One conclusion of the recent IPCC report, produced by some 600 scientists and 620 expert reviewers, was:
Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since
the mid-20th century is very likely due to the observed increase in
anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations.
John Hawkins just surveyed a large number of right-wing bloggers and asked:
Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?
The result?
Yes (0) -- 0%
No (59) -- 100%
I wonder if any of these bloggers are brave enough to put their money where their mouth is.
More like this
Call me an old grump but the SPM for the IPCC AR4 report wasn't terribly exciting. Which was, perhaps no great surprise: having read the draft chapters, or at least skimmed them, it was clear that nothing revolutionary was going to appear. They throw in the phrase Warming of the climate system is…
The latest in a long series of science summaries on climate change from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) has just been released. While the report has a massive amount of information in it, related to a wide range of geophysical implications of climate change, here are some of…
But he isn't a tosser. I'm sure he'll be glad to know that.
Which Mullah do I mean? I mean Richard Muller (who has one of the worst-looking websites in the known universe, beaten only in my personal experience by TimeCube and (of course) Lubos). Muller is running the Berkeley Earth Surface…
A probabilistic quantification of the anthropogenic component of twentieth century global warming is a paper just out that examines an important conflict in the conversation about climate change and global warming. Before getting to the details, have a look at this graph from the paper:
This is…
He didn't ask me. :-)
The answer is, pretty clearly, yes, at least over the last quarter century.
How many leftist bloggers understand and could explain the science, and how many believe it because it's the position their 'side' has taken?
Tim
The real bet is whether human well being has improved over the same period that guy is trying to bet. The gold standard for human well being as an index format or sorts is real GDP. In other words is world GDP currently US$45 trillion going to be higher or lower.
I am willing to make a bet that world GDP will be higher over the next 20 years or so.
Considering that most experts say even if we act now AGW is still going to linger for the several decades any warmer and gloomy forecastor ought to be wanting to take a bet that human well being is going to tank and therefore GDP is heading south.
I bet that it will be higher on evens
Gerard, you left out the alternative "how many believe it because they think that scientists might actually understand the science?"
One other thing.
I'm agnostic to believing AGW is man made. The issue to look at is the rate of change coupled with economic and technological progress.
Tim:
I suppose that's a fair point. The right is far more anti-intellectual. With respect to some parts of the intelligentsia, that's reasonable; postmodernists, for example, are nuts. But they've let it slop over to anyone in any way associated with academic or research pursuits.
Well, post-modernists may be nuts, but as has been pointed out by others, some "mainstream" (e.g., politically influencial) conservatives have taken postmodernist ideas much further than any mainstream liberals have. I.e., you will often hear these sort of post-modernist ideas about science being spouted by those who want to deny evolution or global warming...E.g., that science can't really determine anything in regards to these issues, any view on the scientific issues is as good as any other, and what the scientific consensus claims to know is simply the influence of societal factors like climate scientists wanting more funding for their discipline or the pervasive liberalness of academia.
Thanks for the link - looks like I have 59 more bloggers to challenge.
Hawkins is someone I've challenged multiple times to bet; he's never responded.
JC, but who's to say whether world GDP (and I'd dispute that this is "The gold standard for human well being") woudl be higher or lower if we take action now to reduce global warming.
Most econometric models predict that significant reductions in emissions would result in a very slight reduction in economic growth on the order of around 0.1% per year.
The costs of global warming, if it isn't addressed, are likely to be greater than that.
So reducing CO2 emissions will likely have a net positive impact on economic growth.
As to why I don't consider GDP per capita as the gold standard for well-being:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28nominal%29_per…
Anyone want to argue that citizens of Qatar are better off that citizens of the US?
That Mexicans are better off than Chileans?
That citizens of Iran are better off than citizens of Thailand?
RealClimate had a great post on skepticism vs. contrarianism and a while back.
JC, you just crashed my brain when I tried to comprehend your comment:
I'm agnostic to believing AGW is man made. The issue to look at is the rate of change coupled with economic and technological progress.
Whats the issue of whether Global warming as it now stands is mostly human casued got to do with rate of change and economic and technical progress?
Tim's response to Gerard's response was the option I was going to choose. Thanks for providing it.
Anti-intellectual is a good way of putting it, Gerard, and I can't figure out if it has always been that way, or if this is a recent trend. Back in the day, it seems the US was the tip-top of research and development. Did anti-intellectualism hold true during the space race, or has it only become en vogue since then? If the latter, when might we expect "knowing" to be more popular than "not knowing" again?
I wasn't alive back then, so I don't know.
For the anti-intellectualism of the right a good place to start is Richard Hofstadter's "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (used to be on line). As to anti-intellectualism on the far left, we only need to think back to the campaigns in the Soviet Union against the rootless cosmopolitans. In both cases there is a strong resentment against an international group (science) that threatens "real .....whatevers".
It also seems to me that Gerard could go down Tim's blogroll and pretty much prove himself wrong.
I think the global warming debate comes down to this: What do we, today, owe future generations? If you say nothing, then to hell with global warming. By the time the second ice age hits Europe, and Florida is under water, I'll be long gone and so will my kids.
I think every right wing politician should endorse this attitude. To hell with our great-great-grandkids. If it wasn't for our seed, they'd never be born anyway. What do we owe them?
So what you do say right-wing bloggers? Live for the day! Global warming - who cares?
Put their money where their mouth is?
I'd suggest that Right-wing Global Warming Deniers SELL any property that they own which Global Warming theories predict WILL rise in value when they become beachfront property when the sea level rises.
I understand that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has been BUYING such land in vast quantities.
Does anyone have a citation to prove or disprove this, which I know only second-hand?
Given the rate of growth of the world population and economy, is it really possible to do anything substantive to reduce the human footprint in the atmosphere? Consider that the amount of energy our global economy requires today is less than half of what it will require 20-30 years down the road, is a 10% reduction in greenhouse gas emission going to solve anything? In other words, if today we release 100 billion tons of Co2 (making that number up), will we solve anything if 20 years from now we release 180 billion tons instead of 200?
We would need to reduce by 50% in 20-30 years just to break even, in the face of a growing economy. And if the economy isn't growing, then believe me, nobody's going to care about global warming.
I'm all for reducing human footprints but we need to look at this realistically. And realistically, no political leader is going to endorse changes that will cripple their local economy. What's much more likely to happen is the political endorsement of actions that sound like they address the problem but don't really do anything substantive. Economics rules above all else, for better or worse.
In a recent comment, Gerard Harbison [accused](http://homepage.mac.com/gerardharbison/blog/RWP_blog.html) Gore and his acolytes of
>proposing a set of solutions which will significantly impact all Americans, and telling us we must prepare to make sacrifices, but buying themselves out of that impact with a modest tax-deductable [sic] donation to a favorite cause. I'm sorry. Leadership means walking the walk, not merely talking the talk.
If we go to the [survey](http://www.rightwingnews.com/mt331/2007/03/rightosphere_temperature_che…) mentioned by Tim above, we see that another question put to the right-wing bloggers was:
> Do you think the surge should go forward?
The answer?
> Yes (61) -- 97%
> No (2) -- 3%
This got me thinking: Will Gerard write about all these bloggers who advocate a military escalation in the region without volunteering themselves to go to Iraq? Will he condemn this "talking the talk" about sending about 22,000 additional troops with no actual "walking the walk" towards actually fighting the war?
It is almost always more economically viable to increase the efficiency of an operation. Carnegie was a visionary in this regard, and all labor-issues aside, invested tremendous capital in increasing the efficiency of steel-production. There's a reason he was at the tip top: if it costs less to produce, you can ALWAYS undercut your competition.
With that in mind, it isn't necessarily the consumption of energy that needs to decrease, but the amount of wasted resources in the production of energy. The earth doesn't care if we released half as much CO2 because we conserved energy or because our energy came from more efficient sources.
In other words, if a power company cuts their costs by 50% and you cut your power consumption by, say, 30%, they're STILL making more money. As far as the economy is concerned, don't worry about the man: he will always keep you down ;)
Brian,
Where is this magical jump in efficiency going to come from? The market would have rewarded any such innovation long before global warming came along. Anyway, improvements in efficiency are usually pretty small, especially compared to the kind of levels required to represent any real reduction in greenhouse gas emission. On top of that, it would probably be necessary to make large capital investments to upgrade any significant portion of the energy-production industry, and who's going to pay for that? Finally, such an upgrade would take years.
What else have you got?
>If you say nothing, then to hell with global warming. By the time the second ice age hits Europe, and Florida is under water, I'll be long gone and so will my kids.
Heraldblog the problem is that human induced climate change has been happening with haste since the 1970s. The current estimate is that of order 100,000 extra deaths a year can be attributed to it. Even the rich west is not immune with massive deaths during the Eurpoean heatwave the probability of which was massively inflated by the "around" 2C of warming central Europe has experienced. In OZ, places like WA and southeast Australia are now suffering under the burden of by far the worst droughts on record which have been made worse by record high temperatures. In addition most scientists who have studied the problem are concluding human induced climate change is a contributor to the lack of rain... in the case of WA to the tune of about 50% of the decline.
If people think they are immune, just hang around as the creeping hand of climate change will first hit the vulnerable and those with limited adaptive capacity, but eventually touch us all, either through higher prices, higher taxes, social disolocation, or through direct effects on our lives.
I guess in some schools they teach "very likely = science".
Makes you feel better, I suppose, to say 'science' instead of 'scientific opinion'. I'm not much into feelings.
The issue with efficiency is capital. While you might make money in the long run, there is an upfront cost which limits the adoptation of the most efficient technology absent regulation. Thus the need for regulation (e.g. not licenses for new coal powered plants without 100% sequestation).
Terren: Let's pretend that instead of facing global warming, we were simply facing the fact that we are running out of fossil fuels (which may in fact start to be true for oil...but not for coal for a long time). Would you have a similarly fatalistic attitude or would you imagine that the market will somehow allow us to innovate out of the problem (by forcing the price of fossil fuels up as they become scarcer)?
And, if you believe the latter, what is different in the case where we are not actually running out but just deciding that we can't use all the available fossil fuels (or can't use them without sequestering the CO2...which actually gives us more flexibility)?
Look, I think the idea behind reductions like Kyoto is not that the emissions reductions themselves will make such a huge difference but rather that it will send a signal to the market that we are entering a "carbon-constrained" era when the cost of using the atmosphere as a free sewer for our greenhouse gas emissions is no longer zero. Then the market forces will help us come up with the technologies to get us out of the problem.
RW: In fact, dealing with various levels of uncertainty is precisely what science is all about. If you want certainty, i.e., absolute proof, you had better stick to mathematics. That's the only place you will ever get absolute certainty. Science is inductive, not deductive.
It is in fact unfortunate that these sorts of basic facts are not taught in our schools. By focussing on scientific knowledge that has been around for a century or more, schools tend to give a misimpression of what science is all about.
Jonathan Vos Post: The problem with your proposal is that, in response to climate change that we are inducing, sea levels are likely to be continually rising over the next millenium or so...So, what is oceanfront property will be continually changing over time.
And, since there are fairly large uncertainties associated with how fast much of this rise will occur, it would be hard to predict what land to buy even if the rise were slow enough for the land to be valuable for some reasonable period of time.
This is a long way of saying that my bet would be that your rumor regarding the Gates Foundation is urban legend.
"Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?"
Gerard Harbison said: "The answer is, pretty clearly, yes, at least over the last quarter century."
I suggest that you read what the IPCC actually said because that ("at least over the last quarter century") is not it.
Gerard Harbison also asked "How many leftist bloggers understand and could explain the science, and how many believe it because it's the position their 'side' has taken?"
More "leftist" bloggers than "rightest" ones, I'd guess (given that 100% of the surveyed right wing bloggers are clueless on the science).
Besides, it's far better to follow the pack that is correct on the science than to follow the pack that is wrong. My definition of intelligence is "either knowing the answer yourself of being smart enough to decide who's right".
Hi Joel,
I'm not fatalistic about anything except the importance of the economy. I advocate the pro-active approach of investing in research of renewable energy technologies. Kyoto isn't pro-active, it's reactive and a huge drain.
With Kyoto, you're spending over two hundred billion dollars a year (just talking about the US here) towards a plan that doesn't actually reduce greenhouse gases by any significant amount. As you mentioned, the prime benefit is to signal to the market that it's no longer free to dump greenhouse gases into the air, and by artificially inflating the cost of energy extraction with fossil fuels, you make alternative energy more attractive. However, with all the money you're spending, you're creating a new carbon-remediation industry that will become obsolete once renewables catch up - but that industry will fight hard to stick around. Ironically, this means that Kyoto makes it more likely that we'll be using fossil fuels for much longer than the with the alternative I suggest.
With research & development, you're accelerating the rate at which renewable energies will become competitive with fossil fuels, which will lead to real reductions sooner than later. Right now we spend around 200 million dollars a year on such research. If we increased spending on that kind of research by 100, it'd still be a tenth of what Kyoto would cost.
Kyoto: artificially make renewables more attractive, but at a huge cost (roughly $600 per person per year in the US).
R&D: make real solutions available sooner (currently less than $1 per person per year, could easily increase 10-100x).
No brainer to me.
When these left wing/right wing climate change discussions come up, I'm always reminded of the Douglas Adams quote:
Human beings, who are almost unique in having the ability to learn from the experience of others, are also remarkable for their apparent disinclination to do so. Douglas Adams, "Last Chance to See"
I'm not sure why there is this fear of implementing modest reductions like those suggested under Kyoto. Based on past experience, we'll wait until we absolutely have to do something, then invoke draconian measures that will cost 10 times more than Kyoto.
Joel Shore:
Thank you. No point then in changing you name to Joel Near-Shore or Joel Far-from-Shore. Urban myth is possible. I've also seen those maps of where the shoreline would be on Mars if one had an ocean of given depth.
"Do you think mankind is the primary cause of global warming?"
Gerard Harbison said: "The answer is, pretty clearly, yes, at least over the last quarter century."
Since I doubt Gerard will post (or even read) what the IPCC actually said (hint: it's not what Gerard said above), here it is:
"Most of the observed increase in globally averaged temperatures since the mid-20th century is very
likely due to the observed increase in anthropogenic greenhouse gas concentrations12. This is an
advance since the TAR's conclusion that "most of the observed warming over the last 50 years is likely
to have been due to the increase in greenhouse gas concentrations".
In other words, their assessment about warming covered the last 50 years -- not 25, as Gerard Harbison indicated above.
Minor details (Not)
From the IPCC 4th assessment summary for policymakers
http://www.ipcc.ch/
Dave,
It's not fear that characterizes my resistance to Kyoto, it's common sense. First, "modest reductions" won't do anything substantial to reduce emissions over the long run. Second, you have to look at the cost/benefit trade-offs. How much does it cost? Estimates for the US are between $150-350 billion per year. Obviously this makes energy much more expensive, and inflation is a big concern. Purchasing power goes down, people go into fear mode and stop spending, the economy slows down, etc. Are you willing to lose your job over Kyoto?
The Skeptical Optimist has a great way of discussing economic policy: is it a carrot method, or a stick method? Kyoto is definitely a stick method. It's punishing our existing industry.
Instead of beating our economy into submission, why not use the carrot method of investing in alternative energy technologies? Create incentives for investment. That would actually create jobs and make for a healthier economy, all while making a long-term future of fossil-fuel independence more likely to arrive soon.
Ah, so the title "Right wing blogs reject uncertainty" is surely upcoming, right? No? Oh....well, nice try, any way.
Actually, I did, & prefer it to majors like "philosophy" as it is one of the sciences - which is why I can discern what is based on science, what is based on the opinion of scientists using data and what is intentionally misleading rhetoric. "Right wing blogs reject science" is the latter.
Could be that they're too busy presenting scientific opinion as "science", as well.
It's a moral issue, too!
While science uses mathematics it is not a science, since it is completely devoid of content (you make some arbitrary assumptions, you explore the consequences, whereas in science both the assumptions and the consequences have to be compared to observations. No RW you are definately the product of a middle school science class taught by my mom.
Why even bother to study science?
Mathematicians are obviously omniscient oracles, so we would be much better off just asking them how nature will behave under specific circumstances than actually doing the experiment.
"The market would have rewarded any such innovation long before global warming came along."
No, markets reward companies that minimise their total cost per unit of output.
The problem is that environmental costs haven't been incorporated inot energy costs and companies have therefore been effectively using subsidised power and have focused on minimimising their use of other factors of production where they were paying closer to the full cost.
"I guess in some schools they teach "very likely = science".
Makes you feel better, I suppose, to say 'science' instead of 'scientific opinion'. I'm not much into feelings."
Really real scientists don't hold with this probsbility tuff, that's why you never see confidence intervals in physics or chemistry papers.
"I'm not fatalistic about anything except the importance of the economy. I advocate the pro-active approach of investing in research of renewable energy technologies. Kyoto isn't pro-active, it's reactive and a huge drain."
I keep hearing this and it is, quite simply, a pack of lies.
Go read the text of the agreement, especially the sectiosn relating to technology and emissions trading and stop relying on Republican propaganda.
As usual you misrepresent the effort involved for the un to try to portray man's involvment in this global warming scheme. What was reported was 90% certainty man caused. What actually happened is they forced these people to stay until they had a concensus.(An old scientific term which means that they have no proof, but they think it may be true.) The accepted range of belief was actually 66-90%. So Headlines around the world say 90%, what did we expect. Back in Italy even though there was evidence that the Earth rotated around the Sun, the concensus was the opposite. Unless we are willing to pay for research, no mater where it leads,politics will rear its ugly head, please allow the scientists to find proof of anything, before we commit to another boondogle.
"With Kyoto, you're spending over two hundred billion dollars a year (just talking about the US here) towards a plan that doesn't actually reduce greenhouse gases by any significant amount."
Prove it.
This is a perfect example of the absurdly inflated figures that the oil industry and their toadies flosted in their successful campaign gaisnt Kyoto.
Gerard Harbison asked, "How many leftist bloggers understand and could explain the science, and how many believe it because it's the position their 'side' has taken?"
I have a science background and I've been following the global warming controversy for a long time. On the subject of left vs. right, the most striking thing that I've noticed is that those on the left never, ever address the science. Their approach is always to either 1) declare that the "debate is over" and hence no discussion is necessary, or 2) attack the credentials and motivations of those who disagree. They insult, malign, and spin conspiracy theories about the "deniers" being corporate shills, etc.
But they never delve into the science. They haven't a clue about how complex and uncertain the science is when you look at it closely, and how utterly unreasonable it is to trust the predictions of a computer model on the state of the climate 100 years hence. The computer model is worthless as a predictive tool, yet we are on the verge of wasting trillions of dollars on the basis of it.
The right wing is not a whole lot stronger on the science, but at least they're able to recognize a political motive when they see one. You can't get much more anti-American than the U.N. and the fact that the IPCC would have the U.S. pay dearly while letting communist China off the hook speaks volumes.
It's all about the politics at the point; The science will take decades to sort out.
Hmm. As a working mathematician, I would hardly consider mathematics "one of the sciences." It lacks important things like, I dunno, hypothesis-testing, or any direct connection at all to the real world.
Mathematics is essentially just a formal system, meaningless without scientists using various aspects of it to model the real world.
Terren,
Kyoto was but an example of standard human behavior. I could have easily mentioned Hurricane Katrina. Some of the finest warnings I've ever read were issued for that storm, yet they were ignored by the powers that be until it was too late. The upshot is a cost of $150 Billion to the economy. If a more proactive stance had been taken the cost might have been much less. Certainly, the human toll would have.
