The Copenhagen conference on climate change: what are we learning?

By Griff Wigley, on December 9, 2009, 7:31 am

This week’s announcement of the Google Living Stories Project (NY Times: Google Unveils News-by-Topic Service) presents the opportunity for us to use the tool to track the Copenhagen conference on climate change and discuss it here.

I’m not a global warming skeptic but the “smug groupthink” evident in some of the recently hacked emails of a small network of climatologists is disturbing.

Environment, Featured, International

157 comments to The Copenhagen conference on climate change: what are we learning?

• 51
  Griff Wigley says:

  December 26, 2009 at 7:51 am

  Lee, Vicki and Riana Dilley have a letter to the editor in today’s Nfld News: Earth’s climate is changing.

  Few people have been privileged to live with or even know the first victims of climate change. Our voice is speaking for the people of the island nations: Tuvalu, Kiribati, Marquesas, Haiti and many other nations. Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are the countries least responsible for global climate change. Scientific assessments consistently identify SIDS in particular as the most vulnerable countries that will suffer disproportionately from the impacts of climate change. What is happening to these nations is not a theory to be debated, this is fact; the islanders are physically threatened. Many have already had to relocate to other land, usually in another country as a climate refugee. Entire nations are likely to become extinct … culture, language, ethnic group will be gone, gone forever.
• 52
  norman butler says:

  December 27, 2009 at 5:44 pm

  “..victims of climate change”..? Where there are victims, there are law suits. Good grief!
• 53
  john george says:

  December 27, 2009 at 10:11 pm

  Norm- If the US gets trapped with paying for all the clean-up of the climate, you and I will be the victims. Would that be anti-climatic or what?
  • 53.1
    john george says:

    December 27, 2009 at 10:12 pm

    Oops! I meant to say “clean-up of the atmosphere.” Sorry.
• 54
  Peter Millin says:

  December 28, 2009 at 9:18 am

  It is sad to see that certain people are losing their homes due to natural occurrences.

  But isn’t that just part of the history of earth. Haven’t we lost cultures and entire species due to natural changes in the environment?

  The only difference today is that we have instant access to this information.
  • 54.1
    Paul Zorn says:

    December 28, 2009 at 4:31 pm

    Peter:

    You ask:

    Haven’t we lost cultures and entire species due to natural changes in the environment?

    Yes, nature can be brutal. But you’re dodging (or assuming an answer to) the most important question here: Are changes in Tuvalu, Maldives, and similar places really “natural”? Or might we all have helped?

    And then:

    The only difference today is that we have instant access to this information.

    The “only” difference? Really? Doesn’t it matter that humans may be partly at fault here? And that we know a lot more about climate science than we did in the past?
  • 54.2
    peter millin says:

    December 29, 2009 at 7:56 pm

    Paul,

    Yes, nature can be brutal. But you’re dodging (or assuming an answer to) the most important question here: Are changes in Tuvalu, Maldives, and similar places really “natural”? Or might we all have helped?
    —————————————————-

    Yes, this is the heart of the question. The one that hasn’t been answered yet.
    I am just pointing out the possibility that it is not man made.
    ————————————————–
    The “only” difference? Really? Doesn’t it matter that humans may be partly at fault here? And that we know a lot more about climate science than we did in the past?
    ————————————————–
    My point was that in the past civilization have been eradicated by natural causes without us even knowing. Since there was no information system in place to notice it.
    We are now much more aware what goes on in the world around us, due to faster and better information.
    This can lead to hasty and/or wrong interpretations.
    What seems to us as an unique event today might have repeated itself many times before as part of a natural cycle.

    What killed the dinosaur? We can only speculate?
• 55
  Vicki Dilley says:

  December 28, 2009 at 12:54 pm

  Filifau, Esau, Lasaini, Tulua….these are just a few of the names of the possible climate refugees. Real people with real names. It is easy to sit in our cozy homes (heat in the winter, airconditioning in the summer) and not think about those affected by our decisions. Keeping our heads in the sand and backs to those in need because history has destroyed species and cultures before seems to me to be a very selfish and ignorant act. And Norm, don’t worry about your pocket book, these victims have no resources to take anything from you. You are safe, they are not. We all benefit when we think outside of oursleves and ask what we can do for our neighbors.
• 56
  john george says:

  December 29, 2009 at 11:14 am

  Vicki- I appreciate your concern for these people. Since we are seeing a pattern of sea levels rising, for whatever reason, and affecting their island nations, I would think the noble thing to do would be to open our borders to the citizens of those nations. That is action that can be done now to ease a problem they are facing right now. I have a precedent from my particular world view, and that is providing refuge to the sojourner. Since this problem did not arise overnight, it seems to me that any changes we make in our lifestyles will probably not produce perceptable effects overnight.
• 57
  Mike Zenner says:

  December 29, 2009 at 12:36 pm

  Copenhagen failure: Hard to get an agreement on how to slice up the contracting global economic pie(due to depleting fossil energy,natural resources, and expanding population) when everyone wants to hold onto or expand their piece of it!

  The link below is an 83 page PDF that pretty much spells out the difficult choices that need to be made quickly and how for now we are only giving lip service to (see “The Wrong Tree” pg2). Also, very illuminating on pros and cons of energy choices currently available.

  http://www.postcarbon.org/new-site-files/Reports/Searching_for_a_Miracle_web10nov09.pdf

  Griff, 3rd post underscore spam filter caught?
• 58
  David Ludescher says:

  December 30, 2009 at 10:36 am

  Mike:

  If the only lesson that we learn from Copenhagen is that people and countries will need financial incentives to reduce carbon emissions, then Copenhagen will be a success. It seems to me that we haven’t been very honest in addressing the two different problems to arrive at a solution.

  The “Al Gore Problem” is a real and perplexing problem. For all of his pontification on the global warming problem, Gore still consumes a grossly disproportionate amount of carbon based energy.

  Even if we could solve the Al Gore Problem, and all the developed countries were to band together to reduce carbon emissions, it seems quite likely that the developing countries would just produce more, thereby offsetting any gains.

  The first problem may be solvable; but, the second problem isn’t.
  • 58.1
    Patrick Enders says:

    December 30, 2009 at 8:55 pm

    David,
    And…?

    Are you suggesting that because it will be difficult to convince developing countries to limit carbon emissions, we should not try to solve either problem?

    That seems rather foolish, unless you believe that neither of the problems is a real one.

    If that’s not your point, then – like Paul – I’m really not sure what your point is.
  • 58.2
    David Ludescher says:

    December 31, 2009 at 9:35 am

    Patrick: I don’t have an answer. But, it seems to me that the only thing more foolish than doing nothing is doing what we are doing. Do you or I or anyone else have an idea what it would take to arrest global warming? If the current level of emissions are causing global warming, what percentage decrease do we need to reverse the trend? What are the chances that we are going to be able to reduce global warming given the current political situation of developing/developed nations?

    My point – We need a broader approach to addressing the issue. All indications are that carbon emissions will continue to climb in the years to come. We need to develop a plan to deal with the obvious. Our current solution is similar to health care – let’s throw money at it.
  • 58.3
    Paul Zorn says:

    January 1, 2010 at 9:52 am

    David:

    You say:

    We need a broader approach to addressing the issue. All indications are that carbon emissions will continue to climb in the years to come. We need to develop a plan to deal with the obvious.

    Right. Could anyone disagree?

    Our current solution is similar to health care – let’s throw money at it.

    In what sense do we now “throw money” at this problem?
• 59
  Mike Zenner says:

  December 30, 2009 at 7:16 pm

  David,

  My post was directed more towards the understanding that a lower carbon energy generation complex translates directly to a smaller GDP due to the fact that that any form of work requires energy. Higher cost energy is equivalent to a tax on the economy as a whole which in turn retards GDP growth. Very high energy costs and/or a shortage of needed energy results in negative or contracting GDP. In the absence of our consumption of the worlds fossil fuel endowment, the global GDP must contract substantially and along with it a large part of the worlds population, to match the energy level provided by alternatives alone. This, I feel, is where the honest discussion with the public should be.

  Whatever carbon trading racket that Al Gore and his Wall Street friends are cooking up is only going to inflate their bank accounts and not the world GDP. No amount of Money shuffling, taxing and carbon derivatives will fix the fundamental issue of less energy.

