John Tierney, demoted from the NYT op-ed page and now continuing his libertarian propagandizing in the guise of "science writing," points out that flying around to climate-change conferences creates a large carbon footprint for high-profile environmental activists. That allows Tierney to claim the sort of faux-populist gotcha! so beloved among glibertarians and greedhead conservatives. (The theocrat, nativist, and imperialist wings of conservatism prefer their faux-populist gotcha!s on different topics.)
If you travel frequently by air, even on commercial flights, you can't escape having a huge carbon footprint. Yet many of the most vocal advocates of cutting emissions -- politicians, environmentalists, journalists, scientists -- are continually jetting off to campaign events and conferences and workshops. Are they going to change the way they operate? If not, how are they going to persuade anyone else to cut back emissions? (My advice to the peripatetic preachers: Do not try explaining why your work is more important than everyone else's.)
Where to start?
The point of environmental management isn't to denounce sin, it's to get prices right. ...
Rich people use more goods and services than poor people. That's what "rich" means. ...
A large gross carbon footprint doesn't imply a large net carbon footprint. That's what offsets are about. ...
Tierney's admirer and fellow faux-populist glibertarian Glenn Reynolds thinks that this is no better than "buying indulgences." The difference, of course, is that the purchase of an indulgence didn't offset the damage done by the underlying sin (and certainly didn't make reparation to the other people injured by it), while GHG offsets actually undo the original damage. ...
This point needs to be emphasized.
3. Offsets by and large aren't about offsetting GHG production or about net carbon footprints, they're about making a buck and public relations. They've gone unmonitored thus far (unless you count muckraking journalists), but the FTC and numerous state AGs are cracking down on them for deceptive advertising and practices.
Offsets...[are] about making a buck
Wow. Someone's trying to make a profit in a capitalist economy. Stop the presses.
If carbon offsets aren't perfect, they must be evil, right?
Anti-carbon-market cynics are so boring. You're not doing the environment any favors, you're just doing your best to look holy. Guess what, there's going to be a carbon market, and you'd better get on that bus.
Instead of sitting around bitching about carbon offsets, think about advocating carbon offsets that ARE monitored. Go look up "certification" and "additionality."
..and if someone lives the lifestyle of carbon piety, they call 'em dirty hippies and write 'em off as kooks. It's a no-win situation with the denier-pundits.
Surely free enterprise could never lead to anything good. What a naive idea!
A carbon market will never be perfect. Inevitably, there will be fraud and people trying to game the system. But representing that as a fatal argument against carbon offsets is a bit like arguing that the subprime mortgage crisis means that we should all give up on the idea of owning houses and go live in the woods.
Anti-carbon-market cynics are so boring. You're not doing the environment any favors, you're just doing your best to look holy. Posted by: theo | May 13, 2008 4:05 PM
.
Sorry, how does that describe the anti crowd and not the pro ?
How does pointing out that carbon offset schemes being unregulated, unproven, unadopted and unattractive shell games operating on nowhere near the scale necessary to offset industrial emissions... amount to him being concerned only with appearances and not you ?
Even just on appearances that shit falls flat. Where'd the forrest get planted to offset last week's new coal power plant in China, let alone this week's and next weeks ?
Where's that appeared ?
Where's the offset scheme that's gonna make up for the fact that the world's largest emitters won't be participating ?
Where's your explanation for how that amounts to anything other than an excercise in managing appearances ?
It's a no-win situation with the denier-pundits.
Right. Doing something makes you a hypocrite or wanting to drive everyone back to the Middle Ages or a taxing socialist. Doing nothing makes you a hypocrite or...
You get the idea.
Best,
D
That was nicely demonstrated by someone in some comments on some blog.
It was a fallacy with some name even that boiled down to this:
"But they're using oil to drill oil!"
It's about return on investment.
Their goal is paralysis.
Hey, a question - the NY Times now has an "ask the editors" feature; has anyone gotten a chance yet to ask the editors
a) on what basis they view Mr. Tierney as a competent science journalist;
b) why Naomi Oreskes's wedding was news fit to print, but her global warming "consensus" and "denial" research is not;
and
c) which PR agency sparked William Broad's March 2007 "Hollywood has a thing for Al Gore and his three-alarm film" article, "From a Rapt Audience, a Call to Cool the Hype"
?
Tierney is a hack and his argument is either stupid or hypocritical. That said, Kleiman's three points are the wrong ones. He already grants (in his third footnote) that offsets, as they are available now, may be disfunctional. That in itself shows that his points do not justify extra emissions by some people until a better offset mechanism is in place. I will, however, follow his lead and focus on the theoretical situation in which somehow carbon emissions are effectively monitored.
The problem with Kleiman's argument is that it is based on the premise that just because in our society the rich currently have various advantages, the non-wealthy should accept that the rich should also have the right to emit more, because they could afford the offsets.
Why should we accept that? I find this offensive, and would be disinclined to go along with such a system. Why shouldn't we insist on a personally-assigned emissions quota system?
Think of it as taxes on emissions.
Which, by the way, is also how the wackos at WSJ tried to frame it, in an effort to denounce it as a socialist scheme or something. Carbon offsets is probably something like the "wave-particle duality of light" thing, in that it doesn't fit into neat ideological categories...
> Think of it as taxes on emissions.
Personally, I find all forms of non-income taxation unreasonable. But that is beside the point - the point is that in our society there are some things you can buy (e.g., the right to exclude other people from a piece of land) and others you can't (e.g., the right to dump toxins into a river, or the right to vote multiple times in an election). I don't see any reason why the non-rich should simply accept that the rich can buy the right to emit GHG.
Again, I think a personal quota is the fair way to go, and that people should insist on that system.
Sorry Sortition, I'm not following. A personal quota seems fine to me, but why shouldn't it be tradeable?
While agreeing with Kleiman, it still makes sense for those concerned about the issue to look into ways of reducing their footprint, for example through videoconferencing. There's some big informational externalities here. That is, the more people learn about videoconferencing the more its advantages (compared to flying places for physical meetings - so C20!) will become evident, and the lower the transactions costs will be.
Carbon trading - Are We Fooling Ourselves?
Surely the imperative is to pollute less, not someone who is poor to sell his or her carbon allowance to a rich person to pollute more, while allowing the dreadful inheritance of emitted Fossil Carbon to cascade down the generations for hundreds or thousands of years.
Off-Setting or Off-Ripping?
I think as currently presented that carbon offsetting is a confidence trick. Planting trees to permit someone else to emit? This depends upon the relative lifetimes of trees and CO2 in the atmosphere. How long does a tree last? Well it would need to last at least as long as atmospheric CO2, or be replaced sequentially. If there is a significant mismatch, then all offsetting does, is to delay the inevitable. We know that CO2 remains in the atmosphere for a long time. Estimates vary but one study (Ref. 1) suggests that 33% remains after 100 years, 20 percent after 1000 years, with a long tail. Another study (Ref. 2) suggests that persistence of CO2 is 75 percent for 300 years and 25 percent for 30,000 years. In-fact, it is this 'long tail' in both cases that is responsible for much of the warming.
Limitations and Practicalities
Let's think about this, don't these huge time-scales make continued human action rather unlikely, or even impossible? Perhaps I have missed something [quite possible], but wouldn't it be better not to put the fossil CO2 in the atmosphere in the first place? Presumably the calculations have been done, but is there is even enough suitable land to continue indefinitely offsetting the current annual release of ~7.5 gigatonnes of carbon released each year, without the imaginable futility of cutting down forests for new offsetting schemes? If there isn't sufficient suitable land available [there are many constraints and caveats], then offsetting would seem to be purely a greenwashed money-making scam.
Could Offsetting work?
