this couldn't be paid by the Chinese, etc.
I'm surprised Hansen is playing economist after all the economists like Lomborg(business school types) decided to play climate scientists.
Lomborg has a masters and PhD in political science. He's neither a physical scientist nor an economist.
From your link,
Bjorn Lomborg is adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School.
http://www.lomborg.com/about/biography/
A lack of qualifications in a given field has never stopped anybody from publishing commentary and criticism of the field.
I would be willing to bet that not one person out of a hundred that condemns Lombirg's work has actually read any of it.
I have, although it has been a while.
There is quite a bit of food for thought in The Skeptical Environmentalist.
It never hurts and often helps to look at problems from a different point of view.
Unfortunately Lomborg is roundly condemned whereas he should be read for his insights.
I am confused as to how this is a problem. If the US charges $115 per ton, then doesn't this put the US in a better long term position as it can keep a stable fossil fuel price over a longer time while china experiences significant volatility in the market? The US reinvents itself around a higher cost of fossil fuels while there's still capital to spend (questionable, but theoretically possible) while china sets itself up for an even bigger crash because they're so comparatively inefficient.
Furthermore, a tax in the US that is appropriate (i.e. revenue neutral) gets paid back to the citizens in the form of reduced income taxes. In other words, if you use less than average, you pay less in overall taxes than you do now. If you use more than average, you pay more in overall taxes than you do now. A fairly minor push in the direction of using less than average goes a long way, and allows the society to adapt via capitalism instead of regulations dictated from above. This seems all around a far preferable situation, regardless of what anyone else does.
How do you determine the price of carbon? By government decree?
Too high would bankrupt too many, too low and the results would be too small.
Carbon taxes from the 1990s in Finland failed to reduce carbon consumption.
Revenue would be funneled thru the government which would ideally send money to industry to 'clean up' but suppose the industry is oil and we're running out of oil wouldn't there be a misallocation, maybe the money should go to electric cars instead, etc. Poor countries(and poor people) are disproportionately dependent on cheap fossil fuels. The tax would disproportionally favor rich people who can afford carbon neutrality and hurt those who can't afford it.
With cap and trade, CO2 polluters get a permit and if they choose to make improvements they can sell a portion of that permit in the market
offsetting the cost.
Overtime the number of the permits will fall, encouraging conservation by the permit holders.
A tax would raise a lot of money but taxpayers would hate it, politicians would try to spend it on the wrong things and old industries would waste it on fixing up their old processes.
The biggest CO2 polluters are monopolistic electric utilities and giant oil companies so they would be ideally the beneficiaries of a government carbon tax reinvestment and would bet even bigger. Some of these companies, like Exxon, favor a carbon tax which would send them government money.
Cap and trade would leave credit pricing to the market which is largely electric utilities and oil companies. I imagine their main objective will be to figure out ways to keep ahead of shrinking caps and NOT have to buy
increasingly expensive credits. It would be rather hard on fossil fuel companies as there would be an incentive not to buy their fuels.
Yes, that is the tricky part, for any country. However, I don't see a reason why it needs to be the same for each country, as nominally the proceeds are redistributed to the populace evenly, meaning that the country isn't removing money from the economy as a whole -- only the part of the economy that is using too many fossil fuels.
So then they weren't set high enough, as you said.
Assuming that any eventual tax is done by the government instead of by the EPA, I don't see why this needs to be the case. The money should be redistributed to the people so that low-energy citizens are positively affected while high-energy citizens are negatively affected. Poor countries that are disproportionately dependent on cheap fossil fuels will be in trouble, but I'm not talking about taxing the *makeup* of their energy use, I'm talking about their total fossil fuel use. I would be *amazed* if those poor countries that are dependent on cheap fossil fuels actually use even close to the amount that is use per capita in the US. Similarly, I don't agree that this would favor rich people who can afford carbon neutrality, because they probably can't! I don't know about where you live, but where I am the poor people without much money are the ones taking the bus, walking to work, and *not* flying willy-nilly across the country. Those people should end up *better off* under this system because the rich folks who pay a premium for the luxury of flying around, driving everywhere, etc are paying the poor people for that use.
Compare this to cap and trade, where the poor people get fewer credits than the rich people! Now *that's* unfair. A rich person can easily afford to drop their consumption of oil by 10%. Good luck telling me to do the same thing -- I walk to work, walk to the grocery, hardly ever fly, etc. For me, cutting my oil use by 10% is a much larger hardship than for someone who simply needs to telecommute 10 times instead of flying across the country.
Cap and Trade is a disaster waiting to happen. The only fair way to do this is a tax/fee/tarriff on non-renewable energy use made revenue neutral. Note that this most likely helps small businesses as well, as they'll be more able to compete being local companies than big corporations with lots of transportation and infrastructure costs.
I agree with this point. In fact if this were the case, I would be inclined to shift my bias from slightly in favor of cap and trade to slightly in favor of a tax. However, I but don't believe that anyone in a position of authority has even suggested it or that there is any chance that the funds would be used this way. In all likelihood, the would go into a general fund to support all government activities with a portion set aside for government selected clean energy projects, which to date have included large doses of ethanol, clean coal and carbon sequestration.
I'm not at all sure where you came up with this. Do you think that individuals will all have to measure their current carbon footprint and reduce that by a certain portion? At the level of the individual the two schemes would be identical. Energy prices would increase, encouraging then to reduce consumption. Yes, returning tax revenues to individuals would balance this out, but a revenue neutral tax plan will never get passed.
This is a silly point to make unless you back it up with an argument that says why. As far as I can tell the only way that Cap and Trade can go that far wrong is if offsets are improperly defined, which I would agree is a real possibility.
At the end of the day, the two schemes are not night and day. The only way you can say one is great and the other is terrible is to assume a perfect tax and compare that to a realistic cap and trade program (or other way around). In either case the ideal version is better than a version of the other scheme that would be implementable.
Neither one is inherently stronger or weaker. That all depends on what level a government sets the cap or tax and at what rate it shrinks or grows. At a theoretical level returns from a cap and trade system go to the lowest cost solution for reducing carbon emissions, which would spur innovation and favor poor countries. It also provides a dynamic market set price for carbon that should gradually increase as the cap shrinks (or decrease if we come up with a magic technology). At the same level, a tax could return funds to citizens or go to supporting carbon reduction activities. In reality for cap and trade, the protocol for determining offsets is immensely complicated and governments can set the cap too high and degree of reduction too low. In reality for a tax, the government can also go wrong on the level and growth of the tax, the funds can be misused, and it doesn't provide the same incentive for new technologies.