  You are correct in the assumption that the developing nations will consume more energy if they are truly developing (e.g. growing GDP) as stated above go hand in hand, with the cheapest and most reliable energy to be used up first. It would only seem fair that the developing nations get poll position after developed nations had our energy faces submerged in the fossil fuel trough for over a century.
  • 59.1
    William Siemers says:

    December 31, 2009 at 8:55 am

    Mike..What about advances in technology? Your reasoning seems to assume that there will not be improvements in both the utilization and production of energy…some of which are likely unimaginable from a contemporary perspective. And won’t some of these advancements come about because of higher cost and/or scarcity?
  • 59.2
    Mike Zenner says:

    December 31, 2009 at 10:14 am

    William,

    Incremental improvements in utilization and production of current technologies slows the decline but won’t solve the supply problem.

    Like the title of the PDF I attached above “Searching for a Miracle” anything is possible. However, whatever this yet to be found new energy source would be needs to comprise elements from this planet that are in great abundance and that would require less energy input then what would be obtained from its use.

    Its reasonable to assume that with brute force on a continent wide deployment of renewable energy (solar, wind) at current efficiencies coupled with a massive high voltage DC grids(underground?) connecting all these sources along with pumped hydro storage, that a viable renewable electrical energy system is possible. Question is is there enough resources, political will, and money available to do this? I know the environmentalists would be apoplectic in opposition to a plan like this.

    The primary question is do we need to grow GDP and population anyway? Obviously the banking community says yes because that is what supports their usury system of extracting profit from the larger economy. I feel we as a society might be better off with less energy, less material wealth and healthier too. OMG, I am sounding like a socialist!
  • 59.3
    peter millin says:

    December 31, 2009 at 11:22 am

    Great perspective Mike and I couldn’t agree any more with most of your points.

    If we could frame the discussion as pointed out by you we would be able to really address the issue.

    Most people agree that there is a limit to fossil fuel, most people are not out to destroy the environment.
    We need to balance the issue of GDP growth and energy issue in a smart and sensible way. This has to happen in a comprehensive way will all options on the table.
    I don’t believe that we have a single magic bullet to solve our need for energy in the future.
    It has to include the remaining fossil fuels, solar energy, wind mills, nuclear, natural gas, hydrogen, thermo and others.

    I am hopeful that in the coming years we will see political leadership that stays away from interest groups and focus on realistic solutions.

    Between “drill baby drill” and going back to horse and buggy there must be a better way.
• 60
  Peter Waskiw says:

  December 31, 2009 at 6:26 pm

  We are also learning there is a “good probability” that increases in global warming leading to dramatic changes in climate, on some countries, is caused by human behavior / practices / development patterns.
• 61
  Paul Zorn says:

  January 1, 2010 at 9:57 am

  Repeating (or re-repeating) an old theme: advantages of a carbon tax.

  Don’t take my word for it. Read this:

  http://finance.yahoo.com/expert/article/economist/208577

  by the Naked Economist (block that metaphor!), a brilliant (i.e., he agrees with me) U. Chicago economist. Notice, especially, his point that even climate denialists should like this idea.
  • 61.1
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 1, 2010 at 2:18 pm

    Paul,

    A Carbon Tax may very well reduce CO2 output but its not a booster for the economy in the long term. I hope your not selling it as such. The Naked Economist is a typical credit card Keynesian, spend the money today and pay the minimum payment on the bill tomorrow.

    High energy costs makes everything more expensive which contracts consumption causing lower GDP, which also causes lower tax revenues. Further, will drive what little of the US productive economy off shore to developing nations, who will be pushing harder on the growth accelerator to meet up with the devolving developed economies, somewhere in between where we are now and where they are.

    This new lower economic level will be a point where higher cost alternative energies can sustain lower economic activities. This devolution will be particularly hard on those who are already on the economic margin.
  • 61.2
    Sean Fox says:

    January 1, 2010 at 3:47 pm

    Mike, you’re equating the economic impact of a carbon tax with the economic impact of higher energy prices. They are not the same. Notably with a carbon tax all the ‘cost’ of the higher energy prices is available (as tax revenue). Until you account for how that tax revenue is spent you have no idea how the carbon tax will effect the GDP. There are trivially obvious examples where a carbon tax would lead to an immediate increase in GDP.

    For instance if we divided all taxed behaviors into those that impact GDP (e.g. the cost of electricity to run your auto plant) and those that don’t (e.g. the cost of choosing to leave your christmas lights on all night) we could choose to refund all the taxed money (and more) to those GDP enhancing activities, while not refunding the tax on the GDP neutral activities. That would immediately result in an increased GDP (though people might not like it).

    Of course you could argue that it’s unlikely the political system will choose to use the tax money in ways that boost the GDP. But that’s a different argument than implying a carbon tax *must* lower the GDP due to some inviolable economic law.
  • 61.3
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 1, 2010 at 11:14 pm

    Sean,

    Sorry, I may have mislead in a quick transition in my thinking, going from speaking of near future Carbon Tax to a more, not so distant future higher costing energy structure.

    I guess I’ve always assumed that Carbon Tax revenues would be directly returned to the economy in help building a viable alternative energy infrastructure. I feel any other type of government spending of this revenue would be squander.
• 62
  Paul Zorn says:

  January 1, 2010 at 8:23 pm

  Mike:

  You said:

  A Carbon Tax may very well reduce CO2 output but its[sic] not a booster for the economy in the long term. I hope your[sic] not selling it as such.

  I’m not “selling” a carbon tax as an economic panacea — we have more economic problems than any one medicine could hope to cure. But I (and the Naked Economist) think that a carbon tax is better for the economy than no carbon tax. We might hurt a bit now, but (I think) less than we’ll hurt later if we do nothing.

  Then you say:

  The Naked Economist is a typical credit card Keynesian, spend the money today and pay the minimum payment on the bill tomorrow.

  Come again?

  The N.E. may or may not be a Keynesian, whether or not “typical” or of the “credit card” variety. But how would one infer this from the N.E.’s advocacy of a carbon tax. What’s especially Keynesian about that?
  • 62.1
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 2, 2010 at 12:02 am

    Paul,

    I see the Carbon Tax as a tool to push us to make the energy transition sooner, rather than later when there will be less fossil fuel to build a new energy structure from, and consequently fewer options, and time available.

    From NE:

    “Given the current deep recession, we could even introduce the income or payroll tax cuts now and then phase in the carbon tax in a year or two, after the economy has recovered. We would get a stimulus in the present while guaranteeing higher government revenues in the future (to begin paying down our staggering national debt).”

    This is textbook Keynesian, deficit government spending now and assumed increased government revenues in the future.

    Problem is the federal government has been stimulating the economy for over 30 years now with nearly increasing contiguous deficit spending. We never get to the point of balanced budget or surplus which even Keynes himself expected to make his theory work.

    It’s even more disappointing to see that NE views the Carbon Tax to be used as just another tax for use in deficit reduction. Although, as the last 30 years have shown, the deficit is never addressed, and therefore, Carbon Tax will be squandered.
  • 62.2
    Paul Zorn says:

    January 2, 2010 at 12:55 pm

    Mike,

    Again, the N.E. might or might not be a textbook Keynesian, but I see nothing specifically Keynesian (or anti-Keynesian, for that matter) in a carbon tax.

    You say this:

    It’s even more disappointing to see that NE views the Carbon Tax to be used as just another tax for use in deficit reduction.

    The N.E. does not view a carbon tax as “just” another way to reduce the deficit. On the contrary, his main point is much simpler: taxing carbon would reduce carbon use. Taxing anything, of course, raises tax revenue, and so it’s no surprise that the N.E. discusses possible ways of using this revenue, some of which have nothing to do with the deficit.
  • 62.3
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 2, 2010 at 11:02 pm

    Paul,

    You’re right. I should have stated it as such: “It’s disappointing that the NE considers the Carbon Tax to be just another tax to be squandered”.
  • 62.4
    Paul Zorn says:

    January 3, 2010 at 9:03 am

    Mike:

    I guess we’ll just have to disagree not only about whether the N.E. is right or wrong, but also about what he’s saying. So be it.

    New on the carbon tax front: today’s Strib has a commentary by Timothy Taylor, “managing editor of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, based at Macalester College in St. Paul”.

    http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/80371187.html?elr=KArksc8P:Pc:U0ckkD:aEyKUiD3aPc:_Yyc:aUU

    Taylor’s general point is that a lot of hot-button legislation is unnecessarily complicated and technical. For example (this may sound familiar, Mike):

    There’s a simpler, faster and more direct way to reduce America’s use of fossil fuels, whether because of concerns over climate change, or other air pollution and environmental concerns, or because of the unwanted U.S. dependence on imported oil. Phase in a tax on fossil fuels or carbon emissions. Start at, say, 10 cents more per gallon of gas each year for a decade, with equivalent taxes for other fossil fuels. Use the money to cut other taxes or reduce budget deficits.