Just how many generations of trees [and farmers] would be needed to lock-up the carbon for 1000 years, or 30,000 years in order to permit natural sequestration of the carbon? I don't know, it depends upon the species. Eucalyptus regnans with maximum average life-span of 400 years, in a forest, with genetically diverse individuals grown naturally from seed. This is not a true average life-span, it is the average maximum life-span of mature 'standards', the largest examples of the species! This ignores all the thousands or tens of thousands of genetically less suited trees lost through disease and other mortality.
Problems with Off-Setting in Practice
Eucalyptus is apparently very popular with offsetting schemes [e.g. Tist] and for reason of economy, these are NOT typically propagated from seed, but are GROWN FROM CUTTINGS, which means that they are all CLONES. Eucalyptus are disease-prone at the best of times and genetically identical disease-prone trees being grown in plantations, is hardly a recipe for long-term success - in-fact it's a recipe for eventual disaster. Surely, the limiting factor is surely not how long exceptional trees can grow for in the wild! It's how long REAL trees last in such a plantation in practice. In-practice this means survival in a plantation of identical individuals, where any disease will affect all the trees and if it can kill one, it will be able to kill them all rapidly! After-all, these plantations or forests will need to be with us for centuries or even millennia, so the probability of affliction with some pathogen or other will continue, so these forests must be robust and not disease-prone. Surely, trees for offsetting should be grown from seed, slower and more expensive, yes. But the trees need to be genetically diverse and preferably mixed species, making the plantation like a natural forest.
Conclusion
Doesn't this make offsetting a great deal more expensive in real terms than it is currently? Which makes me believe that offsetting schemes are really making the polluters feel better, but are never going to achieve the results promised, apart from making a few individuals rich for promises they can never deliver.
References
1 The fraction of CO2 remaining in the air, after emission by fossil fuel burning, declines rapidly at first, but 1/3 remains in the air after a century and 1/5 after a millennium
(Atmos. Chem. Phys. 7, 2287-2312, 2007).
2 The fate of fossil fuel CO2 in geologic time - David Archer
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~archer/reprints/archer.2005.fate_co2.pdf
BBC World Service OnePlanet: Carbon Offsetting
More and more people are trying to offset their carbon footprint. Individuals and companies alike are using a range of offsetting schemes to try to cancel out the greenhouse gases they emit. But serious questions have been raised about how effectively these schemes work. If someone clicks on a mouse and pays a small price, will their carbon emissions really be cancelled out somewhere else in the world? And is there a case for this industry to be more regulated? For One Planet, Becky Milligan has travelled to Tamil Nadu in South India to talk to local farmers working in an international carbon offsetting programme.
Summary of OnePlanet: Carbon Offsetting Programme
The journalist looked at the experiences of local farmers involved in one of tist.org's offsetting schemes. It seems in practice that Tists's offsetting schemes were not well supported. Sample trees were taken to a tree specialist. The problems listed above, i.e. all the trees in the area were Eucalyptus trees propagated [clones] from cuttings. One farmers trees were all dead. Other farmers had a bad disease problem. The impression was that Tist's management left much to be desired. When interviewed, Tist's representative was very bullish & dismissive, sounded more like a hard-nosed sales & marketing man or a politician, presented it as not a systematic problem, but a little local difficulty. A local problem, but nothing to do with Tist. I've come across his type before. If he was the caring type, he certainly concealed it well. Of course it was perfectly clear that he couldn't care less.
The euphoria about carbon offsetting ignores a few salient points; such as proportionality, equivalence and social equity. Gore is rich, he can pay; but a large nursing home, which over a year produces an equivalent amount of CO2 (well, maybe 1/2 dozen nursing homes), will have far less ability to pay; why shouldn't Gore pay more than 100% for his carbon offset; why not 150 or 200%, and the nursing home(s) less than 100% to reflect the social equity disparity? Is there a disparity? Some people would say Gore is contributing to social equity and responsibility and should have a similar dispensation; who is to decide?
Any new system of taxation and wealth redistribution needs to be as impervious to scams as possible. How can any CO2 offsetting structure be scam-proof? Consider; you are engaged in a physical wealth creating activity, and cease it and outsource to a developing country where CO2 emmissions are unregulated (and which is likely to be a recipient of IPCC penalty redistribution because its emmissions are low). Having received a carbon credit for closing down your production, you then leverage it on the carbon futures market. You then securitise your gains through a collateralised carbon obligation (CCO) issue and convert your projected future yields into a carbon debt swap, all guaranteed by AAA rated monoline carbon bond insurance agencies. You borrow against this, or sell the rights, and reestablish and expand your physical business in the undeveloped country. Net result; the same or more CO2 and a sizeable wealth redistribution.
Cohenite, well first let's take note that the actual cost of carbon offsets are far lower than right-wing hysterics like to suggest.
US per capita GHG emissions are around 20 tonnes of CO2 emissiosn per capita. Let's assume a a per tonne cost of US$20 for offsets. So the average US cost would be ca. $400 per year, $8 per week or slightly over a dollar a day - obviously a vast amount that only the fabulously wealthy could afford.
Then we have the fact that Gore does pay for significantly more carbon mitigation than his actual emissions.
Oh and then there's the fact that current carbon offset programs are voluntary volitional contributions ot the common good- you know the stuff the US right keeps telling us would expand to fill the void if only the US government would stop wasting money trying ot help the poor.
So far as I know no-one is suggesting that offsets be made be made mandatory - I'll have to raise that at the next meeting of the International Socialist Global Warming Hoax Conspiracy. I've been kind of busy plotting to murder more African babies by banning DDT so I may have missed that part of our master plan for tyranny and genocide.
Isn't the main problem with 'offset' that the carbon you emit isn't directly equivalent to that offset, either because it is just locked up in a relatively short term pool e.g. by reforestation, or increasingly because it is used to fund scarcely audited 'green' projects that often are no such thing. I suspect that were the volume of offsetting to approach a significant proportion of GDP then we'd again hit a bottleneck of having to reduce overall energy consumption but not wanting to do so. Contraction and convergence anybody?
http://www.gci.org.uk/
Jody
Ian; once you sign up Kyoto is not voluntary. I also suspect your cost figures are a tad undernourished, as this would indicate;
http://blogs.wsj.com/environmentalcapital/2008/03/19/in-kyotos-home-jap…
Otherwise very droll, especially the bit about a 'masterplan'.
"Ian; once you sign up Kyoto is not voluntary. "
Feel free to quote the relevant section of the Protocol which makes in mandatory.
As for your link:
"Japanese households and businesses could end up paying more than $500 billion to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 11 percent over the next decade..."
Let's see $500 billion divided by 10 years divides 120 million Japanese. works out to approximately $400 per person per year per person.
You are are of course free to believe the figures arrived at by the Japanese government rather than figures based on current market prices since we know that governments in general are vastly superior to markets in setting prices and minimising costs and that Japan's government in particular is known for its honesty and competent economic management.
> A personal quota seems fine to me, but why shouldn't it be tradeable?
Tradeable or not is secondary to me. The crucial distinction is between a tax system and a quota system.
This doesn't really work with a market-driven strategy. Could you imagine having to submit a financial statement to find out how much you'll have to pay for a car? Would you want people refusing to sell their carbon offsets to middle class people because they get a better price from the wealthy?
Besides, as it happens, we already have a system for charging the wealthy more. It's known as the graduated income tax. So why reinvent the wheel? If we want the wealthy to pay more than their share, we could simply devote a portion of the Federal budget to carbon mitigation strategies and fund it from the income tax.
But that'll provide no incentive for wealthy people to actually reduce their emissions when they can.
Carbon offsets are pure fraud. Fossil carbon is removed from the planetary crust, converted to gas by burning and released where it becomes a greenhouse gas.