As I have said earlier, these are both good approaches that have strengths and weaknesses. I could easily support a well designed tax or cap and trade program. However, in reading this thread i have become dismayed that the arguments against cap and trade appear ideological and hysterical. There are lots of comments that it "would be a disaster", it's a "shell game", or "a hand out to banks". I haven't yet heard a cogent and ration argument being laid out, although even I could easily make one.
I don't think we are going to make any progress in reducing carbon emissions if we spend time insulting and denigrating our natural allies (both cap and trade and tax advocates are pushing solutions, neither of which is inherently stricter or easier). It should be perfectly obvious that a well designed program in either case is the right step to solving the problem, but in the course of implementation, flaws will emerge.
So let's stop pretending one is good and the other bad and look at how at a realistic level they differ. I assure you each has advantages and disadvantages. It may well be that one is better than the other, but we have to convince voters and governments around the world of this. We are not going to do that by falling into a delusional Manichean screaming match.
You're right, and I suspect most people agree with you. The fact that we're at this stage arguing about details is, from my point of view, a very good thing, and I don't take such arguments personally. I will support anything that I feel will be net positive on society, regardless of if I think it's perfect... I've been an engineer long enough to not sacrifice good for perfect.
My primary complaint with cap and trade is the complexity of credit allocation, and that it seems intrinsically less fair to initially allocate the credits based on current output. My reason for this is that if an industry accomplishes a given task using no carbon, they get nothing out of that fact while another company which used to use lots of carbon can get huge bonuses for finally doing the right thing. However, my concern there may be based on an incomplete or inaccurate understanding of the carbon credit system. I suspect that this confusion is shared by a large number of people, not least of which is the Senate and House. If I don't understand it, it's very likely that the only people who do are the ones that are actually sitting in the negotiating rooms, plus a very small number of citizens who are profoundly well-informed.
My primary reason for thinking a tax will be simpler is that the government is very experienced with taxing specific goods, and so I think that the organizational difficulties in such a system are significantly reduced. Further, so long as it was revenue neutral, individual taxpayers can actually see the direct benefits of reducing carbon emissions instead of the benefits coming secondhand (if at all). However, I also agree that I think it is unlikely given the current legislature, with it's attitude of "once it's in my hands, I'm never giving it back" approach to taxes (enunciated quite nicely by the recent "returned TARP funds" being quickly reallocated to other projects instead of simply being DROPPED from the expenditures/borrowing of the government), I suspect that it won't work in such a fair and reasonable way. It would be great if the government's primary goal was to help people, but that doesn't seem to be the case.
You also got me thinking about the benefits of a revenue neutral carbon tax. I guess my position now is that I would be so happy about the prospects for a either a perfect tax or a perfect cap and trade system that I wouldn't mind flipping a coin to choose between them.
However, as you note, we won't get perfection. With the tax, I am afraid that the funds will be misspent and that a later administration could revoke it. For cap and trade, I am worried that the offset mechanism at a global level is far too complicated for the whole thing to work. In both cases, setting levels and adjustment are also problematic. In both cases, the new costs will be associated with the Obama Administration and so need to have as much popular support as possible. I would hate to see this be a club that he is hit with in the next election.
Perhaps a tax that returns a portion of the revenues to individuals would be practical, achieve the best possible results and be popular enough to get implemented and not hang over the Democrats.
In any case, I do think this is an interesting and complex issue. I do hope we can all discuss it rationally as I think it will bring about the best, and most broadly excepted outcome. I echo your comment:
Being the guy that often has to implement those engineers plans as quickly as possible, sacrificing perfect for good is seldom an issue. The trick is learning what 'good enough' is. The work must go on, the schedule is unrelenting, but you have to truly know what 'good enough' is or the product will be crap.
By the way, ol' Ms Red Jacket was already in Iowa hitting Obama with the carbon club. Well at least it keeps her out AK, missed she isn't.
I believe the truth is the opposite. The collision of economic cycles with an inflexible cap will produce the same kind of price swings we are seeing with oil. Investing in such a volatile environment is problematic. A carbon tax has the virtue of being predictable.
Tax-and-dividend allows no misuse of funds, and it provides across-the-board incentives for anything which reduces FF consumption because it reduces costs. You wouldn't normally think of a 200-watt circulating pump in a heating system as being a target for CO2 reduction, and under any kind of incentive program it would almost never get attention; it is too small to be worth filling out the paperwork. But if that pump runs 24/7 and a carbon tax has bumped up the price of coal-fired power by 3¢/kWh, replacing that pump with a 100-watt model is an instant savings of $26/year in carbon alone. Under a cap system, there is zero incentive to make this change if the pump's power source is uncapped.
The "inventives" of government go to the politically favored. Under tax-and-dividend, anyone who cuts their emissions gets to keep more of their dividend. That is simultaneously more fair and more productive.
I seems to me that cap and trade does more to encourage producers of gases to pay for mitigation them than a simple tax does.
A tax gives the producer a choice of cutting emissions, going out of business, or passing the costs onto consumers.
Cap and trade gives them the additional option of paying someone else to cut the same amount of emissions if they are able to do it for less.
In theory, cap and trade is a beautiful mechanism for finding those sources of carbon that can be reduced at the lowest cost and focusing on them first. In this regard, for a given cost to the economy, much more carbon can be taken out of the system.
About ten years ago, I visited the California Air Resources Board, who organized an early market for emissions. There are cases in which a power plant has already make huge investments in pollution control to the point that incremental reductions are extremely expensive. At the same time a smaller business, I recall visiting a car paint shop, is putting out the same pollutant, but can't afford to reduce the emissions. In this case, the power plan paid to build a tent and ventilation system that would prevent the paint shop's emissions. In this case, the same unit of pollution is removed, but the cost is lower.
Of course theory is not reality. At a global level verifying credits may be so complicated that it derails the whole system.
I slightly favor cap and trade over a tax because I think it enables us to invest more efficiently in reductions and provides a dynamic carbon price. However, I am receptive to countervailing arguments, if they have an actual point and are fact-based.
However, the arguments against cap and trade are starting to sound like the arguments against AGW. They are ideological rather than ration and little effort is made to justify them on an analytical basis. Just repeating the cap and trade is a shell game, without explaining what you mean, or using the canard of "bankster profits" may help whip up a ideological fervor, but it is not helping us solve the problem.
So, would you like to tell me why cap and trade is a shell game? Or do you just want to stick to sloganeering?
The problem with offsets is the incentives to game the system. We've already seen that in Europe.
Hansen gives an excellent argument against offsets. Suppose that a forest's carbon uptake is sold as an "offset". A forester is paid to let trees grow, which is what they were going to do anyway; money is paid for no change in atmospheric carbon. Meanwhile, there has been no reduction in the demand for lumber and paper products, so trees are cut and carbon emitted elsewhere.