    Right on, Tim.
  • 62.5
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 3, 2010 at 11:21 pm

    Paul,

    Right on Tim, Indeed!

    Good article but he could have boiled it down to this:

    The complexity of legislation these days (health reform, cap and trade, stimulus package, etc ) is the direct product of hiding the true beneficiaries (corporate\government special interests) of these laws, while sticking the average American with the Tab, in the supposed interest of providing for the common good.

    Best rule of advice “Follow The Money”, it will lead to the answer on why the complexity and who’s benefiting from it.
• 63
  Ray Cox says:

  January 6, 2010 at 4:30 pm

  Paul, you identify the issue in Tim Taylor’s article that really gets lost in all the kurfuffel over the climate change discussion. I think the basic issue was flawed right out of the starting blocks. I personally think it is a real stretch to think man can control our climate….either by warming it up or by doing something to cool it down. I say the discussion is flawed because the reduction of carbon dioxide has been wrapped in this climate discussion.

  It would make a lot more sense to me to focus on the overall benefits of removing pollutants from the air…..period. Some years ago we made great strides in removing sulphur dioxide from the air. We didn’t base the campaign on “we really need to keep our buildings and statues from getting do dirty so lets get rid of sulphur dioxide”. It’s a pollutant chemical that we don’t need to spew into our air. The same thing holds true with all the auto emissions. We’ve removed tons of them over the years.

  I think the link between carbon and global warming was made to try and get some traction for the effort. But I think it compliicated things too much. When I was in the legislature we worked on plans to remove mercury from power plant emissions. There were a lot of people that said it was a waste for two reasons: 1) we don’t really absolutely know that airborne mercury causes health issues and 2) removing mercury here will only help the states east of us due to prevailing winds. But, we managed to keep out of the ‘big’ picture of just exactly what might be accomplished by removing mercury, and focued on the ‘small’ picture of let’s just work together to remove mercury from the emissions and we know our air will be cleaner and we hope health will improve. No promises for improved health were made.

  In the same manner, if we work at removing carbon dioxide we can do so by knowing our air will be cleaner and not making promises that we will reduce global warming.

  With all that said, if the global warming crowd is only beating the drum to use it as a tool to transfer wealth from developed countries to undeveloped countries through a tax and trade system then it is just another example of people using environmental issues for social issues. I hate to see environmental issus hijacked for political or social issues. I remember when President Nixon created the EPA and passed the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts. He did so because he was a conservative and cleaing up things before they make a mess should be a principle of all conservatives, as it greatly reduces clean up costs. Nixon understodd that (but may have had a few other things he didn’t understand!)
  • 63.1
    Sean Fox says:

    January 6, 2010 at 6:45 pm

    Ray,
    While it might be a politically expedient simplification to change the discussion to “carbon dioxide is a pollutant so we should reduce it” that strategy has the downside that it is false (the pollutant part anyway). Unlike mercury or sulfur dioxide co2 isn’t toxic to humans and trying to eliminate it completely would be a very, very bad thing. CO2 isn’t a pollutant in any real sense. If we stop talking about the climate change part of things then there is no purpose in reducing co2 emissions. (well okay, there’s ocean acidification but that’s gonna be even less compelling to voters than climate change) Eventually some voter who payed attention in their high school science class will notice the “co2 is pollution” argument is false. And then where will we be.

    I certainly agree that we should get beyond the climate arguments in the sense that we should stop arguing about their veracity and focus our attention on solutions. And also that the influences of money on the political process are skewing things in all sorts of unhelpful directions.
  • 63.2
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 6, 2010 at 6:50 pm

    Ray,

    The Carbon Tax wealth transfer appears to be going to well known Corp/Gov special interests as shown in the article below:

    http://warofillusions.wordpress.com/2009/03/30/obama-maurice-strong-al-gore-key-players-cashing-in-on-chicago-climate-exchange/
• 64
  Mike Zenner says:

  January 6, 2010 at 10:05 pm

  It appears Cap and Trade is just another derivative Ponzi scheme! James Hanson say’s it may increase global carbon use.

  http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16785
• 65
  Ray Cox says:

  January 7, 2010 at 6:08 am

  Sean, I appreciate your comments. I was thinking more about the concept that virtually anything we send up a smokestack we could do with less of in the atmosphere. I understand the CO2 isn’t a poison but I still think that focusing on cleaning up smokestacks is the way to go.

  I also agree with Mike that the efforts behind carbon tax credits are very misguided and are piggybacking an environmental issue for a social agenda.
• 66
  Norm Vig says:

  January 9, 2010 at 11:32 am

  Folks,

  This has generally been an enlightening and civil discussion, unlike that in the Northfield News anonymous commentary. Not everyone is tuned in to what climate science is really saying, but Sean Fox and others are. So maybe we can move on to possible solutions.

  In my Nfld News letter I supported the cap and trade approach because I think it is the only one that has a chance in hell of passing. The GOP will never support a carbon tax, and neither will many Democrats. The last time it was tried, with Al Gore’s BTU tax in 1993, it ended up with a minor (4.3 cents per gallon) federal gasoline tax increase. Since then it has been a third rail that no politician wants to touch.

  The cap and trade approach has some advantages. George H.W. Bush successfully passed the first such program in the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990. This was very successful in reducing SO2 and N0x precursors to acid rain by 50% in ten years, at an overall cost far below what industry had predicted. You don’t hear too much about acid rain any more. The European Union Emission Trading Scheme, a cap and trade program covering about half of CO2 emissions in Europe, got off to a rocky start because too many allowances were given away free, but now it looks like it is working well.

  In theory, either a carbon tax or a cap and trade market can achieve economically efficient (least-cost) results, but the cap and trade system has two advantages: it allows government to set an overall limit on GHG emissions, whereas if the carbon tax is set too low it may not achieve a reasonable reduction; and a tax is just much harder to pass in today’s political climate. That is why the Republicans always frame cap and trade as a “tax,” even though it is not (though of course it could lead to higher fuel bills, but so could any number of other things, such as war in the Middle East).

  So what we have now is the Waxman-Markey bill passed by the House last year, and a Senate bill co-sponsored by John Kerry, Joe Lieberman, and Lindsay Graham in the Senate. Neither is a very good bill because of all the special-interest concessions, as Jim Hansen and other have pointed out. The Senate bill is likely to end up being what Paul Wellstone used to call a “Christmas tree bill,” with something for everyone including nuclear, clean coal, oil and gas, and clean energy. But maybe that is the only thing that has any chance of getting through Congress. Like the health bill, it may be a lot of compromise or nothing. You can check out the provisions of these bills at http://www.pewclimate.org.

  To go back to an earlier point that my friend David and others discussed, Copenhagen was probably a bigger success than people realize. The US, China, India, Brazil and S. Africa account for about half of global GHG emssions, and this is the first time that these five countries made any commitment to limit their emissions. I have to admit that the Bush administration was right in saying that the Kyoto Protocol was flawed in that it did not require any limits on the developing countries (though its response of doing nothing and irritating the hell out of our European allies was not helpful). We cannot make any progress without the US and China making significant commitments (and we have been playing a game of chicken until now). But I am afraid that if we can’t pass a climate bill this year the whole thing will collapse for many years to come. It doesn’t look hopeful at this point.

  The alternative is for EPA to impose regulations on all industries and businesses that will probably be much less economically efficient. Believe me, Obama will use his executive powers as he already has on auto emission standards and other things. I have been studying presidential use of powers on environmental policies since the 1970s, and they always do. (By the way, Ray, Nixon established EPA by Executive Order and vetoed the Clean Water Act, but it was passed over his veto. But he did accomplish a lot because public opinion demanded it.)