To actually offset a pound of coal burned you need to bury a pound of charcoal in the same quarter that the coal is burned. If you leave the GHG in the atmosphere for a while it contributes to global warming. That warming has knock-on effects such as permafrost melt and methane release. These effects can cascade in ways we don't truly understand since things keep warming "faster than expected." It's like compouding interest where you borrow some money and then try to pay back only the principle; the debt keeps growing.
Since there isn't a single carbon offset program that buries charcoal in the soil in the same month the offset is purchased I can guarantee you that they are frauds. All the "Free Market" hand-waving is just so much misdirection of the sort that led us to the world monetary crisis, and the energy crisis, and the food crisis, the health care crisis, the ocean fisheries crisis, the drug-resistant pathogens crisis........
Once somebody starts using "free market" as a reason to take a particular path be assured you are talking to the big bad wolf who is going to beat you to grammy's house and then eat you up.
From what I understand of climate models, global warming is a consequence of changes in the earth's energetic budget that follow atmospheric CO2 levels pretty closely. The problem is that natural processes remove CO2 from the atmosphere fairly slowly, but I don't think that there is any scientific evidence for the idea that CO2 produces some kind of long-term momentum effect that would persist long after the CO2 is gone. So the notion that the CO2 must be sequestered "in the same quarter" doesn't really make a lot of sense.
"Once somebody starts using "free market" as a reason to take a particular path be assured you are talking to the big bad wolf who is going to beat you to grammy's house and then eat you up."
This is pure irrationality as bad as anything the denialists trot out.
Tell me, do you think, for example, the food supply would be improved if farming, processing and distribution were government monopolies?
Isn't it just a trifle irrational to make the false dichtomy of either "free market" OR "government monopoly"? You can't even imagine a market with good oversight and regulation. Adam Smith certainly could, with the idea that a free market needed transparency, which the market by itself never seems to achieve, for rather obvious reasons.
Ian, OTOH you could hardly say that food is provided by a "free" market. It is very carefully regulated, farmers receive considerable government assistance, and food is distributed largely courtesy of government-built infrastructure.
FWIW, there are areas that surely need more government control (e.g. regulation over humane treatment of animals) and others less (subsidies to farmers).
Longer answer: "Free market"is indeed an essentially meaningless slogan.
Ask a typical libertarian to define the term and watch them flounder.
But ask a typical knee-jerk leftwinger to define the term and he'll be equally lost.
Neither side knows what it is they're ranting about but they're absolutely convinced free markets are either the source of all evil or the panacea for all social and economic problems.
As most people here are probably aware, I'm definitely on the left of the political spectrum. However I'm also a former environmental economist.
Emissions trading and carbon offsets are not examples of the mythical free market - they are examples of government intervention to create property rights which can then be traded to produce the desired environmental outcomes at the lowest economic cost.
I do not base this view on any ideological support for "free markets" I base it on approximately twenty years of empirical evidence from emissions trading in such markets as air pollution permits in Southern California; the American national Sulphur Dioxide trading scheme and the Hunter Valley Salinity Trading Scheme in New South Wales.
I tend to despise professionalism and arguments from authority. It is unreasonable to say that every person who has an opinion about an economic issue needs to have undertaken formal Economics studies - especially since economics affects nearly every aspect of human life.
However, if you are - like Pangolin - going to make assertions which directly contradict the entire basis of economic theory, you should have at least soem idea of what you're talking about.
Otherwise, you are indeed in the same position as the typical AGW denialist carping on about sunspots and the logarithmic decline in IR absoprtion with increasing CO2 levels.
In this specific case, I'd be interested to hear Pangolin's reasons for objecting to the use of emissions trading to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from power plants (including an explanation of alternate regulatory frameworks which would have produced equivalent or greater reductions at the same cost) or a detailed explanation of the differences between the Sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide emission markets which mean that a market mechanism which has worked effectively for one is not applicable to the other.
Ian,
Here is my tentative view. Feel free to inform me:
A cap and trade system is a corrupt version of the tax system (corrupt because existing polluters somehow get credit for their current level of pollution). It therefore has the drawback of the tax system (i.e., it allows the rich to pollute more) and some additional ones. (By the way, I don't find the reductions produced by the SO2 system [3x over 3 decades] that impressive - we definitely need more dramatic reductions in CO2 emissions.)
In addition, there are significant differences between sulfur emissions and carbon emissions. First, the sources of SO2 emissions are much more concentrated. Secondly, technology-based mitigation of CO2 is much more problematic than that of SO2. It therefore seems likely that much of the mitigation would have to be the result of reduced consumption. With a cap and trade system this could only happen if energy prices are raised significantly - opening the door for windfall profits for the producers and for serious hardship for the poorer among consumers.
As I wrote above: a personal consumption quota system seems a better way to go.
Ian; Kyoto provides for compliance and substantive, time-linked commitments ; this is a reasonable exposition of the regime;
http://www.hwcn.org/link/mkg/issue_no._19.html
You may be confusing the compliance and enforcement provisions which are slightly more problematic. The substantial penalties apply to the developed countries, which impost should be considered along with the energy transition costs which my previous link provided. The issue of the developed/undeveloped dichotomy raises the real problem with any carbon offsetting and emmissions scheme; that is, what mechanism can be used to gain compliance from India and China?
That would be the Kyoto that wants a fairly measly cut to some 5% below 1990 by 2010? A cut about which there is significant doubt thatcurrent mechanisms will allow even the significantly committed to achieve?
http://www.ippr.org.uk/uploadedFiles/pressreleases/2005/trafficlights.p…
Hi all
I see that GISS Temp has now made March 0.68 from 0.81 deg C. Must be a lower C footprint ah. Why the massive change?
What about the cold April, 0.51. Not much GW for 5 years now. (Based on GISS Temp).
Regards
Peter Bickle
Peter, why must you keep embarrassing yourself? How many zillions of times does one have to define the difference between determinism and stochasicity? Your human genes have programmed you to think in time scales that do not equate with the kinds of change that occur over large spatio-temporal scales in nature. Its useless therefore, as you and the contrarians constantly do, to make a big noise about static records over a month or even over a few years when we have to look at trends occurring over a much longer time frame - say 20 years or more - to understand what is happening (and that is a relatively short time frame, too).
Those who engage in the endless repetition of saying stuff like (a) its been a cold week (or season) in my part of the world and that this disproves AGW, or (b) the temperature records show that the rise in the global mean surface temperature has become relatively static over the past few months or even years, or (c) a combination of (a) and (b), DO NOT understand the differences between predictable and unpredictable processes, and the scales over which these processes are generated. The fact that we as a species are evolutionarily programmed to think and act in short time frames (at least short when compared with factors regulating natural cycles) indeed may be our undoing. Many people apparently just cannot understand that a human lifetime, in terms of nature, is but the blink of an eye. The fact that humans now have the capacity to profoundly affect global cycles of water, nitrogen, carbon etc. that operate over stupendously large scales is of great concern, or at least should be. This is because the functioning of natural systems, and the services that emerge from them that permit our species to exist and persist, is strongly correlated with these cycles.
Jeff; a reasonant proclaimation; mankind has undergone an apotheosis and has a quasi-god-like ability to effect nature, but most of us are too witless or, insufficiently evolved morally and intellectually, to exercise that power responsibly. It is up to the evolved custodians to curtail this premature power by allowing natural rhythms and processes to reassert themselves. Why do you guys sound like characters from A.E. van Vogt?
Cohenite: It is too bad that your attempt at intellectual discourse falls flat, simply because of its accuracy (e.g. there's a bit of Orwellian double-speak in your lame riposte).
What have the writings of van Vogt got to do with it? The problem with 'us guys' is that we conduct research that generates conclusions that don't fit in well with the pre-determined world view of 'you guys', at least those with your political/scientific perspectives. Your 'most of us are too witless etc.' statement is the kind of response I would expect from a contrarian: shoot the messenger by making it look like he/she is making a direct attack on your intelligence. Then follow that up with a witty remark that shows your audience that you are a smart person after all; this being the case, how could I (Jeff Harvey) be right? Again, Orwellian in the extreme.
