THE VINE JULY 1, 2009
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Among people who think we need strong, rapid action to curb greenhouse-gas emissions and avoid dangerous climate change—and I'm one of them—there's been a great deal of hand-wringing over whether or not to support the House climate and energy bill, which is now cruising on over to the Senate.
The warts on the House bill are big and hideous: The renewable-electricity standard would require utilities to do little more than what existing state laws already require. The short-term targets for reducing emissions (nominally 17 percent below 1990 levels by 2020) fall well short of what the IPCC recommends to avert a climate fiasco (try 25 to 40 percent). The carbon cap-and-trade program relies on potentially shabby offsets that could weaken the targets further and will now face even less scrutiny thanks to a last-minute deal Collin Peterson struck on behalf of farmers. And it's quite likely the Senate will produce an even more diluted bill.
Still, in his New York Times column today, Tom Friedman lays out the case for why a watery, badly compromised bill is still better than nothing. Baby steps are important! In particular, Friedman argues that even a modest price on carbon will start steering our slow-turning supertanker of a country in a cleaner, greener direction:
More important, my gut tells me that if the U.S. government puts a price on carbon, even a weak one, it will usher in a new mind-set among consumers, investors, farmers, innovators and entrepreneurs that in time will make a big difference—much like the first warnings that cigarettes could cause cancer. The morning after that warning no one ever looked at smoking the same again.
Ditto if this bill passes. Henceforth, every investment decision made in America—about how homes are built, products manufactured or electricity generated—will look for the least-cost low-carbon option. And weaving carbon emissions into every business decision will drive innovation and deployment of clean technologies to a whole new level and make energy efficiency much more affordable. That ain't beanbag.
Hey, no need for Friedman to ask his gut. As Jon Gertner reported last year, the first item on the wish list of every venture capitalist working in clean tech is a simple price on carbon. Lay that down, they say, and money will start spilling into energy innovation. Likewise, Chuck Gray, executive director of the National Association of Regulatory Utility Commissioners has said that "climate-change legislation is essential no matter what the economic situation," because "it will remove many of the uncertainties that are preventing state regulators, utilities, and others from planning and financing new electricity investments."
One critical point to recognize is that this bill is only a first step. Looking back through history, every single piece of major environmental legislation in the United States evolved in fits and starts. The original Clean Air Act in 1963 dealt rather lightly with air pollution. But it kick-started innovation in scrubber technology and was expanded little by little, in 1965, 1966, and 1967, as awareness of the dangers of air pollution grew. Finally, by 1970, a new, much more comprehensive Clean Air Act was passed into law. (To be sure, that was a somewhat novel situation, as Richard Nixon was jockeying with Congress to see who could support the strongest environmental law.) Similarly, Europe's cap-and-trade system has been bolstered over time, its weaknesses patched, its targets tightened.
It's easy to envision a similar dynamic with global warming. A climate bill will give the Obama administration a better negotiating hand in the international talks at Copenhagen this December. If that helps us persuade China to take bolder action, and if reducing emissions proves as dirt-cheap as the CBO and EPA expect it to be, then combine those two things with the growing body of evidence that the dangers of climate change are more dire than we thought, and there should be fresh momentum down the road to augment and improve climate and energy laws here in the United States.
Indeed, that's essentially what happened with the push to curb CFCs and prevent the destruction of the ozone layer during the 1980s and '90s. As Michael Kraft, an environmental-policy expert at University of Wisconsin recounts, early moves on CFCs were modest, but the Montreal Protocol included a provision allowing countries to revisit the treaty every five years. As the science of ozone-layer destruction became clearer, and as people realized that transitioning away from CFCs didn't cost nearly as much as industry spokesman had warned, it became easier to accelerate the cleanup. "This sort of incremental decision-making is how the United States usually proceeds," notes Kraft.
Now, mind you, we could also see things careen in very much the other direction. It's possible for Congress to design a climate bill so malignant that electricity rates quickly spike, polluters buy up shady offsets by the truckload, and Goldman Sachs makes a fortune manipulating the carbon-trading market. In that case, public support for action on climate change would evaporate. Now, I don't think the House climate bill will lead us to that fate, and neither do the EPA and CBO analyses, but it's a definite concern.
--Bradford Plumer
19 comments
The planet's warming happens so gradually and incrementally that people adapt to a whole new baseline level of "normal" without even realizing it. So it goes with political attitudes and legislation. Poetic, in a quais-cynical, strained-metaphory kind of way.