  I think the main thing people have to understand is that climate change is a qualitatively different problem than we have dealt with before–including all the pollution issues. If climate scientists are right, we can truly mess up the future as never before. Think about this one statement: “Doubling atmospheric levels of carbon dioxide to 580 to 600 ppm would result in a rise of 2 degrees C to 4 degrees C in average surface temperatures by AD 2100. The last time the Earth was that warm–3 million years ago–sea level was 25 to 35 meters (80 to 130 feet) higher than today.” People like Jim Hansen say that even present levels of CO2 in the atmosphere (387 ppmv, up from 280 ppmv pre-industrial) are a recipe for disaster (see his article in the Dec. 14 Newsweek: Power Failure: Politicians are fiddling while the planet burns. What’s a voter to do?, or any of his other recent pronouncements). We are really gambling with our future here.
• 67
  Paul Zorn says:

  January 9, 2010 at 7:41 pm

  Ray, Sean:

  Perhaps I misunderstand, Ray, but you seem to assert that the connection between carbon dioxide and global warming is fictitious, or made up for some political purpose. In fact, the connection is strongly supported by the science, as James Hansen (often approvingly quoted here) clearly asserts in the Newsweek piece Norm Vig cites, and elsewhere.

  Whether CO2 is a poison or a pollutant, like SO2, may matter to the chemistry. And of course nobody is proposing to remove CO2 altogether, although doing so would alleviate all our worries, as we’d be dead. But it seems very clear that excess CO2 is indeed a problem, and if James Hansen tells us true it’s a very serious problem indeed.

  As for the relative merits of cap and trade vs. carbon tax legislation, I’d like to think Norm Vig is wrong about the political infeasibility of the latter, but I fear he’s right. In the present political climate the T-word has become, ironically, more toxic than sulphur dioxide, let alone carbon dioxide.
• 68
  john george says:

  January 9, 2010 at 8:48 pm

  Norm- In Hansen’s excerpt, he states-
  “So far, humans have caused carbon dioxide to increase from 280 ppm in 1750 to 387 ppm in 2009.”
  What is the evidence to lead to this conclusion, that the 107 ppm increase is caused solely by humans? Has everything else in the environment remained constant in the last 260 years, and human activity is the only thing that has changed? I haven’t read his book, only this excerpt, so perhaps he better explains the evidence there. So far, in all the articles I have read, this conclusion is continually stated, but the observations that lead to that conclusion are not evident to me. I must be missing something.
• 69
  William Siemers says:

  January 10, 2010 at 6:23 am

  I think a modest and then gradually increasing carbon tax would be easier to pass than cap and trade…partiuclarly if sold as having the additional benefits of reducing imports of foreign oil and reducing pollution. And to bring in the skeptics…I read of this idea: Make the gradual increases in the tax relative to the real increase in global temperature change. Temps go up…Tax goes up. Or vice versa. Where temps are measured; the duration of the moving average; etc being subject to scientific revue.

  Maybe the same thing could be incorporated into cap and trade, but it remains hard to sell because it is so poorly understood.
• 70
  Norm Vig says:

  January 10, 2010 at 9:28 am

  Tom Friedman posed my question perfectly in his NYT column today, “Who’s Sleeping Now?”
  “Is President Obama going to finish health care and then put aside the pending energy legislation–and carbon pricing–that Congress has already passed in order to get through the midterms without Republicans screaming ‘new taxes?’ Or is he going to seize this moment before the midterms–possibly his last window to put together a majority in the Senate, including some Republicans, for a price on carbon–and put in place a real U.S.l engine for clean energy innovation and energy security?”
  Read thw whole article at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/10/opinion/10friedman.html. Why are we exporting our best new energy technologies to China to let them clean up on world markets?
  To Paul and William I say, I actually agree that carbon taxes would be a better solution–much easier to implement and enforce, and with greater visibility to encourage consumers to change behavior (as the NE points out). They have been widely used in Europe for a long time.
  I would like to think a gradually rising tax could pass. Maybe it could if it were revenue-neutral (i.e., offset by tax cuts on “goods”) and could be enacted as a tax measure through the reconciliation procedure in the Senate. But I just don’t think so.
  As to John, he raises a fair point. But the fact is that we humans have removed tens of millions of years worth of fossilized carbon (coal, oil, gas) from sequestration below ground and burned it to release massive amounts of CO2 over the past 100 years or so (a nanosecond in geological time). True, correlation doesn’t equal causation, but there is no other plausible explanation for the 38% increase in atmospheric CO2 in this short period (well, deforestation and land clearance may account for up to 20% of the total, but again, that cannot be attributed to natural causes).
• 71
  Paul Zorn says:

  January 10, 2010 at 6:41 pm

  John G:

  In #68 you ask about the evidence for human contribution to C02 levels. The article Climate myths: Human CO2 emissions are too tiny to matter

  http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn11638

  is one of many, many sources of information on the subject.

  You ask, too:

  Has everything else in the environment remained constant in the last 260 years, and human activity is the only thing that has changed?

  Assuming the question isn’t just rhetorical … Of course lots of things change over 260 years, but what drives the bottom line is the relative magnitude of things. The referenced article has lots of useful quantitative things to say, including the key observation (made again and again in this discussion thread) that even if human-generated CO2 contributions are small compared to those of natural processes, the resulting imbalance accumulates — as we’re now seeing.
  • 71.1
    john george says:

    January 10, 2010 at 7:27 pm

    Paul Z.- Thanks for the link above. I have not read this report before. There are a couple assumptions made in the scientific community that I question, the old earth theory being one of them. Brahic bases her conclusions on this assumption. A person has to start somewhere, so this is where she, and most scientists, start. When analyzing ice cores, how do we know that the precipitation rates have been consistent through history, seeing that we have only been recording them for about a century and a half? There was an article in National Geographic about a year ago about some dinosaur fosils that have been found intact, with flesh and skin on them. I remember the statement in the article about this said that the fosilization process overtook the decomposition process. Oh, really? What conditions existed in that specific area to cause this, and did not exist in other areas in the same rock strata? And, if that can happen, will someone dig up our dead cat we buried a number of years ago and find it intact, or will it be rotted, like every other animal’s remains I have ever unearthed?

    The other assumption that comes out of the old earth theory is that conversion of carbon from gaseous to stored solids/liquids takes millions of years. What if it does not? I remember an article in a Science Illustrated magazine back in the ’50′s, where scientists produced crude oil out of a pile of garbage by applying the right pressure and heat conditions. How do we know this old earth assumption is correct?

    I still question whether we are correctly analyzing the observations we are making. I would really like to see us restore some of the rain forests that have been decimated in the last few decades. I have no problem with researching more efficient and cleaner, non-carbon based energy sources. That is just human innovative progress, but I really question whether this will turn the tide in climate change the way “science” says it will. It certainly won’t hurt, but will it do any good? Are we missing something that we have not yet thought about?
  • 71.2
    Paul Zorn says:

    January 11, 2010 at 9:23 am

    John:

    If you doubt that earth is billions of years old then, indeed, little else in science makes any sense. But in this case we might as well be speaking different languages, and there’s little point in science-based discussion. And your idea, if I understand it, that scientists just assume an old-earth position because they “have to start somewhere” is especially baffling. Scientists work with the best evidence available, and there is abundant, overwhelming evidence in nature itself for an old earth.

    As for ice cores and precipitation rates: scientists do not assume that precipitation rates are the same throughout time — understanding this phenomenon is one reason for ice core research itself. Nor are ice cores the only pointers to varying precipitation rates.

    Sorry, but I just don’t get your point about dead cats. I have a couple buried in my back yard, too, and hope they’re not getting up to anything.
  • 71.3
    john george says:

    January 11, 2010 at 4:47 pm

    Paul- I hope you don’t find any of your dead cats, either. I have a great story about a lady whose rabbit died. I won’t bother filling up space with it here, but if we get a chance for a F2F, remind me to tell you.