We have a bad habit of waiting until the last minute to deal with critical situations, and climate change is just another example. We'll argue ad nauseum about the minutiae of the wording the AR4 report, but we won't do anything. It's the perception of doing something that really matters.
"The Skeptical Optimist has a great way of discussing economic policy: is it a carrot method, or a stick method? Kyoto is definitely a stick method. It's punishing our existing industry."
Point to ANY provision in the Kyoto Agreeemnt that punishes existing indsutry.
no vague handwaving, go read the agreement and cite the relevant provision.
Careful Davis you have veered out of what you know into what you don't know. The discussion of the role of mathematics in science is part of the philosophy of science and many mathematicians would disagree with you about the experiemental nature of mathematics e.g Greg Chaitin .
So you don't pay any attention whatsoever to weather forecasts? You think investment banks are wasting money and resources on modeling financial markets? Or is it only climate models which, mysteriously, are worthless?
Unless you're talking about their own motives, you owe me a new irony meter.
I didn't actually say anything about experiment, simply because I do think it's experimental in some sense. But science is about more than experiment.
If you ask around I'd be willing to bet you'd find most mathematicians don't consider themselves to be scientists (though it's possible I've been living in a weird bubble in that regard). Because the delineation of science is so fuzzy, this is one of those areas where I give that opinion greater weight than philosophical arguments.
Nevermind, I thought I had cut out the line about "hypothesis-testing" in the original post (as I intended).
Which report was this? The recent IPCC document to come out was the Summary for Policymakers. That report was authored by 33 'drafting authors' and 18 'draft contributing authors' - who are named in the document. I haven't seen the IPCC Report yet. I think they're out after April.
US GHG emissions are currently around 7 billion tons of CO2 equivalent per year.
1990 US GHG emissions were equivalent to ca. 6 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and the US' Kyoto commitment was a 7% reduction - i.e. to ca. 5.6 billion tons.
So to achieve its Kyoto target, the US would need to reduce emissions by approximately 1.4 billion tonnes per year (or pay other signatories to reduce their own emissiosn by that amount.)
http://unfccc.int/files/essential_background/background_publications_ht…
Terren claims this would cost the US between $150 billion and $350 billion per year.
That equates to a cost of approximately $100-$250 per ton of abatement.
Contrast that with the $5/ton for carbon offsets via Native Eenrgy of $12 per ton of CO2 equivalent.
http://www.nativeenergy.com/individuals.html#total
Or the $3-4 per ton for which credits trade currently on the Chicago Climate Exchange
http://www.chicagoclimatex.com/news/newsletters/CCX_carbonmkt_V4_i1_jan…
Or the one Euro credits are currently trading for on the European Climate Excahnge
http://www.europeanclimateexchange.com/index_flash.php
but right-wing bloggers and Washington Republicans OBVIOUSLY know more abotu the correctprice for goods and services than markets right?
I guess you have to factor in the risk that a Democrat could be elected President and the inevitable ensuing genocide of White Christian Americans.
Okay I'mworking from the shop here and got distracted. IN my last post, the the sentence beginning:
"ontrast that with the $5/ton for carbon offsets...: is obviously nonsense as itcurrently reads.
It should read "Contrast that with the $12/ton for carbon offsets via Native Eenrgy."
Other carbon offset companies offer offsets for $5/ton or less but I couldn't remember any of their URLs off-hand.
Let me calarify the last comment I made.
I am agnostic/uncertain tending towards believing some AGW is man made.
Ian Gould
What measure would you use to determine human well being that is as commonly used, reasonably accurate and useful as real GDP per cap? It isn't perfect, but then neither am I, although I do try.
Ian, i also take issue with you cost estimate. It would be much, much higher than what you suggest.
-----------------------
Guthrie says:
"JC, you just crashed my brain when I tried to comprehend your comment:
Whats the issue of whether Global warming as it now stands is mostly human casued got to do with rate of change and economic and technical progress?"
--------------------------
It could been a server problem, Guthrie. Ask Tim to fix it.
But seriously........
The rate of climate change caused by AGW is possibly the most important element in the whole exercise. The IPCC report in fact shows the rate of change to be mildish and most certainly not dramatic. Overlay this with the rate human technological change and the picture changes quite a bit.
Combting AGW is a wealth/technology issue. The more wealth accumulated the better chances at success.
I don't get why people tend to think climate models are the only evidence for AGW. And climate sensitivity can be estimated from observations too.
"Ian, i also take issue with you cost estimate. It would be much, much higher than what you suggest."
Based on what?
Explain to me why the cost of carbon offsets will rise tenfold if the Us enters the market in a large way - especially seeing as American sources of offsets (such as efficiency programs and afforestation) will also enter the market.
As far as measures of wellbing go, I'd say the Human Development Index is superior to GDP per capita:
http://hdr.undp.org/
bill: "The accepted range of belief was actually 66-90%. So Headlines around the world say 90%, what did we expect."
Actually, the IPCC summary for policymakers of the 4th assessment report released a few weeks ago used the phrase "very likely," which they define as meaning 90% certain or MORE to describe their confidence that most of the warming over the last half century is due to humans. [The previous report in 2001 had used "likely" which equates to the 66-90%.]
Since you yourself claim that headlines said "90%", I assume you will now correct yourself and take the fact that they quoted the lower end of the range to mean that the media is underplaying the issue...a clear sign of their conservative bias and corporate bias?
BobDog said: "On the subject of left vs. right, the most striking thing that I've noticed is that those on the left never, ever address the science."
Perhaps part of the reason why this is so (which it isn't...but there may be some truth to a weaker phrasing of it) is because those on the left are intelligent enough to know that they should not go spouting off on issues that they do not have detailed knowledge about but should, instead, either rely on respected expert opinion or take the much harder and more time-consuming route of actually learning enough to be able to talk intelligently about the science. [Along these lines, I remember a survey done a few years ago that showed that there was an inverse correlation between how much people thought they knew on subjects and how much they actually knew.]
All a conservative has to do is jump on over to some right-wing web site and grab a bunch of their pseudo-scientific points and run with them. It takes a long time and patience to then refute these points. (I know this from personal experience of having wasted more than a little bit of time doing so.) It is the same scenario that has played out in the left-right debates on the evolution issue.
Well, at least I now know where I can go to get high-minded discussion and deeply considered rationale. :(
RW as Davis also pointed out you are a bit short of a clue on the issue of whether mathematics is a science. Be a good lad and listen and learn.
BobDog is a bit more clever, he has jujitsued several onto the side that the expert opinion on climate change is leftist. It is not, nor is it of the right (Eli and Ms. Thatcher are pretty much on the same side, as are almost all right of center and left of center politicians in civilized countries. Of course, you do have the Bobbsy twins, Bush and Putin, the Ying and Ying of climate change and colonial war policies. (apologies, just COULD....NOT.....RESIST....)
Depends on how one approaches it, I suppose. My degree says bachelor's of science, but I guess others may vary.
Related:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematics#Mathematics_as_science
Actually, since you've decided that the jackass approach is the avenue to take, this is a visual medium. Really, if I want smarmy & adolescent harping I can get it from Usenet (or just go piss off my wife then I'll be able to 'listen'). Please stop trying to display bravado via your keyboard, okay? It's unbecoming.
"As far as measures of wellbeing go, I'd say the Human Development Index is superior to GDP per capita:"
Ian we had a long discussion on the HDI at Catallaxy and arrived at the conclusion that it is a mumbo jumo of contradictions and new age gobbledygook. GDP as imperfect as it is still the gold standard.
------------------------
How do you arrive at .1% of GDP? You have and hard numbers to support that. It would also be necesary to factor in trade offs , having to substitute to more costly alternatives in addtion to loss of wealth issues..... like the broken window fallacy that conventional economics doesn't capture that well (the one big weakness in GDP).
Oh, goodness, never mind....another "those who can't...." member. Sorry I wasted your bytes & bandwidth, Tim. Not. Worth. My. Time.
Jc, so "life expectancy at birth"; "GDP at purchasing power parity" and adult literacy rates are "a mumbo jumo of contradictions and new age gobbledygook:?
Because the HDI is simply based on the average of those three numbers with the country that ranks highest on each rated as "100".
As to Terren's "$350 billion a year" claim for costs to the Us that appars to be a misreading (probably at second or third-hand) of Nordhaus:
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/Kyoto.pdf
Only thing is, that isn't the annual cost - its the net present value of the cost of Kyoto over the period to 2100.
JC, look at figure 12 or page 32 of that paper - the cumulative (not annual) reduction in US income by 2100 is approximately 2%.
Figure 9 on page 25 shows a cumaultive reduction from reference of around 1% of world output over the same period.
Nordhaus by the way was fiercely anti-Kyoto and his figures were wdiely cited by Republicans as supporting their opposition to Kyoto.
Nordhaus assumed a high price for carbon emission permits - see table 4 on page 23. (Those figures are per ton of carbon, offhand I don't remember the caonversion rate beteen tons of carbon and tons of CO2.)
Nordhayus doesn;t explictly state the oil price sumptions built into his reference case - but writing in 1998 I doubt he set it anywhere near current levels of ca. US$60 a barrel.
The more expensive oil is, the lower the likely economic losses from substiuting other energy sources.
More from Nordhaus (although this dates back to 1990 and is seriously outdated.)
http://www.uwmc.uwc.edu/geography/globcat/globwarm/nordhaus.htm
The total annual worldwide cost of a 70% cut in greenhouse gas emissions is estimated at approximately $500 billion in 1990 dollars.
As a very approximate first cut, let's assume that converts to circa. $650 billion in 2007 dollars and assume the US will bear around 30% of the cost in line with its current share of world GDP.
That gives us US costs of circa. $195 billion or 1.5% og GDP per annum.
That's not for Kyoto - that's for a 70% cut - and once again it is based on extremely low oil prices by current standards.
And all this comes from a critic of Kyoto who has been widely embraced as an authority on the topic by Republicans.
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/41xx/doc4198/2003-3.pdf
In 2003, the Congressional Budget Office summarised the results of 14 different economic models of the economic impact of ratifying Kyoto on the US economy.
"The synthesis of model results suggests that real U.S. GDP would decline between 0.5 percent and 1.2 percent below baseline levels in 2010 under the Kyoto Protocol, and real consumption would fall between 0.4 percent and 1.0 percent, depending on the scenario.36 The direct cost of the Kyoto Protocol would be between 0.2 percent and 0.4 percent of GDP. The total value of permits used, which indicates the amount of income that would be transferred from producers and consumers of energy to recipients of permits, would total between $108 billion and $245 billion (in 1997
dollars) in 2010, or 0.9 percent to 2.0 percent of GDP. (Many households would both pay and receive funds.) If the government auctioned the permits, its revenues
would rise by a comparable amount."
Again that's a total reduction of AT MOST 1.2% over multiple years.
But the science of economics obviously hates freedom - like those commies in the (Republican-controlled) CBO.
And Al gore is fat.
Ian,
"(v) Progressive reduction or phasing out of market imperfections, fiscal incentives, tax and duty exemptions and subsidies in all greenhouse gas emitting sectors that run counter to the objective of the Convention and application of market instruments;"
There's some damage to existing industry in Kyoto. Not sure what is meant by market imperfection, but the rest is all about taking money away from industries that don't fit the profile.
And my degree says "Doctor of Philosophy" -- does that mean math is philosophy?
The Wikipedia link you provided is interesting (though it's unfortunate Wolfram is used as a reference on the topic); however, it does seem to support my position that the majority opinion is that mathematics is not a science. Ultimately, I think the absolute certainty in mathematical results is precisely why this is so, though the lack of connection to the real world is also a major issue.
Actually Kevin it means taking away hand-outs and corporate welfare.
Given that industry as a whole pays a big chunk of the taxes that fund those hand-outs to special interests, I'd say that probably represents a net win for industry.
But thank you for actually taking the time to read the document in question.
Anyone who wants to emulate Kevin;s excellent example can find the full text of the Kyoto Protocol here:
http://unfccc.int/resource/docs/convkp/kpeng.html
Ian Gould: "offhand I don't remember the caonversion rate beteen tons of carbon and tons of CO2"
Atomic weight of Carbon 12: about 12
Atomic weight of Oxygen 16: about 16
So atomic weight ratio of carbon to oxygen: 3/4
So molecular weight ratio of carbon to CO2: 3/11
That concludes our physical chemistry lesson for today :-) (thanks Ian)
The easiest way to get the conversion is by taking the ratio of atomic mass of carbon (12) over the total mass of CO2 (44)
12/44,
which is equal to 3/11 (given above), but the additional step of finding atomic weight ratio of carbon to oxygen given above is unnecessary and may be confusing to some.
"the additional step of finding atomic weight ratio of carbon to oxygen given above is unnecessary and may be confusing to some"
Which is easier to do in your head (if you haven't yet remembered the ratio) and thus less likely to confuse, (1) add 12+16+16=44 and then divide 12/4=3 and 44/4=11 or (2) think of carbon as being 3 units, oxygen as being 4 units and the only calculation then is 3+4+4=11? There isn't actually a greater number of steps anyway, just easier ones.
Ian,
Kyoto has many more examples of downsides for existing industry, but seeing your dismissal of the one I cited, I don't feel very motivated to bother citing more.
You are claiming that the loss of subsidy is 'probably' a net gain. It's a nice libertarian style argument, but plainly counterfactual, at least in the short term and in the context of a status quo that already endorses transfer payments. Also, the affected industries plainly don't perceive that to be to their net benefit.
In any case, losing a duty or tax exemption isn't something being paid for by industry; it isn't a payment at all. It's an increase of the tax burden for the affected industry. So your argument wasn't even relevant and was also counterfactual and counterintuitive.
To put this plainly, is X coal burning power company or oil concern going to gain or lose more from the loss of subsidies and exemptions and carbon quotas if Kyoto were enacted? If you're right, you should be selling that line to the oil companies and then you wouldn't have so much 'industry-funded' skepticism to worry over. Contrary to you, every other AGW conspiracy theorist in the world seems to think that big oil finds Kyoto onerous and is funding sham science to avoid it. You should go shine the light of truth for them.
Chris,
Different people find different methods easier and either method works fine, at any rate.
I should probably not have said "easier" but instead "more straightforward" because the way I described explicitly shows what it is we are trying to determine: the fraction the carbon weight is of the total CO2 weight.
"You are claiming that the loss of subsidy is 'probably' a net gain. It's a nice libertarian style argument, but plainly counterfactual, at least in the short term and in the context of a status quo that already endorses transfer payments. Also, the affected industries plainly don't perceive that to be to their net benefit."
Yeah I'm a notorious libertarian - just ask "Nannu Govt Sucks".
The only way to assess the impact of a complex long-term economy-wide economic policy is in the long term and in the aggregate.
"To put this plainly, is X coal burning power company or oil concern going to gain or lose more from the loss of subsidies and exemptions and carbon quotas if Kyoto were enacted?"
So we should only implement those economic policies which benefit absolutely everyone and harm no-one?
Let me know when you find one.
"the fraction the carbon weight is of the total CO2 weight"
I'm sure Ian Gould and others could find this out for themselves. My technique was meant as a memory/mental calculation aid.
If the issue is memory, wouldn't it be easier to remember that the fraction is about a quarter? (which is actually accurate for most purposes, since 3/11 differs from a quarter by only .02)
My discussion with Kevin has gotten somewhat off the point.
Kyoto does not require countries to impose carbon taxes. It does not require countries to set emissions targets for specific companies or to issue tradeable permits.
Should signatories wish to issue tradeable permits, there's nothing to stop them issuing those permits for free to established industries.
While signatories are required to get rid of subsidies and so on, there's nothing to stop them compensating the affected firms in various ways. (The obvious parallel here is agricultural trade under the WTO where countries can't subsidise agriculture output but can provide income support; adjustment support and payments for ecological services and conservation provided these payments aren't linked to the volume of production.)
There's nothing in Kyoto that REQUIRES any signatory to take any action which will adversely affect any company.
"The market would have rewarded any such innovation long before global warming came along."
The all-powerful, all-rational market. Yes, of course; for instance the rational consumer would long ago have abandoned incandescent light bulbs for fluorescents, which would pay for themselves over the lifespan of the light bulbs, in addition to reducing CO2 emissions. And the lower a consumer's income is, the more difference that would make, percentage-wise. However, they have not. I'm sure conservative economists are pondering the mysterious reluctance of low-income consumers to divert money from the children's shoe budget to lighting hardware, for later payoff; or, to acquire a loan from the bank in order to purchase fluorescent light bulbs.
Z, when they solve that one, they can turn their collective attention to why subsistence farmers in India still burn dung for light and heat when propane or kerosene stoves and propane or solar lighting can provide better, safer and healthier light and heat and liberate women from countless hours of backbreaking labor (allowing them engage in more productive work instead.)
I'm sure it can't be because the alternatives to dung can cost a year's income or more upfront and they currently spend 90% of their income on food and clothing.
Ian,
You're being disingenuous if you suggest adopting Kyoto won't bring substantial costs to the US economy. Either our energy infrastructure must be substantially upgraded to meet the Kyoto-mandated 5% reduction, or we must pay for credits, or both. Any and all of these costs will be passed to the consumer, which will drive up inflation, and so on. Most estimates I've seen project that energy would cost around 40-80% more as a result of Kyoto.
Obviously the total cost of Kyoto is a contentious issue but it is clear that it is an expensive policy.
I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to give me a good reason why spending instead on R&D for new, disruptive technologies (which may solve the greenhouse gas problem outright) is a bad idea. For example, there's a lot of promise in biotech - using bacteria to convert cellulose into ethanol is one strategy, but that idea suffers from lack of scalability. But it's a problem that can be solved in principle... so let's put American ingenuity to the test and become world leaders in alternative energy. Will someone please tell me why that's a bad idea, or at least no better than Kyoto?
Ian,
And by the way, you undermine your own position when you make assumptions about my biases simply because I don't agree with you. I don't get my arguments from republican talking points, I get them from careful consideration of the issue. I don't claim to speak Divine Truth, but I'm certainly no drone. I'm not even a republican. So lighten up, it's cool when people disagree, but only if there's a modicum of respect.
Z,
The difference between poor people and corporations is that corporations have many financial instruments available to them that make it possible to acquire the capital necessary to invest in new technology. Competition gives them the drive to do so. For this reason capitalist markets tend to increase efficiency in general. That's why middle class folks like me (and perhaps you) are able to afford the technology that affords us to have this conversation in the first place.
"You're being disingenuous if you suggest adopting Kyoto won't bring substantial costs to the US economy. Either our energy infrastructure must be substantially upgraded to meet the Kyoto-mandated 5% reduction, or we must pay for credits, or both. Any and all of these costs will be passed to the consumer, which will drive up inflation, and so on. Most estimates I've seen project that energy would cost around 40-80% more as a result of Kyoto.
Obviously the total cost of Kyoto is a contentious issue but it is clear that it is an expensive policy.
I'm still waiting for someone, anyone, to give me a good reason why spending instead on R&D for new, disruptive technologies (which may solve the greenhouse gas problem outright) is a bad idea."
1. If I'm being disingenuous, I guess all the economists who conducted the modeling exercise are also being disingenuous.
2. Work out what you personally pay for energy then work out what percentage of your total income that represents. Then consider the impact of higher energy prices on energy consumption on energy usage. Then consider the economic impact of people investing more in energy saving through strategies like improved insulation, both in the money they save and in the stimulus effect of higher demand for those products and services on output and employment.