Sadly, your exceedingly simple comment on 'natural rhythms' is a reflection of your limitations in knowledge and understanding of the importance of natural systems in sustaining civilization. Of course your aim is to assert that it isn't so, and that as an intelligent human being you can say that with some authority. Can you? I'd be interested to find out how much you do really understand about the relationship between biodiversity and ecosystem functioning, and whether you think this is important. I'd like to know what you think about the link between diversity and nutrient cycling, pest control, the generation and maintenance of soil and renewal of soil fertility, climate control, detoxification and decomposition of terrestrial wastes, flood control, pollination, protection of the Earth's living surface freom the sun's ultraviolet rays etc. I would also be interested in knowing how many technological substitutes you think there are for these services, and if you also think that humanity can survive without them.
I already have a strong indication of what your answers are likely to be. Here's a hint: because you do not understand the relationship between biodiversity and the provisioning of ecosystem services (it's not your fault: you haven't studied it), you dispense with the whole discussion of the field. To defend your views, you claim that anyone who is qualified in the field and who disagrees with you (including those like me with the empirical weight to back up their arguments) is attacking your personal integrity and intelligence (see Orwellian comment above).
This is correct, isn't it? How else can one interpret your response above? I have not said anything about 'premature power' and 'allowing natural rhythms to reassert themselves', but have simply stated the facts as I see them with respect to the effects of human activities across the biosphere. Our species is simplifying nature at an alarming rate, while knowing that these same systems generate a range of condiitions that make life possible. Every natural system is in decline; some faster than others. This is not controversial. We are living off a one-time inheritance of natural capital and are spending it like there is no tomorrow. Most of the world's leading environmental scientists and population ecologists have been warning for the past 20-30 years that there will be (and already are) consequences of the human assault on natural systems. I can give you many examples if you like; there are already economic consequences of this that are documented. The real question is to better understand how much humans can simplify nature before this rebounds on us in a large way. Given that our understanding of the way that complex adaptive systems function is still in its relative infancy, we continue to conduct this huge, non-replicatible experiment at our peril. But of course, because you are not interested in the underlying science, and the conclusions generated from this science appear to clash with your political views, then all you have left is a witty, curt dismissal.
Ian,
I've begun to view offset schemes with some suspicion simply because it seems to me that they rely heavily on good oversight and assessment. If emissions trading schemes are very narrowly defined, I would be happy with them - e.g. if you set a certain well-defined emissions standard for power production or cement factories, etc. But some carbon offset schemes are based on replacements that seem to have much more dubious effects - e.g. the much-maligned "treadle-pumps" replacing gas-powered irrigation pumps in India. Equality and development issues aside, the scheme relies on some relatively dubious measurement - I certainly wouldn't believe those offsets to be as reliable as offset from a much more closely-monitored utility company in a major city somewhere. So: how to deal with this problem? Is there a mechanism that makes those offsets worth less, or makes them riskier to buy? If not, why wouldn't crappy accounting sink this ship?
Cohenite- an attempt at humour? But you would be better off referencing E E Smith than Van Vogt for all powerful elites who know things we mere plebs can't know.
Peter....
Here's where you made your mistake.
It's ok to use short term events or trends to point out the possibility of simular future events..... if long term trends continue.
It's not ok to use short term events or trends to point out the possibility of simular future events.....if long term trends don't continue.
Getting back to Tim's absurd assertion that the "no warming" trend is only six years long, here is the latest data, updated to April, that shows that there has been no warming for the last 10 years.
http://tinyurl.com/4de3v7
guthrie; I'm a married man; humour sustains me. I'm not overly familiar with Doc Smith; read some when I was young in another century and didn't like the ascending, mine's bigger than your's, approach; van Vogt is genuinely surreal, with a hard edge; one of his heroes uses superposition to defend his enemies; actually, it is used twice in what I consider to be his best series, the Weapon Shops; his evolved heroes, Hedrock in Weapon Shops, Cemp in The Silkie -van Vogt liked his little word games with names - battled not only unevolved humans but aliens as well; I always assumed the aliens symbolised the natural universe, which pitiless treatment of humans had to be bested by turning its logic back at it. The reference to this debate makes it a throw-away line; in this respect I don't mind being lectured about the science of nature by Jeff; that's one of the ways I learn; what I object to is any reverence for nature; I'm farm born and bred; I respect nature because she always wins, at least on a personal level; but anything which mitigates the harshness of nature I'm for even if a certain aesthetic has to be sacrificed; if people can't see the difference between that and polluting and soiling our nest -which I am most certainly against - then that is their problem.
Thank you for the strawman.
Tilo, what the fuck is your point? Yes, El Nino years are warm years. 1998 is obviously an outlier. If you construct trends based on outliers, you will get screwed-up trends. That's TERRIBLE science. If you go back another year, the upward trend returns. So... what exactly are you trying to prove, here? That you don't know anything about statistics? That you can draw meaningless conclusions from insufficient data? What?
Cohenite, Why noty go our and find for yourself how nature subsidizes the bulk of our economies? There's literature available: Daily, Baskin etc. Quite accessible to the lay reader, too.
As a scientist, I don't take quips like 'reverence for nature' particularly seriously. My arguments regarding human dependence on natural ecosystems and the services that emerge from them are empirically founded. There's a huge amount of evidence that we are on a collision course with natural systems (most comprehensively in the recent Millenium Ecosystem Assessment) and that the consequences of the continued assault on the planet's systems are likely to be severe. Just today, the latest Living Planet Index (based on the health and vitality of the three most important ecosystems in terms of human welfare: coastal marine, freshwater and terrestrial forest) reports a continuation in the trend towards a qualitative and quantitative decline - some 27% since 1970 (when the index was started). The Index is co-sponsored by the World Bank - hardly a temple of green extremism. Add to that thousands of peer-reviewed studies in the most important scientific journals and the evidence becomes overwhelming.
The choice is not between wild places and people; basically the choice we humans have is this: a secure or an impoverished future. If we continue on our current self-destructive path, we are greatly increasing the possibility that it will be the latter.
As for Tilo's disposable comment, I dealt with that yesterday.
Ian -
The specific problem with CO2 markets is the size and timescale of the investments involved.
For example, a coal fired power station is typically a 50-year investment. Which means that if you suddenly impose a carbon tax or quota 10 years into this period, then it has to have extreme costs or penalties to change behaviour (Turn the plant off or spend a huge amount on a sequesteration scheme) - going way beyond the relatively easy task of scrubbing SO2. And that's one of the simpler cases.
Of course, if a power station run out of permits to emit, should we force it to switch off, bringing down the power grid for a few million people?
At the individual level, reducing consumption can involve large capital costs - replacement of heating systems, insulation, replacement of car, microgeneration, that sort of thing. That is something that has never been done before.
To give an example, here in the UK, fuel duty has beens specifically raised to give a market force to discourage waste (I hesitate on CO2 emissions because it's been going on for a long time). To the extent that we now have a $8 gallon. Based on a US default, our fleet economy is circa 30mpg vs. 20mpg (despite the widespread availability of higher mpg cars). So a 'carbon tax' in excess of 150% has increased economy of only 50% - and this is because capital costs (buying a car) exceed running costs even with extreme carbon taxes.
So the real world issue here is that if you wise to use carbon taxes then you have got to set them at painfully high levels - levels that would be politically impossible given the effect on the poor - in order to make changes to behaviour in capital investment that would actually make a detectable difference.
Personal tradeable carbon quotas will simply get disregarded, since the consequences of miscalculation - elderly people forced to turn off heating in cold weather, electric grids going down, people banned from driving their cars to work - are clearly impossible to enforce, yet allowing breaches brings down the system.