    Forgetting about what we might base our interpretations of our observations on, we still have a problem with the fluxuations we are seeing in the climate. I have expressed this concern before, and will express it again, that we are concentrating on the build-up of only one greenhouse gas. We also have the effects of methane and water vapor. The main byproduct of hydrogen based fuel cells is water vapor. I remember from the ’70′s, how there was a legitimate concern for unburned hydrocarbons in the atmosphere. The concern at that time was that the Earth would cool. The cleaning up of auto emissions has made a visible difference in those concentrations, but the more complete combustion has now added to the CO2 concentrations. As I look at the various things we humans have tried to “adjust” in the environment over the decades, my general impression is that in taking care of one thing, we cause another problem with some unforseen effect of our tinkering. My hope is that in addressing our contribution to the CO2 levels, we don’t seal our own coffin.
  • 71.4
    john george says:

    January 11, 2010 at 6:18 pm

    Good grief!! I can’t believe I spelled “fluctuations” like that! Sorry
• 72
  kiffi summa says:

  January 11, 2010 at 3:33 pm

  There is no point in discussing the abandonment of all SCIENTIFIC evidence, which proves by accepted SCIENTIFIC measures that the Earth is indeed BILLIONS of years old… unless the only ‘science’ you ascribe to is that of what a Carleton geology professor calls the ‘Sunday morning 6000 year old forum” …

  Sorry if anyone finds that comment rude…
• 73
  Norm Vig says:

  January 11, 2010 at 7:47 pm

  John, it is not just CO2 that has increased at rates never before experienced in geological history. Methane (CH4) has gone from about 270 ppb in 1750 to almost 2000 ppb in 2000. Nitrous oxide (NO2) has increased from about 270 ppb to over 1200 (related to agriculture). We have also created a bunch of synthetic chemical gases, mostly fluorides including CFCs, that are far more potent heat trappers than CO2. As to water vapor, as global temperatures increase, more water evaporates, increasing the concentration of water vapor in the atmosphere, which in turn causes more warming. Same for methane: as temperatures increase, permafrost melts and organic matter decays to release more methane. These are positive feedback loops that tend to accelerate warming. There are possibly some negative feedback loops to offset these effects; e.g., higher temperatures will stimulate plant growth in some latitudes, leading to more CO2 uptake, and cloud formation might deflect more solar energy as water vapor builds up. But I don’t think we have any evidence that these effects will negate the warming effects. The IPCC examined studies covering more than 29,000 temperature data series of 20 years or more from all parts of the world, and found that 89% were consistent with a warming trend. How much evidence do you need?
  • 73.1
    john george says:

    January 11, 2010 at 10:25 pm

    Norm- Thanks for providing some great data on these other compounds. I am not looking for evidence of warming, just evidence that is is ALL man generated. There are definitely relationships between mans’ activities and natural phenomina, such as the CH4 and NO2 build-up. Also, the CFC’s are a problem in that they not only absorb radiant energy, but they also deplete the ozone layer. One thing that has helped in this regard is the replacement of freon as a refrigerant, especially in autos. They are notorious for having leaky systems. My question is how CO2 reduction alone will cause the effects we need to see in the atmosphere? Are these other gases interelated to CO2 and its production that directly? Just wondering if there are more measures we need to be taking that have not been discussed.

    The other interesting observation in the data you provided is that CO2, CH4 & NO2 were all about the same concentrations 260 years ago, about 270 to 280 ppm. I don’t have any specific interpretation of that, but it just seems interesting to me. Thank you for providing some understandable data for such an unscientific person as I am.
• 74
  Norm Vig says:

  January 12, 2010 at 8:09 am

  John, I don’t think anyone is saying that human activity is the ONLY cause of climate change, only that natural forces cannot account for the rapid buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. The focus is on CO2 because there is a lot more of it (we are talking ppm of CO2 and ppb of the other two gases mentioned); because it remains in the atmosphere for so long (at least a century, and possibly many centuries); because we know how to control it better than, say, methane; and because it appears to be the least costly to address. Methane molecules are more powerful heat-trappers than CO2, but they only account for maybe 15% of the greenhouse effect; they come from sources hard to control (e.g., cattle, rice paddies); and they decay in the atmosphere after 20-30 years. I think the most obvious factor in the growth of all the GHGs is human population growth and associated agriculture since the 18th century.
  When you talk about feedback loops, you are talking about natural phenomena that kick in once the heating process starts. They will be important in determining how fast the process goes, but they don’t seem to have started it.
  Those conservatives who are skeptical about cap and trade should read Robert Frank’s column in today’s Star Tribune, “Cap and Trade ought to fit for Conservatives.” I have never been a fan of Coase, but practical politics seem to dictate this kind of private-action approach.
  • 74.1
    john george says:

    January 12, 2010 at 5:13 pm

    Norm- Thanks for clarifying the ppm/ppb quantities. I missed that detail in reading over the ammounts and how they had changed. That makes quite a difference in how they compare.

    As far as the “human cause” of global warming, I can only respond to what I have read. It seems all the articles, many of them linked here, about CO2 build-up that I have read present the conclusion that the increase is man-generated. I certainly have not read all the thousands of articles and studies out there, but I have yet to find one out of what I call the scientific community that has presented a different conclusion. It is good to hear someone tempering this a little bit.

    Global population growth is one factor, alright, but I think the destruction of so much rain forest has not helped. We can still fit the whole population of the Earth inside the state of Texas. I agree there must be better ways to utilize the resources we have. The US alone grows almost enough grain to feed everyone else in the world. When I see some of the things we just throw away because of outdating, it really bothers me. I have traveled to other countries that simply do not have the abundance we have here. I still go back to Francis Schaefer’s assesment from the ’70′s. The greatest problem facing mankind is the compassionate distribution of accumulated wealth. Greed knows no sociopolitical boundaries.
  • 74.2
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 12, 2010 at 11:35 pm

    John,

    Unfortunately, when the fossil fuels leave the economy so will the high powered food production.

    http://www.uvm.edu/~gflomenh/VTLAW-EcoEcon/papers/…/Hinman-term.doc

    Clip from doc link above:
    “Unfortunately, much of the world today follows the fossil-fuel addicted, industrial paradigm which “provides no means of restoring the inevitably lost energy. Neither does the neo-classical paradigm of economics, the reductionist paradigm of science, or the mechanistic worldview.” (Ikerd, 4) What is taken from the earth to facilitate the economy must be balanced sustainably. Economics will surely not solve any social problem alone without sharing a holistic view of the local and global ecosystem. “Once the energy required to grow and transport food and resources becomes greater than can be generated by wind, water, and biomass in the region, the region has passed the limits of sustainability. It can continue to grow only at the expense of another region’s resources.” (Ikerd) The extraction and use of resources is called the throughput of the region, and if this throughput is limited as described above, we can say that it is modeled to a sustainable scale.
    According to Ikerd’s notion of bioregional throughput and scale, extracting and using fossil fuels—with their inordinate destruction of energy compared to that coming in form the sun—will lead to entropy of the ecosystem. On the other hand, as one author suggests, “Without cheap oil the economy would succumb to entropy.” (Monbiot, Break out the bicycles, The Guardian. 6.8.04) So it appears that something has to give under our current model. Either we sacrifice our economy to expensive oil or we sacrifice our ecosystems to cheap oil. Because oil (and all fossil fuels) is a non-renewable resource, we know that eventually it will run out. If we do in fact reach the peak of global oil extraction within the next decade, the prices will skyrocket, so either way it seems inevitable that the economy will either entropy or be forcefully changed to reflect shrinking oil reserves. Monbiot sees the situation rather cynically:
    “If the complexity of our economies is impossible to sustain, our best hope is to start to dismantle them before they collapse. This isn’t likely to happen. Faced with a choice between a bang and a whimper, our governments are likely to choose the bang, waging ever more extravagant wars to keep the show on the road…””

    Also another link about entropy and our current state of world affairs:

    http://canada.theoildrum.com/node/2381

    “There are obvious parallels between the Roman situation and our own, both from the point of view of political centres and from the perspective of the hinterland. The solar energy subsidy available to the Romans allowed them to create a concentration of ordered socioeconomic complexity in a sea of relative disorder and and simplicity, driving entropy in reverse locally. Western industrial economies, and more recently other competing centres of political power in the era of globalization, have been able to do the same, but to a much greater extent due to the very much larger energy subsidy provided by fossil fuels. The centres have seen spectacular gains in complexity, while the hinterland has stagnated, to a greater and greater extent over time.

    Although there is currently no center which claims direct political control over a large periphery as Rome did (a de jure empire), there is nevertheless at least one de facto empire in the form of the industrialized West, and more specifically the United States. The economic power of the US (with its reserve currency advantage) to determine the terms of international finance and trade, backed by its military strength and extensive network of permanent military bases, has resulted in the ability to entice, cajole or coerce a large periphery into accepting life on the terms of the ‘imperial’ center. This has involved the monetization of peripheral economies, often in tandem with leading those nations into a deep indebtedness thereafter managed through structural adjustment programs by quasi-imperial institutions such as the IMF. The net effect has been the debt enslavement of whole nations, despite their putative sovereignty, as the established wealth conveyor carries resources and surpluses to the center while leaving most of the externalities behind.”
• 75
  Griff Wigley says:

  January 12, 2010 at 12:15 pm

  BBC: Pope Benedict XVI lambasts Copenhagen failure

  He criticised the “economic and political resistance” to fighting environmental degradation and creating a new climate treaty at Copenhagen.
  