3. Oil and natural gas (but not coal) prices have increased by far more than the 40-50% figure you mention in the past three years and yet the impact on the US economy has been minimal.
4. No-one thinks additional R&D is bad idea - that's why there are specific provisions in Kyoto dealing with additional R&D and also with technology diffusion. (If India and China's energy consumption per unit of output was similar to western counties' it'd drastically reduce the projected growth in global emissions. We need to develop better technology certainly but we also need to deploy our existing technology to best effect. That's what the Kyoto Clean Development Mechanism is intended to achieve.) Of course, the Bush administration for the first four or five years it was in power both cut the energy R&D budget (except for nuclear energy) AND opposed Kyoto.
Terren: I find it strange that in one post, you are lecturing us about the efficiency of markets while in another approach, you are suggesting R&D investment rather than the market-based approach of forcing the costs of emitting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere to be internalized so that the markets find the solution to the problem.
I have no problems with R&D investment, but it is certainly the "big government" approach and will presumably require the government to decide which technologies are likely to be winners, which alas government doesn't tend to be that good at. (It tends to find the "winners" in the sense of the political winners, e.g., the ones that make the most farm state representatives happy, rather than the best solutions.)
By contrast, an approach like Kyoto or a nationwide cap-and-trade system or a carbon tax harnesses the market by correcting the externality associated with the emissions of greenhouse gases. This seems to be the sort of thing that one who believes in markets in any sort of scientific sense (rather than just having a religious belief in "free markets") ought to embrace.
Terren: Sorry...I missed your post above where you addressed some of what I wrote in my last post. I do see to a certain extent your point in regards to research on renewables. However, it does seem to me to be "picking winners". I, for one, am not sure that renewables alone are the best solution...Perhaps mix of other things, such as burning of fossil fuels with requestration of the CO2, really is needed...at least for a while
Also, of course, the big point is that, without the market incentives of a carbon-constrained economy, there is less pushing folks toward the use of renewables and all that other great stuff. You are effectively continuing to subsidize the wasteful use of fossil fuel energy.
Furthermore, Terren, you may not have received directly from a Republican source but the idea that Kyoto will impose huge economic costs on the US IS a Republican talking point.
The fact that they've managed to disseminate so widely that people don't even realise that is a classic example of The Big Lie.
Furthermore, I do take this personally. Up until a couple of years ago I was an economist working for the Queensland government on a range of issues including climate change.
It may not be fashionable to tell people this but like the majority of public service professionals I care passionately about good public policy. Which includes providing politicians and the public with the best possible information on which to make policy decisions.
So when I see lies being peddled in order to corrupt public policy for the benefit of big corporations I take it personally.
Hi Joel,
You make a good point about picking winners, and I totally agree that the government is usually lousy at it. Perhaps some sort of 'X Prize' can be part of the effort - 10 million to whoever can demonstrate economically competitive renewable energy. You could set one up for solar panels, a different one for biotech, and so on.
In terms of Kyoto, I like the way you put it - Kyoto would harness the market - but my worry would be that it'd be harnessing it to dead weight. And not to repeat myself but if the economy is wounded, then global warming will hardly be the priority it is now. That's why poor nations are the worst environmental offenders.
Are you pro nuke power or against it, Ian Gould?
Ian,
>>(The obvious parallel here is agricultural trade under the WTO where countries can't subsidise agriculture output but can provide income support; adjustment support and payments for ecological services and conservation provided these payments aren't linked to the volume of production.)
Kyoto mentions eliminating all financial incentives. If it doesn't catch an obvious loophole like this, I am wondering what effect you expect it to have at all?
>>There's nothing in Kyoto that REQUIRES any signatory to take any action which will adversely affect any company."
There is literally no way this could not adversely affect the economy. Somehow, somewhere, either taxpayers are going to pay or the affected industry will pay. And the increased costs of energy are obviously going to have national implications; the short term oil increase we just saw in the US raised prices of almost everything.
You basically granted this here:
>>So we should only implement those economic policies which benefit absolutely everyone and harm no-one?
>>Let me know when you find one.
before the rhetoric filters kicked in and you decided it was time to linguistically retrench.
>>"The Skeptical Optimist has a great way of discussing economic policy: is it a carrot method, or a stick method? Kyoto is definitely a stick method. It's punishing our existing industry."
>>Point to ANY provision in the Kyoto Agreeemnt that punishes existing indsutry.
>>no vague handwaving, go read the agreement and cite the relevant provision.
So I went and did it. I am not saying the change would or wouldn't be net beneficial to the economy at large in the long run. I am not saying industry shouldn't bear a burden if CO2 emissions are causing net harm. What I am saying, and it shouldn't be hard to grant as it forms the invalid argumentative basis of so many attacks on anti-AGW scientists, is that it is not in the interest of CO2 intensive industries for Kyoto to pass, which you disputed.
What I am also saying is the rhetoric surrounding this issue is so polarized that no one can simply admit, "Whoops, that last claim was a bit of a boner on my part." You made a fairly hyperbolic statement, I pointed it out and now lots of bandwidth has been spilt over a pretty trivial misstatement. Like I wrote before, if your argument were true, the oil companies would be clamoring for Kyoto.
Ian,
Just because something is a Republican talking point doesn't mean it's automatically false. Again, I haven't taken my arguments from them, but I'm in agreement with the idea that Kyoto would be expensive. Maybe it would hurt the economy, and maybe it wouldn't. Unlike the paper-cutout pundits you're referencing, I'm comfortable with uncertainty.
To respond to your points above:
1. Look, the whole point of Kyoto is to make a global impact on emissions. So if it doesn't impact on global industry, it's toothless. As Joel has been saying, the actual point is to build the cost of emissions into the energy production market. The more ambitious the policy is, the higher the cost it attempts to impose. Kyoto tries to strike a balance between building an effective cost in to the market, and not hampering the same. The less expensive it is, the less it has any real effect. If you want to argue that Kyoto doesn't have a significant cost, then by implication you're saying that it's impotent policy.
2. Home consumers represent a small portion of energy usage - less than 10%. Real energy costs are incurred multiple times for most products and services, significantly multiplying the effect of energy cost increases. I may spend only a small portion of my income on heating my house and paying for gas, but every single product I buy has built into it the increased energy costs associated with such a hike - costs that were imposed at each step of the production process.
3. This is a good point. But again, I have no way of knowing what the market can absorb and what it can't. However, you certainly can't pretend that the market will always be able to handle whatever you throw at it. Environmentalists often brush aside the economic impacts of their policy, but I think anyone is naive who believes that people as a whole will act against their own economic interests for something abstract and lofty like "improving the environment". Some will, but many more won't, especially if they're living hand to mouth. Personally, I feel that responsible environmental stewardship is among the most pressing issues we face, but any policy we craft has to be economically sensible, or it simply won't work, or worse, backfire.
4. We're in agreement here.
Regarding mathematics as a science:
Why is this an issue regarding the qualifications of someone to comment upon a scientific claim? So much of science relies on mathematics and logic that both logicians and mathematicians are authoritatively qualified to critique scientific arguments.
"Are you pro nuke power or against it, Ian Gould?"
I'm pro-rational economics and pro-markets.
So rather than seeing governments pick technological winners whether they be in the fields of renewables or nuclear power, in the first instance I'd like to see the environemtnal cost of carbon emissions incorporated into energy prices and then I'd like to see the most cost-effective way of minimising those costs adopted.
As it happens, in Australia, I think that renewables, clean coal; natural gas and energy efficiency are likely to be more cost-effective than nuclear power.
In many other countries nuclear may indeed be the best option. But I'd like to see that determined by markets not by governments.
"There is literally no way this could not adversely affect the economy. Somehow, somewhere, either taxpayers are going to pay or the affected industry will pay."
So there are no instances where the health costs of current fossil fuel use exceed the additional marginal cost of alternatives?
There are no countries where a broadly-based carbon tax would allow the removal of other more distortionary taxes?
There are no countries where reducing dependence on imported oil would improve the current account deficit resulting in flow-on downward pressure on interest rates?
There are no countries where state-owned monopolies in the electricity-generation industry could be eliminated?
There are no countries with economically harmful subisidies on electricity or petrol use?
No coal subsidies?
"Kyoto mentions eliminating all financial incentives. If it doesn't catch an obvious loophole like this, I am wondering what effect you expect it to have at all?"
It's not a loophole.
So-called green-box agricultural subsidies are permitted being they don;t promote overproduction.
Similarly, there's no reason why, for example, you couldn't impose a carbon tax on large emitters and use the revenue from the tax to fund energy efficiency measures in the affected industries. (You'd operate a tender system so companies bid for the money on the basis of the amount of CO2 emissions they could mitigate.)
"So I went and did it. I am not saying the change would or wouldn't be net beneficial to the economy at large in the long run. I am not saying industry shouldn't bear a burden if CO2 emissions are causing net harm. What I am saying, and it shouldn't be hard to grant as it forms the invalid argumentative basis of so many attacks on anti-AGW scientists, is that it is not in the interest of CO2 intensive industries for Kyoto to pass, which you disputed.
What I am also saying is the rhetoric surrounding this issue is so polarized that no one can simply admit, "Whoops, that last claim was a bit of a boner on my part."
Except in this case it wasn't a boner.
A country can meet its Kyoto commits in any way it sees fit - including taxing its citizens to underwrite the cost to industry.
There may be a likelihood that some industry will lose out but there is no certainty or invetiability about it.
"The less expensive it is, the less it has any real effect. If you want to argue that Kyoto doesn't have a significant cost, then by implication you're saying that it's impotent policy."
No, I'm saying that the cost of reducing emissions is a lot lower than you think.
Math as a science came in as an issue in the context of being able to deal with uncertainty. As was pointed out, math is an axiomatic system. Perhaps it was a bit of a sidetrack but in the context of the discussion it had to be said.
Now as far as the cost of Kyoto, the discussion is somewhat like the guy who murders dad and mom pleading for mercy as an orphan. It has always been recognized that the climate problem has a huge procrastination penalty. Those who have opposed taking any action, fought it tooth and nail, have imposed that penalty on us, and now they are moaning about the expense.
There were any number of action which, if taken in the 90s would have been low or negative cost and which would have brought us if not to the goal quite close. Moreover, the US with high emissions and low efficiency had a lot of low hanging fruit available.
A general comment, there seems to be a great lack of understanding of the role of trading under Kyoto.
No industry (other than for PR reasons) is going to reduce its own emissions if it is cheaper to pay others to do so.
No country similarly, needs to reduce its own emissions if its cheaper to buy credits from other countries.
Under the clean Development Mechanism, these credits can be generated in the developing world Non-Annex B members of Kyoto.
So the cost to the US of compliance, barring some monumentally perverse bit of policy, is the cost of buying the full amount or credits required on the international market.
Currently CDM credits are trading for around 5-10 Euros or roughly US$7-14 per ton of carbon.
If we assume that US entry into the market doubles the market price and we assume that sufficient credits are available; then the US could meet its entire current Kyoto liability (the gap between current emissions and its target)
for around US$45 billion.
Since people are apparently concerned about the possible impact of that cost on industry assume its met either by a tax on oil imports or by increased government borrowing (hey for a year it's less than the Iraq war costs in two months).
Of course this won't be the real cost because all that investment in developing countries will act as an economic stimulus in those countries which will also help the US economy through higher exports.
Oh and $45 billion is around 0.4% of the US economy - and as I've already noted its an inflated figure. But it's also the absolute maximum compliance would cost.
In practice. much the US coal-fired electricity generation capacity operates at a gross profit margin of less than $5 per ton of carbon dioxide emitted so if the cost of abatement exceeds that it becomes economic to shut down the oldest and most-polluting generating plant (which would generate emission reduction credits if the US had a trading system in place) and invest in more efficient new plant.
(The US could probably go a long way towards meeting its Kyoto targets simply by shutting old east coast power plants using relatively dirty West Virginian coal and replacing them with efficient modern powerplants in the west using Powder Basin coal, which also happens to be cheaper.)
>>There were any number of action which, if taken in the 90s would have been low or negative cost and which would have brought us if not to the goal quite close. Moreover, the US with high emissions and low efficiency had a lot of low hanging fruit available.
What changes in the 90's would have had negative cost and would have had a significant impact on CO2 output? I was not aware of any large scale industrial retooling in the 90's that missed the boat on CO2 reduction at a net savings.
Eli, much of that low-hanging fruit is still there - and the US also has massive potential as a carbon sink via forestry and agriculture.
In fact, its entirely possible that the US could be a net exporter of carbon credits as a Kyoto signatory. I.e. other countries would pay the US to reduce its emissions because it would be cheaper to do so than to reduce their own emissions.
Here's an excellent report from the International Energy Agency on the potential benefits of upgrading existing coal-generation capacity to modern standards - not the hypothetical standards achievable via new technology but the standard regularly achieved by new conventional coal plants:
http://www.iea.org/Textbase/nppdf/free/2005/CIAB.pdf
"There is considerable potential to reduce CO2 emissions from coal use by applying existing state-of-the-art
technology.
Under ideal conditions, modern coal-fired power plants are capable of achieving efficiency levels of more
than 40% on a higher heating value basis. This is about a 30% improvement on plants built in the 1950s
and 1960s, with equivalent reductions in CO2 emissions. Furthermore, modern installations emit less dust,
sulphur and NOx than older plants, and their reduced fuel usage contributes to management of increasingly
scarce energy resources.
New power plants illustrate the current status of power plant technology. In Germany, the 965 MW BoA2
lignite-fired power plant with supercritical steam conditions went fully on stream in 2003 at
Niederaussem/Rhineland with an efficiency of more than 43 % on a lower heating value basis. In Australia,
the recently completed 860 MW Millmerran black coal power station has an efficiency of around 40% on
a higher heating value basis, and in Japan, the 1050 MW Tachibanawan-2 black coal power station has an
efficiency of around 42 % (HHV).
Hard coal and lignite combustion efficiencies will continue to improve through the use of coal drying and
higher power plant steam cycle temperatures, as illustrated below.
Coal-fired generating capacity of about 1 000 GW is installed worldwide. Almost two-thirds of the
international coal-fired power plant portfolios are older than 20 years and have an efficiency of 29%. These
power plants emit some 3.9 bn t CO2 per year."
So the technology exists now to reduce global emissions from the power sector by 1.3 billion tons per year.
"What changes in the 90's would have had negative cost and would have had a significant impact on CO2 output?"
Kevin,
Energy prices are much lower in the US than in much of Europe.
American industry, quite rationally, uses more energy per unit of output than does European or Japanese industry.
We're not even necessarily talking about industrial processes - European commercial and office building uses less energy than do American ones simply because they're better insulated.
Europeans also make extensively use of Combined Heat and Power plants were waste steam from power plants and industrial boilers is used for space heating.
There are large parts of the US where this would be uneconomic due to lower housing density - but there are also plenty of areas especially in the north east where it would make perfect sense.
None of this is to suggest that Europeans are smarter or more virtuous than Americans - the Europeans have reacted in an economically rational way to high energy prices, the Americans have responded rationally to low energy prices.
Energy prices are much lower in the US than in much of Europe.
I'm not sure that's correct. It's certainly correct for transportation energy--the cost of much of which in Europe is taxes. But a lot of electricity in Europe is generated by nuclear plants. The cost of electric power in our house outside of Munich (Germany)--much of which is probably nuclear--appears to be lower per kilowatt hour than the cost of electric power at our house in Boston MA (US)--much of which is oil or natural gas.
Raj, if you got to the IEA report I linked to above and look at figure 19 on page 43, you'll see that industrial electricity prices in the US are roughly equivalent to those in France, Germany and South Korea. (That's despite the fact that the South Koreans and the French get a much higher proportion of their power from nuclear. Australia which has no nuclear power plants is lower than any of them.)
Some other European countries, notably Italy, Ireland and (to a lesser extent) the UK have significantly higher electricity prices than the US.
Domestic prices are higher than industrial prices and the relative inefficiency of European distribution networks means that their retail electricity prices are well above those in the US.
Heating oil is also more expensive in Europe.
Ian says:
I'm pro-rational economics and pro-markets.
Yep. I am too.
-------------------------------
So rather than seeing governments pick technological winners whether they be in the fields of renewables or nuclear power,
Well yes. I agree. But at present it doesn't really come to that seeing almost all of the Green left has taken nuke power off the table. So in effect the one most likely source of big power is now out of bounds. It may not be a case of government picking winners. It may be the case of governments eliminating winners, if you know what I mean.
--------------------------------
in the first instance I'd like to see the environemtnal cost of carbon emissions incorporated into energy prices and then I'd like to see the most cost-effective way of minimising those costs adopted.
Would this be a carbon tax or carbon trading which is the equivalent of people trading in rations coupons.
------------------------------------------------
As it happens, in Australia, I think that renewables, clean coal; natural gas and energy efficiency are likely to be more cost-effective than nuclear power.
How so? Could you please explain how you arrived at this astonishing conclusion, seeing the technology for green coal is in its infancy at present.
---------------------------------------
In many other countries nuclear may indeed be the best option.
Why over there and not over here? So do you support Nuke power in Oz or do apply the precautionary principle?
---------------------------------
But I'd like to see that determined by markets not by governments.
With a tax or placing coal on a tax I guess, right? Which is hardly allowing markets to decide, is it?
http://www.investaustralia.gov.au/media/BS_Energy_costs_in_Australia_we…
This Australian government publication shows in figure 2 a comparison of international electricity prices. Domestic prices in all European countries shown are above the US figures (the US figures exclude tax presumably because sales taxes vary between the Us states. But you'd need a 20 or 30% tax to raise US electricity prices to the level of France and Germany.
The Australian residential electricity price is around half that of France. Anyone still wonder why I'm skeptical about the economic case for nuclear power in Australia?
Of course, the nuke advocates tell us that there's a new generation of far cheaper nuclear reactors on the way. Funnily enough the same people are usually deeply pessimistic about potential improvements in renewable energy technologies or carbon sequestration.
Yes I would agree with your last comment Ian. But I also hasten to add that US prices in some states are also very expensive primarily due to kneejerk reactions after Three Mile Island... such as when the Long Island Power Authority was forced to ditch its reactor and go to oil and gas fired plants. The cost of that Democrat induced panic attack was about $10 billion in addition to higher energy prices in the region.
The problem with nuke power is that the lead-time in building those things has been/would lengthened from 5/6 years to 10/12 years as a result of regulation gone mad. So we really don't know the true economic cost of nuke power.
Sorry missed this last bit
"The Australian residential electricity price is around half that of France. Anyone still wonder why I'm skeptical about the economic case for nuclear power in Australia?"
We are blessed with mountainous deposits of brown coal close to our large cities. These deposits are essentially low-grade coal that doesn't carry a world price since there is little demand for this stuff in smaller quantities due to its combustibility disadvantage. Our price of power is essentially cosseted by this huge advantage we have, almost an absolute advantage if one thinks of it..
However its low combustibility ratio makes it high in emissions: almost conversely so. Therefore once we signed on to some agreement we would move very quickly up to world price for energy thereby giving away our cost advantages.
JC,
It is clear that you are a linear thinker, as well as someone who hasn't got much of a clue about the tight link between the health and vitality of natural systems and human welfare. What is really unfortunate is that you try and interpret climate change by (a) invoking a complete ignorance of its effects, along with a myriad of other anthropogenic stresses, on a range of ecological services for which there are no technological substitutes (and probably won't ever be), and (b) interpreting these effects from a completely anthropocentric view e.g. Your refrain is thus: 'Golly gee, 4 C ain't much of a rise, so why worry'?