The difference between cap and trade on CFCs and cap and trade on CO2 (as an example) is the difference between squeezing water from a sponge and a sandstone.
I'm afraid I've been unwell for the past couple of days and can't currently respond to people in detail.
Hopefully I will be feeling better tomorrow and will be able to do so then.
Nice to find someone else who has read van Vogt. Unfortunately I can't recall a huge amount about them, its been a few years. Compared to many authors of the period, he was trying to do interesting things, and make people look at the world more clearly.
But as for reverence for nature, that is a personal values ridden thing. Sure, some greens worship nature. But they almost certainly are not the ones pointing out the problems via the scientific literature. Reverence is rather a religious word as well. I don't have reverence for nature, but a certain respect (See, another value laden word). I've not grown up on a farm, I mostly walk through the countryside, pausing ocaisionally to prise a rabbit from the dogs jaws. (well, she's too old now to go rabbit chasing)
But anywayas Chris Neill said, your statement regarding reverence is a straw man.
@All
I don't know much much facts about the subject, I honestly don't. But I attempt a question: What does the following report mean for the price building of carbon offsetting programs and who will pay the insurance premium for droughts and other natural disasters that affect the success of offsetting emissions? China quake may cut carbon offset supply.
Tilo proves that everywhere he posts, and does so frequently.
In other words, he's just another troll.
Sorry to get back to the original theme here, but this is how I see the problem. I have nothing at all against wealthy people buying up a gazillion houses and yachts and automobiles and private jets etc, and using them all. But when they do that and then claim there's a global warming catastrophe looming around the corner, and that their lifestyle is cool because they "offset" their carbon, well, I don't believe them.
To borrow a statement I read elsewhere... when they start acting like there's a crisis, I'll consider believing them. Offsetting of carbon by folks like these doesn't do much to convince me that they really believe in the crisis.
Ben, that seems strange: you'd have less confidence in a person who with foresight acts calmly and incrementally to head off a problem, than in one who does nothing until it's time to panic?
I suppose it makes sense if you believe all long term or large scale planning is doomed to fail, in which case I guess the good leader is the one who panics most effectively in a crisis.
"Tilo, what the fuck is your point?"
That you are a moron. Do you have any clue about what happened in 1998. First, go and get the El Nino, La Nina record. You will see that we had a few month left of El Nino, but, the thing that stands out is that we had more than 2 years of La Nina immediately following that El Nino. And those two years of La Nina pull the front end of the trend line down more than the El Nino pulls it up. Following that La Nina there were 3 El Nino's. If you take all of the El Nino's, and La Nina's together for that time period they worked more to give you an upward slope than anything else. You cannot simply take what happened in 1998 and in the last year when you look at a trend line. So get your head out of your butt and understand this simple fact - NO WARMING IN THE LAST TEN YEARS!!!
For those of you supporting the dumb argument that we only have a ten year flat trend because 1998 was an El Nino year, here is the NOAA El Nino, La Nina record.
http://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/analysis_monitoring/ensostuff/ens…
So:
1. El Nino from May of 97 to April of 98. 12 month of El Nino.
2. Followed immediately by La Nina from July of 1998 to June 2000. 24 month of La Nina.
3. Followed 3 month later by La Nina from Oct. 2000 to Feb. 2001. Five more month of La Nina
Basically we had 12 month of El Nino followed by 29 month of La Nina. All of this in the early portion of the 10 year trend. So those that suggest that we only have a 10 year flat temperature trend because the time period starts with a La Nina, clearly have their head where the sun don't shine.
http://tinyurl.com/4de3v7
No warming for ten years - end of story!
Andrew Dodds,
> Personal tradeable carbon quotas will simply get disregarded, since the consequences of miscalculation - elderly people forced to turn off heating in cold weather, electric grids going down, people banned from driving their cars to work - are clearly impossible to enforce, yet allowing breaches brings down the system.
While I don't doubt that there would be some details to iron out, I don't see the issues you mention as being insurmountable barriers. It shouldn't be too hard to have part of the quota designated as non-tradeable set-aside for the essentials such as heating, cooking, refrigeration and lighting. Thus, at any point in time some limited amount of power would be available for those essentials.
As for being unable to drive to work: that's what public transportation and carpooling are for. BTW, no banning necessary: once you exhaust your, say, monthly gas purchase quota, no more gas until next month.
Dearest Timo, hand-waving bullshit is unconvincing. People have run the stats, and yes, the fact that 1998 was an El Niño year heavily skews the trend.
Statistical analysis isn't moronic, sorry.
dhogaza:
"Dearest Timo, hand-waving bullshit is unconvincing."
Then why do you do it?
"People have run the stats, and yes, the fact that 1998 was an El Niño year heavily skews the trend."
Of course it does microbrain. But the 29 month of La Nina that immediatly follow also skew the trend - in the other direction! You cannot pick the El Nino's and La Nina's that you like and that suit your argument and ignore those that you don't. And the bottom line remains - No warming for 10 years!
Tilo, no one else here is attempting to discover trends based on 10-year intervals which can be skewed by the vagaries of year-to-year phenomenon. Only you are doing that.
saurabh "Only you are doing that."
No one in their right minds would make assertions about man made global warming because of 30 year trends when the earth's history has shown far greater temperature extremes, over longer time periods, without mankind. Sorry, the warming cultists don't get to pick their own intervals of statistical significance. If they can show me that a 30 year trend has a greater probability of predicting the next 30 year trend than a 10 year trend has of predicting the next 10 year trend, then I might listen - but I suspect that they can't.
Tilo, amusing though it is to watch your pointy head explode, can you perhaps try and do some calculations on the trends, including and not including 1998? Heck, start in 1950, 1980, finish in 2004,5, 6 or 7 if you like. What do you haev to do to find that there has been no warming in the last 10 years?
Oh, and by the way, you do know that ocean doesn't cover every bit of the planet?
In other words, Tilo doesn't understand that there's actually a statistical basis for choosing 30 years, that it's not simply pulled from a hat.
Your ignorance isn't our problem, Tilo. Nor is it the problem of professional climate scientists.
"when they start acting like there's a crisis, I'll consider believing them."
I'll bite. What are you looking for? Weeping? Peeing in the pants? Armed revolution? Coming to your house and screaming in your face? Maxing out my credit cards?
Tilo Reber:
Tilo Reber, on the other hand, can pick a period that starts with an El Niño and finishes with a La Niña. Pity he can't seem to pick a period that doesn't start with an El Niño or finish with a La Niña. Apparently it's one rule for him and another for everyone else.
"Tilo Reber, on the other hand, can pick a period that starts with an El Niño and finishes with a La Niña. "
As I already pointed out, the trend isn't made by the starting year and ending year. All the years in between count as well microbrain. And the El Nino's and La Nina's in those in between years help to give you an upward slope. So stop your your irrelevant whinging.
"Heck, start in 1950"
How about 1050. Oops, looks flat. Lotta data points. Must be statistically significant.
"As I already pointed out, the trend isn't made by the starting year and ending year. All the years in between count as well microbrain"
then the trend shouldn't change much if you push the starting date up a year or two. good. show us.
I think I have some sort of pathology where I think trolls can be reasoned with.
Tilo, how come you don't use a 3-year trend?
"In other words, Tilo doesn't understand that there's actually a statistical basis for choosing 30 years, that it's not simply pulled from a hat."
Maybe it's being pulled out of Gavin's ass. As I see it, 30 years is only significant if it has more of a probability of telling you about the next 30 years than 10 years has of telling you about the next 10. Can you show me why you think that 30 years has a predictive capability? Go back and break the temp record up into 30 year chuncks and see if those chunks can predict the next 30 years. Do that for the last 2000 years.
How about 1000 years. Shouldn't that have even more predictive capability than 30 years? No warming since the MWP.