- adaglas
July 1, 2009 at 1:36pm
This bill is dead on arrival in the Senate and was almost defeated in the House, even after House Democrats almost completely and thankfully gutted the bill.
There is growing dissent about the role of anthropogenic CO2. Domestic oil production and nuclear energy should be promoted, further research in alternate energy should be funded, CAFE standards should be increased.
Opponents of ethanol, Brad, like yourself are rather silent on this crucial issue as EPA is jamming Renewable Fuels Standard down our throats. There is at least as much hypocrisy on the enviro side of the issue as there is on the industrial side. probably much more.
- r.ennis
July 1, 2009 at 3:20pm
Batman’s a Scientist [Chris Horner]
Anyone with even a casual acquaintance with the global-warming industry knows that this crowd's first response to any challenge, of any sort, from any source, is to go ad hominem. When the climate facts are not helpful, ad hom is their way to change the subject. They know what they need to know — that climate legislation is the instrument at hand for long-desired "social change," and whatever means that are necessary will be employed. To these people, facts and logic are for losers —and often enough, ad hominem is used to conceal the ideologues' staggering ignorance on the issues (ignorance of the sort that President Obama revealed with his recent claim that carbon dioxide "contaminate[s] the water we drink and pollute[s] the air we breathe" — he said, opening a Perrier and exhaling a sigh).
So when the EPA got caught suppressing the sole substantive report submitted as part of its "internal deliberation" over whether and how to seize the energy sector of the U.S. economy, you knew ad hominem was sure to follow. In the Washington Times story about the suppressed report, we read that a spokeswoman for EPA administrator Lisa P. Jackson — who made the determination that CO2 threatens the world — "noted that the memo's author, Alan Carlin, is an economist, not a climate scientist." Funny how people tasked with certain jobs become unqualified only when they are inconvenient.
Carlin is, indeed, a Ph.D. economist from MIT, a degree he obtained after earning a degree in physics from Cal Tech — both of which probably explain why he holds the job of reviewing such proposals. But this reflexive ad hom raises several obvious questions, none more obvious than: What makes Lisa P. Jackson a climate scientist? (She's a chemical engineer.)
For that matter, who the hell are Barack Obama, Henry Waxman, Ed Markey, Nancy Pelosi, Carol Browner, Al Gore . . . need I continue? They all apparently are perfectly suited to reach informed judgment on the issue. Waxman is a scientist (bachelor's in political science, UCLA ‘61) like Batman's a scientist. Freeman Dyson, meanwhile, is "just a physicist." Clearly, our governmental solons are qualified because they agree that this issue must be ridden to achieve the desired "change."
As I detail in Red Hot Lies, this ad hom addiction doesn't serve the alarmists well — particularly when their credentialism is a one-way street. EPA now joins the rest of the gang in assailing critics of the IPCC report (to which the agency admits outsourcing its decision making on climate science) as lacking proper scientific credentials. But that report was written by 52 government representatives as part of a process expressly chartered to support a future global-warming treaty and was not, as EPA claims, peer-reviewed. (Many peers did review it, and we learned through a FOIA threat that — just like EPA's reviewer — they rejected it, only to be ignored. That's a lot of things, but peer review isn't one of them.) Naturally, some of us wondered about the amazing qualifications of the "world's leading climate scientists" behind the IPCC who are not to be challenged — what it must take to become qualified to speak! — only to discover that they included teaching assistants in anthropology and the like (really).
Team Soros was particularly adamant about an economist daring to opine, sniveling "since when have economists . . . become scientists, and why should we care what they think about climate science?" And now the EPA plays the same card against economist Carlin, and suggests we defer instead to the IPCC, as did they. But, uh, the fellow posing as the IPCC's chief "climatologist" (New York Times and USA Today), or the UN's "chief climate scientist" (AP), is . . . an economist.
The alarmists, now joined by the Obama administration, are bullying, sneaking, dissembling, and on occasion openly lying to the public to get their way. You've got a little bit of time left to be outraged. My colleagues and I are flattered that so many people just assume we're handling these things, and the public can go about their lives. I have a life on the outside, too, with a wife and children. So, please, if this should come to be, don't call me. We told you.