What happens when the forester decides the trees are mature? Does she get to keep all the offset payments when the standing wood becomes decaying paper, rotting bark mulch and burning slash heaps? Do we need some massive tracking scheme to claw back all that money if the use changes? What happens if there's a forest fire? Who pays for all this accounting overhead? Will it pay companies more to lobby for exemptions or free permits than to actually reduce emissions?
Accountants and lobbyists are deadweight losses on our economy. We cannot afford any full-employment programs for them.
Awesome, thanks for doing the legwork on this, Dave.
Yes, good to see an article about The Most Important Issue of Our Time, instead of the constant stream of articles about a possible oil peak, which is less and less interesting after the realization that the transition away from oil will be made much easier by using the world's 30 year supply of CNG and LPG.
Gail:
As you may remember from that meeting that we both attended in Washington, Congressman Waxman is a strong believer in Cap and Trade, having seen it work before. Thus I would suspect, if the legislature ever does get through both Houses, that that is what we are going to get.
Some of the other implications of the ruling have yet to emerge. I noted a bit of caution in one or two of the stories that seemed to imply that an EPA decision to limit application to just those that generate more than say 25,000 tons of CO2 a year may not be possible, by nature of the ruling - but I suspect that we are in unknown territory here. At the extreme end of the scale one might wonder if one is still going to be allowed to make and sell carbonated drinks (yay for flat beer - I don't think); there are lots of unanswered questions.
The problems that we have had in the past have centered more about what was considered a waste product, and we bumped into things such as "when it says "none" that means at the limit of detection there is none." Guess it will keep a lot of lawyers and lobbbyists in employment.
Personally I won't mind at all if corporate megabrewing goes the way of the dodo bird, along with corporate wonder what this is bread.
Brewing and baking are excellent places to get moving on localization.
If I were God I would institute a double reverse flip advertising tax- only companies and products having tiny market shares in consumer products such as beer would be allowed to advertise.If mega brand wants to advertise under my scheme, there would be a very steep progressive advertising tax -keyed to market share-right on up to a level that would mean that the only Bud ad you would see would be about a column inch in the classifieds in the back of Popular Mechanics.
I am utterly convinced that if the Founding Fathers could have concieved of todays mass media and saturated advertising they would have outlawed the advertising as a threat to the freedom and prosperity of the individual and the body politic.
This would not cause anybody to run short of beer or bread or toothpaste but it would save a lot of paper and help lots of bright creative types employed in offices in New York and Chicago get out in the sunshine and earn a few calluses making an honest living. ;)
I was just thinking this morning that cars and soda pop, being as bad for public health as cigarettes, should be banned from public advertising just like cigarettes. But I could go for a progressive advertising tax as you suggested above. Would probably work just as well.
Your faith in founding fathers is endearing but let us not forget that they couldn't even ban slavery.
But for a historical accident of deism being the in thing those days, I don't think we would have gotten chruch-state separation either.
ev,
You have a point about the church and state seperation.
But I think I am right abut the advertising -the founding fathers were not necessarily interested in what is right but more so in setting up a system whereby govt would be just powerful enough to carry out the absolutely necessary functions of that day, namely defense, customs, post office, diplomacy, etc.
That bunch of guys were mostly pretty well to do and were very interested in creating a system that would protect them from outsiders but not be a threat in and of itself-they were afraid of concentrated power, realizing that a strong American govt could just as easily destroy them as a strong king.
Luckily the system they created has worked fairly well for the general public except during the trust era and recently during the banksters era.
If they had been able to understand mass media and the power of advertising I think they would have arranged things so advertising could not be a powerful a force.Such forces after all could be turned against them at some future time.
Slaves at that time were not regarded as being "real" human beings but quite literally property..The whole deal was about protecting the status quo of the ruling class of that day first and then arranging a country where everybody else would be at least prosperous enough to look after themselves so the rich could enjoy thier riches in peace.
Some of the founders were troubled by slavery and might have wanted to do something about it if it had been feasible at that time, but the time was not yet.If slavery had not been condoned , there would have been no constitution.
The trick to getting a far reaching law like the social security laws or the Clean Water Act or the Endangered Species Act is to pass them in such a fashion that they are of little consequence at the moment in time when they are passed.The people who will be most affected are not likely to put up a big fight over things that don't matter for another twenty years or so.
Inserting such restrictions on advertising into the constitution as I suggested would have been very easy as there would have been no significant constituency fighting for it at that time.
I have a fairly high opinion of the founding fathers as politicians go , but I don't think of them as saints by any means.
evnow
well accidents that work out are what allow species to survive, this historical accident may well be a major contributing factor that has allowed this form of government to survive.
OFM,
interesting advertising policy, running a micro are you ?- )
still you have a good point.
By and large dealing with something like advertising in the constitution would have been way too specific. It is the most general of frameworks, that impresses itself on me every time I reread it. Heck those boys could hardly envision a letter making it from one end of the colonies to the other in a week, the speed of transport and communication is something they could not foresee. Some of the biggest checks they thought they were putting on central govt. disappeared as trans/comm picked up steam. Hamilton might have liked the effect, though.
Yes, Congressman Waxman will likely try to cap bean production unless traded for shares in Beano.
People will be compelled to carry large inflatable bags with them to prevent accidental breaking of wind into the air.
The future looks interesting indeed.
Thanks for the summary HO,
The EPA ruling is fascinating but, IMHO, will have absolutely no impact on global greenhouse gas emissions.
<rant>
The Copenhagen Climate Summit has bureaucrats jetting around the world and is front page news. The EPA announces that greenhouse gases are endangering the public which has Goldman Sachs and other traders rubbing their hands in anticipation. Americans and Europeans are in a lather of concern.
But what are the prospects for a global reduction in GHG emissions? Stories like China, India LNG Imports May Rise Sevenfold lead me to believe that the chances are slim. Reviewing energy consumption trends in the Energy Export Databrowser has me completely convinced that the only thing that will reduce the consumption of fossil fuels is a shortage of those fuels.
Having spent 12 years working with ocean modelers in NOAA's Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory, I have long been aware of the scenarios being portrayed and have observed how even those who are well aware of the problem and who have made careers studying the issue have not found it compelling enough to significantly alter their own lifestyle choices. If even these guys are unwilling to reduce their consumption of fossil fuels, I certainly can't expect impoverished folks in the developing world to give up on their chance at a better life.
I find the whole Global Climate Change alarmism fascinating in a fin-de-siecle sort of way. Everybody knows we are damaging the ecosystem and that this has impacts on human health -- Duh! What was your first clue? Dickens wrote "Bleak House" in 1853 and "Hard Times" in 1854 -- and many are positioning themselves to profit from the now mainstream concern. But it's not clear to me that top down efforts will have any significant impact. The Ozone/CFC issue was only an international success because the same companies that made the ozone depleting pollutants were the ones who stood to profit from their replacement with newer refrigerants.