Message for Tilo Reber:
So when are you going to do it, moron?
"Tilo, how come you don't use a 3-year trend?"
For what? My statement is that there has been no warming for ten years. Why does that simple fact elude you? I didn't say that I could predict the future from it. But I also don't believe that you can predict the future from a 30 year trend. The significane of ten years with no warming is that it is ten years with continous CO2 increase. So unless you can explain ten years of flat temp through other natural effects, your CO2 forcing theory is screwed. So explain to me, saurabh, what natural climatic changes have masked the effects of that CO2 rise for 10 years?
"So when are you going to do it, moron?"
900 - 2006. No warming!
1500 - 1700 Significant cooling!
500 - 900 Four hundered years of a warming trend.
Remember butthead, the earth is more than 3 billion years old. Both 10 years and 30 years are less than a blink of an eye.
http://www.ncasi.org/publications/Detail.aspx?id=3025
Proof by publication in Energy and Environment, right. What other jokes do you know?
Las time I checked, the Antarctic ice cores didn't show much change in CO2 from 1500 to 1700 or from 500 to 900. No-one is saying natural cooling or warming cannot happen sometimes. Please spare us the strawmen.
You're right. What humans are doing is happening in less than the blink of an eye.
Sure if you say so, liar.
Tilo - The surface of the Earth is not a closed system. I don't know why you expect surface temperatures to behave in such a simplistic way. You WERE talking about El Nino and La Nina earlier, right?
Tilo Reber posts (in his usual charming manner):
Get your head out of your butt and understand this simple fact -- YOU'RE WRONG!!!
http://members.aol.com/bpl1960/Ball.html
Tilo Reber, proving himself a statistical illiterate, posts:
Tilo, here's an assignment for you, so you'll stop making patently stupid statements like that last one. Find some books on statistics. Find out how significant a mean from a group of ten points is compared to a mean from a group of thirty points. Compare and contrast.
Tilo ...
If you have a fair coin, how often do you expect 100 tosses to result in 50 heads and tails? 51 of one, 49 of the other? The odds for each possible combination of heads and tails?
If 10 tosses, 5 of each? 4 of one, 6 of the other? The odds for each possible combination of heads and tails? Are 10 tails and no heads in this case more likely than 100 tails and no heads in the first case?
If 1 toss ... 1 of each? (trick question!)
As BPL said, go learn some probabilty theory and applied statistics.
This thread is old, probably derailed, and dying, but I would still like to hear what Ian has to say about my and others' above comments, whenever he's feeling better.
Barton:
"Tilo, here's an assignment for you, so you'll stop making patently stupid statements like that last one. Find some books on statistics. Find out how significant a mean from a group of ten points is compared to a mean from a group of thirty points. Compare and contrast."
You truely are a dumb ass Barton. If you think that you can use statistics to give you predictability, then I have an assignment for you. Follow the stock market. When you get thirty days over which you can find an upward trend, then buy the stock and keep it for the next thirty days. Let me know how you do.
"Find out how significant a mean from a group of ten points is compared to a mean from a group of thirty points. "
Well Barton, if number of points is your criteria for statistical predicatbility, then let's use the 1000 points from the year 1000 to the year 2000. That beats 30 points all to hell, doesn't it? And what do we find? No warming. Not only that, but within that 1000 years we find 30 year trends with slops going all over the damn place. So those 30 year trend lines must be worthless. Damn, thanks for showing me how to do than Barton. I feel much better now.
"Get your head out of your butt and understand this simple fact -- YOU'RE WRONG!!!"
So let me get this straight, Barton, you are using a 9 year trend to show me that my ten year trend is wrong. You are using yearly data to show me that my monthly data is wrong, and your are using Hansen's fraudulent temp record to show me that HadCrut3, RSS and UAH are all wrong.
You really do have your head firmly up your ass.
Here is my data again. It starts in 1998 and ends with the most recent monthly data available.
http://tinyurl.com/4de3v7
Now, if you don't trust my chart, simply go get the HadCrut3 raw data, the RSS raw data, and the UAH raw data for yourself - monthly. Then plop them into your excel program and tell it to run a linear trend line through it. Even a dummy like you can do it.
Concering the bullshit cherrypicking accusation, only the first four month of 1998 was El Nino. That was followed almost imediately by 29 month of La Nina. So that rationalization is garbage as well.
Let me give it to you one more time so that you can remember it.
NO WARMING FOR MORE THAN TEN YEARS.
By the way Barton, if you can't figure out how to get the data from the web pages into your excel program, let me know and I will send you the raw data in excel format. You can then do a few spot checks against the temp sites to make sure that I'm not screwing you. The only problem that you will have is keeping it updated, since more than just the latest month is usually updated. Sometimes they update for several years back. For example, Hansen came out with a .67 anomoly for March. Everybody made a big deal about what a uniquely hot march it was. Then when he came out with the April data he corrected March back to .60. Suddenly it wasn't quite so unique. If you can't figure out how to get it charted, I can give you a starter chart. Looking at your own real data might help you not to make so many stupid assertions.
"Are 10 tails and no heads in this case more likely than 100 tails and no heads in the first case?"
Well dhogaza, if it was purely an issue of the number of point, then would it make a difference if I did 10 coin tosses in one minute as suppose to say one hour. Nah, shouldn't make a difference right. So then why do I have to use 10 points for 10 years? Why can't I use 120 points for 120 months? Hmm, there seems to be some difference from the coin toss analogy doesn't there? It does seem that you want to try to understand the entire world in terms of coin tosses dhogaza, but it won't always work.
Sortition -
That's not exactly convincing (and never mind the logistics of trying to get two kids to nursery and get to work on time whilst using public tranport where I live..); you cannot predict ahead of time how much heating a person will need over a winter. Schemes such as you describe are fine for fit and well 20-somethings with no depandants. Once you introduce young children or elderly relatives life becomes more complicated.
This is also a classic illustration of the capital investment problem; a person may have bought a house in the suburbs based on a certain energy availability. If you suddenly impose a cap then you may end up writing off this investment, which hardly seems fair. And of course, we live in a democracy and the ironic thing is that should carbon tax/quota policies actually reach the stage of achieving their ends - forcing reductions in consumption - there if a very good chance of a backlash at the polls. You may be disappointed to find how many 1st world people prefer airconditioning to Bangladesh.
Tilo Reber posts:
Yes, warming. Where the hell are you getting your misinformation?
Tilo Reber, insisting in the face of more than 200 years of the development of statistics that sample size doesn't matter, posts:
Tilo, here are the annual HADCRUT3 anomalies for 1998-2007:
YearAnom
19980.546
19990.296
20000.270
20010.409
20020.464
20030.473
20040.447
20050.482
20060.422
20070.402
When I run the regression, I get a nonsignificant UPWARD trend of 0.004661 per year.
So do you want to change that "NO WARMING" to "NO SIGNIFICANT WARMING?" Or do you just want to stick your fingers in your ears and chant, "Na na na na na, I can't hear you!"
And, incidentally, if you use the last 30 years of data rather than the last 10, you get... significant warming. How about that.
But go on insisting that sample size doesn't matter.
Tilo Reber posts:
Why can't I use 120 minutes? It's 8:35 AM as I write this, and the temperature has increased several degrees since 6:35 AM. So I guess global warming is completely out of control and we're all going to be burned to death by the end of the week. Right? By your logic?
Try to memorize this, Tilo:
"Climate is defined by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) as mean regional or global weather conditions over a period of 30 years or more."
"It's 8:35 AM as I write this, and the temperature has increased several degrees since 6:35 AM. So I guess global warming is completely out of control and we're all going to be burned to death by the end of the week."
It depends on the type of clock....is it an Alarm(ist) clock?
Andrew Dodds,
> [Y]ou cannot predict ahead of time how much heating a person will need over a winter.