- r.ennis
July 1, 2009 at 3:38pm
Chris Horner's rant is fun, but he never addresses the fact that actual climate scientists have looked at Carlin's "critique" and found basic, embarrassing errors:
www.realclimate.org/.../bubkes
As for ethanol, I've written about it plenty of times here and will continue to do so. I'm honestly not sure how that counts as hypocrisy.
- Brad Plumer
July 1, 2009 at 4:01pm
You should be insisting that Renewable Fuels Standard is going in the wrong direction. By 2020, approximately 15% of our transportation fuel will be corn or soy based. At current subsidy rate, we are talking $115 billion per year by then. What a colossal giveaway agriculture and agribusiness. Your silence in this manner compared to your carping on fossil fuels is deafening. I think that counts as hypocrisy.
- r.ennis
July 1, 2009 at 4:29pm
great post!
- pdx1
July 1, 2009 at 4:32pm
Another thing. What qualifies someone ro be an "actual climate scientist" anyway?
- r.ennis
July 2, 2009 at 8:47am
Someone who's done/doing peer-reviewed research in the field? Seems like a good definition to me, though I'm open to better ones.
- Brad Plumer
July 2, 2009 at 9:36am
So an "actual climate scientist" is someone whose work is accepted by other "actual climate acientists". I get it.
- r.ennis
July 2, 2009 at 11:17am
Team Obama is now selling Cap and Trade as a "jobs bill" despite actual experience in Europe that shows it is a job inhibitor.
'Cap and Trade Dementia' [Greg Pollowitz]
NRO contributor Peter Ferrara has a long piece over on the AmSpec blog:
Barack Obama called for House passage of the cap and trade tax bill last Friday by calling it a jobs bill. The bill is designed to raise the price of energy in the U.S. so much that it will reduce the use of fossil fuels by 17% by 2020 and by 83% by 2050. Sentencing the U.S. economy to high cost energy is not a particularly good strategy for creating jobs. The Charles River Associates, a Harvard based economics consulting firm, estimates a net loss of jobs from the bill of about 2.5 million each year.
This is surely a gross underestimate of the net job losses from a bill designed to reduce the use of fossil fuels to the level in 1907. All those soccer moms better get used to riding their horses to the grocery store and back. And their husbands better get used to working the farms again, by hand, as high cost energy will chase remaining American manufacturing out of the country to India and China, which do not suffer from Al Gore's delusions about supposed global warming.
Yet Barack Obama calls it a jobs bill. This reflects a by now well-established pattern of deceptive, misdirection rhetoric, raising broadly appealing ideals in promotion of policies that would do just the opposite. For example, Obama is also trying to sell us a new health care entitlement, larger than any of our already grossly overgrown entitlements we can't finance, with the argument that it will actually reduce costs, even while CBO estimates that it will increase Federal spending by $1.6 trillion (woefully underestimated).
And worse news for Obama, the American people understand this:
Recent polls show the truth about global warming has broken through to the American people. A recent Zogby poll found Americans oppose cap and trade 57% to 30%. The latest Rasmussen poll finds that 42% think the House passed cap and trade bill will hurt the economy, with only 19% agreeing with President Obama that it will help the economy. Another Rasmussen poll found that only 34% now believe humans cause global warming, the lowest polling yet and a reversal from a year ago. Gallup says a record high 41% of Americans now say global warming has been exaggerated, and "Gore has failed — the public is just not that concerned" about global warming. Other surveys find Americans ranking global warming dead last among issues of concern.
- r.ennis
July 2, 2009 at 11:24am
Yes, just wait until you hear the shocking truth of how the fields of biology, chemistry, and physics operate. It's a real scandal.
- Brad Plumer
July 2, 2009 at 12:40pm
I hope you are not implyimg that "climate science" is not open to debate with biologists, chemists, pysicists and other technically astute individuals who (also) know something about the first, second and third laws of thermodynamics also who may disagree. Are you?
- r.ennis
July 2, 2009 at 8:29pm
R.ennis: you've always struck me as being pretty switched on, but this must be the third or fourth denialist piece that Ive (let realclimate.org) been able to spot the immediate flaws in. They're typically plauged with some combination of internal inconsistencies, denial of accepted data without refuting it or simple mis-understanding of basic science.