I thought I'd demolished this simplistic level of scientific understanding before on other threads, but you persist. Clearly, scientific discourse bounces off of you like water off of a duck's back. Please enlighten me with some of your techological optimism: given that ecological services do not carry prices and where the costs of human simplification of ecological communities, ecosystems, biomes and realms is externalized, how on earth is the market going to help when these systems begin to collapse? How can we reconcile technology at a time that humans are fully assaulting our ecological life-support systems? How is the market going to deal with fraying and unraveling food webs, mass extinction, hyper-eutrophication, wetland loss, the mass disruption of biogeochemical cycles, aquifer depletion, degradation in soil fertilty, and many other human-driven processes across the biosphere? How will the market deal with collapses in pollinators, seed dispersers, and biological agents that stablize coastlines, climate, water tables and act as detoxifiers? You stand on a pedestal and claim that technology and the market are the human saviors without having even a basic understanding of nature's value in sustaining life in a manner that we know.
Your most cringe inducing comment, "The IPCC report in fact shows the rate of change to be mildish and most certainly not dramatic" belies a complete inability to grasp the non-lnear dynamics in the way that natural systems respond to change. First of all, the temperature won't increase by a uniform 1.6- 4 C everywhere - some places (e.g. lower latitudes) will hardly change at all (although temporal rainfall patterns certainly will) whereas other areas, particularly in high latitudes may see temperature rises exceed 10 C. THIS RATE OF CHANGE IS UNPRECEDENTED IN HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS IF NOT MILLIONS OF YEARS, and previous warming/cooling episodes did not occur when all of the planet's natural systems were utterly dominated by a bipedal primate. If the planet's surface temperature does indeed increase on average by 4 C in the coming century, it will have catastrophic effects on natural systems. THIS IS A FACT, PERIOD. Species and populations will be challenged by conditions that will be well beyond the ability of many to adapt. Species do not exist as isolated entities in nature: they interact, and it is these interactions that determine the resilience and stability of the system. There will be some winners and many losers. Most importantly, humans are not exempt from the laws of nature.
Jeff is right. The science backs him up
[From Spiegel Online](http://www.spiegel.de/international/0,1518,469608,00.html)
UN REPORT EXCLUSIVE
Climate Change Impact More Extensive than Thought
By Volker Mrasek
"Global climate change is happening faster than previously believed and its impact is worse than expected, information from an as-yet unpublished draft of the long-awaited second part of a United Nations report obtained by SPIEGEL ONLINE reveals. No region of the planet will be spared and some will be hit especially hard."
"Many natural resources are likely to fall victim to climate change according to the IPCC draft report:
* Some 20 to 30 percent of all species face a "high risk of extinction" should average global temperatures rise another 1.5 to 2.5 degrees Celsius from their 1990 levels. That could happen by 2050, the report warns."
* Coral reefs are "likely to undergo strong declines."
* Salt marshes and mangrove forests could disappear as sea levels rise.
* Tropical rainforests will be replaced by savanna in those regions where groundwater decreases.
* Migratory birds and mammals will suffer as vegetation zones in the Artic shift."
Jeff, I have a suggestion- that you write a standard reference list of articles on these topics, with urls to things like the Spiegel article. Then when you meet people like JC, you just copy and paste, thus saving your time. I am sure you have more productive things to do than rant at people online. Better to throw information sources at them. Some will read them, many wont. But the lurkers will pay attention, and a lot of them will read the articles, and become informed.
"So much of science relies on mathematics and logic that both logicians and mathematicians are authoritatively qualified to critique scientific arguments."
Is the guy who provides the surgical instruments to the doctor qualified to diagnose the disease?
Knowing the math (or how to use the surgical saw) is not the same thing as knowing the science (or medicine).
Thanks JB. Excellent post. As a senior scientist, I have to deal with these simple linear extrapolations (like those made by JC and other linear optimists) all of the time. One Julian Simon redux after another. To be honest, I have better things to do than to counter such utterly unscientific arguments as those postulated by the likes of JC and his/her ilk here. But their comments reveal a poor understanding of the way in which natural systems function and ignore our utter dependence upon a huge array of ecological services. For the millionth time, these services permit humans to exist and persist. They do not function exclusively for the benefit of Homo sapiens, rather Homo sapiens exists because conditions generated from natural systems over variable scales - ecological services - permit it. Ecological systems are clearly somewhat resilient to the human assault, and they have to be otherwise our species (and many others) would have already committed itself to extinction. However, there is no guarantee that ecosystrems will be so resilient in freely providing these life-sustaining services if we continue to nickel and dime the planet to death.
The refrain of the denial/delusionists is that 'Because I don't understand something, even if it may be relevant, I dismiss it'. Time and time again I see that here. And time and time I counter it, only for the same techno-optimistic 'the market is our savior' gobbledegook to appear again sometime later. It is exasperating.
"The less expensive it [mitigation] is, the less it has any real effect [on global warming]."
Not true.
For example, energy efficiency improvements can produce huge emissions reductions with a net savings.
According to Amory Lovins, an energy efficiency expert and CEO of Rocky Mountain Institute, "since the Arab oil embargo in 1973, the United States has gotten more than four times as much new energy from savings as from all net expansions of domestic energy supplies put together. The millions of little things people did to weatherize houses, get more efficient cars, plug up steam leaks, etc., plus some changes in economic structure, yielded four times as many additional BTUs as did the net increase in supply from all new American oil and gas wells, coal mines, and power plants built in the same period. (Renewable sources provided a third of all the new supplies.)"
"Impressive though these savings are, they're only the beginning. Americans can still cost-effectively save half the electricity they use--even the Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI), the utilities' own think-tank, says so--and at least that much of the oil and gas."
http://www.rmi.org/sitepages/pid318.php
The US Department of Energy commissioned a Five lab study in the late nineties that concluded that very large reductions in emissions could be accomplished with ZERO net cost (net savings in some cases)
From the executive summary of the DOE Five Lab study on carbon emissions
"if feasible ways are found to implement the carbon reductions as described above, all the cases (with reductions varying between 120 and 390 MtC/year by 2010) can produce energy savings that are roughly equal to or exceed costs.
"Three overarching conclusions emerge from the analysis of alternative carbon scenarios. First, a vigorous national commitment to develop and deploy energy-efficient and low-carbon technologies has the potential to restrain the growth in U.S. energy consumption and carbon emissions such that levels in 2010 are close to those in 1997 (for energy) and 1990 (for carbon). We analyze a case in which
energy efficiency can reduce carbon emissions by 120 MtC/year by 2010. We analyze a second case, with policies that promote adoption of energy-efficient and low carbon technologies and a $25/tonne carbon permit price, with emission reductions of 230 MtC/year in 2010. Under a $50/tonne carbon permit price and aggresive policies, 2010 emissions could be cut by about 390 MtC/year. The analysis also suggests that substantial additional savings are available if permit prices were to begin to rise above the $50/tonne level.
Indeed; my math degree certainly doesn't give me any special knowledge regarding most of the topics argued here. The most useful aspect of knowing math is that it makes it easier for me to understand the science when it's explained -- I already speak the language, so to speak.
Thanks Davis, in class I rather regularly use the idea that math is the native language of science.
from the linked Wikipedia article:
So are we in agreement?
Just an aside, my engineering degree says "master of arts". Make of that one what you will...
Kevin says:
"Regarding mathematics as a science:
Why is this an issue regarding the qualifications of someone to comment upon a scientific claim? So much of science relies on mathematics and logic that both logicians and mathematicians are authoritatively qualified to critique scientific arguments."
As Eli has already pointed out, but which perhaps bears repeating (given that the discussion of this rages on), my original distinction regarding science and math had absolutely NOTHING to do with whether mathematicians are qualified to critique scientific arguments.
I was simply pointing out that statements like, "Disagreeing with anthropogenic global warming is not going against science because scientists still aren't 100% certain" or "I haven't seen absolute proof that AGW exists" are red herrings because science does not deal in 100% certainty or absolute proof because, unlike math, it is inductive not deductive.
This, by the way, has some interesting sociological implications for the fields as was once pointed out to me by a mathematician I met at a math conference who had recently himself attended a materials science conference: I was noting how much more friendly things were at this math conference than what I am used to (in physics / materials science) and he agreed, saying that he found the materials science community much more combative than the math community. I think the reason for this is that arguments in math don't persist for very long. If a proof is complicated, it may take a while for mathematicians to reach a consensus on whether it is correct or not, but before too long they will. By contrast, in science, we can argue about something for a long, long time because you can never settle with 100% certainty whether a given measurement is correct or a given theoretical model accurately represents the physical system.
I wrote: "in the first instance I'd like to see the environemtnal cost of carbon emissions incorporated into energy prices and then I'd like to see the most cost-effective way of minimising those costs adopted."
JC wrote: "Would this be a carbon tax or carbon trading which is the equivalent of people trading in rations coupons."
Again, I'm agnostic. One of the virtues of Kyoto is that different countries can adopt different market mechanisms and we can then see which ones work best. No-one in their right mind has ever suggested issuing individuals "ration coupons" and the most realistic real world system would probably consist of tradeable emission quotas for large industrial carbon dioxide emitters and taxes on electricity use and petrol. There's no single optimal solution because each country starts from a different point. For example, given the high level of petrol taxation in Europe, there's probably little to be gained from increasing it further.
JC wrote: "With a tax or placing coal on a tax I guess, right? Which is hardly allowing markets to decide, is it?"
Markets work well 99% of the time, they fail in some circumstances, one of which is when there are externalities (economic impacts of market transactions not borne by either part to the market transaction). Pollution is an externality and without some means to internalise the cost of pollution to the costs of the firms that produce it, firms will pollute and impose additional costs on others. From the point of view of mainstream economists, we should only seek to intervene to correct market failure when there's clear proof that the costs of intervention are lower than the costs of the externality. If we accept that there's a case for intervention and conclude that voluntary measures (i.e. asking the industry voluntarily to cut their pollution) are insufficient we look for the least economically distorting way to alter the market price. For carbon dioxide emissions that intervention is likely to involve some mix of carbon taxes and emission quotas.
JC wrote: "We are blessed with mountainous deposits of brown coal close to our large cities. These deposits are essentially low-grade coal that doesn't carry a world price since there is little demand for this stuff in smaller quantities due to its combustibility disadvantage. Our price of power is essentially cosseted by this huge advantage we have, almost an absolute advantage if one thinks of it."
This is only the case in Victoria. There's virtually no brown coal outside of Victoria. In New South Wales and Victoria, the power plants tend to be located well away from the capital cities. Check the Invest Australia document I linked to earlier. Sydney electricity prices and Melbourne electricity prices are virtually identical. Brisbane prices are less than 10% higher.
So Australia's price advantage in coal isn't attributable to
the brown coal of the Latrobe valley. It's attributable to the vast open-cut anthracite coal mines of central Queensalnd and the highly efficient underground mines in the Hunter.
In fact, Australia could cut its energy-related carbon dioxide emissions by 5% by closing Hazelwood (which produces 9% of our carbon dioxide emissions and emits roughly twice as much carbon dioxide per unit of power as black-coal power plants and four times as much as gas-fired power plants.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hazelwood_Power_Station%2C_Victoria
Joel - As JB and Jeff Harvey demonstrated with their comments, your original comment was not the reason I posted about the relation of mathematics and logic to science. I understood your intent.
JB - While understanding mathematics and logic is not the same as having conducted a scientific study, are you suggesting that it is not sufficient to critique a scientific study? If so, why? Your analogy didn't seem very compelling. While a statistician may not be familiar with the latest development in paleoclimatology, for instance, he would be eminently qualified to critique the statistical methodology of a paleoclimatological survey. The same would follow with logicians and ensuring premises entail conclusions.
Jeff Harvey wrote: "How will the market deal with collapses in pollinators, seed dispersers, and biological agents that stablize coastlines, climate, water tables and act as detoxifiers?"
http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=Bees+fruit&btnG=Search+News
Jeff, there's already a major die-off of bees in North America and it appears to be having a drastic impact on the fruit industry there.
Whether its attributable to global warming is another question but it is an illustration of the potential risks.
As you obviously realise, the direct economic impacts are only the start. We aren't just facing damage to fruit crops; a loss of pollinators would have a massive impact on natural ecosystems with very serious long-term effects on humans.
But even those direct costs are enough to justify action.
In my earlier post the sentence: "In New South Wales and Victoria, the power plants tend to be located well away from the capital cities." should have have "In New South Wales and Queensland..."
Ian,
1) You still seem to be arguing the loss of a subsidy is not injurious to a given industry. This plainly isn't the industry view.
2) Raising taxes will affect any industry largely dependent on consumers having ready disposable income. So some industries will definitely be negatively impacted, either directly or indirectly by increasing energy costs or increasing taxes.
3) Trading carbon credits is precisely why I think the issue of bias in the science is a two-way street. Kyoto is a backdoor to world socialism under UN supervision. This isn't directly relevant to the argument, but it merits no more or less consideration than direct or indirect ties to oil funding do when considering motivations.
"Kyoto is a backdoor to world socialism under UN supervision."
Yes concocted by those arch-communists George Herbert Walker Bush; Helmut Kohl; Margaret Thatcher and John Major.
That's why socialists like Arnold Scwartzenegger, Michael Bloomberg and John McCain are amongst its strongest supporters in the US.
1. It's the view of the individual firms who will be adversely affected. Other firms will benefit. Exxon Mobil's loss is BP and GE's gain. "Industry" in economics refers to the industrial sector as a whole not to individual firms.
Industry itself meanwhile seems to disagree with you on this issue: http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/03/energy_industry.html
2. You assume firstly that other taxes will not be decreased and secondly that ant net money raised from taxes won't be used in a way that results in economic expansion. But given your comments about "a backdoor to world socialism" that's hardly surprising.
Jeff Harvey
Appreciate your concerns about the environment, but quite frankly the reputable climate scientists are not telling us the sky is falling like Chicken Little.
Failing to take note of the IPCC estimate for rate of change and tech progress is quite frankly avoiding the obvious and only demonstrates your personal preferences issues. In any event, it seems that your solutions are a command and control type, which is heavily dependent on government and bureaucratic interference resembling the Soviet model that in the past has really got us into more trouble. I would argue for instance that the greening of America was stopped in its tracks after the Three Mile Island incident that closed down and actually reduced the number of nuke reactors in the US. The debacle with Long Island Power Authority and the reactor in that region is a case in point.
Ian
The type of coal that is mostly used to supply energy for the large centers in OZ is essentially low-grade burn coal that hasn't high exportable value. If you would like me to list the different grades and the types used, give me a day and I will be happy to do so. There are about 30 different grades of coal from what a coal trader tells me..
I am quite confused with your answer regarding the use of nuke power. At first you argue rightly that the government should not be in the business of picking winners and then suggest that nuke power is unlikely to work for OZ. Please share with us the reasons you have arrive at these conclusions: especially if our absolute advantage in coal is going to reduced by the imposition of a green tax of some sort. So the question remains. Do you support nuke power as a substitute in the likely event that coal will be taxed? Yes or no? No trick question and please assume no subsidy or government interference in the choices. Thanks
(maybe I wasn't clear the first time).
I guess Paul Anderson Ceo of Duke Energy is a socialist too:
http://makower.typepad.com/joel_makower/2005/04/climate_change_.html
JC, my skepticism regarding nuclear power in Australia boils down to my belief that the papers which claim it would be economical if a carbon tax was imposed on coal (or other forms of carbon limitation like emissions permits) assume extremely high carbon prices.
I suspect that the actual price of carbon will be a lot lower and that, in any case, afforestation; energy efficiency; biomass and fossil fuel substitution (i.e. switching from lignite to anthracite or from coal ot natural gas) will be a cheaper way of offsetting that cost.
I also take note that the lead times for nuclear power plants are extremely long and even the optimistic claim that they could be reduced to six years means they're substantially longer than for other forms of power. Additionally, if there is a global resurgence in demand for new nuclear plants we're likely to see bottlenecks in the design and production process which will both increase costs and cause delays - you don't produce hundreds of new nuclear engineers overnight.
Even the promoters of nuclear energy admit it'd be well over a decade before the first nuclear plant would start operating in Australia. Meanwhile we're adding new renewable energy every day.
Ian,
I wasn't aware that Thatcher authored the Kyoto Protocol. Please, enlighten me.
Further, I don't care who or how many support it. Neither the arguments from authority or popularity are truth preserving. What is a fact, rather than a survey of political opinion, is that Kyoto creates a legal mechanism that forces wealthier nations to either structurally damage their economy or to make transfer payments to less wealthy nations under UN auspice. The resemblance of such a system to a system of redistributive justice is entirely coincidental, I'm sure.
Last, I don't care to debate semantics on the meaning of 'industry'. Either carbon intensive industries will take a hit or the whole economy will in subsidizing them. If you feel the need to deconstruct your claim to avoid admitting you misstated, enjoy.
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=1073…
"Recently three changes in atmospheric chemistry have become familiar subjects of concern. The first is the increase in the greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide, methane, and chlorofluorocarbons--which has led some[fo 4] to fear that we are creating a global heat trap which could lead to climatic instability. We are told that a warming effect of 1°C per decade would greatly exceed the capacity of our natural habitat to cope. Such warming could cause accelerated melting of glacial ice and a consequent increase in the sea level of several feet over the next century. This was brought home to me at the Commonwealth Conference in Vancouver last year when the President of the Maldive Islands reminded us that the highest part of the Maldives is only six feet above sea level. The population is 177,000. It is noteworthy that the five warmest years in a century of records have all been in the 1980s--though we may not have seen much evidence in Britain!"
"In studying the system of the earth and its atmosphere we have no laboratory in which to carry out controlled experiments. We have to rely on observations of natural systems. We need to identify particular areas of research which will help to establish cause and effect. We need to consider in more detail the likely effects of change within precise timescales. And to consider the wider implications for policy--for energy production, for fuel efficiency, for reforestation. This is no small task, for the annual increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide alone is of the order of three billion tonnes. And half the carbon emitted since the Industrial Revolution remains in the atmosphere. We have an extensive research programme at our meteorological office and we provide one of the world's four centres for the study of climatic change. We must ensure that what we do is founded on good science to establish cause and effect.
In the past when we have identified forms of pollution, we have shown our capacity to act effectively. The great London Smogs are now only a nightmare of the past. We have cut airborne lead by 50 per cent. We are spending £4 billion on cleansing the Mersey Basin alone;[fo 5] and the Thames now has the cleanest metropolitan estuary in the world. Even though this kind of action may cost a lot, I believe it to be money well and necessarily spent because the health of the economy and the health of our environment are totally dependent upon each other.
The Government espouses the concept of sustainable economic development. "
That's Thatcher from 1988.
Ib the following two years before her fall from power, she approved British participation in the drafting of the United Nations Framework Agreement on Climate Charge which was signed by her successor John Major in 1992.
The UNFACC contains all the principles you find so objectionable about Kyoto. Kyoto is essentially about putting numbers to the emissions reductions agreed to in the UNFACC. Emissions trading, the Clean Development mechanism; joint implementation; the idea that the developed countries should cut their own emissions first with developing countries joining in later. It's all in UNFACC and it was all drafted with the support of the British government under Thatcher.
As to the definition of "industry" I'm sorry call me perverse but in economic discussions I'll contiue to use the standard economci definition of the term - you lack of comprehension notwithstanding.