You also cannot predict how much money a person needs to buy the fuel for heating. Why would rationing in energy be more problematic than poverty? We accept the hardships of poverty as a matter of course, and any political pressure toward eliminating poverty is suppressed. It is naive to believe that the main obstacle toward implementing such a scheme would be the hardships experienced by the unfortunate.
Yes - there will be inconvenience involved with energy rationing, and hardship involved on occasion, but these phenomena are not unknown in our present society. With good planning, responsibility, co-operation and management the problems could be handled.
> Schemes such as you describe are fine for fit and well 20-somethings with no depandants. Once you introduce young children or elderly relatives life becomes more complicated.
Life in general is easier for 20-somethings with no dependents. But, again, there are children and elderly people living in poverty - where is the sensitivity and political pressure for making sure these people do not experience hardships?
> You may be disappointed to find how many 1st world people prefer airconditioning to Bangladesh.
My sense is that if the policies seem fair, they would enjoy a lot of public support. I guess we will not know until we try.
"Why can't I use 120 minutes? It's 8:35 AM as I write this, and the temperature has increased several degrees since 6:35 AM. So I guess global warming is completely out of control and we're all going to be burned to death by the end of the week. Right? By your logic?"
You have just blown up your own logic Barton. You have, as I did a little earlier, shown that if you only deal with the number of points in order to gain statistic significane then you are missing much of the boat. In other words, you may have something meaningful in statistical terms but not in real world terms.
Notice how you jumped from statistics to the real world the moment that the statistical analogies broke down>
Notice how you jumped from statistics to the real world the moment that the statistical analogies broke down>
too me it rather loked like he changed his approach, because you don t undersatnd basic statistics.
foer example you don t seem to understand that datapoints need to make sense. that yearly data is an average of monthly data (which is an average of daiy data, which is..) and that you re still into cherry picking start dates...
"foer example you don t seem to understand that datapoints need to make sense."
Exactly what I said:
"that if you only deal with the number of points in order to gain statistic significane then you are missing much of the boat. In other words, you may have something meaningful in statistical terms but not in real world terms."
Oh boy. Jetting around the world to climate change conferences is fine as long as one buys offsets. Why not simply live a more modest lifestyle?
Many people dislike Gore because he has profited massively peddling the message that we must make radical changes. He has earned this money off people and industries that contribute largely to the C02 problem.
The optics are horrible for the warmers who demand to live a jet-setting lifestyle of privelege while demanding we turn our own lives inside out.
You suggest offsets are morally superior to the old practise of buying indulgences. I am not so sure. Persons like Gore, like hucksters of old, have manipulated the issue of global warming mainly to secure a personal fortune for themselves with no benefit whatsoever for the population at large. Indeed, he is a hypocrite.
Paul S from DeSmogBlog seems to have discovered Deltoid...
Ah yes, the good old "if environmentalists don't all kill themselves then they're all hypocrites" schtick. Since you're going to denigrate them no matter what, it's just right that they should ignore what you say of them.
Gore is not a complete hypocrite, but amassing a large personal fortune over the supposed greatest challenge facing mankind does not elevate my respect for him.
Why should the general public pay heed to a man who is rapidly accumulating huge sums of money and lives a privileged lifestyle of which he shows no inclination to moderate whatsover?
Oh sure he buys offsets. It's spare change from the outrageous climate change profiteering he is engaged in fleecing rich individuals and large corporations.
Andrew Dodds:
What else would you call it when people prefer to run airconditioning than avoid flooding Bangladesh?
"What else would you call it when people prefer to run airconditioning than avoid flooding Bangladesh?"
That's brilliant Chris.
Someone running their air conditioning is now causing the flooding in Bangladesh......I wonder if there were ever floods before air conditioning?
Can you show me the peer reviewed consensus approved publication that states this giant leap of logic.
And if you believe this Chris, then you would agree that air conditioning is probably a little more important than say.....Amusement Parks, Disney Land/World, Air shows, Car races, all Sporting events,vacations,recreational boating, Broadway shows, and basically everything else in the world that may be considered an unnecessary luxury.
Everytime you attempt to make yourself comfortable or you participate in a form of fuel induced leisure....I hope you are proud of yourself for flooding Bangladesh.
Of course, I won't blame you, because I realize it's the rich evil corporations fault for manufacturing those flood inducing Air Conditioners and other items designed to make life more pleasant.
Can you imagine how many people would be alive today if Air Conditioners were never invented by that evil doer Willis Haviland Carrier (known as Adolf to his friends).
And wouldn't you know it, this inconsiderate flood maker was an American.....of course, we already knew that.
"Many people dislike Gore because he has profited massively peddling the message that we must make radical changes."
Actually Gore donates all royalties from his books and movies and his speech fees to charity.
Feel free to demonstrate how he made those "massive" profits.
I'm back but not 100% so i'm goign to be workign through stuff slowly:
Cohenite at 31: "Ian; Kyoto provides for compliance and substantive, time-linked commitments ; this is a reasonable exposition of the regime;
http://www.hwcn.org/link/mkg/issueno.19.html"
None of which has anything to do with your suggestion that private individuals will be compelled ot by offsets to cover their individual emissions.
"To actually offset a pound of coal burned you need to bury a pound of charcoal in the same quarter that the coal is burned."
Nonsense - what matters is reducing the total net human addition to global greenhouse gases.
Carbon dioxide (and methane, Nitrous oxide etc) molecules don't come with labels attached as to where they came from.
They are, to use an economics term fungible.
"It's like compouding interest where you borrow some money and then try to pay back only the principle; the debt keeps growing."
Actually your argument is like demanding you be repaid with the exact same dollar notes in which the loan was made.
You also seem to be unaware that most offset schemes involve multipliers - meaning that if an action results in say 10 tonnes of mitigation, you would only sell 3-5 tonnes of credits.
This is primarily done to recognise both the time delays in SOME by no means all offsets and also the uncertainty. (E.g. distributing high-efficiency light bulbs reduces energy consumption but the exact amounts depends on multiple factors such as user habits and the tendency to be more careless about turning lights off if the cost of leaving them on decreases.)
Pangolin at 24.
If you leave the GHG in the atmosphere for a while it contributes to global warming. That warming has knock-on effects such as permafrost melt and methane release. These effects can cascade in ways we don't truly understand since things keep warming "faster than expected." It's like compouding interest where you borrow some money and then try to pay back only the principle; the debt keeps growing.
Since there isn't a single carbon offset program that buries charcoal in the soil in the same month the offset is purchased I can guarantee you that they are frauds.
Sortition at 30: "A cap and trade system is a corrupt version of the tax system (corrupt because existing polluters somehow get credit for their current level of pollution)"
First of all, we appear to be endelessly confusing offsets and emissions trading here. THe two concepts are actually quite distinct.
Second, grandfathering (issuing free permits to existing polluters) is not an innate element of an emissions trading scheme. Most (all?) countries have introduced some form of grandfathering in the introductory period for emissions trading schemes.
All such provisions (so far as I know) are for limited introductory periods usually of around 3-5 years and generally over that period involve annual reductions in the numbers of permits issued.
In economic terms this is EXACTLY the same as introducing a carbon tax at a low rate and progressively increasing it.
Thirdly, "Pollutor Pays" is not an economic term, it is a term from environmental ethics. Economists prefer instead to talk about internalising the environmental costs into the price of goods and services.
One reason we make this distinction is that "Polluter Pays" typically means in practice "Polluter's customers and polluter's employees pay through higher prices and job losses".
The point of grandfathering is to try and minimise and spread out that harm.
I should also say that I worked for a decade in the Queensland EPA including drafting legislation and assisting in prosecutions. I met a handful of people who could reasonably be described as "polluters", I helped send some of them to prison.
I met a great many more business owners who were sincerely working to minimise the environmental harm of their businesses to the best of their ability and subject to their limited resources and understanding of the environmental issues.