I submit that our citizens will really only be motivated by pocketbook concerns and would be better served by realistic information about the future availability of oil, gas and coal. The average educated, middle class family didn't give up their plane trip to Hawaii two years ago when they thought they were rich even though they knew about global warming. But not that they feel poor they're staying home. If folks really thought that gasoline or heating oil were going to become very expensive they would take the kinds of actions from that bottom up that government is trying to impose from the top down.
You only have to look to Europe to see how taxing consumption changes behavior.
Too bad there isn't political will to do this in the US or Canada.
</rant>
-- Jon
I agree that people respond to their pocketbook, and if they really knew the future expense of gasoline or other energy sources, they'd be making different choices. I am all for taxing consumption of fossil fuels and using the money to help people reduce consumption through weatherstripping/ insulation/solar hot water/public transit--the list is long.
My neighbors recently purchased a Mini Cooper. I noticed the new car and in a friendly way asked the gas mileage. He said they get 32.5 on the freeway. (Surprisingly low, in my opinion, for such a small car, but I held my tongue.) My neighbor added sheepishly, "We probably could've got something with better mileage but you have to have a little fun." I smiled wanly and said that at least it was small and easy to park. But I did have to wonder, if my neighbor had expected gasoline prices to double over the next five years, would he have bought this car? Sadly, it was too late to show him Hubbert's curve or I might have been tempted to do so. At least he hadn't bought a Hummer.
(Just as an aside, Bleak House, possibly my all-time favorite book, isn't a criticism of industrialism and its ecological impacts but rather of the tortuous and perverse British legal system at the time. Hard Times, as noted, is Dickens' swipe at capitalism, industrialization and strict educational utilitarianism.)
The best solution may be to buy a car with fold-down rear seats, and a bicycle. That way, if things go really wrong, you can live in the car and ride the bicycle wherever you need to go.
In which case a H2 wouldn't seem like a bad idea...
I think you began on the right path by stating "tax consumption of fossil fuels" but then lost it by thinking taxing the consumption meant taxing the fuel.
We MUST tax the consumption. Tax personal transport, get 'em off the road. Tax (possibly on a sliding scale) everything which consumes fossil fuels, from air conditioners, computers, space heaters, cruise ships, toasters and theme parks.
We need fossil fuels for essential services. By taxing the machines which use the fossil fuels we open a raft of possibilities to begin to conserve. The worth of a a devise over recent times seems to be determined by how much power output it has, from the 2200W Vacuum cleaner to the 2400W iron, kettle and toaster. We must reverse that trend immediately.
Now getting off the idealistic rhetoric, I'll turn to what in fact WILL occur.
There will be rhetoric at Copenhagen because they all think they other player doesn't see the cards they are holding.
With human nature being the common denominator I see a similarity with the North American passenger pigeon, wales and energy.
When it was discovered that those resources (passenger pigeons and wales) were declining, did we conserve? No absolutely not, it sent us into a frenzy to get 'em all before they were all all gone or somebody else got them.
The dodo, cod, swordfish, Atlantic salmon, North American buffalo and many other species too numerous to mention have been hunted to death for food and sport. If something becomes scarce it just increases it's worth and provides the justification to use it.
I tell you, if the word got out that we were "running out" of oil, conservation would be in the hands of the owner only. That will last for as long as they can defend it. We're gonna burn it all until there is nothing worthwhile left to burn. That's the conundrum of human nature.
How do you tell the difference between a quartz heater powered by coal, and the quartz heater powered by wind, hydro or nuclear?
If it gets to the stage where BAU is run with the latter I guess it will be a problem.
The base Mini Cooper has the highest mileage of any car sold in the U.
S. that isn't either a diesel or an hybrid according to the EPA.
Rant on, Jon! An excellent description of the hypocrisy that I witness all the time in the research community. The "holier than thou" climate advocates seem to think that the damage of their above-average GHG emission is offset by all the good they do in the world. It reminds me of study I read recently, where it was found that preachers tend to molest children at a higher than average rate because they feel that their bad actions are offset by all good they are doing in the world by preaching morals. Truly disgusting.
"Be the change you wish to see in the world." -Ghandi
I hardly think that climate scientists and pedophile priests are comparable in any manner. This is an off-the-cuff cheap shot. I am a 'climate advocate' and live in a passive solar house powered by solar PV, etc, etc. Offhand generalizations like yours are predominantly groundless and ill-informed.
I couldn't have said it better...
Excuse me, sir, but I did not generalize. If you practice what you preach, then more power to you. I find hypocrisy disgusting. I suppose the allusion to pedophilia is a bit harsh; actually, I think the study I referred to concerned all sorts of moral transgressions (extramarital affairs and so on). The point is that throwing massive concerts and flying around the world, telling poor people that they have to watch their carbon footprints is the worst kind of hypocrisy and just downright absurd. The claims by the organizers of the Copenhagen conference that they are "offsetting" the carbon footprint of their extravaganza only highlights how morally bankrupt those people truly are.
There was a news article about how all the paper used at Copenhagen for there 2000 page reports would be from renwable sources and the ink made from biodegradable compounds.
I slept much better after reading that.
Sorry, I don't see much in your claims besides vague generalizations and puffery, so I continue to disagree with you. Those who continue to consume large amounts of fossil fuels, decimating the future of their children and grandchildren, are IMO the morally bankrupt. YMMV.
If you were equally upset, and realistically, more so, at the people trying to stop any climate mitigation, you might have some traction. Given they have lied, paid people off, and mounted a concerted campaign based on fakery and lies, why don't you mention it?
In fact, if the unvarnished truth about climate change were allowed to be told without all the lies and BS that Exxon, et al., have paid for, I daresay we'd not be having ANY meeting now because it would have been done with years ago.
Have you the intestinal fortitude to prove yourself not a hypocrite?
Hints:
Oreskes - American Denial of GW
UCS - Smoke and Mirrors
Cheers or Jeers?
jonathan.s.callahan mumbled:
I find it interesting how the deniers and sceptics are subtly shifting their stances on the AGW issue. Quite a few have posted on this page, implicitly agreeing with the need for action on climate change and the effects humans are having. Is it the media coverage that COP15 is getting? Some people are so fickle.
My guess is that greenhouse gases are pretty much a red herring. An increasing shortage of oil at reasonable prices will crimp the economy to such an extent that we will have a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade without any specific regulations. An additional layer of regulations will only add to this effect.
The only problem will be coal. But I think oil shortages might make mining and transport of coal so expensive that consumption of it will decrease also.