BTW, by your seizing on Thatcher, can I take it you are implicitly calling Kohl, Bush 41; Major; Schwartenegger; Bloomberg and McCain socialists?
Are all they just fools and dupes?
Here's Thatcher in 1989:
"Now, the damage to the environment comes from the actions of millions of people conducting peaceful activities which contribute to their health, their well-being and their work in agriculture or industry, activities in other words which are perceived as beneficial.
But Mr Chairman, no matter at what degree of latitude we live, ozone depletion will severely affect us all, just as will global climate change.
The conclusion is clear. It is no good some of us acting to solve the problems while others go on as before. The problems will only be solved by common action and every country must play its full part and every citizen can help.
Thus we have a powerful incentive to strengthen the United Nations and other international bodies. When we consider the aid we give through international agencies, including the World Bank, we must see that it is given in a way which does not harm but which preserves nature's life support systems.
And speaking for this country, we shall put greater emphasis on environmental needs in allocating our aid programme and I hope others will do likewise. Such a course would naturally require the cooperation of all concerned.
The institutions to enable us to work together are already there. We have the United Nations Environment Programme as the main institution. We have the Montreal Protocol as the framework. We have the World Meteorological Organisation. We have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change which is bringing together in sharp focus the results of scientific work from all parts of the world."
From the same speech (but referring to the Montreal accord to eliminate CFCs):
"I recognise, as Dr. Tolba said, that some countries will want to be assured that the necessary measures to halt the damage to the ozone layer will not place severe limits on their economic growth. Clearly, it would be intolerable for the countries which have already industrialised and have caused the greater part of the problems we face to expect others to pay the price in terms of their people's hopes and wellbeing. Our Conference has shown that such fears are not necessary.
First, the solutions indicated are compatible with continued and sustainable economic growth; and second, the new technologies and substances which are becoming available should help others to avoid the mistakes which we in the highly industrialised countries have made. They need not go through a CFC phase at all."
http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=1075…
Yes I appreciate you answer Ian, and I essentailly agree with some of the points you raised, but are you in favour in having nuke power in the table or not? I am a little confused as to whether you actually support nuke.
Ian,
I don't think the personal beliefs of the people you cited is relevant. I will note that you didn't explain how any of them 'concocted' Kyoto, the point of contention.
You did offer a case that Thatcher felt possible harms justified transfer payments to avoid, not GW, but ozone depletion. It's not relevant to this discussion as she didn't 'concoct Kyoto' and carbon doesn't affect ozone like the CFCs she feared in your cite.
Further, if Thatcher thinks the threat of ozone depletion justifies redistributive justice [as she wrote in your cite], then she isn't opposed to socialism. You are quoting Thatcher arguing socialism is justified by environmental threat, not that Kyoto is not socialism by virtue of her [she apparently being a paradigm of anti-socialism for you] support of CFC reduction.
Whatever context you want to try and fix this discussion in to salvage rhetorical victory, the 'coal industry' fits your prior claim of industries to be harmed under any meaningful linguistic paradigm including the language of economics, and it will be harmed by Kyoto.
"1. the aggregate of manufacturing or technically productive enterprises in a particular field, often named after its principal product: the automobile industry; the steel industry."
If you really want to claim that this definition doesn't fit into a discussion of 'industry' in economics ala 'oil industry' or 'coal industry,' you need something better than your say so.
I have an observation about Kyoto that doesn't directly relate to the ongoing debate, but I'd be interested in others' takes on it, since in my view it's a piece of the puzzle worth considering.
I believe many of us feel guilty about the overly consumptive lifestyles we lead. Kyoto may assuage that guilt by offering a means to repent: by taxing ourselves for our consumption (in a broad sense), we may feel as though we have, in some small way, absolved our sins of affluence.
Do you ever feel guilty about being an affluent member of a consumptive culture? If so, does Kyoto represent a way to feel better about your lifestyle? In other words, does this debate go beyond your stated concern for the environment, into the more private, psychological domain of your inner feelings about the life you live?
Kevin: Labeling something as "socialism" doesn't make it socialism. In fact, we know that the industrialized world is responsible for the vast majority of the current elevated CO2 levels in the atmosphere. (Yes, China will soon surpass the U.S. in the rate of emissions but it will take a long time for them to come close to catching up to us in the cumulative amount of emissions.) To not ask them to take the first steps toward alleviating the problem would not be very fair. It is also most practical from the point-of-view that the industrialized countries have the technical know-how that is generally in shorter supply in the less developed countries.
If you go out and destroy the property of someone who is poorer than you (or collective property that belongs to everyone) and the government makes you pay for the damage, that is not socialism.
I don't. I suppose some people may.
Uh... Kyoto's goal isn't to reduce consumption. It's to reduce CO2 emission (and it starts out very, very small) . Not all consumption results in CO2 emission, and Kyoto is easily satisfied by shifting toward similar consumption which emits less CO2.
If Kyoto was self-punishment, it would be the equivalent of self-flagellation with a wet noodle. But perhaps I feel that way because I don't feel guilty in the first place.
Joel,
The concept of 'collective property that belongs to everyone' is itself a hallmark of socialism in preferencing collective approaches to property ownership based on social interest over private approaches based on personal interest in using a scarce resource in a manner that may or may not benefit the collective good.
A private approach to ownership would be that anything no one particular can lay claim to owning by virtue or finding it or making it, e.g. air, is not owned at all.
If, OTOH, you are claiming the US is involved in some kind of global tort, I think you'd be pressed to a standard of proof I doubt you could meet, but I'd grant you weren't supporting socialism. I would then have to ask you how CO2 could be a tort on the part of the US but not by other countries, though.
Also, your government analogy seems to place the UN in the role of government bringing a recalcitrant US into the international fold. The US ought not to surrender sovereignty to the UN. Doing it de facto through Kyoto or any other treaty that mandates US behavior under UN auspice will set a bad precedent and lead to it happening de iure. US courts reserve the right to cite foreign law as precedent already much less once a treaty gets passed.
What you've asserted should not be called socialism is therefore a worldwide collectivism enforced by UN mandate. So, I reply that refusing to call something socialism doesn't mean it is not. It's not the naming that makes it socialism. You just offer a different means of justifying it than Rawlsian redistributive justice or Marxian dialectic. It's still going to be either legally mandated transfer payments to the less fortunate for egalitarian purposes or the industrial nations taking a big economic hit and retooling all their industries to meet carbon output goals in time.
"Jeff Harvey
Appreciate your concerns about the environment, but quite frankly the reputable climate scientists are not telling us the sky is falling like Chicken Little."
Climate scientists don't study the impact of climate change, they just study climate change. Ecological impacts of climate change are studied by ecologists.
Kevin: "I don't think the personal beliefs of the people you cited is relevant."
Right, the fact that the heads of government of the countries that were primarily responsible for the Kyoto Protocol were all conservatives is obviously totally irrelevant to your claim that it's all a socialist conspiracy.
That Jeff Harvey - what a nut.
Just because he has a Ph.D. in ecology; is a former Associate Editor of Nature and is currently a Senior Fellow at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology he thinks he's some sort of expert.
'You did offer a case that Thatcher felt possible harms justified transfer payments to avoid, not GW, but ozone depletion. It's not relevant to this discussion as she didn't 'concoct Kyoto' and carbon doesn't affect ozone like the CFCs she feared in your cite."
In 1988, Thatcher said climate change was a serious problem.
The following ears she said it again with even more emphasis and in the same speech endorsed the fundamental principles behind Kyoto in the context of CFCs.
A few months after she left office her successor signed a treaty - which had been under negotiation for years - based on those principles.
But obviously she intended something completely different.
"Further, if Thatcher thinks the threat of ozone depletion justifies redistributive justice [as she wrote in your cite], then she isn't opposed to socialism."
The voice of moderation and reason from the contemporary American right: Margaret Thatcher is dirty commie.
JC: "Yes I appreciate you answer Ian, and I essentailly agree with some of the points you raised, but are you in favour in having nuke power in the table or not? I am a little confused as to whether you actually support nuke."
By all means let's have it "on the table". But that doesn't mean we have a stage-managed enquiry stacked with proponents and proceed to commit billions of dollars on their say-so.
Terren:
"Do you ever feel guilty about being an affluent member of a consumptive culture? If so, does Kyoto represent a way to feel better about your lifestyle? In other words, does this debate go beyond your stated concern for the environment, into the more private, psychological domain of your inner feelings about the life you live?"
Terren I live in a housing co-operative where the per capita CO2 emissions are around 20% of the Australian average; I don;t own a car and my commuting is done either by gas-powered bus or electric train; I haven't flown in about three years.
Until a few months ago I was an unpaid volunteer director of an ethical investment organisation and as head of the finance committee of the Board I was personally responsible for a multi-million dollar stock portfolio which was heavily invested in renewable energy firms.
I don't say any of this to boast but, no, I don't think guilt has much to do with my views on global warming.
"The concept of 'collective property that belongs to everyone' is itself a hallmark of socialism.."
Yes, the sooner we can privatise the atmosphere the better.
Oh and Kevin you missed one of my questions: Bloomberg; Schwartzenegger and McCain, commies or useful idiots?
JC- you do understand that there is a difference between climate science and ecology? They are related, insofar as the climate affects ecologies, but to wave away Jeffs concerns like that is unnecessary.
Moreover, we cannot definitely rely upon future technology to make everything better. What technologies are you going to rely on? Do you have an exclusive view of the future?
Given also the known and expected effects of climate change, added to the presssures that humans are putting on ecosystems through pollution, overfishing, removal of forestry, etc etc, can you not see that it is likely that there will be irreversible losses in the next few decades, long before any wibbletech can be invented to save us all?
Hey look, the Union of Concerned Scientists have produced a demonstration vehicle made up entirely of existing off-the-shelf components that's 40% more fuel-efficient than comparable vehicles currently on the road.
Dirty commies!
http://www.sciencedaily.com/upi/index.php?feed=Science&article=UPI-1-20…
Ian says:
"By all means let's have it "on the table". But that doesn't mean we have a stage-managed enquiry stacked with proponents and proceed to commit billions of dollars on their say-so."
If by stage managed you mean proponents actually discusing it so people are not bamboozled into believing that nuke power is enternally dangerous. Well I disagree.
Governments role is to explain the options and be totally honest about it.
From then on it becomes a matter for private investors. And on this we seem to agree.
Guthrie.
I think a little of those issues you raise- important ones- could easily be solved through effective and strengthened property rights.
If land ownership meant not just the surface but also from the core and the heavens a lot of what you point out shouldn't be a problem.
Ian, Guthrie, Thanks for your comments and support.
JC more-or-less shot him/herself in the foot (as expected) by failing to answer my main point: how can we reconcile economic development with mass extinction, falling water tables, population crashes of pollinators and seed dispersers, plagues of pests, and a general loss in a range of critical ecocystem services? Our understanding of the complex ways in which natural systems function is still in its relative infancy, but we do know that human beings exist because conditions are in place that emerge from natural systems which permit it. At the same time, overconsumption rates in the developed world (combined with an increase in the overall human population) is simplifying nature far faster than at any other time in human history. There are no technological subsitutes for most of the critically important ecosystem services yet our species continues to hammer away at these systems with reckless abandon.
JC: instead of relying on crossing your fingers and hoping that Homo sapiens will pull technological rabbits out of hats, please tell me how technology can replace pollinating invertebrates (e.g bees) that are in demographic freefall in the U.S. but are essential in sustaining agriculture, or how we could replace nitrogen fixing bacteria if these were to disappear. You might also tell me how we might replace groundwater that is being unsustainably drained, or replace exhausted soils with fertile soils that are rich in soil biota that play a critical role in sustaining crop productivity. I could go on and on about this, but JC won't give any answers. Nope, he/she will just bleat out the usual axiom: 'technology will save us', and 'rely on the market'. JC's response was thus as I expected: He/she was saying, 'Because I don't understand something, even if it may be relevant, I dismiss it'.
Finally, JC read the damned IPCC report or the World Scientist's Warning to Humanity (1992) before you make any further fatuous remarks about how serious senior scientists such as myself regard the current predicament. Where on Earth can you provide empirical support for saying, 'Quite frankly the reputable climate scientists are not telling us the sky is falling like Chicken Little'. This is patently untrue! I personally know a number of evry senior climate researchers and they view AGW with great concern. The current situation is very serious indeed, and the consequences on further procastrination will be profound.
Ian
Talsa is a Silcon Valley firm made up of former computer geeks (sorry Tim) who produce an electric car that is faster than a Ferrari. Being computer guys they farm most of the stuff out to other firms. They ingeniously solved the battery problem by using computer battery technology instead of what estblished cars makers are heading.
They do about 350 miles and then require 3 1/2 hours plug in time. They have begun to sell these things at a 100g a pop.
They expect to begin competing with in the family class Mercedes/ BMW/ Lexus crowd by 2011 and hope to sell these at 50-70 grand.
Electricty costs about 1 cent per mile vs 2 1/2 cts for a regular car.
We're getting there.
Jeff H
A lot to deal with, but I'll try.
1. See the car report above. BMW is coming out with a hybrid across all their models commencing next year. So is GM from what I understand and Toyota is already there. We need a little patience as the retooling costs are going to be huge.
2. GM crops use far less arable land and it would be a worthwhile thing if green groups around the world started supporting it rather than nixing and creating scare campaigns. It would go a long way towards reducing productive acreage.
3. Water issues. Well take a look at this new invention in MIT tech report, which promises to reduce the cost of desalination by up to 80%. I would argue that the water issue is mostly a government caused problem in rich world through mispricing and the command style soviet model that is applied to it which invariably causes misallocation and shortages.
4 About the birds and bees I have no answer, as I don't know anything about it. However if the pollen issue is as dire as you say it is, I would dare say that we should have seen a fall off in US agricultural production by now and the price of foodstuffs going through the roof. So at first blush it looks like your point could be a little overblown, as raw food prices have not gone up across the board.
5. Regards the issues of mass extinctions: there isn't a problem with mass extinctions but I certainly would agree that it shouldn't be dismissed. The main issue there is again man made. Fencing is a huge problem as critters need unfenced land to move around.. Land zoning that is mainly a nimby-derived problem is the cause of much of that. Remove all height restrictions and fast-forward the movement to Gm crops. That should go some way towards giving the critters the space they deserve. Introduce land tax as a replacement to income derived tax and we see less use of land for human activity.
I'm happy to deal with you other issues tomorrow. I would however warn that the command style Soviet model never worked and pollution issues were a far bigger problem in relative context in the Sov Union than it ever was in the West.
MIT tech report on water desal: http://www.technologyreview.com/Nanotech/16977/
Please don';t think iwas ignoring your points, as I thought I had answered.
please tell me how technology can replace pollinating invertebrates (e.g bees) that are in demographic freefall in the U.S.
European bees are invasive species in America and should be eradicated anyway. :-D
http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/
Same for bananas in Africa, potatoes in Europe and wheat in America.
And tulips in Amsterdam.
JC,
I will answer your points in detail later. I appreciate you replying to them, even if you still just do not realize how much humanity depends on nature. Humans co-opt more than 40% of net primary production and 50% of freshwater flows. One third of the planet's land has been converted from its original state to agriculture. We have significantly altered a range of biogeochemical cycles, and have kick-started the sixth great extinction (and the first to be caused by one of the planet's evolved inhabitants). In spite of those who believe that somehow technology has elevated our species above and beyond dependence on natural systems beyond the obvious importance of providing the materials we need to maintain civilization, the fact is that natural systems provide a range of 'life-supporting' services without which we would not exist, nor would we have evolved in the first place.
The problem is that these services do not carry prices, and thus we only appreciate their importance when they are added or (more worryingly) when they are lost. Both examples are absolute. Pollination, a service I alluded to earlier, is but one; others are the cycling of nutrients, the breakdown of wastes, the stabilization of coastlines, flood prevention, climate control, the production and maintenance of soil fertility, pest control, and seed dispersal. The gradual decay of our ecological life-support systems is hardly recognized until some critical threshold is reached and passed, when it is too late to recover them. It is like standing in a canoe and rocking it back and forth: we remain in the canoe for a long time eve as the amplitude increases and then we are pitched into the water. This is exactly what we can expect as humans continue to assault nature in a myriad of ways, and our impacts are sadly not declining but are still accelerating. The jointly sponsored UN-World Bank Living Planet Index (based on the health and productivity of the three major global ecosystems: forest, freshwater and coastal marine) suggests that humans are consuming nature far faster than nature can repair itself. The LPI has mesaured a 35% decline in the productivity of these systems since it was set up in 1970. All I can say as a senior scientist is that this cannot continue, but yet there are no signs that the situation is reversing or even leveling off. At some point the debt we are accruing will have to be paid - and it is then when humans will be pitched into the metaphorical water from the canoe. One thing is certain as we continue our global one-off experimet: expect surprises. Nasty ones.
Your solutions abopve deal with symptoms but not the disease which is the very scale of the human enterprise. GM crops, for example, are no solution at all. There is actually enough food produced in the world today to feed everyone, but the problem is that wealth and power is becoming ever more concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. The global economic system in place is one that rewards the privileged few at the expense of the poor and suffering many. The promotion of GM technology - via intense greenwashing and advertising campaigns - is simply because this technology will make some investors very much money. We are dealing with intellectual property here, and I would truly believe the technology was aimed at alleviating hunger and poverty were I to see these technologies freely shared with the poor countries. But it isnt happening, nor is it likely to. Corporations that invest billions in this technology aren't doing it out of the goodness of their hearts. They want hard cash for it, dollars, not rupees. How on Earth will a a farmer in Uganda afford GM crops when they can't even lay out 5 dollars for a shovel? Moreover, there are plenty of scientific risks. Ignoring the obvious environmental consequences of introducing GM crops, what will happen is that we will lose an immense amout of genetic variability if we come to reply on GMOs. It is this genetic variability which gives a species a better chance to adaptively respond to an unexpected disaster like that casued by a damaging pathogen. The more genetic variability there is in a species, the greater the likelihood that a certain genotype will be able to survive the pathogenic outbreak. But this genetic 'safety net' will be lost with GM crops, which will mostly have limited genetic variation. Farmers will also end up becoming like workers on an auto assembly line; small holding farmers in the third world, who have saved seeds for generations will suddenly have to grow a single strain of a GM variety.
I really don't weant to belittle your points, JC, but you really haven't spent to much time on any of the points I have made on this or previous posts. You are placing a misguided faith in markets and the free enterprise system, a system wich is ever reliant on 'economic growth' and increased concumption. Let us be honest here: planners arent interested in what's going to happen ten years down the road or even five years: they are concerned with the next quarter year's profit margins. At most they think one-two years ahead but this isn't far enough. Thus, environmental issues like climate change or biodiversity loss hardly register wit them, if at all. The same planners are promoting a global corporate feeding frenzy that is sending our planet to hell in a handbasket. The 'Washington Consensus', as it is known, is a disater for the environment and a disaster for creating social justice. Unlimited free enterprise is therefore not the solution, but the problem.
The global economic system in place is one that rewards the privileged few at the expense of the poor and suffering many.
I though that Lomborg demonstrated that although the absolute number of starving people was in icreasing, the relative number was declining. "We live in a richer, cleaner world"
There will always be people who think that the glass is half empty.
JC said - "GM crops use far less arable land and it would be a worthwhile thing if green groups around the world started supporting it rather than nixing and creating scare campaigns. It would go a long way towards reducing productive acreage".