  • 75.1
    Patrick Enders says:

    January 12, 2010 at 1:11 pm

    Does this mean that the Pope is also a part of the global scientific conspiracy/fraud seeking to force us into giving up human freedom to a(n) elite cabal based on that theory?
• 76
  Norm Vig says:

  January 12, 2010 at 7:09 pm

  John, I certainly agree with your latter sentiments. Ultimately, I think, this boils down to a moral question. Are we willing to sacrifice something for the common good, both in this generation and those that follow, or are we going to think only about ourselves?
  Overall, this was a good day, as Ivan Denisovich would say. We got both Pope Benedict and Ronald Coase on our side. That is a red-letter day, indeed!
• 77
  john george says:

  January 12, 2010 at 7:53 pm

  Norm- I agree with your statement-
  ” Are we willing to sacrifice something for the common good, both in this generation and those that follow, or are we going to think only about ourselves?”
  And, I think you are correct in suggesting that there is a moral element to the solution. Hopefully, this next generation coming on can get ahold of that ethic. I’m not sure my generation, and the one in between, has done a very good job of establishing this mindset as a foundation. I believe there is hope, though, as long as we are honest about what we have done.
• 78
  Norm Vig says:

  January 13, 2010 at 8:49 am

  Mike and John,
  Those are very interesting quotations, Mike, but I think way too sweeping. Is it really a choice between cheap oil and economic “entropy”? We in the U.S. have the highest per capita oil consumption in the world, almost twice that of Europe and Japan. Their economies haven’t collapsed; in fact, their standard of living is superior to ours in many respects. There must be a lot of room to improve energy efficiency without sacrificing growth. If I remember, China recently announced a goal of reducing its energy “intensity” (energy per unit of GDP) by 45% by 2020. Compare that to George W. Bush’s 2002 goal of reducing our intensity by 18% in 10 years. Granted, China is more inefficient at present, but the point is that decarbonization of production is already taking place and will continue into the future.
  If we got a clear carbon price signal through a cap-and-trade system, I think markets would adjust pretty quickly. Agriculture might be a laggard since it is largely exempted in the bills pending in Congress and there are no easy substitutes for industrial food production at current scale.
  • 78.1
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 13, 2010 at 8:06 pm

    Norm,

    I am looking at a global GDP contraction since fossil fuels are a globally traded commodity. Europe and Japan are more efficient than the US but they still consume fossil fuels and import goods made with someone Else’s fossil fuel. Economic growth requires more energy period. It’s very difficult to see alternative energy alone can even fill the void left from fossil fuel depletion, let alone expand future GDP. All alternative energies today have a fossil fuel component in their construction and deployment.

    Of particular worry food inputs (fertilizers, pesticides, packaging etc) will never be created from alternative energies.

    Point is economic and population growth cannot go on indefinitely on a planet with finite resources. I believe the high EROEI of fossil fuels have allowed mankind to expand population waaay beyond the earth’s natural carrying capacity of resources and solar energy absorption. Once the fossil fuels energy flow rates max out this will become glaringly evident in the not to distant future (2020?.
• 79
  Norm Vig says:

  January 14, 2010 at 8:28 am

  Mike, I see what you are saying, and you may well be right. According to the ExxonMobil ad on the editorial page of today’s NYT, GDP in developed (OECD) countries will increase over 50% between 2005 and 2030 without ANY increase in energy consumption. However, energy demand will continue to rise in non-OECD countries so that GLOBAL energy use will be 35% higher in 2030. In other words, even with all the new energy efficiencies, energy use will increase by one-third in 20 years. They don’t say how that translates into CO2 emissions, but probably it implies a lot more greenhouse gases and global warming.

  So you are probably right, and energy/climate change policies are only part of the larger problem of carrying capacity. More fundamental changes in lifestyle are necessary. But it seems to me we still have to make a start on climate policy.
  • 79.1
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 15, 2010 at 12:16 am

    Norm,

    I am all for a Carbon Tax, with two restrictions, first that a serious continental alternative energy plan be adopted including strict progressive tariffs on imported fossil fuels. The Plan needs to include sweeping regulatory changes that will allow for swift approval and construction of said energy system.

    Secondly,that all the revenue from this tax and tariffs are used ONLY for new alternative energy investment including electrical grid building subsidies, property/right of way of said investments.

    Without either of these restrictions I fear the our government will find other uses for these revenues, like for example, to fund our current energy policy (Middle East Resource Wars).

    You can put me down for 50 cents a gallon if these restrictions can be adhered to!

    On the other hand, I feel Cap and Trade is a designed racket to fund Wall Street and a phony front to make everyone feel like they are doing something for the common good when in reality we are not doing anything as it relates to reducing carbon use.
• 80
  Bright Spencer says:

  January 14, 2010 at 5:55 pm

  If China continues to buy up oil fields at the present rate, we might be really glad if we have alternatives to float our country’s boat.
  Some say that it doesn’t matter who owns the oil, but I don’t know enough about that to say anything definitive.
• 81
  Norm Vig says:

  January 15, 2010 at 8:50 am

  Mike, I would support a carbon tax like that, but to go back to my original comment (#66), I just don’t think there is any chance of it passing in the forseeable future–unless you can tell me how to re-make (a) the U.S. Senate and (b) the Republican Party. That is even more obvious now that the Tea Party is well along in taking over the base of the GOP (see today’s NYT article).
  A cap-and-trade system, on the other hand, has had tripartisan support (including the Joe Lieberman Party). Both Obama and McCain supported it during the presidential campaign. The House has passed a cap-and-trade bill, and the Senate could still do it with support from some Republicans, although of course the TPers and other conservatives are demagoguing it as a tax.
  I know Jim Hansen and others have trashed cap-and-trade as a sell-out to Wall Street. I just don’t buy this. There are a lot of weaknesses in the pending legislation, but if it would pass there would at least be a mechanism for lowering the cap over time–which taxes do not guarantee. California is putting a cap-and-trade in place, and so have the Northeastern states, so there is precedent at the state level to build on. Again, it may be this or nothing on the federal level.
  • 81.1
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 16, 2010 at 11:21 am

    Norm,

    I assume you have read the Cap and Trade bill? If you comprehended it and understand it inside and out I commend you. Just reading a summary of it I started to glaze over within a few pages. Before reading this summary I was mainly focused on the potential for fraud and abuse in the carbon trading mechanisms, example of which below:

    http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/2403024/posts

    On the surface everything reads green and happy, but as a cynic,as I think about how things will be impemented after reading the summary I have come to the conclusion that in addition to financial manipulation there appears to be a complete takeover of the economy by the EPA (Command and Control Economy?). The EPA Administrator controls all energy flow and by extension all economic activity, which promotes crony capitalism(friends /contributors to the Administrator). Further, it appears the EPA Administrator is free to enact agreements with foreign governments in the transfer of carbon offsets(monies?). Isn’t this unconstitutional?

    After reading the summary, I have no doubt the Cap and Trade bill will pass with flying colors! A “Christmas ornament” for all politically connected interests.

    Mussolini might have been proud of this coming new America, except for the fact that the trains won’t run on time due to cost overruns and lack of Energy!
  • 81.2
    Mike Zenner says:

    January 23, 2010 at 9:26 am

    Speaking about the Tea Party and Joe Leiberman, Joe B tells it the way it is.

    http://www.joebageant.com/joe/2010/01/taking-tea-with-the-lizards.html
• 82
  Norm Vig says:

  January 16, 2010 at 3:29 pm

  Well, Freerepublic.com is one of the most right-wing web sites I’ve seen. It is interesting that these groups are working so hard to stir up populist anger against Wall Street! I also read the article by Todd Guerrero, “Carbon tax preferable to cap and trade,” in today’s Star Tribune, which again goes after Wall St. Mr. Guerrero is an attorney for Fredrikson and Byron in Minneapolis. He begins his bio with the words, “Todd concentrates his practice on the representation of energy companies….” He was lead attorney and a registered lobbyist for the Big Stone II coal-fired power plant. Do you really think these guys want a carbon tax? Or are they just trying to stir up populist sentiment against any climate legislation?
  Mike, I don’t get your reference to Mussolini and EPA’s “command and control economy.” Command and control refers to direct regulation, which is mostly what EPA does in regulating pollution. That is how they will regulate carbon if no legislation passes. But that doesn’t mean they would take control over the entire economy. And I don’t see any new constitutional issues with cap and trade.
  In fact, cap and trade is the least intrusive approach as it allows affected entities to decide for themselves when and how they will reduce emissions. The market, not the government, would set the price of carbon permits. There may be room for gaming the system, especially with offset credits, but the ridiculous examples given don’t impress me. It seems to me these are just more scare tactics to defeat any legislation. I’ll sign off for awhile now and let others weigh in.
• 83
  Norm Vig says:

  January 25, 2010 at 8:00 pm

  Those of you who might be interested in which companies are supporting cap-and-trade legislation might want to consult:

  http//:www.pewclimate.org/american-leadership-ad

  For an argument that it is still alive and needed, see

  http//:www.pewclimate.org/blog/roym/how-avoid-temporary-relief-leads-bigger-headaches

  The pewclimate.org Web site has a lot of other useful information as well. We should not let the Tea Bag know-nothings intimidate us on this and other issues.
• 84
  Norm Vig says:

  January 25, 2010 at 8:06 pm

  Sorry, that was http://www.pewclimate.org/american-leadership-ad and
  http://www.pewclimate.org/blog/roym/how-avoid-temporary-relief-leads-bigger-headaches
  • 84.1
    john george says:

    January 25, 2010 at 9:15 pm

    Norm- Thanks for fixing the links. The second article presents some wisdom, IMO, to being sure what we do legislate doesn’t create greater problems a few years down the line. This has been a concern of mine. The writer’s last bullet point still states that global warming is “largely man produced.” I still question that this theory has been sufficuently proven scientifically to warrant being the driving influence for legislative direction. There is a good column in the Strib this last Sunday regarding our responses to “invasive species” in our environment. From some of the information presented, it would appear that many of our knee-jerk responses are often times a waste of money. I’m not convinced we fully understand the ability of the atmosphere and living organisms to adapt to changes in our climate. This doesn’t mean we should sit back passively and do nothing, by any means, but my concern is that there has not been enough research into this phenominum. We need to take this adaptive ability into consideration in our responses.
• 85
  Paul Zorn says:

  January 29, 2010 at 8:18 am

  Today’s Strib has an editorial

  http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/82983407.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU

  about a variant of cap and trade, which its proponents call cap and dividend. The idea seems to be one of those discussed on this trade: do the cap and trade thing, but rebate the proceeds on a per capita basis.

  The details are somewhat muddled in the editorial, IMO. For instance, the author complains that the usual cap and trade system is excessively complicated, and therefore invites gaming. But it’s unclear, at least in the editorial, how the proposed system would address this problem.

  Still, the spoonful of sugar might actually help the medicine go down.
• 86
  Norm Vig says:

  January 29, 2010 at 10:14 am

  Yes, cap and dividend is an interesting variant that I certainly could support. The most important part is the cap, but as Paul says, maybe rebating the auction money to everybody would blunt the populist attack. Obama called for auctioning all permits during his campaign, but the House bill gives most of them away free. There would be fierce opposition to an auction-only system from business and industry–and from the Just Say No Party, I’m afraid, but it is an interesting idea.

  It seems to me that Obama shifted tactical ground on climate change in his State of the Union. While endorsing “the bipartisan effort in the Senate” (without saying which one), he also signalled his openness to nuclear power and offshore oil drilling as part of the package (as in the Kerry-Graham bill). However, I think his most important statement was the following: “But here’s the thing–even if you doubt the evidence, providing incentives for energy-efficiency and clean energy are the right thing to do for our future–because the nation that leads the clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the global economy. And America must be that nation.” That’s pure Tom Friedman with a moral plea as well. It finesses the controversy over climate science and frames the issue in economic-national interest terms. But I don’t think they can pass any bill with a cap in this Senate.

  Two other articles of interest in today’s NY Times:

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/30/science/earth/30energy.html?ref=us, and
  htpp://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/science/earth/29vapor.html?ref=us.

  John will be pleased at the latter one as it shows that there are still natural(?) forces at work that we don’t understand in climate science. But, it seems that the basic theory is still intact. As to Massachusetts, looks like the Tea Baggers don’t quite control the state yet.
• 87
  Norm Vig says:

  January 29, 2010 at 10:20 am

  I can’t type URLs worth a damn. The second one was:
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/science/earth/29vapor.html?ref=us
  • 87.1
    john george says:

    January 29, 2010 at 2:54 pm

    Norm- Perhaps you know this, but if you right click the address line all the way to the top of your screen (when you are reading an article), you will get a choice to copy it. Then, when you get to the post block here on LGN, just click file and paste, and it will be accurate. I can’t seem to get those blasted things correct, either.

    As far as the natural vs. human contributions to the armosphere, our side is probably the only one we have control over. As we get more studies on the natural influences, it just seems that this data would help us address the human contribution, also. We can sometimes have natural phenomena working against our efforts and not recognize it because of a lack of understanding. I tend to be a big picture thinker rather than a microcosm thinker.
• 88
  Norm Vig says:

  February 14, 2010 at 9:59 am

  If anyone is still interested in the future of the planet, you might like to read this review:

  http://www.tnr.com/print/book/review/politics-and-the-planet

  Jim Hansen may be a great scientist, but he is a lousy politician.
  • 88.1
    Paul Zorn says:

    February 14, 2010 at 2:24 pm

    Norm,

    As you and the review say,

    Jim Hansen may be a great scientist, but he is a lousy politician.

    Yup, this is a problem, as is the number of good politicians who are lousy scientists. The second problem is arguably worse, since politicians probably have more power.
  • 88.2
    Phil Poyner says:

    February 14, 2010 at 3:07 pm

    The funny thing is that some of us on the operational (as opposed to research) side of the Atmospheric Sciences see Hansen as more of a politician than a scientist! After all, it’s the rare climate scientist that gets arrested for civil disobedience (trespassing onto the private property of Massey Energy Company in Coal River Valley).
  • 88.3
    Paul Zorn says:

    February 15, 2010 at 2:44 pm

    Phil,

    Fair enough … among scientists, Jim Hansen is surely more political than most.

    But how do y’all “on the operational side” regard Hansen’s science?
  • 88.4
    Phil Poyner says:

    February 15, 2010 at 4:48 pm

    Paul, having been out of the academic and research environments for over a decade, I don’t feel qualified to judge either Hansen’s science or his conclusions regarding climate change. I certainly find his latest statements regarding the IPCC and their reports to be outside of the mainstream of conventional thought, and that concerns me. The various statements he makes involving policy rather than science are what lead many atmospheric scientists view him as a politician (there is no value judgement involved in using the word “politician” in this case).

    This discussion has become so politicized that I’ve actually seen scientists with contrary opinions publicly ridiculed; Dr. Pielke Sr. comes to mind. This doesn’t bode well for the atmospheric sciences, as there is much research that still needs to be done. Having researchers “pick sides” in what is increasingly becoming a political debate does not make for very objective research. I have no interest in becoming just another scientist that has taken a position on this topic, especially as I don’t consider myself to be well positioned to express a particularly valuable opinion. If I ever take up reading journal articles as a full-time hobby I’ll have more to offer! Maybe after I retire…
• 89
  Norm Vig says:

  February 15, 2010 at 12:49 pm

  Paul:
  I certainly agree with your conclusion. When I worked for Paul Wellstone in the Senate I was amazed at the lack of scientific understanding among members — and that was before Gingrich & Co. abolished the best source of objective scientific advice they had, the Office of Technology Assessment, in 1995. The Republicans were not interested in any scientific evidence that conflicted with their deregulatory agenda or their pet projects such as Star Wars. You can read all about it in Chris Mooney’s book, THE REPUBLICAN WAR ON SCIENCE (Basic Books, 2005). They have continued to deny any science (such as climate science) that doesn’t fit their ideology–as was evident by their inane comments after the DC snowstorm last week.
• 90
  Paul Zorn says:

  February 22, 2010 at 8:10 am

  More on the climate front:

  1. Today’s Strib has an editorial of sorts, by a “media fellow” called Murdock, at the Hoover Institution, kicking up some old dust around climate science.

  http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/84816722.html

  2. Overleaf from the Murdock piece Paul Douglas (“a Christian and recovering Republican”) reviews how science actually works.