There are reports of huge natural gas reserves, but the detailed parts of these I've seen personally tend to show that the reserves figures widely quoted are, at best, P50 reserves. That is, there is a 50% probability they are smaller. Often, the quoted reserves are P10: a 90% probability they are smaller. Arthur Berman is right.
The projected large increases of LNG consumption in China and India are therefore not very likely to happen. When these countries import LNG in the future, the gas is likely to be largely used to replace coal, which will give some greenhouse gas reduction.
So in essence EPA regulations will serve mainly to generate employment opportunities for bureaucrats, lawyers, and accountants.
There are reports of huge natural gas reserves...
If you want to become fabulously wealthy, figure out a workable way to extract the methane from the geopressured brine reservoirs underlying much of Texas and Louisiana. If you are -- just for an example -- willing to pipe the waste brine 100 miles out into the Gulf and dump it, there are enormous P90 methane reserves. The people looking for oil and dry gas know exactly where the brine reservoirs are, they've spent decades trying to avoid them.
Of course, if you dump it in the Gulf, within a few years you'll have killed off most of the sea life. Lots of nasty stuff dissolved in there along with the methane. There are at least a few dozen patents on file for methods to extract the methane and dispose of the brine. None of them have worked out in practice on large scales.
"My guess is that greenhouse gases are pretty much a red herring. An increasing shortage of oil at reasonable prices will crimp the economy to such an extent that we will have a major reduction in greenhouse gas emissions over the next decade without any specific regulations. An additional layer of regulations will only add to this effect."
Any reduction in emissions that come about from resource constraints being met will be used by politicians as an affirmation that mitigation attempts imposed by their policies were successful. Peak oil is so far under the radar still that if they play their cards right they get to stay in power and look good at the same time.
Rather than repeat myself:
http://aleklett.wordpress.com/2009/12/07/%E2%80%9Dthe-un%E2%80%99s-futur...
The problem with climate change in the U.S. is that it is no longer viewed as a scientific issue with cold hard facts. It has become a political issue of opinion based largely on your political views. When Al Gore first talked about global warming, it rose awareness and most people believed it as a scientific fact.
However, when conservative voices started casting doubt that it was real, Gore's involvement became a huge negative. Instead of it just being science, it was a liberal political position that you wouldn't subscribe to of you are a good conservative. So now half the public does not believe in global warming, or at least that it is caused largely by man.
That being the case, the EPA ruling isn't going to change anyone's mind. Conservatives will just view it as a political opinion pushed by the current Democratic administration, and any new rules and regulations passed to fight climate change will likely be overturned the next time the Republicans are in power. In fact, the mere actions to fight global warming make it much more likely the Republicans will come to power. Once people have to suffer some cost or inconvenience by these measures, which they inevitable would have to for them to be effective, they are going to vote for someone that says we should do away with them.
So, in short, I'm not optimistic. It would be a very difficult battle to fight global warming even if everyone agreed on the need to do so. With half the public opposed, I have a hard time seeing it going anywhere until such time that climate change is impacting us severely, at which point it will be too late.
If a future US administration abolishes carbon emission mitigation measures unilaterally, US exports will face tariffs and taxes on landing at foreign ports. There will be no way to go it alone on this issue.
You really need to watch The American Denial of Global Warming talk by historian Naomi Oreskes.
A tax would be better than cap and trade because there is less potential for abuse with a tax. However, it would be good if there was a way for carbon sequestration to be incorporated and properly rewarded. However, the only carbon sequestration methods I can think of that are proven and will hold onto carbon for a significant geological time period are biochar and carbonate weathering of rocks. Making biochar yields energy (although not nearly as much as conventional combustion) and sequesters carbon as long as you bury the biochar. You also get some liquid fuels from the process.
Although biochar is by no means a BAU substitute, it is a carbon-negative energy source (albeit one that will only ever be useful for low-grade heat in small quantities and producing very small quantities of liquid fuel).
I would like to see a post on TOD about biochar (Lovelock supports biochar, which lends it credibility) and rocks which absorb CO2 as they weather.
For many of the politicians designing the system, the offsets that can be abused are a feature, not a bug. Higher energy prices as a result of cap-and-trade (or an international carbon tax) will fall more heavily on poor countries. The politicians want some mechanism for transferring money collected in the rich countries to the poor countries to help mitigate higher energy prices. The rich-country politicians believe (I think rightly) that voters will not tolerate direct transfers. That is, any plan that says the US will collect 500 billion dollars from the sale of permits and send a hundred billion of it to poor countries is DOA. Payments for permits that poor countries create by planting trees (or not cutting trees down) provide the politicians with a transfer mechanism that may be more palatable to voters.
The same approach is taken even by carbon tax proponents thinking just inside the US. Most such proposals include something like an offsetting payroll-tax reduction.
A little environmental math:
On September 15, 2009, EPA and the Department of Transportation’s National Highway Safety Administration (NHTSA) proposed a National Program that would dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions and improve fuel economy for new cars and trucks sold in the United States.
Will that matter?
According to Wikipedia the surface area of the earth is 510 million square kilometers. Given 39,370,000 inches in kilometer that amounts to about 800,000,000,000,000,000 (8e17)square inches. With the weignt of the atmosphere at 14.7 pounds per square inch, that yields an atmosphere weighing 1,160,000,000,000,000,000,000 (1.16e19) pounds or about 5260770975000000 (5.26e15) metric tonnes.
According to the EPA administrator:
“Together, these proposed standards would cut carbon dioxide emissions by an estimated 950 million metric tons and 1.8 billion barrels of oil over the lifetime of the vehicles sold under the program (model years 2012-2016).”
950 million metric tons is a pretty small fraction of the atmosphere, about 5.56 parts per million. The U.S. Energy Information Agency currently estimates that worldwide emissions of CO2 will be 31 billion metric tonnes in 2010 and 41 billion metric tonnes by 2030, for a total of 179 billion metric tonnes during that period (which is a fair approximation of the average lifetime of those vehicles). In 2006 the U.S. alone spewed 5.75 billion tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. The worldwide total in that year was 28.4 billion metric tonnes.
So the EPA proposal, over the estimated 15 year life of the affected vehicles would reduce the amount of new CO2 introduced into the atmosphere by about half of one percent of the expected amount of new emissions (950/179,000).
To quote Dante:” abandon hope all ye………….”
Do us all a favor: stop playing climatologist unless you are one.
The scientists who know what they're talking about have advocated cutting emissions. Your argument, which tries to make everything we do look futile, is a well-worn ploy of climate change deniers.
Exactly. Any one measure could be a small in scope, but when combined with several dozen, make a substantive contribution.