Where on earth did you find this piece of nonsense? Everywhere GM crops have been introduced they have become disasters for the farmers using them. Even in the US yields have gone down while chemical use has increased.
Argentina and Brazil soils are being ruined on a massive scale and indigenous farmers are being forced from their land.
All the promises of actual benefits to producer and consumer have never materialized. Drought resistance, where is it? Salt tolerance, where is it?
GM crops are not the answer for ethanol production either. Why engineer amylase into grains when under the right conditions they can produce it by themselves (ever heard of malting?). Anyway, mild acid hydrolysis is far superior in any case.
Genetic engineering is great science but has not developed into a useful technology as far as agricultural crops go.
Hans,
Lomborg is a hack in my view. The global economy has grown by a factor of 13 since 1950 and poverty has hardly been dented. Furthermore, there are more starving people in the world now than there were people alive in 1930. The UN also alarmingly predicted last year that the gradual decrease in absolute poverty would remain stable or increase again by 2015. Hardly progress.
Its easy for us in the ecologically debt-ridden overconsumptive countries to talk about 'half full glasses' when 1 person in 9 receives such little nutrition that there minds are actually wasting away. And the bottom line is that poverty reduction is mostly a sham - read what the planners are saying and you will see that alleviating poverty anmd social justice are never mentioned.
I'd take Lomborg's demonstrations with a grain of salt.
"Cleaner" world, Hans Erren ? You ought to check this BBC-page detailing a piece of research published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. It focuses on the global impact of Asia's pollution.
Cleaner, Hans ?
In some debates on GW I've seen denialists stating authoritatively that man as species are arrogant if they think they can affect climate.
Fer chrissakes, I thought it was frikkin' OBVIOUS man affects climate and nature through pollution etc. Acid rain, ozone hole, air pollution, global warming, oil spills (Exxon Valdez, anyone?) etc.
But then again, obvious points often fall on deaf ears with someone in de Nile...
Has Lomborg's book been "Audited" ?
'Cos it should. It really should.
Someone had better call in the Climate Frauditors !
Ian,
I still couldn't care less about doing enough research to make an honest and reasonable judgement about Schwarzenegger, McCain or any other supposedly anti-socialist political figure you'd care to dredge up. What don't you understand about neither the argument from popularity nor the argument from authority being truth preserving?
Furthermore, the one who is treating socialism like some sort of boogeyman is you. An honest and carefully supported argument in favor of it is much preferable to trying to slide it in the back door and obfuscating the issue by citing purported conservatives who support it. If you have some logical reason why a system of transfer payments based on redistributive justice is not socialism, then make your argument. What you've managed so far is meaningless, procrustean pap.
And the atmosphere is currently unowned because no one has commodified it yet. There is no need to 'make it private'; no one can increase its value or restrict access to it. It is a resource in common. If you don't appreciate the difference between common property and collective property, the problem is yours.
"I though that Lomborg demonstrated that although the absolute number of starving people was in icreasing, the relative number was declining. "We live in a richer, cleaner world"
There will always be people who think that the glass is half empty."
Including, oddly enough, many of those whose dinner plate is completely empty.
"I still couldn't care less about doing enough research to make an honest and reasonable judgement about Schwarzenegger, McCain or any other supposedly anti-socialist political figure you'd care to dredge up. What don't you understand about neither the argument from popularity nor the argument from authority being truth preserving'"
why don;t you understand that I'm doing nothing of the sort?
You advanced the bizarre conspiracy theory that Kyoto is a socialist plot. That claim only works if the people who were responsible for Kyoto are socialists.
They weren't.
In fact at this point about the only mainstream politician who doesn't support an international carbon trading system of some sort is Senate Imhofe.
So who'll you be writing in on your'08 Presidential ballot, him or LaRouche?
This is only true if you define socialism as "anything that isn't an unfettered free market capitalist system". Most of us (including you, did you but realise it) live in a world with a little more nuance than that. Kyoto was designed as an explicitly market-based response to a global environmental problem, to enable each country to make its own least-cost contribution to the reduction of carbon emissions.
You can only dismiss Kyoto on two grounds: that you think carbon emissions are unimportant, or that there's a better way of doing it. If you accept the science, then your position must be the second.
So, what is the better way? Please explain in detail a plan that has a chance of success, that will engage all the world's major emitters, and that meets your criteria (whatever they may be).
"If you have some logical reason why a system of transfer payments based on redistributive justice is not socialism, then make your argument."
Issuing permits to pollute and making them a tradeable asset is almost the exact opposite of "ransfer payments based on redistributive justice".
It's something of a side-issue but given that Kevin is so very very ill-informed on such a wide range of issues, I should expand a little on Thatcher's position regarding climate change and tradeable permits.
In 1989, the Thatcher government introduced the Non Fossil Fuel Obligation which taxed all electricity users and used to the money to purchase renewable energy certificates. Renewable energy producers and nuclear power generators were obliged to tender on a competitive basis to sell certificates to the regulator.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Renewables_Obligation_Certificates
Ian G says:
"Issuing permits to pollute and making them a tradeable asset is almost the exact opposite of "ransfer payments based on redistributive justice". "
Ian, please, they are the sibling of the old ration card. We would be simply trading in ration cards.
-------------------------------
Jeff H
Thanks for your response. You seem to care about the issues important to you.
I have a question for you that may be worth pondering. Out of a rating between 0 and 10 how much do you value industrial civilization? No trick question here. As it is leading to the issue of trade offs.
Ian G, you may want to have a stab at it too.
I'm fairly sure that trading ration cards is not any different from trading any other commodity.
As for the value of industrial civilisation, thats a pretty poor question. We can almost certainly maintain industrial civilisation without destroying the biosphere, if we put our minds to it. The tricky thing is how to do it.
The carbon nanotube based filter reminds me of stuff i saw at the CArbon 2006 conference in Aberdeen. 5 to 10 years is a reasonable time to market I think, however given the amount of processing involved etc, I also think it likely that they will not really be all that cheap. And in the short term, it would be better not to waste water at all.
At this stage, extending private property rights into the atmosphere or under the ground smacks to me of desperation- how do you deal with the fact that the air above your property changes many times an hour? Surely you can already sue for pollution? In fact, I would have thought that a Kyoto type agreement could almost make sense, i.e. you the property owner could sell the pollution absorption capacity of your property to a polluter. Surely that would work?
Manboy- I have an url somewhere to the Danish response to Lomborgs book, in which a whole bunch of scientists pile onto him. I'll see if I can dig it out.
Jeff Harvey said: "the bottom line is that poverty reduction is mostly a sham - read what the planners are saying and you will see that alleviating poverty anmd social justice are never mentioned."
This is a common ploy to balance emissions reductions is against poverty reductions, since, as everyone knows, "we simply do not have enough to do both and all money not spent on emissions reductions will be spent of poverty reduction."
But this either/or scenario is simply not credible.
Who really (I mean, really) believes that any money not spent on reducing emissions will be spent on reducing poverty? (raise your mouse hand)
Also, who believes that we (here in the first world) don't have the money to do both?
After all, we (the US) have spent $500 billion (and probably will spend over a trillion before all is said and done) on a war that has produced highly dubious results (to say the least) -- so we apparently have money to burn.
How much CO2 emissions reduction might be produced with 500 billion invested in research and development on renewable energy and efficiency improvements, for example?
How much poverty reduction can you buy for $500 billion dollars? I'll guess that we could easily have raised hundreds of millions of families out of poverty (provided that Haliburton was not siphoning off tens of billions of dollars, of course).
Think I exaggerate? Think again. A company called KickStart is doing it for less than $100 per family in Kenya, for goodness sake.
Hans: "I though that Lomborg demonstrated that although the absolute number of starving people was in icreasing, the relative number was declining. "We live in a richer, cleaner world"
So, Hans, 850 million starving people out of 6 billion is better than 670 million out of 4 billion right?
If the assessment of biologists like Harvard' E. O Wilson is worth anything, the only thing Lomborg demonstrated conclusively in his book was his own ignorance.
The relative number starving vs absolute number starving only tells part of the story and is not a priori the best way to assess whether progress has occurredthis piece indicates.
"Ian, please, they are the sibling of the old ration card. We would be simply trading in ration cards."
So when companies pay for radio spectrum that's socialism?
When people pay more for penthouse apartments that's socialism?
How about when people pay for express parcel delivery?
When the demand for a good exceeds supply, there are only a few ways to allocate the good. Rationing and queues are one way (and in some cases such as organ transplants they may be an appropriate way) or you can establish property rights and
let the people who value the good most pay the market price.
If any characteristic of the various trading and tax schemes developed by the Kyoto signatories has any resemblance to socialism it's the tendency to give permits out for free to existing industries.
"I have a question for you that may be worth pondering. Out of a rating between 0 and 10 how much do you value industrial civilization? No trick question here. As it is leading to the issue of trade offs.
Ian G, you may want to have a stab at it too."
Industrial civilisation rates about a 9.99 with only actual survival of the human species ahead of it.
Which is why I'm constantly pissed off that economic illiterates and right-wing conspiracy nuts have been doing their level best to prevent the quite small and modest steps that we need to take to ensure its survival.
"Manboy- I have an url somewhere to the Danish response to Lomborgs book, in which a whole bunch of scientists pile onto him. I'll see if I can dig it out."
"Scientists" right. They're obviously all socialists who want to destroy industrial civilisation.
But JB, Kickstart are obviously socialists. After all, if there were really free market solutions to African poverty the market would already have implemented them.
Don't you understand. God is a capitalist. The outcomes of current capitalist systems are merely an expression of His Divine will and not to be questioned.
You know its a damn good thing Henry Ford's bankers weren't efficient market fundamentalists: "I'm sorry Henry, you claim you can radically improve output just be adding a few conveyor belts and changing the way people work. Clearly if that were the case, someone would already have done so."
"Ian, please, they are the sibling of the old ration card. We would be simply trading in ration cards."
So when companies pay for radio spectrum that's socialism?
When people pay more for penthouse apartments that's socialism?
How about when people pay for express parcel delivery?
------------------------------------------
Ian, it appears you are confusing and conflating economic concepts here. You are confusing scarcity and the price mechanism to allocate resources efficiently.
Spectrum is a scarce resource and so is the apartment. The price mechanism in these examples allocates affectively.
However top down, government determined emission limits/coupons is rationing and therefore carbon credits trading is simply form of trading in ration slips.
-----------------------------------------
You say:
"If any characteristic of the various trading and tax schemes developed by the Kyoto signatories has any resemblance to socialism it's the tendency to give permits out for free to existing industries."
-----
I have a difficult time getting my head around this statement .....the standard argument used to defend emissions controls.
To determine externalities one must have a party or group that can prove damages. I am yet to see one person take the issue of AGW to court let alone win a case. Therefore I regard the issue as more a personal preferences issue, which is ok too. There seem to be enough people around these days who would prefer pristine air.. or as close as we can get to that.
However there are trade offs, big ones. Far bigger than the figures you have presented that can't be quantified through simple static accounting. Dynamic scoring is the only way such things can be measured and it certainly is far more than you have argued here.
We also seem very determined to create a wealth transfer from poor people to rich dudes. On current estimates people alive 100 years from now will be quite wealthy with a GDP per cap. projection of med. income around $200,000. Ours is around $32,000 at present. So we are being asked to sacrifice current consumption and living standards of the present day to fund the living standards of generations that aren't yet alive..... two/three generations away.
This is problematic in any context.
Lawyers pontificating about scienciness stuff as though it weren't plain they'd no idea which end of a test tube was up - who needs 'em?
Kevin and JC: Can the two of you please get together and decide if Kyoto is bad because it transfers wealth from the rich to the poor (and is therefore socialism) or because it transfers wealth from the poor to the rich?
Joel.
I haven't read what Kevin has said even now, but actions on AGW are a wealth transfer.
If you had read my comment you would have noticed that I made mention of a generational transfer not between living people.
"Ian, it appears you are confusing and conflating economic concepts here. You are confusing scarcity and the price mechanism to allocate resources efficiently.
Spectrum is a scarce resource and so is the apartment. The price mechanism in these examples allocates affectively.
However top down, government determined emission limits/coupons is rationing and therefore carbon credits trading is simply form of trading in ration slips."
No, there is a limited capacity of the environment to accept pollution without causing economic harm.
The whole point of permits is to commodify access to that limited resource so that normal market principles apply.
This approach was originated in the US in the 1980's and has been adopted by regulators all over the world precisely because its more economically efficient and more congruent with markets than the older regulation-based process.
It's the mechanism used in the Los Angeles basin air pollution market; in the US tradeable development rights market; in water trading regimes worldwide and the US sulphur dioxide permit market.
Chanting "socialism" and "rationing" doesn't change that.
"To determine externalities one must have a party or group that can prove damages."
No you don't - who were the plaintiffs in relation to either South Coast Air Basin in California or the US national sulphur dioxide market?
One of the principal advantages of emission trading is exactly that it eliminates the need to fix damages or to allocate costs for those damages between emitters. Instead it ensures that the emissions are reduced at the lowest net cost without incurring legal costs or other transaction costs.
All that is necessary to determine whether trading is justified, is whether the aggregate cost of likely damage is lower than the aggregate likely cost of mitigation.
In the case of the US and carbon dioxide, the health impacts of other pollutants from current coal and petrol use (including ozone; mercury; particulates; nitrogen dioxide; sulphur dioxide and particulates) probably more than justifies emission reductions regardless of the climate change issue.
Even quite small estimates of probable climate change costs, suitably weighted for probability (i.e. you discount the cost of the less probable scenarios) make the economic case for emission trading overwhelmingly clear.
"However there are trade offs, big ones. Far bigger than the figures you have presented that can't be quantified through simple static accounting. Dynamic scoring is the only way such things can be measured and it certainly is far more than you have argued here."
Actually dynamic effects are included in the econometric models. Furthermore all the models I cite assume zero cost
from increased climate change relating to failure to reduce emissions.
You also assume zero dynamic losses from failure to act to limit emissions.
In fact, major US companies are urging the government to act to introduce carbon trading precisely because uncertainty about future regulation is discouraging investment.
Basically, "dynamic costs" is the last resort of the right wing economic scoundrel. It's invoked whenever you don't like the outcome of economic modeling to inflate costs or exaggerate benefits of various policies.
"We also seem very determined to create a wealth transfer from poor people to rich dudes. On current estimates people alive 100 years from now will be quite wealthy with a GDP per cap. projection of med. income around $200,000. Ours is around $32,000 at present. So we are being asked to sacrifice current consumption and living standards of the present day to fund the living standards of generations that aren't yet alive..... two/three generations away.
This is problematic in any context."
Of course, the people two generations in the future (assuming climate change hasn't had a dramatic effect on living standards in the interim) will argue that the people two generations on from them will be richer still and therefore they should take no action.
Question: do you think the US should have implemented the Clean Air Act of 1970 or allowed air quality to continue to deteriorate and leave it to the people of 2007 to fix?
Basically, "dynamic costs" is the last resort of the right wing economic scoundrel. It's invoked whenever you don't like the outcome of economic modeling to inflate costs or exaggerate benefits of various policies.
Of course it isn't, Ian. Otherwise such things as the laffer curve wouldn't exist.
"One of the principal advantages of emission trading is exactly that it eliminates the need to fix damages or to allocate costs for those damages between emitters. Instead it ensures that the emissions are reduced at the lowest net cost without incurring legal costs or other transaction costs."
But the money is not going to the injured parties, otherwise there wouldn't be a case of externalities...... which becomes circular reasoning, doesn't it? If emitters are casuing damage there must be "damagees". However the whole concept ignores this issue. So it really becomes an issue of personal preferences, which as I said is not problematic in itself if that is what people want.
"In the case of the US and carbon dioxide, the health impacts of other pollutants from current coal and petrol use (including ozone; mercury; particulates; nitrogen dioxide; sulphur dioxide and particulates) probably more than justifies emission reductions regardless of the climate change issue."
How so. Who has sued for damages? As I said there are always trade offs. You know that, you're an economist.
"No, there is a limited capacity of the environment to accept pollution without causing economic harm."
We don't know that, since we haven't set a price for environmental degradation the market due to loose property rights. Carbon credit limits would be set by the government and "trading" would accord to the limit(s) set. It is not establishing a market price at all. Like rationing, trading in ration cards is not setting the real price for what the ration card is being used for. You are alos unable to compare it to the free market.
The market was never allowed to set the price of emissions due to the fact that property rights were ignored. So you can't exactly say that trading will be market based since the market wasn't allowed to set the limit of the emissions.
"Of course, the people two generations in the future (assuming climate change hasn't had a dramatic effect on living standards in the interim) will argue that the people two generations on from them will be richer still and therefore they should take no action."
Well, not necessarily so. I would bet that 100 years from now the idea of firing up coal fired plants will be equal to people using fire wood to heat their homes out of necessity rather than quaintness.
I would also guess and you would agree that the technology and knowledge will be multilpes more than we know now. IT will also be cheaper.
This really gets to the core of the issue. If you wish to speed up the process of moving away from coal fired plants you want to set policies up that actually increase savings seeing that it is savings that fuels captial spending and R&D. In 100 years time we could be using anti-matter reactors to make energy.
"Of course it isn't, Ian. Otherwise such things as the laffer curve wouldn't exist."
The Laffer Curve has little or nothing to do with dynamic effects.
My point is, once again, that dynamic effects ARE captured by economic models. Claims that models don't capture positive or negative dynamic effects are simply an excuse ot dismiss inconvenient results.
"But the money is not going to the injured parties, otherwise there wouldn't be a case of externalities......"
The point is not to compensate the injured parties for the damage but to prevent further damage occurring in future.
"How so. Who has sued for damages?"
Let me put it this way, we know with a very high degree of certainty that high levels of ground-level ozone in Brisbane correlate with increased hospital admissions for respiratory diseases and increased mortality. How do you suggest we go about proving exactly which individual deaths are caused by ozone and which of the 500,000-odd car owners in Brisbane do you suggest should be sued?
"We don't know that, since we haven't set a price for environmental degradation the market due to loose property rights. Carbon credit limits would be set by the government and "trading" would accord to the limit(s) set. It is not establishing a market price at all. Like rationing, trading in ration cards is not setting the real price for what the ration card is being used for. You are alos unable to compare it to the free market."
So there's no such thing as a free market in land because ownership rights to land were originally established by government action?
Some data on the health costs of air pollution:
http://www.cleartheair.org/dirtypower/docs/dirtyAir.pdf
"This report, "Power Plant Emissions: Particulate
Matter-Related Health Damages and the Benefits of
Alternative Emission Reduction Scenarios,"30 finds
that nearly 24,000 deaths each year are attributable to
fine particle pollution from U.S. power plants."
"Further, the study finds that 22,000 of these deaths could be avoided by requiring the nation's
fleet of older, dirty power plants to cut their sulfur
dioxide and nitrogen oxide emissions to levels consistent
with today's available emissions controls."
Got that? 22,000 lives could be saved in US every year by upgrading or replacing the oldest coal-fired powerplants. Which would also probably go most of the way to satisfying the US Kyoto commitments.
The economic value of a human life is generally estimated at
$1-2 million, so that's an economic benefit of around $30 billion per year to the US not captured in the current economic models which already show quite small net costs.
That's before we consider the economic impact of the 3 million lost work days; the 38,000 heart attacks and the 21,000 hospital admissions.
http://www.oma.org/Health/smog/report/ICAP2005_Report.pdf
Ontario: 5,800 deaths per year. 16,000 hospital admissions; 60,000 emergency room visits.