Do I wish the data supported a different conclusion? Absolutely. But unfortunately science is not a forum that is driven by opinion or desires. It is the business of explaining observations in the real world. Is there a great deal of uncertainty? Of course; however no-one can seriously deny that 1) CO2 (and methane) is a greenhouse gas, 2) we are pumping ever increasing large amounts of it into the atmosphere and 3) the world is warming up as evidenced by many independant forms of measurement. Now 3 does not logiclally follow 1 & 2, but that's what the balance of the evidence shows, and a plausible alternative that either explains the available data or demonstrates why the theory of Global Climate Change in wrong is yet to emerge.
As for the "catasrophic" Economic impact of raising the price of energy: I am as shocked today as the day I first came to the US at the cavalier attitude we have toward energy (as expressed by how we price it). Especially how we price the finite reserves of the most flexible fuel source ever discovered. There is so much low hanging fruit in the efficiency of things as mundane as our residential and commercial building stock (even ignoring industrial and transport) that the correct incease in energy costs coupled with incentives will lead to a huge boom in the manufacturing and installation of insulation. Yes, there is a risk that we'll arrive at the "wrong" price and trash the place, but even in there were no greenhouse effect, this (increasing the price of cargo) is a national security and infrastruture priority. Germany manages to be the worlds #1 or #2 exporter despite substantially higher energy prices, so I'm not seeing an economic apolcalypse from the current proposals.
But enough from me - I'm curious as to how the theory of global climate change violates any of the laws of thermodynamics. Would seem to be an elementary gaping hole if it did.
- Nari224
July 3, 2009 at 10:43am
r-ennis--I'm not sure where your questions are leading, but there's plenty of debate within climatology. A lot of those debates are heated and totally fascinating (Chris Mooney wrote a terrific book about the arguments over hurricanes). But there are also basics that no one in the field disputes--greenhouse gases having a warming effect on the planet, for instance. I realize you don't want this fact to be true. I realize there are lots of bloggers out there who have very elaborate arguments for why the world's actually cooling or whatnot. But if they have hard evidence for their position, they ought to submit it to a journal and have other scientists look at it--that's the way the process works. If they're right, their view will prevail. But it's not enough for a "technically astute individual" to tell the National Review that he doesn't believe global warming is true. Feel free to call me close-minded, but this is pseudoscience and it's worth as much attention as intelligent design or the idea that HIV doesn't cause AIDS.
- Brad Plumer
July 3, 2009 at 11:28am
Nari, if you followed my arguments better you will see that I have consistently argued for energy efficincy, CAFE standards, more domestic production, elimination of counter productiver New Source Review standards and abolition of renewable fuels. These alone would reduce carbon emissions by about 15% by 2020 without a dime of federal subsidy. If, by then the highly dubious predictions of "actual climate scientists" of today are confirmed, we need to move on to carbon tax high enough to actually reduce carbon. Of course the NSF and other government agencies should support further energy research, but in my experience new technology is slow to develop. My Masters thesis in 1964 was on fuel cell technology and it is still hardly economic.
Brad, really your last sentence surely came from irritation and I know that you couldn't really put climate skepticism in the categories you suggest. I respect you too much to believe that. The Wall Street Journal story on the EPA "coverup" insists that the data used for the subject report was in fact "peer-reviewed". And the author was a physicist from Cal Tech. You also cast doubt on the credibility of people who say that the earth has been cooling for at least a decade. If this is not true then show me your data.
I was struck that on the 65th anniversary of D-Day, attendees remarked on how similar the weather was as on the day of the invasion. Now D-Day was 2/3 of a century ago. Why no discernable temperature increase? I know this proves nothing but it is interesting to ponder and to explain why normal people are not concerned.
- r.ennis
July 3, 2009 at 2:47pm
I assume the WSJ story you mention is the op-ed by Kimberly Strassel? As best I can tell, she's just wrong--Carlin relied heavily on non-scientific work, much of it incoherent or contradictory:
www.realclimate.org/.../bubkes
Again, if Carlin's really onto something, he should just submit his findings to a journal. I'd love it if global warming was actually false. But the evidence isn't there.
As for why no discernible increase, that part of Europe has only warmed 1-2 degrees since mid-century, according to NASA:
data.giss.nasa.gov/.../do_nmap.py
Doesn't seem like the sort of thing most people would notice, especially over a 65-year period.
- Brad Plumer
July 3, 2009 at 4:28pm
r.ennis: I have followed your post for some time and normally find myself in complete agreement with yourself. It's your propensity to continue to post or cite easily debunked climate change denialist pieces that I find odd.