Maybe you missed the fact that this is not "any one measure" but touted as some great accomplishment in the fight against AGW. I just demonstrated that its a mere drop in the bucket by the country responsible for the largest contribution to green house gas emissions.
It didn't take an amateur "climatologist" to smell puffery and its not petty to show it up.
It is but one of many measures in one of many nations. The raising of fuel economy standards to 35 mpg by 2016 will certainly contribute an order of magnitude more in emissions savings. Cap and Trade legislation will save even more. A global treaty will mean that virtually all emitting nations will cutting back their emissions.
So it doesn't make sense to look at one measure in one country and complain about how that measure alone isn't sufficient.
If your house catches fire, and it isn't likely that the fire brigade will arrive soon, and all you have is a garden hose, do you say "well it probably won't make a big enough difference, so i won't even attempt to do anything."? I think that most people would atleast make an effort, and that effort may result in a few rooms of the house only suffering smoke damage rather than complete annihilation.
We are in the same situation with climate change -- we have a few garden hoses around, i just hope we can get them coordinated in time.
My point is only that they need to do a hell of a lot more if they are serious. But actually I don't think they are.
That's why they call people like me "doomers".
In the Star Trek movie, "Wrath of Kahn", Captain James T. Kirk defeats poor Ricardo Mandelbaum because the villain can't "think three dimensionally".
IR rays depart from the planet as a surface area phenomenon.
Think two dimensionally.
Arrgh. Foiled again.
____________________________________
Edited add on: I should have explained more: And therefore you need to treat the CO2 content as if it were a thin film optical layer in the atmosphere. The mass and 3D dispersal of CO2 in the atmosphere is irrelevant. IR rays travel in a straight line out toward space and sooner or later a given percentage of those IR rays are going to strike a CO2 molecule and be absorbed by it.
So if it is a thin film, the thickness or thinness of the film and the density of the CO2 in that film will dictate just what percentage of the IR radiation actually strikes a CO2 molecule. This looks 3D to me. It does seem CO2 mass is critical to those calculations, though I am certainly not the person to show anyone how such calculations are done.
Luke H,
No. That's wrong.
Let's go back to the "Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?" Science Class.
(No offense intended. Very few of us can remember what we learned back in 5th grade --and much of it was probably wrong by today's standards.)
OK. So do you remember this thing (left click to go to source page)?:
That's right, The Periodic Table of Elements.
Every atom has a mass.
Mass of Carbon is about 12
Mass of Oxygen is about 16
That means the mass of a CO2 molecule is 12 + 2*(16) = 44 grams per mole
Note that most of the mass of a CO2 molecule comes from the two oxygen atoms and not from the carbon. So it is a good psychological trick to talk about the tons of CO2 we dump into the atmosphere. But it is irrelevant and misleading.
What counts is the two dimensional density of the CO2 film because light (IR waves) travels in a straight line through the 3D spherical shell of CO2 and either the photons are going to get absorbed or not. Period. "Mass" of CO2 is mostly irrelevant.
I don't hold myself out to be an expert. What you need to do is go to this Wiki page and learn more.
I believe I said
I should have said CO2 mass is critical to calculating the density of the CO2 per volume. Which as you say is the critical factor. The mass tells you how many molecules there are, of course you have to break the atmosphere down into all of its major molecular components and determine the mass of each component per volume. Then you have to divide the mass per volume of each component by its molecular weight which will give you the total number of molecules each component contributes to the volume being measured. Then you add up all the individual components total molecule numbers for that volume and you have the total parts per volume. Then you take whichever component you are interested in and divide its total number of molecules per volume by the total number of all molecules in said volume. That gives you a ratio which is conventionally expressed as parts per million. No magic, straight forward 18th & 19th century physics.
Now once you decide to determine where how the radiation will be absorbed, reemitted or reflected (if such radiation acts in such ways) the calculations get a whole lot more complex and what is actually happening is beyond my understanding. I mean its complicated enough that 70% of the mass being measured in the first place is actually generated by the 'quantum foam' that 'inhabits' the empty space in each molecule. But simple parts per million calculations are pretty straight forward. Maybe it would be better to express it this way: the location of the volume being measured is a real place, with real dimensions and that contains real mass which can be broken down into real individual molecules that can be grouped into populations of like molecules whose population densities can be expressed as ratios of individual molecule population numbers to the number of molecules in the whole population.
I wouldn't doubt, when calculating how it all goes down things are broken down into the 2D components that are the most easily managed and then recombined to illustrate the real 3D or 4D world. I'm guessing that the radiation measurements or some such 'magic' yield parts per million numbers without having to go through the process of containing volumes and measuring the contents, but parts per million is still a measurement of parts which have mass and whose total mass in the system tells us how many parts they are contributing to it.
Luke,
No. Not per "volume".
Use the force of your visual cortex.
Take that volume and squish it into a thin, two dimensional surface. It is in that surface that you want to count the surface density of CO2 in terms of parts per meter squared (p/m^2).
Can't you see that yet? Maybe we need to go back to the cave with Yoda and Plato to study the idea that light "projects" as a straight line through a 3D volume. The Z coordinate of a CO2 molecule is irrelevant. Only the X and Y coordinates matter when it comes to the question of whether a radial beam of IR will strike it or not.
Cheers.
Actually, it's better to think of CO2 (and the other GHGs) as a "picket fence" that limit (absorb) and reradiate in certain frequencies. Some have limited "solubilities" in the atmosphere (e.g, water vapor is limited by a partial pressure relationship that confines nearly all water vapor effects to the troposphere). If you could see in the infrared spectrum (at a sufficiently cold temperature) you would see that there would be parts of the spectrum where there was a ceratin opaqueness to the view like you were looking through a picket fence.
All of the simplified physics is just quantum mechanics packaged up in a simplified way. We know what those frequencies are and how they behave both by pressure and temperature. The proper way of doing the calculations (easy with a computer) is a "layer by layer" approach that considers both the atmospheric temperature (radiance spectrum) and the pressure (and partial pressure of the GHG) of the atmosphere at the altitude (layer) of interest. The absorption and reradiation are part of the quantum mechanics and probability statistics.
Although the Sun is a near perfect blackbody radiator with the rate and spectrum of radiation transfer follwoing the Steffan-Boltzmann and Planck' Law of Radiation Power nearly perfectly, the Earth is not a perfect blackbody absorber or radiator (though for convenience sake, first order calculations treat the radiation rate as if it were). Computers have no difficulty with iterative numerical techniques (except to iterate an infinite amount of time with infinite computing power), though we might simplify and speed spatial and temporal calculations through dominant Eigenvalues or some other mathematical technique.
It is a dynamic equilibrium calculation (not for the faint of heart) but trying to simplify to concepts that people can grasp and identify in everyday life is diffciult because no analogy is perfect.