Economic cost C$7.8 billion per year.
The health costs of air pollution are non-linear and subject to threshold effects meaning a 10% reduction in pollution levels would result in a greater than 10% reduction in costs.
http://www.healthpromotion.org.au/journal/previous/2005_3/article7.php?…
"Abstract
Issue addressed:
Estimated health costs and principal sources of air pollution are reviewed, together with estimated costs of reducing pollution from major sources in Australia.
Methods:
Emissions data from the Australian National Pollutant Inventory were compared with published estimates of pollution costs and converted to the cost per kilogram of emissions. Costs per kg of emissions (and, for the two main sources of pollution, diesel vehicles and wood heaters, costs per heater and per vehicle) are relatively easy to understand, making it easier to compare health costs with costs of pollution-control strategies.
Results:
Estimated annual costs of morbidity/mortality exceed $1,100 per diesel vehicle and $2,000 per wood heater. Costs of avoiding emissions (about $2.1/kg PM2.5 for phasing out wood heaters and upwards of $70/kg for reducing diesel emissions) are considerably less than the estimated health costs ($166/kg) of those emissions."
http://www.unece.org/doc/eur/eur.02.5040828.3.annex4.e.pdf
"In 1996, air pollution caused some 5 600 cases of premature death in Austria, some 31 700 cases in France and some 3 300 cases in Switzerland. In Austria 2 400, in France 17 600 and
in Switzerland 1 800 cases are attributable to road traffic-related air pollution."
Joel:
Happily, JC and I have different points of view.
I don't think JC's claim is necessarily exclusive of mine. He's saying there's no reason to try and save for future generations or feel guilty about wrecking our great granchildren's future since their standard of living will be quite a bit better than ours and I am saying interventionism is relatively inefficient. 2 different claims, but both possibly valid reasons to reject Kyoto.
http://www.worldbank.org/depweb/english/beyond/beyondco/beg_10.pdf
"High concentrations of suspended particulates
adversely affect human health,
provoking a wide range of respiratory
diseases and exacerbating heart disease
and other conditions. Worldwide, in
1995 the ill health caused by such pollution
resulted in at least 500,000 premature
deaths and 4-5 million new cases of
chronic bronchitis. Most of the people at
risk are urban dwellers in developing
countries, especially China and India. In
many Chinese cities air quality is so poor
that nationwide, economic losses caused
by excess illness and mortality of urban
residents are estimated at 5 percent of
GDP. According to estimates for 18
cities in Central and Eastern Europe,
18,000 premature deaths a year could be
prevented and $1.2 billion a year in
working time lost to illness could be
regained by achieving European Union
pollution standards for dust and soot.
The level of air pollution depends on a
country's technologies and pollution
control, particularly in energy production.
Using cleaner fossil fuels (such as
natural gas and higher-grade coal), burning
these fuels more efficiently, and
increasing reliance on even cleaner,renewable sources of energy (hydro,
solar, geothermal, wind) are some of the
best ways to control and reduce air pollution
without limiting economic
growth."
Ian your tireless efforts in this exhaustive thread have been extremely educating. A lot I did not know about Kyoto, carbon trading and the economics of the AGW response have been explained here, and questions I didn`t even think to raise have been answered. Thank you very much.
Ian,
>>You advanced the bizarre conspiracy theory that Kyoto is a socialist plot. That claim only works if the people who were responsible for Kyoto are socialists.
This is a plainly fallacy. I advanced the theory that Kyoto would lead to world socialism. It doesn't matter who is responsible for it or what their intentions are.
Kyoto means a command economy under UN auspice supplanting national sovereignty; moreover one that will effectively create an internationally mandated system of transfer payments.
I don't care if Schwarzenegger, to name one of your obsessions, is indifferent to the relative inefficiencies of a command economy or ignorant of the slippery slope of subordinating the US economy to UN control, a closet member of the Socialist International or unjustifiably scared of CA sinking under a tsunami of ice melt. None of that is relevant. Now why can't you understand that? The relevant issue to me is what will Kyoto do, not who formulated it, who supports it, who doesn't or how one might label their political views.
>>In fact at this point about the only mainstream politician who doesn't support an international carbon trading system of some sort is Senate Imhofe.
Good for him. The argument from popularity isn't truth preserving. Plus, many politicians are poll chasing 'representatives' rather than proper delegates. As soon as it looks like public CW is tilting one way or the other, you know that's where you'll find the opinions of most politicians.
Forbes in '08!
Gareth:
I define socialism as the principled position that property should be subject to social control rather than individual control coupled with state control over the means of production. The US is a mixed economy, but less mixed than many European countries. The less mixed the better.
Kyoto is a top down approach to controlling the means of production. It is the principled assertion of the sovereign jurisdiction over the atmosphere by the UN. The argument goes something like: the atmosphere is too important to allow individuals to damage therefore collective control is warranted. The same has been asserted of education, the postal service, wages, the cost of staples and much more.
Kyoto is market based so long as you accept that the UN has the right and duty to set international standards for carbon release and to set, according to principles of redistributive justice, arbitrary standards for carbon release for less developed nations such that industrial nations can pay them for whatever credits they've been assigned. Can you honestly argue that carbon rationing is not a signifer of a command economy? Isn't all explicit rationing the sign of a command economy?
I'm not too sure about the science of GW. Further, a small or unquanitifiable chance of a very bad event is not a great reason to do something that will negatively impact the economy. You don't need to declare consensus has been achieved if you can, for instance, predict climate change and prove your point. Declaring consensus is a rhetorical tool to stifle dissent. Seeing that so many environmentalists have been pretty plain about their pragmatism wrt the truth and achieve their agenda, I require a pretty high standard of proof before I am buying it.
As far as a solution to CO2, I support nuclear power, until something better comes along, but I support it irrespective of my position on GW. It pollutes far less than coal plants or oil plants. They release tons of actual pollutants that cause death and disease; unlike speculative GW complaints about what may happen in 2 centuries or 10,000 years from now, coal kills plenty of people right now.
Ian,
How can you possibly claim explicit, non-price rationing is a feature of a market economy? It is interventionism instantiated. Kyoto will assign carbon credits to countries that wouldn't necessarily even produce that much carbon to begin with and that likely wouldn't be able to afford them at their true price out of sheer egalitarianism. Making the credits tradeable means nothing. A black market pushing the credits up to their true price would likely evolve anyway.
Kevin wrote:
"I'm not too sure about the science of GW". In other words, you havn't got a clue about the science underpinning AGW. Be honest, don't try to intimate that you have some ideas when you have none.
He then wrote:
"Further, a small or unquanitifiable chance of a very bad event is not a great reason to do something that will negatively impact the economy".
Who said anything about small? And 'unquantifiable' is a red herring; there is NO DOUBT (shall I repeart that?!) that climate change and other anthropogenic alterations of complex adaptive systems that constitute the biosphere are going to have huge, catastrophic impacts on the human economy if we maintain a 'business-as-usual' policy. The mateial economy is underpinned by ther natural economy, is utterly dependent on it, and thus the global experiment humans are conducting is incurring huge ecological debts that WILL have to be paid if we stay on our present course.
Need I spell it out any more clearly for you? Or must we invoke the neat paper that Robert once attached in another thread on the Lancet paper ('Incompetent and Unaware of it') to describe your pontificating?
JC,
Sorry I did not reply yesterday, but I was away. You asked a rather banal question:
"Out of a rating between 0 and 10 how much do you value industrial civilization?"
In spite of what you say, the question is heavily loaded and multifaceted. If I was to answer with respect to the developed world alone and to ignore the natural economy, I'd say 9. If I was to speak in the underdeveloped countries, whose resources are looted to unsustainably support overconsumption in ecologically debt-ridden developed countries, I'd say 2. If I was to answer the question internalizing the ecological costs of industrial civilization, given (a) the ecological deficit that is growing to finance the bubble economies of the developed north, and (b) that industrial civilization depends wholly on a wide range of ecological services that are being threatened by overconsumption, then I'd say 3 or 4.
Now I will turn the tables on you: how much do you think (using the same scale) that human civilization depends on the natural economy? There is a lesson here for you.
Thanks, SG.
"The relevant issue to me is what will Kyoto do"
Then it's a pity you're so profoundly ignorant on the topic.
Ian said: "Kickstart are obviously socialists."
Yes, everyone knows that a "capitalism" and "social conscience" are like oil and vinegar.
I believe what KickStart call themselves is "Social Capitalists", which must really drive the Libertarians to drink (if they have not already started).
The other thing that must drive them batty is that the business model of KickStart works as spectacularly as it does -- and for such little money.
KickStart is a perfect example of capitalism at its best. You provide capital (in the form of a human-powered water pump or oil press, in their case) to someone who has nothing and let them pull themselves up through their own hard work and entrepreneurial efforts -- with a little help and advice along the way, of course.
"Of course it isn't, Ian. Otherwise such things as the laffer curve wouldn't exist."
Martin Gardner (who wrote for SCientific American) gave the best critique that I have seen of the Laffer (or is it Laugher?) Curve with his Neo-Laffer Curve
"The curve resembles the Laffer curve but with the addition of a "technosnarl", a region of chaos that more accurately reflects tax revenue as a complex and multivariate function." -- from Wikipedia
JB, I spent about a decade working as a Director of Foresters ANA Friendly Society where as well as ethical investment we provided micro-finance loans to low income people.
So I'm well aware of the concepts of social capitalism. I'm also well aware that the existence of groups like Kickstart and FANA fly in the face of the idea that "the market" will magically provide investment funds for all worthwhile projects - whether in the area of microfinance or the area of energy efficiency.
Hell, read up on Edwards Deming and continuous improvement and the fallacy in relation to the latter becomes readily apparent.
Just ask that notorious socialist Jack Welch, who obviously lacks the finely developed understanding of markets and economics shared by the libertarian punditocracy.
After all if Motorola or GE could save billions of dollars through quality control they would already have done so, right?
Why don't you go read the protocol? It is nothing of the sort. If anything, it is the method negotiated by sovereign nations to control the extent of damage to a commons. Perhaps you believe that the nations of the world acting together are somehow being "socialist"? In any event, the UN provides a framework for action, but is not itself an actor - that's up to the membership.
Fine. Your position then is one of ignorance. Since you do not know enough to appreciate the seriousness of the problem, you feel free to impose your political views on the response to that problem.
Go and do some research - real research, not swallowing windbag science from advocacy sites - and then come back and argue about the nature of the response. Meanwhile, the rest of us (and I am particularly impressed by Jeff Harvey's take on the matter) will get on with doing something.
Tell you what Kevin why don't you assume for the moment that global warming is real and that the likely consequences will be very serious.
Why don't you tell us what a free market solution to the problem would be?
(Oh and "Cut taxes; abolish welfare; shut down most of the US federal government; and withdraw from the UN" isn't really an adequate answer. I know American rightwingers think it's the answer to EVERY question but indulge us here and explain in more detail.
Gareth,, it is clear that Kevin has read at least soem pats of the Kyoto Protocol.
Sadly, its less clear whether he's understood them.
Ian,
Sorry if I inadvertently implied by posting your quote that " Kickstart are obviously socialists" that you were being serious.
I realized your statement was tongue in cheek and thought it was very funny, so that's why I repeated it.
Some free-marketeers may believe -- and object -- that the beneficiaries of KickStart are "getting a handout", but that is simply not the case. In most cases, the people who receive the pumps and olive oil presses from KickStart do eventually pay for them (so effectively, it amounts to a loan) But even if it were a handout, the investment would be well worth it, since the program is more effective (dollar for dollar) than most other development efforts.
I am also familar with some of the micro-loan programs which have also been so effective and kudos to you for working for such a company -- particularly for so many years.
I know one of the people who started KickStart (Martin Fisher) and am well aware of the personal sacrifices involved in making such programs a reality.
Jeff:
I didn't mean I was completely ignorant of the topic but chose to be opposed regardless. There is a fair amount of evidence that AGW theory as held forth by folks like you is not the case.
Lyman et al. 2006, Gouretski et al. 2007 both imply the data for ocean temperatures until recently were wrong. Lyman's claim that the ocean lost 1/5th of observed heat gain since 1955 in two years is significant and Gouretski claims a .2 to .4 C bias in oceanic XBT measurements and says this puts older ocean temp. records off by a factor of .62. Several people argue the ocean is a more important metric for climate change than anything else.
Kossin et al. 2007 poses issues for a link between GW and hurricane intensity.
The IPCC went in strong for MBH98 and 99 and I think MM and Wegman put a solid dent in that. The peer review process apaprently missed quite a few statistical problems there.
McIntyre is demonstrating, even now, a trend in the paleoclimatogy community of obfuscating one's data, offering non sequiturs to plain questions, and vituperative personal attacks and influence peddling in place of reasoned argument.
Plus, I've just read too much material from actual environmentalists on their pragmatism in getting their views accepted, forests as 'green cathedrals', hyping doomsday scenarios to get media coverage, and other reasons to not be skeptic about their objectivity as my base position. I am not a fan of people attempting to manipulate me for my own good or because the issues are too important not to go their way.
Re: your claims - AFAIK, chances are based on historical data. What's your historical data for how quickly or catastrophically AGW is going to happen? None since it hasn't happened before, right? Without evidence, an ecological 'experiment', could just as likely yield positive as negative results. You need evidence and analysis to back your argument.
And the likelihood of business as usual continuing for long is not high. I thought we'd already hit peak oil or that it was just around the corner? Change is coming one way or the other in the status quo.
While I don't think there is any valid statistical method to quantify a chance of innovation solving all problems, chances still seem decent to me of technology solving at some. Unless you've got a crystal ball, your prognosticating is iffy from the start. If we run low on coal and oil, CO2 production is going to drop. We know for a fact that tech. innovation has solved environmental problems in the past, so we cannot know, as you claim is certain, that the status quo is dooming us to catastrophe. Innovation is part of the status quo.
Ian,
If it were demonstrated that CO2 release were actually pollution, rather than a vital part of our ecology, the question would no longer be relevant to the market. In the same manner that me poisoning your well is not up for a market solution, me poisoning your air is not a market issue. It should not be left to the market to deal with torts or crimes, unless we abolish government altogether.
Gareth:
Who assigns carbon use rations in the Kyoto scheme?
>>Perhaps you believe that the nations of the world acting together are somehow being "socialist"? In any event, the UN provides a framework for action, but is not itself an actor - that's up to the membership.
Once a nation, or at least once the US, ratifies a treaty that treaty becomes the law of the land as in 'equivalent in force to the federal constitution.' Now the US *could* ratify the treaty and then ignore its treaty obligations; the UN is such a patchwork of ideologies that many nations ignore their treaty obligations and are never called for it. However, the US would then properly be termed a rogue state. So it should be easily granted, even by you, that signing a treaty that subordinates US industry to an international body is a subordination of US sovereignty.
>>Fine. Your position then is one of ignorance. Since you do not know enough to appreciate the seriousness of the problem, you feel free to impose your political views on the response to that problem.
Both you and Jeff were quick to interpret this as me meaning I refused to research the topic. I was actually expressing my uncertainty that AGW is significant based on various studies I've encountered and various environmentalist pieces I've read.
"If it were demonstrated that CO2 release were actually pollution, rather than a vital part of our ecology, the question would no longer be relevant to the market. In the same manner that me poisoning your well is not up for a market solution, me poisoning your air is not a market issue."
So you oppose the market-based solutions currently in place or proposed in various parts of the the US for sulphur dioxide; ozone; Volatile Organic Compounds and Mercury - all of which are proven proven toxins or carcinogens?
Which one of us is the socialist again?
"McIntyre is demonstrating,"....."in place of reasoned argument."
In my experience McIntyre has a lot of difficulty with making a reasoned argument himself. After he asserted that papers saying Bristlecone pines should not be used for paleoclimate reconstructions after 1850 meant that they must not be used in any circumstances, I pointed out that this was just a calibration problem and that the recent CO2 fertilization effect does not make it impossible to use these pines for reconstructions in the distant past. Instead of debating me on this point, McIntyre launched into a non sequitur about how terrible Bristlecone pines are as a proxy anyway. His original argument vanished from sight. This is standard procedure from McIntyre, his conclusions are set in stone, but his arguments change with the wind.
"And the likelihood of business as usual continuing for long is not high. I thought we'd already hit peak oil or that it was just around the corner?"
We might be hitting peak oil soon but peak coal is a loooong way off.
"Change is coming one way or the other in the status quo."
And any change is a good change, right? Peak oil is not necessarily going to reduce CO2 emissions. If the oil is replaced by conversion from coal, as has often been proposed, then the CO2 generated per unit of oil supplied will be much greater than with natural oil.
Kevin,
The emissions targets are negotiated between the participants - as they will be for the post-Kyoto arrangements.
Not at all. If a duly elected US government decides to work in concert with the rest of the world to address a problem of damage to a global commons, it is something that US government believes to be in the "national interest". You appear to expect that the US and its corporates should have a "sovereign right" to pollute a global commons.
Judging from the list of papers you reference, you are taking a very one-sided look at the science. Why would that be I wonder?
The world faces a very real problem. Denying the extent of that problem, or shooting the messenger because of your political outlook is irrational and dangerous. The politics here should be in the response, not in the science. I challenge you again: present an outline solution to the problem (as presented by the IPCC) that accords with your political views. So far your only response has been to say that it's not a big issue. Accept that it is, and present your response. Then we might have a proper debate. Until then, you're wasting everyone's time.
Can I also point out that it woudl be entirely consistent with Kyoto for a country to issue tradeable carbon permits for free to all current industries to cover their current emisions and then repurchase permits on-market and retire them to achieve any desired levle of reductions.
So there is in fact no requirements under Kyoto for government to decide who gets carbon "rations".
Unlike most of her adherents Ayn Rand knew the difference between the romantic way in which she portrayed the ideal man in her famous novels, and the reality. I bet she preferred the opinions of scientists to those of lawyers, too.
Gareth,
So the only debate is the one you've chosen to frame? I disagree. The AGW side of the debate has yet to prove their side of the debate is valid. The skeptic side enjoys the presumption of the status quo. No declaration of consensus is truth preserving, nor is the argument from popularity truth preserving.
Further, you've conflated pollution and the despoiling of a commons.
Pollution is "The contamination of air, water, or soil by substances that are harmful to living organisms."
Carbon dioxide doesn't meet that definition. Mercury does.
You are actually making the argument that excess CO2 is despoiling a commons, not toxifying the environment. If you are correct, the status quo is already solving for that issue sans government intervention. Green power, carbon offsets and voluntary conservation efforts are occuring in the status quo without legal compulsion; the more rational a case AGW theorists can cough up the greater participation in CO2 reducing behavior. The whole tragedy of the commons scenario is a counter-factual thought experiment that justifies no government mandate whatsoever.
There is no need for the US government to subordinate US sovereignty to any collective international governance, whether AGW is true or false. In fact, if it is true, and voluntary measures fail to achieve significant progress to avoid ecological disaster, there is no reason the US government couldn't impose intranational CO2 restrictions. There is just no good reason to place the US national interest in the control of the UN.
And yes I presented a one-sided list of recent papers. It's called proving the point that the AGW theory is not able to be uncritically accepted due to lack of conflicting evidence.
>>Can I also point out that it woudl be entirely consistent with Kyoto for a country to issue tradeable carbon permits for free to all current industries to cover their current emisions and then repurchase permits on-market and retire them to achieve any desired levle of reductions.
>>So there is in fact no requirements under Kyoto for government to decide who gets carbon "rations".