  3. Yesterday on Meet the Press, Governor Pawlenty played the well-worn climate-change-is-real-but-man’s contribution-is-unknown tune. The transformation from one-time Will Steeger buddy to willful skeptic is striking, and depressing.
  • 90.1
    Patrick Enders says:

    February 22, 2010 at 9:29 am

    Any link to the ‘overleaf’? I can’t seem to find it on the web version of the Strib.
• 91
  Paul Zorn says:

  February 22, 2010 at 9:50 am

  Oops, I meant overleaf in the physical sense in today’s paper: turn the page from Murdock and find Paul Douglas’s commentary, right next to the weather icons. I don’t see it online, either.
  • 91.1
    Patrick Enders says:

    February 22, 2010 at 10:49 am

    Shame, that. I had to give up on the print version of the Star Tribune, because they seemed incapable of stopping delivery when we were out of town.
  • 91.2
    Phil Poyner says:

    February 22, 2010 at 11:27 am

    Here it is: http://www.startribune.com/blogs/84960397.html?elr=KArksUUUoDEy3LGDiO7aiU
• 92
  Norm Vig says:

  February 22, 2010 at 11:50 am

  Phil, that’s a great temperature anomaly picture. So much for people looking out their window and making judgments about global warming.
• 93
  Patrick Enders says:

  February 22, 2010 at 2:24 pm

  Paul, regarding Pawlenty’s, um, evolving stance on climate change, here’s a trip 27 months into the soon-to-be-ex-Governor’s past:

  November 15, 2007

  Governors from six Midwestern states have agreed to set up a carbon trading market aimed at reducing the region’s contribution to global warming. The agreements were announced at a so-called energy summit…

  In Thursday’s agreement, six governors — including Minnesota’s Tim Pawlenty and Wisconsin’s Jim Doyle — and the premier of Manitoba, agreed to create this kind of market. Three other states will help design it, but did not commit themselves to take part once it’s set up.

  Gov. Pawlenty said the cap-and-trade market is a good way to reduce pollution.

  “If you unleash the requirements and incentives and attractive features of a market, people will respond to it,” he said. “Some will respond by reducing pollution directly. Others will respond by buying credits or offsets in the marketplace, with the ultimate same net effect.”

  Pawlenty said the regional action should push Congress and the president to create a national system.

  Environmentalists seem to agree. Several regional environmental groups called the pact a historic step.

  http://minnesota.publicradio.org/display/web/2007/11/15/govsgreenhouse/
• 94
  Paul Zorn says:

  February 25, 2010 at 12:55 pm

  Here’s an NPR story that suggests (anyone surprised?) that belief in climate change correlates with other aspects of one’s world view.

  http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=124008307&sc=emaf

  Is there any lesson for our discussion here?
  • 94.1
    Patrick Enders says:

    February 25, 2010 at 2:01 pm

    That’s an interesting article. The general principle makes a lot of sense, especially now that we are all able to pick and choose our sources of information (and insulate ourselves from those we don’t want to take in).

    On the other hand, I’m not sure that the cited study is quite the right one to best model acceptance/rejection of evidence supporting the reality of climate change.

    In one experiment, Braman queried these subjects about something unfamiliar to them: nanotechnology — new research into tiny, molecule-sized objects that could lead to novel products.

    “These two groups start to polarize as soon as you start to describe some of the potential benefits and harms,” Braman says.

    The individualists tended to like nanotechnology. The communitarians generally viewed it as dangerous. Both groups made their decisions based on the same information.

    Results from that study might be more directly applicable to the question, “Are you in favor of, or opposed to, climate change?”

    Hopefully, in addition to studying good/bad beliefs, the researchers also addressed the formation of real/not-real beliefs. They’re probably quite similar, but do not seem necessarily so.
  • 94.2
    Patrick Enders says:

    February 25, 2010 at 2:08 pm

    I actually think that there is a fundamental difference between those two questions.

    “Is the climate changing?” is a question for which there is an objective, true answer out there that we are trying to find.

    On the other hand, “Is climate change bad (or good)?” is a values judgment, for which any number of answers might be right.
• 95
  Norm Vig says:

  February 25, 2010 at 2:36 pm

  Paul,
  I think the lesson for our discussion is, yes, people’s attitutes towards and beliefs about global warming are to a great extent influenced by their “world views,” meaning their general attitudes toward government and society. There is a deep divide between individualists and communitarians. However, it’s hard to sort out the psychological aspects from the political influences (both can be part of culture). The fact is that political leaders have politicized the issue, especially on the Right, and those who adhere to the “conservative” mindset and constantly hear echoes of it do not seem to be able to think seriously about this issue. Cognitive dissonance, I guess, but also a concerted disinformation campaign to discredit the science. I think that’s why we see such a drop in the surveys of belief in climate change.
  Partly for that reason, we are beginning to see a shift in language and framing of the issue by environmentalists. You notice that Thomas Friedman had a column on “Global Weirding” (a term originating with Hunter Lovins, I think) in order to convey a more forceful message. More and more of the discussion is also shifting toward national security threats posed by climate change, which people might respond to more. But it might take some more major climate/weather events to convince a majority of the population that this is something we have to face up to now. In the meantime, the Obama administration is making some progress on the executive side, and this is likely to continue below the radar of most skeptics.
• 96
  Felicity Enders says:

  February 25, 2010 at 2:45 pm

  [Fair warning: I haven't read all of the prior posts, so I won't be offended if you skip this one.]

  There have been a number of geoengineering solutions proposed to help mitigate global warming (hopefully without causing bigger problems). See http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/geoengineering-460110 and http://www.treehugger.com/files/2009/02/7-geoengineering-solutions-which-promise-save-humanity-climate-change.php. I especially like the picture of the cow. While geoengineering was very much a fringe idea when first proposed, I was startled at the number of recent links when I googled it just now.

  I mention geoengineering as a reminder that if we really care about climate change, there are some things the city could do if pressed. (I’ve been adamant about not increasing spending in Northfield, but I believe all levels of government need to get involved if we’re to win the climate change battle.) One is to plant trees. http://www.slate.com/id/2181499/ gives advice on which trees are better choices. Also, in the geoengineering links is a reference to biochar, charred biological material that sequesters carbon and may add nutrients to soil.

  What if the city were to invest in planting trees in median strips and parks and possibly use biochar as a fertilizer? How else might Northfield City combat climate change?
• 97
  Norm Vig says:

  February 28, 2010 at 9:52 am

  Here you are, the pure voices of reason!

  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28friedman.html
  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/opinion/28gore.html?hp
  • 97.1
    Paul Zorn says:

    February 28, 2010 at 12:20 pm

    Good links, Norm … especially to the Gore piece.

    Here’s a quote from Senator Lindsey Graham:

    “I have been to enough college campuses to know if you are 30 or younger this climate issue is not a debate. It’s a value. These young people grew up with recycling and a sensitivity to the environment — and the world will be better off for it. They are not brainwashed. … From a Republican point of view, we should buy into it and embrace it and not belittle them. You can have a genuine debate about the science of climate change, but when you say that those who believe it are buying a hoax and are wacky people you are putting at risk your party’s future with younger people…”

    So Graham’s approach to bringing around his conservative state has been simple: avoid talking about “climate change,” which many on the right don’t believe. Instead, frame our energy challenge as a need to “clean up carbon pollution,” to “become energy independent” and to “create more good jobs and new industries for South Carolinians.” He proposes “putting a price on carbon,” starting with a very focused carbon tax, as opposed to an economywide cap-and-trade system, so as to spur both consumers and industries to invest in and buy new clean energy products.

    Graham is, of course, a Republican senator from the decidedly red state of South Carolina. Any lesson here for our own blue-state governor?
    • 97.1.1
      Phil Poyner says:

      February 28, 2010 at 1:35 pm

      A lot of good lessons. I could come up with three good reasons for moving away from carbon-based energy just off the top of my head without even mentioning climate change. And at least one or two of those reasons would appeal to both sides of the political spectrum.
• 98
  Bright Spencer says:

  March 1, 2010 at 11:09 am

  While watching the Olympics programs, I learned that there are insects eating trees in NW Canada and causing about 1 billion tons of CO2 each year and that the roof of one of the new big Olympic pavilions in Vancouver (which is long enough to house 4 747s end to end) is made from that very partially eaten fungus ridden wood.

  Not only do the trees emit CO2, but they also are prevented from filtering the gas.

  The lesson is to work with our environment as soon as possible and not wait for the outcome of years and years of study and argument. People all over the world often do it well…http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/9/view/9253/earth-architecture-handmade-school-bangladesh.html

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