Another way of metaphorical looking at it is adding additional "layers" of blankets. The blanket "slows" the rate of energy transfer from the warm side of the balnket to the cold side of the blanket. However, since we continue to add energy (through sunlight) the effect is the atmosphere warms up to a new temperature equilibrium to increase the rate of heat transfer (by approximately the fourth power of absolute temperature).
One other thing, the current atmospheric concentration of CO2 is higher than any time in the last 850,000 years, and not by just a little bit.
We passed through the 390 ppm peak this past spring and in my lifetime CO2 concentration has increased by ~80 ppm. We should pass through 400 ppm in 3-5 years.
Considering that it took 200 years to rise ~30 ppm (to approximately 310 ppm) and that half of the total rise from pre-industrial age concentrations to current levels has taken place in the just the last 30 years should indicate more than concern. Or put another way, it took 200 years for the accumulation of the first 30 ppm of CO2 increase above pre-industrial levels, it took 30 years for the next 30 ppm accumulation (increase), it took 20 years for the next 30 ppm accumulation, and given the current trajectory it will take only 11-13 years to add the next 30 ppm.
Exponential overload at work.
I'll need to be asked to be pardoned, my words here are relevant to climate change but not so much oil. Perhaps, I am also going to seem redundant, given my other posts.
Hell, I might as well ask for forgiveness for invoking my inner Machiavelli and Dr. Strangelove.
BUT... when people die, I believe, the amount of oil they consume decreases?
I know its going to sound like I'm being cheeky and sarcastic here, but that is -only half- of my reason for saying this. I have not yet seen a post here, that address how a "Mild die-off" will effect demand for crude oil, and its derivatives. [Perhaps I missed it?]
I understand we have many [complicated] factors, relating to Crude oil. However, there are things going on that will have implications, relevant to the main topic here, that I'm not sure "everyone" here is aware of.
IE: "Rice prices soar on supply shortages"
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c5d82c0e-e462-11de-a0ea-00144feab49a.html
"global rice production is set to fall in 2009-10 for the first time in five years as a result of India's driest monsoon in four decades, a series of typhoons destroying crops in the Philippines and droughts elsewhere because of El Niño weather phenomenon."
All of these events are "Climate related". It can be argued, reasonably, that they will continue if not get worse in time. Wile they have nothing to do with oil production, I strongly believe they will have an impact on oil Consumption.
When people have starved to death, they use less oil.
I am certain, these "events", and their effects, will prove to be a Pandora's box for the Asian continents inner-political relations, they will also have impacts on oil consumption.
[For those interested, id recommend reading "The coming food coups" http://www.twq.com/09winter/index.cfm?id=324 ]
Wile the extent of these events and their "effects" is extensively variable, [thus debatable and impossible to nail down] my point is that these events will have an impact. Wile this forum is probably not the "proper" one for such discussions, I thought it might like to know about, and ponder such things.
Yes,Wulvz,famine will probably be the earliest manifestation of the crash and it will hit the massively overpopulated nations first and these are mainly in Asia.
And this is a proper forum for discussion of this and many other scenarios relating to resource shortage.
I agree. I have read some of your other posts, and I agree with those as well. Feel free to read my other posts, you may find we have some clear understandings.
I was a little nervous about posting here for along time.... I wasn't sure hoe my words would be received. The things that I might be able to offer this community are mostly from a geo-political analysis, food security standpoint.
It is nice to know that even if my "understandings" are so distant from the act of oil production, others can find my thoughts and words relevant and welcomed. Thanks.
The news even reached me here in the 1930s, on good old AM radio.
CO2 = bad so Big Brother will line ya up and shoot ya for usin' it or something.
Well, all I read it as, is, I have a pellet gun that shoots CO2 so, HOARD CYLINDERS!
CO2 in the form of "dry ice" is a good way to preserve grain for long term storage, lo and behold our grain here is MOLDING, I need to come up with my OWN stores and preserve 'em properly. There are other ways to get oxygen out of grain, but a chunk of dry ice is one handy way to do it.
I'm all for Earth and the Environment but that problem is solved. The dieoff is on the way. We are living less large because we can't afford to live as large as we were, soon many will not live at all for this same reason.
If you think you have a shot at survival, HOARD CO2.
Releasing fossil CO2 into the atmosphere is the problem. Dry ice produced by condensing it out of the atmosphere and subsequently subliming it back into the atmosphere does not contribute to anthropic climate change unless fossil energy was used to make the dry ice.
fleam,
Did you see yesterday's Merc News?
BB guns and police do not mix well
(20 yr old kid fatally shot by police after he points BB gun)
So "survival" is not assured by having a BB gun.
Thanks for the work summarizing this HO. Very nicely done.
Thank you all for reading it.
So EPA gets a foot in the door on regulating CO2.
What about the tens of thousands of other pollutants being spewed into the biosphere-- probably most synthesized from crude oil or NG stock? What I read leads me to believe that the 'Generally Recognized as Safe' (GRAS) list that lists these chemicals is simply expanded to accept every new chemical that comes along in somewhat the same manner that the national debt limit is automatically raised when government budgets breach the current level.
CO2 is just the latest chapter in humankind's efforts to poison itself.
Excuse me, but did you read TFA? If you look in it, you'll find this:
We are talking about greenhouse influence here. Other toxic/mutagenic effects fall under different parts of the EPA's mandate.
There are thousands of possibly toxic/mutagenic chemicals dumped into the biosphere. I don't think the EPA attempts to evaluate or test even a small fraction of these. How could they? That's why the so-called GRAS list exists.
While it is probably a positive thing that the EPA can now exert some manner of regulation on CO2 and the other greenhouse gasses, I would like to see some real progress on the generally accepted practice of poisoning the biosphere. Hell, we don't even know how poisonous most of these chemicals are much less how they might interact with each other.
They find HBCD in polar bears that is produced in factories in Europe and yet they still do not know the full toxic effects of this compound on wildlife or humans;
http://www.empa.ch/plugin/template/empa/*/54785/---/l=2
The factories wont be shut down though unless a safer alternative is found because it saves the insurance industry millions.
CO2 might have been the first chapter too with new found fire waste gases blowing back into the cave when the wind changed ?- )
EPA did not just get a foot in the door on this...some parts of it were dragged (metaphorically) kicking and screaming (although Congress mandated that the EPA come up with a GHG reporting rule, which it has done) by the courts.
As for other compounds, well there are a number of hazardous air pollutant (HAP) compounds that EPA regulates directly under Title III or the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments. Some state air quality agencies have a more inclusive list than 189 that the EPA was directed to include in the 1990 CAAA.