Those are the people who I don't want to see put out of business in the name of ideological purity.
"I've begun to view offset schemes with some suspicion simply because it seems to me that they rely heavily on good oversight and assessment. If emissions trading schemes are very narrowly defined, I would be happy with them - e.g. if you set a certain well-defined emissions standard for power production or cement factories, etc. But some carbon offset schemes are based on replacements that seem to have much more dubious effects - e.g. the much-maligned "treadle-pumps" replacing gas-powered irrigation pumps in India. Equality and development issues aside, the scheme relies on some relatively dubious measurement - I certainly wouldn't believe those offsets to be as reliable as offset from a much more closely-monitored utility company in a major city somewhere. So: how to deal with this problem? Is there a mechanism that makes those offsets worth less, or makes them riskier to buy? If not, why wouldn't crappy accounting sink this ship?"
The simple answer is multipliers: you assess the probability of a given reduction in emissions actually occurring and reduce the credits generated accordingly.
To take an Australian example: an afforestation scheme on marginal land with no water resources and in an area at high risk of bushfire would generate fewer credits than a similar scheme in an area with higher rainfall, an aretesian water source and a lower bushfire risk.
BOTH schemes would be required to take out crop insurance and the funds from the policy would be legally required to be used to purchase replacement credits from other sources if the afforestation failed.
Yes, it's complex - but no more so than the accounting and audit compliance issues businesses deal with every day.
Andrew Dodds at 46: "Of course, if a power station run out of permits to emit, should we force it to switch off, bringing down the power grid for a few million people?"
Andrew, as you probably realise, power generators operate in highly regulated industries. They enjoy substantial market power and generally make pretty reliable profits = in large part because of their fairly cosy arrangements with government.
A power generator is no more likely to be shut down because of a lack of permits than they are by bankrupcy. Off hand I can't think of any instance anywhere in the world EVER where a major power generator was allowed to simply shut down due to financial or regulatory problems.
More typically, bankers arms are twisted and if necessary a shot-gun marriage merger with another generator is arranged or as a last resort there's always nationalisation.
But in those circumstances neither the managers or the shareholders simply walk away.
Let's say hypothetically, a major generator comes up badly short on permits - they'll be fined or forced to buy more permits on-market in the first instance.
If that fails, the government will likely issue them permits from the reserve every country maintains and then pursue them through the courts for the money.
"To give an example, here in the UK, fuel duty has beens specifically raised to give a market force to discourage waste (I hesitate on CO2 emissions because it's been going on for a long time). To the extent that we now have a $8 gallon. Based on a US default, our fleet economy is circa 30mpg vs. 20mpg (despite the widespread availability of higher mpg cars). So a 'carbon tax' in excess of 150% has increased economy of only 50% - and this is because capital costs (buying a car) exceed running costs even with extreme carbon taxes.
So the real world issue here is that if you wise to use carbon taxes then you have got to set them at painfully high levels - levels that would be politically impossible given the effect on the poor - in order to make changes to behaviour in capital investment that would actually make a detectable difference."
Firstly let's note that like most countries in Kyoto, Britain is using both carbon taxers and emissions trading.
The false dichotomy between the two approaches is really a rhetorical device rather than a substantive point.
Pure carbon taxes will indeed have to be set very high - because people and businesses have varying marginal costs of abatement.
Applying a single uniform rate of tax will mean, for example, that outer suburbanite dependant on a car to get to work will not reduce their transport-related emissions until the tax reaches the point where it becomes economical to move or change jobs.
Emissions trading SHOULD allow the businesses with the lowest cost of mitigation to cut their emissions most.
Mandatory Personal emissions trading would be insanely complex, difficult and probably unworkable.
Which is why it makes sense to combine emissions trading in high-emission sectors of industry with broadly-based carbon taxes.
In both cases, a big chunk of the revenue raised could be used to fund mitigation programs. (For example, by allowing older more-polluting coal-fired powerplants to write-off their remaining capital cost immediately and shut down.)
Subsidising industry to cut emissions is often objected to on ethical grounds - we're back to "polluter pays".
But I'm an economist not an ethicist. (Given the Van Vogt references, I'm tempted to throw in a "Damn it Jim...")
Ian,
I find your arguments unconvincing on many points. Let's start with these points:
> First of all, we appear to be endelessly confusing offsets and emissions trading here. THe two concepts are actually quite distinct.
What is the difference? As far as I can tell, cap-and-trade is an offset scheme with central accounting and reliable monitoring. Is there a more fundamental difference?
> Second, grandfathering (issuing free permits to existing polluters) is not an innate element of an emissions trading scheme. Most (all?) countries have introduced some form of grandfathering in the introductory period for emissions trading schemes.
> All such provisions (so far as I know) are for limited introductory periods usually of around 3-5 years and generally over that period involve annual reductions in the numbers of permits issued.
I really do not understand. If there are no free permits for existing polluters, then what is there to trade? If there is no grandfathering then polluters have to buy pollution permits from the government pool of permits rather than from each other and no trade is going on. In that case, if a polluter reduces the amount of pollution it produces, then it simply buys less permits - it does not sell the reduction to someone else. This scheme is then very similar to the tax scheme.
Ian -
Well,if we allow generators to bend the rules - which is exactly what you are saying - then you've basically written off the system. As I said, and you didn't address, the capital cost for electric generators to reduce emissions is very high indeed, and the presense of a get out clause makes the 'do nothing but lobby for removal of system' option even easier to take.
You can't fine the companbies into bankruptcy (well, you can, but then you just have a nationalised electric generating company, still emitting CO2 at the same rate). You can't turn them off because they broke the rules because that means turning the grid off. Emissions trading may work in some marginal cases - it may push some high emissions industries overseas, for instance - but it simply cannot practically work on the bulk of emissions; economic theory simply runs smack bang into physical/political reality.
As an engineer, I can say quite easily that if you wish to cut CO2 emissions, then step 1 is to stop burning coal; and the only realistic way to do this is to use nuclear fission to replace coal in electric generation.
Then you have to move as much of the transport fleet to battery power as it practical.
Then you have to replace Natural gas in home and industry with electricity.
Then your emissions will be down by the 80+% actually required. The above could technically be arrived at by the application of market based schemes, just sometime after the WAIS has finished melting. This is certainly not an idealised market case, the options are restricted to the possible.
In my previous post, I made the following statement:
"Presumably the calculations have been done, but is there is even enough suitable land to continue indefinitely offsetting the current annual release of ~7.5 gigatonnes of carbon released each year..,?"
Well from RealClimate we have this post:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/05/freeman-dysons-se…
"The problem here, unrecognized by Dyson, is that the business-as-usual [behaviour] he's defending would release almost as much carbon to the air by the end of the century as the entire reservoir of carbon stored on land, in living things and in soils combined. The land carbon reservoir would have to double in size in order keep up with us."
Combined with the long lifetime of CO2 in the atmosphere:
Climate Change and Greenhouse Gases - by Tamara S. Ledley, Eric T. Sundquist, Stephen E. Schwartz, Dorothy K. Hall, Jack D. Fellows, and Timothy L. Killeen
EOS - Vol. 80, No. 39, September 28, 1999, p. 453.
http://www.agu.org/eos_elec/99148e.html
That's it, unless I've missed something! The evidence would seem unequivocal: Offsetting CANNOT POSSIBLY achieve what it promises! The ONLY way that offsetting might work, is as part of a suite of integrated strategies, that include population reduction [hopefully voluntary], energy efficiency, renewable generation technologies, and eliminating wasteful energy use, & etc.
Check out this US Energy Footprint Chart, an interactive United States Energy Consumption Footprint Map, illustrating Greenest States and more. This site has all sorts of stats on individual State energy consumptions, demographics and State energy offices.
http://www.eredux.com/states/