Regarding the cap-and-trade v carbon tax or CAFE standards: I think we'd agree that a carbon tax is a non-starter in the US, and it appeared unreasonably difficult to achieve a trivial increase in the CAFE standards. What is another option? Do nothing? At least a cap-and-trade system provides some flexibility and has a build in downturn relief valve. Now I'd agree that it's flexibility is dangerous in the hands of politicians who may have tangential desires, but its an imperfect world. Since we're in agreement about the need to do something, and our preferred options have not gotten anywhere despite being functionally easier plus probably more efficiacious, what's your primary concern? The cap is a tax by another form, are you specifically concnerned with an implementation detail that we've not discussed?
Regarding the background of the article's author: that's great. However if he's found something new and important, why didn't he submit it to a peer reviewed journal? One only raises warning flags by using the National Review as your outlet (unless you are claiming that the Obama EPA is suppressing science as well and neither he nor the reviewers could take their findings to the outside world). Another warning sign might be that we are reading news stories about the "suppression" rather than how this is challenging the current thinking. Of course, science is a very conservative en devour, so it's possible that the findings are still being digested. However since I (an engineer) could find problems with it, I doubt it.
That's how science works: Once a theory has been accepted as explaining a large body of exisiting evidence as well as new evidence, it becomes accepted and challenges need to either supercede it or demonstrate why it is wrong. This is why Brad doesn't need to post data showing why the world hasn't been cooling for 10 years. The people making this claim need to. It is a bit of a tough sell given that I believe something in the order of 11 of the warmest years on record have occured in the last 13. However you could try to make the case by say, picking 1998 (warmest on record) and comparing its average temperature to those of 2007 and 2008 and note that the latter were cooler than the former. However, as someone who I presume understands statistics, you'll likely notice that this is a slightly suspect way to determine a trend. If you've got a different argument, please by all means share it.
Now none of this means that I am endeared or attached to the conclusions of the current theory. The implications suck big time to say the least. I wish it were otherwise myself. Show me the evidence and I'll be first in line to argue your case.
However you are right that this isn't penetrating the consciousness of the general populace. Perhaps it would help if all of the TV networks showed time-lapse sequences of the increasingly mis-named Glacier National Park, the Alaskan and Greenland ice sheets and the Franz Josef glacier in New Zealand since photographs started being taken. Or the ever-shrinking areas that receive snowfall over the 30-40 years years. And so on.
Also, still waiting for that violation of the laws of thermodynamics!
- Nari224
July 3, 2009 at 8:15pm
Nari,
See link below. This guy claims to follow temperature data and graph the results. The only conclusion I can make is that, since 1979, relatively little or no global warming has occured and the anomaly in 1998 was an exraordinarily high rise. It is disingenuous to point to that year and claim that the resulting decline is based strictly on using that statistical anomaly to disguise the trend since 1979, to say at least. If this guy is also an easily debunked denialist. I can be persuaded.
Regarding violation of thermodtnamics, Brad once posted that we are close to a tipping point that would make bring CO2 concentration up from the present level to over 800 ppm. That seemed to be very questionable and possibly in violation of at least one of these laws. If I jumped to conclusions, I apologise. I never hear any alarmist ever apologising.
www.drroyspencer.com/latest-global-temperatures
- r.ennis
July 6, 2009 at 4:45pm
To repost what I wrote in another thread:
That Roy Spencer graph only shows trends in the troposphere--when we're talking about "global warming," there are also surface temps, ocean temps, stratospheric temps to consider. If you're genuinely curious about the science here, read the 2006 synthesis report (or at least the exec summary) on atmospheric trends, which was published by the U.S. Climate Change Science Program. They looked into the graphs by Spencer you linked to as well as various other discrepancies and asked a lot of good questions about how to reconcile these problems with other information that's out there.
It was a major project and a really interesting one, although the end result, alas, is basically the familiar one--climate change is still real, the discrepancies are very much resolvable, etc.:
www.climatescience.gov/.../sap1-1-final-all.pdf
>>>>>>>>
As for tipping points, I doubt I ever wrote what you're suggesting. The idea behind tipping points is that if we release a certain amount of carbon into the atmosphere, the resulting warming could lead to certain events (forest die-offs, or accelerated tundra melt that releases methane) that would then inevitably result in even higher greenhouse-gas concentrations down the road. It has nothing to do with violating the laws of thermodynamics.
- Brad Plumer
July 6, 2009 at 4:58pm