The most significant aspect that has been overlooked is once regulated there is a question of "significance" in emission increases for new and modified sources under the prgram known as Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD).
EPA is attempting to craft something known as the "tailoring rules" for this program to avoid absurd results since, if no significance level is established, ANY increase warrants review and establishment of BACT under the Act and the PSD program.
This is my first comment here, please go easy. I recognize that it is only tangentially related to the EPA endangerment finding, and apologize in advance. Also, thanks to all of this site's editors and contributors for conducting (I believe) the most important discussion of the century.
I have followed the uproar over the East Anglia CRU 'climategate' disclosures intently over the past few days. I have my own opinion of the significance of those disclosures, but as a layman, perhaps I'd better keep it to myself.
Setting that aside, the whole affair has greatly tweaked my interest in the debate about climate change and what to do about it. My employer would be dismayed by the amount of time I have spent searching for data and reviewing arguments pro and con.
All of this has left me more aware of how much I do not know. After reviewing the arguments of AGW proponents and skeptics, I find it impossible to to say that the arguments of one group outweigh those of the other. (I HAVE learned quite a lot about recognizing entrenched positions and closed minds; neither side seems to have a monopoly in those departments.)
There seems to be true consensus on only a few points:
* The atmospheric concentration of CO2 is increasing.
* The increase began before the start of the industrial revolution, but has accelerated with the growth in consumption of fossil fuel.
* In the past, rises in temperature preceded rises in CO2 concentration, but this is no longer true.
* Even if all fossil fuel emissions stopped tomorrow, we would be stuck with increased concentrations of CO2 for a long, long time (and the concentration might continue rising anyway due to natural inputs and saturation of CO2 sinks).
On other topics, there seems to be more contention than consensus. For example,
* How significant is the increase in average global temperature? (The amount of the overall increase seems to be slight so far, and questions have been raised about the amount of error that is introduced by data homogenization.)
* How much of the increase in global temperature is attributable to rising CO2 concentration, and how much is due to other factors, such as changes in cosmic ray influx, variations in the earth's orbit, changes in solar activity, etc?
* Why should we be worried about CO2 in particular, given the relatively small effect on temperature of total CO2 (including the relatively small human contribution and the much larger natural inputs) compared to water vapor?
* To what degree does the relatively small human contribution to atmospheric CO2 act as a driver of change in other factors, such as the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere, and the ability of the world's oceans to absorb CO2?
* How fast are the ice caps melting, and to what degree is the meltdown attributable to natural causes, rising temperatures, black carbon, etc?
* Is ocean acidification serious concern and if so, what can or should be done about it?
* How much and how fast will sea levels rise due to polar melt?
I agree that fossil fuels are bad for the environment, that the earth has warmed to some extent, and polar bears are in trouble. I also agree that we cannot expect to use fossil fuels in large quantities without adverse environmental consequences.
However, the very cogent arguments appearing on this site and elsewhere have convinced me that fossil fuel emissions are going to decline anyway, and probably sooner rather than later as we reach peak fossil energy. The consequences have been convincingly portrayed as anything up to and including a total collapse of modern civilization, accompanied by extreme hardship and a drastic decline in population.
Am I wrong in thinking that efforts to reduce global fossil fuel emissions would be meaningless unless they exceed the rate of reduction that we could anticipate from declining fossil energy production? Might efforts to restrict fossil fuel consumption actually accelerate collapse? How can we balance the risks and the costs with all the unknowns?
Thanks once again.
Oh FFS, not another one.
After listening to the rants of the AGW deniers over the last few weeks, the one thing I am increasingly certain of is that their arguments (or slogans, really) don't outweigh anything.
I do think we need to examine all of the evidence critically and realize that there is just so much that humans can know about this issue. However, the sloppy and repetitive talking points pouring out of the right wing recently have convinced me that their argument is purely ideological.
Unfortunately some (and just some) of the anti-cap and trade discussion seems to have stooped to the same low.
As a newbie, you obviously have much more to learn.
Sorry, this is not an uncomplex problem.
Read up on EROEI.
Read up on coal.
It's fun when we can have a happy ending to the story. Alas, this is not one of those stories.
No. Previously CO2 varied between 180 and 280ppm over a 100000 year Ice Age cycle. Since 1800 it grew to 380 ppm today.
http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/last_400k_yrs.html
During the Ice Age CO2 gets trapped in snow and ice and is released when it melts.
Yes. It takes about 500 years for CO2 to be absorbed and the more CO2 the slower the rate of absorption.
The temperature will lag as the mass of the earth heats up. Now the heat is going to melt ice. Melting a ton of ice in 24 hours at 32 degrees is the same amount of energy as heating 144 tons of water from 32 to 33 degrees in the same amount of time. As the ice decreases more heat will go into heating the atmosphere, land and ocean.
The maximum variability of solar radiation is ~.2 W/m2 while the heat increase due to GHG trapping escaping heat is 2 W/m2.
The IPCC says this is the balance.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Radiative-forcings.svg
The amount of water vapor in the atmosphere is regulated by the hydrologic cycle. Put too much in and you get rain or snow.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_cycle
The ability of the oceans to absorb CO2 is obviously much slower than our ability to pump CO2 into the atmosphere as shown by the increase in CO2 from 280ppm to 380ppm in 200 years. All these factors are called feedbacks and it isn't clear how strong they are. Feedbacks only slow the effect of drivers like CO2. Of course humans reduce these feedbacks by cutting down forests, acidifying the oceans which reduces their absorption potential, building cities, etc.
Pretty fast.
World's largest ice sheet melting faster than expected
East Antarctic sheet shedding 57bn tonnes of ice a year and contributing to sea level rises, according to Nasa aerial survey
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/nov/22/east-antarctic-ice-she...
Rising temperatures.
You could add tens of billions of tons of lime(calcium hydroxide). The world cement industry is around 3 billion tons.
Estimated at 1/2 foot by 2050.
Poorly worded.
The IPCC says,
The growth rate of global emissions after 2000 has been about 3%, while the growth rates under these emissions scenarios is between 1.4% and 3.4%. This has attracted attention and could be evidence that these scenarios are too conservative. However, because these emissions scenarios are long-range predictions, it is also possible that the recent trend is a short-term trend that will not result in a long term deviation from the possibilities described by these emissions scenarios. [15]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Report_on_Emissions_Scenarios
It is possible that by running out of fossil fuels we will have a more gentle rise in temperatures but right now emissions are growing in the upper end of the range.
Unlikely. Our society is incredibly wasteful of energy.
You'll have to trust the experts.
Thanks very much, I did not expect a response in detail. I would love to discuss these questions further, but sense this forum is not the place to do it (and anyway, work is catching up with me). Thanks again for taking the time to respond.