And how would this not be a method of rationing carbon release? You're saying the government would fix all industries at current levels of CO2 production and buy permits to further limit it. That's a ration. QED.
You need to read for comprehension. I don't think CO2 is a pollutant, but I did speculate on the proper way to react if it were, since you asked me to. If we're just talking a tragedy of the commons scenario, no government action is warranted. People aren't morons; the status quo will resolve the problem through voluntary measures, as it is already doing, even based as it is IMO in inadequate proof. Any being rational enough to recognize the preservation of the commons is to their long term interest will understand short term maximizing is not.
"Carbon dioxide doesn't meet that definition. Mercury does.
You are actually making the argument that excess CO2 is despoiling a commons, not toxifying the environment. If you are correct, the status quo is already solving for that issue sans government intervention. Green power, carbon offsets and voluntary conservation efforts are occuring in the status quo without legal compulsion; "
I'm sure that the people who die as a result of the despoiling of the common will be duly impressed by your ab
iolity to fantasise meaningless distinctions that.
Furthermore, even if the various measures you cite were adequate in themselves to address the problem (they aren't or emissions would be going down and we wouldn't be having this conversation), they aren't appearing the in the absence of "government intervention" since governments including in the US subsidise green power and the threat of further government action has to be a prime motivator of much corporate activity in this area.
"And how would this not be a method of rationing carbon release? You're saying the government would fix all industries at current levels of CO2 production and buy permits to further limit it. That's a ration. QED.
You need to read for comprehension."
Ah, the irony.
Once again you fail to comprehend my point.
Assigning permits based on historic emissions removes government from any role in determining the initial allocation of permits.
Repurchasing permits on-market means that it is individual businesses determining how much they wish to emit or how many permits they wish ot sell at a price determined in the market.
Note please that I'm not actually advocating this, just pointing out that even if your absurd delusions had any basis in reality they could be accommodated with the Kyoto framework.
Tell tou what, why don't you either go pick up a high school level introduction to economics or go check the ammo in the bunker for when the black helicopters come.
Fine. Ignore the evidence. Just don't get cross when we ignore your views.
Regards.
Kevin, it occurs to me that in your armwaving about "despoiling the commons" you never stated a view one way or the other regarding the desirability of trading systems for mercury et cetera and on whether you conisdered such schemes socialism.
While wew're at it, do you consisider tradable fishing quotas and transferable logging rights to public-owned forests socialism?
"Evidence"? Gareth.
Did John Galt let "evidence" stop him building his perpetual motion engine?
"The AGW side of the debate has yet to prove their side of the debate is valid."
Unfortunately, this is not how science works.
Science can never "prove" anything -- only disprove and/or accumulate evidence in support of a claim.
A growing body of data supports the idea that global warming is real and that humans are causing it and so far, no one has come up with a better explanation for all of the observed warming over the past century.
Even though one can not "prove" anthropogenic global warming, one could disprove the theory (at least in principle): by showing that an increased output of the sun (or some other mechanism) over the past century has accounted for all the warming that has been attributed to humans. But no one has done this to date, but not for lack of trying. They have tried and failed.
This is how science works. Someone comes up with a theory that explains all the available evidence (eg, Einstein's theory of gravity explains how matter moves in the vicinity of other matter) and then people try to come up with experiments that "disprove" the theory.
The best theories are never actually "proven" once and for all, as one would do with a mathematical theorem. That is not possible. The best theories are those that are left standing after all the tests. The tests are refined until an exception is found for the rule, at which point a new theory has to be found which explains it. In some cases, that requires an entirely new theory (eg, quantum theory), but in some cases, merely a refinement of the old theory is required.
Kevin said: "Pollution is 'The contamination of air, water, or soil by substances that are harmful to living organisms.'
Carbon dioxide doesn't meet that definition".
Mmmm, not correct Kevin. Here is a quote from a paper on the health effects of carbon dioxide:
"Relationships between detrimental health effects and high
indoor carbon dioxide concentrations have been studied.
These studies were made in the range 300-700 ppm
above ambient carbon dioxide levels. At a carbon dioxide
concentration of 600 ppm in an indoor atmosphere, the
occupants become aware of deterioration in the atmosphere.
At and above this level, some occupants began to display
one or more of the classic symptoms of carbon dioxide poisoning, e.g. difficulty in breathing, rapid pulse rate,
headache, hearing loss, hyperventilation, sweating and
fatigue. At 1000 ppm, nearly all the occupants were
affected. These effects were observed in humans with
only a transient exposure to an atmosphere containing in-
creased levels of carbon dioxide and not a lifetime expo-
sure."
D.S. Robertson: CURRENT SCIENCE, VOL. 90, NO. 12, 25 JUNE 2006
A pdf file can be found at: http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jun252006/1607.pdf.
There have been a number of other papers out recently on the same subject. I'm sure CO2 is a main contributor to "sick building syndrome". So now you know why you feel so terrible after enduring a two hour lecture with 400 other students.
I wasn't aware of carbon dioxide's toxicity previously.
I wonder what will happen to the incidence of unhealthy indforr levels of Carbon dioxide if the background level increases?
I wonder how much that will cost the world's economies?
Ian, I have been aware of CO2 toxicity for a while, I used to use it to kill rats in a past life as a cancer researcher. I also know that it was the gas which is used to kill chickens and turkeys when they are culled if a flu virus is found. I was a bit surprised when these papers came out showing physiological effects at these low concentrations but when you think about it people have been experiencing it for a long time just not atributing it to CO2.
I know that even in regular lab environemnts CO2 concentrations can get over 600 ppm. I was doing a study on biodegradation of oil contaminated soils for a client and I used to calibrate my GC every morning. I just used air since I was interested in the O2/N2 split plus production of CO2 (percent levels). I always got a small blip for background CO2 but ignored it since I was working in the percent levels. I noticed that in the mornings it was much higher and could be integrated (600 - 800 ppm). The fellow that I was doing the study for didn't believe me when I told him that CO2 varied during the day (the building was next door to a major road and there were numerous trees near by) he blamed it on faulty equipment and kept telling me to get it properly calibrated.
Not having considered the issue previously I did a quick web search for articles on the health effects of increased ambient carbon dioxide levels.
This is one of the first I found:
http://www.ias.ac.in/currsci/jun252006/1607.pdf
"Relationships between detrimental health effects and high
indoor carbon dioxide concentrations have been studied.
These studies were made in the range 300-700 ppm
above ambient carbon dioxide levels. At a carbon dioxide
concentration of 600 ppm in an indoor atmosphere, the
occupants become aware of deterioration in the atmosphere.
At and above this level, some occupants began to display
one or more of the classic symptoms of carbon dioxide
poisoning, e.g. difficulty in breathing, rapid pulse rate,
headache, hearing loss, hyperventilation, sweating and
fatigue. At 1000 ppm, nearly all the occupants were
affected. These effects were observed in humans with
only a transient exposure to an atmosphere containing increased levels of carbon dioxide and not a lifetime exposure. At present, the conditions giving rise to these symptoms can be readily reversed by moving into the outdoor atmosphere.
In the event that the atmospheric concentration
of carbon dioxide reaches 600 ppm, the planet will have a
permanent outdoor atmosphere exactly like that of a
stuffy room. The conditions indoors in buildings of the
type now available will become even more unpleasant and
could easily reach 1000 ppm permanently with the results
outlined above."
The 70% reduction in emissions advocated by scientists to minimise the effects of global warming is designed to limit maximum atmospheric concentration to 550 PPM.
That's dangerously close to 600 PPM and even at 550 ppm, many buildings will have unhealthily elevated levels of carbon dioxide resulting in either health costs and reduced efficiency or mitigation strategies such as increased ventilation.
I guess Kevin now needs to reject physiology and environmental medicine as socialist nonsense; having already rejected climatology; economics; epidemiology and statistics that probably isn't too much of a stretch.
This 2007 National Academies Press publication on the other hand states that 90-days exposures to concentrations of 5,000 PPM are safe for US submariners.
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?record_id=11170&page=46
Ian,
1) If people aren't sufficiently scared about CO2 to start making significant voluntary reductions, perhaps AGW theorists haven't made a good enough case to warrant it. If the case were proven, people wouldn't be buying internal combustion vehicles. Rational behavior entails not destroying your environment.
2) You don't appear to understand the concept 'rationing'. If the government fixes output of anything to any level whether today's level or yesterday's or its estimate of 3 months from now, that is non-price, explicit rationing. There's nothing left to debate here. That's what a ration is; a non-market restriction on production or consumption via government intervention. Again, I am not very interested in you trying to deconstruct plain English to avoid just saying "Whoops".
3) On actual toxic emissions: I am not sure what threshold is permissible. Maybe none or maybe only what risk is explicitly assumed by those placed at risk. I don't see a good way to justify pouring just a little poison in your ear, unless you personally think the benefits of it outweigh the risk and accept the risk willingly.
Trading permits sounds nice to keep risk at some arbitrary level but that isn't going to be much help to whoever actually loses the toxic russian roulette game. If I buy all the permits I can I get to completely toxify your backyard with society's approval?
I'd like it if everyone near a coal plant were monetarily compensated for the increased risk and that should be a publicly acknowledged fact and part of the cost of coal generated energy. That way if you chose to live downwind of a power plant, your increased risk would be compensated by the polluter.
Still, what you are talking about is basically a tort. If you are dealing with a hazardous substance and someone gets hurt, you are liable in today's court system. That tort law is inconsistently applied to energy generation is probably an artifact of it not being widespread public knowledge just how hazardous coal emissions are.
And publicly owned forests are a sign of socialism. They're collective property. Fishing rights are the same. It's like the King of England asserting rights over all the deer in his forest. Society is asserting collective ownership over whatever. The only difference is between an individual or a state sovereign. In a market context, it would be odd for anyone to assert ownership of a patch of ocean.
Ian F.,
Thanks for the information. I didn't know CO2 was actually toxic as opposed to simply causing hypoxia, but the context of its emission has to be a consideration before one considers it toxic. Exhaling in your face is not a tort or crime.
Your point is valid that CO2 is toxic at some levels but not particularly relevant to my point that say burning a log or driving a car and releasing CO2 near you is very little like pouring mercury in your ear. It would not be particularly easy to poison you with CO2; I assume that is why CO2 is not generally considered a hazardous material nor classified as such. High indoor concentrations of CO2 can apparently be fairly toxic; still that is not so relevant to a debate of whether or not it is causing AGW to run a lawnmower or drive an IC car or whether driving a car should be treated like a tort or crime.
Kevin: "If people aren't sufficiently scared about CO2 to start making significant voluntary reductions, perhaps AGW theorists haven't made a good enough case to warrant it."
Kevin again: "On actual toxic emissions: I am not sure what threshold is permissible. Maybe none or maybe only what risk is explicitly assumed by those placed at risk."
Say maybe problem with toxins is that the "theorists" haven't done an adequate job of informing the public enough to make voluntary reductions.
Let's rescind the Clear air Act and see what happens.
Furthermore, rationing is not simply setting a limit on the production of something, it's allocating that production between individuals or firms, you know, "rationing".
Oh and here's the dictionary definition of rationing:
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/rationing
"A fixed portion, especially an amount of food allotted to persons in military service or to civilians in times of scarcity."
Tell me, when governments set maximum noise exposure limits for residential properties and require road operators to set up barriers to limit noise is that rationing?
How about when they set high taxes on cigarettes and alcohol to discourage consumption?
Kevin: "I'd like it if everyone near a coal plant were monetarily compensated for the increased risk and that should be a publicly acknowledged fact and part of the cost of coal generated energy."
And who exactly is going to enforce this, collect the money and determine who gets it and in what proportions.
How about transborder effects? Remember those figures I cited earlier for pollution-related deaths in Ontario? Roughly 70% of the pollution in question originates in the US.
What about automobile and plane emissions? Are you proposing individuals sue each car-owner individually?
Kevin: "Still, what you are talking about is basically a tort. If you are dealing with a hazardous substance and someone gets hurt, you are liable in today's court system."
Actually in most jurisdictions, environmental licensing for industry create a specific statutory defence against torts provided you can demonstrate you complied with your license conditions.
Kevin: "High indoor concentrations of CO2 can apparently be fairly toxic;"
Yes, high concentrations similar to what we're likely to see outdoors in a couple of decades if we don't limit emissions.
You also appear not to have grasped that higher background levels in the atmosphere will lead to greater concentrations in buildings. Meaning those "fairly toxic" situatiosn will become more common.
Ian G.:
1) I don't think individual automobile emissions or airplane emissions are toxic, except in very specific circumstances, like running an automobile's exhaust into a poorly ventilated room. I think if you did such a thing you would rightly be charged with murder or negligent homicide. The amount of CO2 I produce driving to work simply doesn't reach the level of a tort much less a crime.
2) Regarding transborder pollution deaths, you don't seem to recognize that the status quo has largely exempted energy generated pollution from the regular standards to which it holds owners and transporters of hazardous materials. If I was burning toxic leaves in my backyard and the smoke killed you, whether you lived next door or across the border, your survivors would have a legitimate right to have me prosecuted, sued or both; but burning coal and killing off people is not treated similarly. Worse yet, you seem to think that legally exempting energy producers from legal repercussions of killing people is a good idea?
If you can actually prove who is killing whom with what, the killer should be legally debarred from doing it. This is not a market related issue and I would have thought it would not be problematic, especially to an AGW supporter. The benefits of power generation are such that maybe simply assuming the risk is worthwhile, but in an age where we can find out who exactly is bearing the burden most heavily, I'd be all for compensating them and making the increased geographic risk plain to all potentially affected.
3) High taxes on cigarettes are not rations. They are certainly a financial disincentive, but a ration is an actual limit on production or on consumption, not a tax. Not that I always think dictionaries are the most precise arbiters of denotation, but even your defintion doesn't imply taxes are rations or that carbon rationing is misnamed. There is a reason why everyone in the free world refers to various limits on carbon use as carbon rations, except you. But go ahead and keep trying to deconstruct the term. Deconstructionism is great fun in debates.
So Kevin, in your view pollution is only bad when it gets to the level of killing people and killing them quickly i.e. if they fall dead in the street. Your view is that it is all right to make people sick or suffer chronic illness and perhaps die in a matter of years. Is this because, in your legal view it would be then impossible to say that it was your molecules of CO2 that did the damage? Thus you could plead "not guilty?"
It is unbelievable that we can have people with such distorted views when pollution and other damage to our environment are obviously at a critical point.
There's none so blind as they that won't see. (Swift)
Ian F.:
It's unbelievable that you can so distort my views and then denounce me roundly for nothing I ever wrote. Well not quite unbelievable because I just read you doing it.
Of course it is not my view that it is good to make people suffer from illness or die more quickly than they might. I didn't write that, I don't think that. In fact, you had to scroll past the section where I wrote that owners of coal plants should be compensating anyone they would likely affect to post your screed.
What I did write was that there is a reason CO2 is considered a non-poisonous, non-corrosive, non-flammable gas under federal statute. CO2 can be toxic but the circumstances under which it becomes so are limited. O2 is toxic in some circumstances. Should I be suing the pine trees outside my house which is both criminally polluting by respiring AND photosynthesizing? I know my orange tree has been polluting all over the place too, that bastard.
If it were proven that AGW was caused by anthropogenic CO2 and would have net negative effects, of course I would change my behavior. The case for greater fuel efficieny, less waste, etc. is a simple economic one that is true irrespective of your literal demonization of CO2.
Andrew, I just came cross this claim myself.
I'm still trying to work out if its true and, if so, what it means.
The paper I cited earlier linking health impacts to carbon dioxide concentrations around 600 PPM may not be correct:
http://eetd.lbl.gov/iep/pdf/LBNL-45019.pdf
INTRODUCTION
The primary indoor source of CO2 in office buildings is the respiration of the building occupants. CO2 concentrations in office buildings typically range from 350 to 2500 ppm [1]. At the concentrations occurring in most indoor environments CO2 buildup is thought to be a surrogate for other occupant-generated pollutants, particularly bioeffluents, and for ventilation rate per occupant, but not a causal factor in human health responses.
CO2 is not a poison, per se. Our bodies monitor CO2 levels as a cue for respiration. If you take all the CO2 and oxygen out of the atmosphere, you can asphyxiate quite peacefully. Higher levels of CO2 cause respiratory discomfort, more rapid breathing, headaches, flushing, and a few other things.
Stewart like most things (including oxygen) a sufficiently high level of carbon dioxide can be quite dangerous. Above about 3% in the atmosphere it accumulates in the blood and causes neurological and respiratory problems which are fatal in a fairly short time.
Ian,
For simply admitting you made an error about indoor CO2 concentrations, thanks.
Stewart said: "Higher levels of CO2 cause respiratory discomfort, more rapid breathing, headaches, flushing, and a few other things."
>If you say nothing, then to hell with global warming. By the time the second ice age hits Europe, and Florida is under water, I'll be long gone and so will my kids.
Heraldblog the problem is that human induced climate change has been happening with haste since the 1970s. The current estimate is that of order 100,000 extra deaths a year can be attributed to it. Even the rich west is not immune with massive deaths during the Eurpoean heatwave the probability of which was massively inflated by the "around" 2C of warming central Europe has experienced. In OZ, places like WA and southeast Australia are now suffering under the burden of by far the worst droughts on record which have been made worse by record high temperatures. In addition most scientists who have studied the problem are concluding human induced climate change is a contributor to the lack of rain... in the case of WA to the tune of about 50% of the decline.
If people think they are immune, just hang around as the creeping hand of climate change will first hit the vulnerable and those with limited adaptive capacity, but eventually touch us all, either through higher prices, higher taxes, social disolocation, or through direct effects on our lives.
>If you say nothing, then to hell with global warming. By the time the second ice age hits Europe, and Florida is under water, I'll be long gone and so will my kids.
Heraldblog the problem is that human induced climate change has been happening with haste since the 1970s. The current estimate is that of order 100,000 extra deaths a year can be attributed to it. Even the rich west is not immune with massive deaths during the Eurpoean heatwave the probability of which was massively inflated by the "around" 2C of warming central Europe has experienced. In OZ, places like WA and southeast Australia are now suffering under the burden of by far the worst droughts on record which have been made worse by record high temperatures. In addition most scientists who have studied the problem are concluding human induced climate change is a contributor to the lack of rain... in the case of WA to the tune of about 50% of the decline.
If people think they are immune, just hang around as the creeping hand of climate change will first hit the vulnerable and those with limited adaptive capacity, but eventually touch us all, either through higher prices, higher taxes, social disolocation, or through direct effects on our lives.
>If you say nothing, then to hell with global warming. By the time the second ice age hits Europe, and Florida is under water, I'll be long gone and so will my kids.
Heraldblog the problem is that human induced climate change has been happening with haste since the 1970s. The current estimate is that of order 100,000 extra deaths a year can be attributed to it. Even the rich west is not immune with massive deaths during the Eurpoean heatwave the probability of which was massively inflated by the "around" 2C of warming central Europe has experienced. In OZ, places like WA and southeast Australia are now suffering under the burden of by far the worst droughts on record which have been made worse by record high temperatures. In addition most scientists who have studied the problem are concluding human induced climate change is a contributor to the lack of rain... in the case of WA to the tune of about 50% of the decline.
If people think they are immune, just hang around as the creeping hand of climate change will first hit the vulnerable and those with limited adaptive capacity, but eventually touch us all, either through higher prices, higher taxes, social disolocation, or through direct effects on our lives.