As many are aware, Congressional leaders exercising their jaws about the need for action on carbon limits continually finding reasons why they need not act. Today, the Online Wall Street Journal reports this is too much for Representative John Dingle (Democrat), the WSJ reports:
If the conclusion on CO2 is desperately self-evident for the EPA, Mr. Dingell suggested, then the same should be true for the Democratic majority – even more so. Regulating carbon involves “inherently political decisions that should be made by the Congress. It should not fall to EPA by default.”
Regulating carbon emissions, and other greenhouse gases, is to complex to leave to the EPA. Congress is not subservient to the EPA and has the power to pass legislation. Permitting congressional representative to pass the buck to the EPA;will result costly delay elevating the risk of harm to the environment, in the event that the worst of warming scenarios are true.
Moreover, leaving regulation of CO2 to the EPA will elevate the risk that chosen responses will fail to consider the relative economic impacts of alternative carbon limiting strategies and result in greater than necessary negative impacts on the economy. This would cause undue harm to the poor who have fewer resources to adapt to economic downturns.
So, to Barbara Boxer, Henry Waxman, and Ed Markey and other Congressional representatives doing nothing but jawboning about carbon, I say: Stop trying to pass the buck to the EPA. Your the legislators. Get to work, draft, promote and pass legislation.
I think we are caught between a rock and a hard spot. While off-loading the problem to the EPA is, IMO, a very bad idea, look what an excellent job the House and Senate have done with (1) crafting an ‘energy policy’ since the 1970s, and (2) the response, so far, to ‘The Global Warming Problem’. Ethanol being only the latest example of the latter. And the Country hasn’t had an Energy Policy since the times they started crafting Energy Policies.
Additionally, Representative John Dingle’s move is a pure political play. He represents parts of Michigan where we made cars and was a center of heavy industry; both past tense. I think it’s too late for either of them to be considered recoverable, unfortunately.
I agree that John Dingle is politically motivated. He’s a politician, so this is to be expected.
The difficulty is that Congressional representatives jawboning, fobbing it off on the EPA and doing nothing is also political. Those that believe there is a problem ought to study the issue, decide what needs to be done, propose legislation, explain why their proposed legislation is good, and put it to a vote.
Whether or not Dingle is politically motivated, leaving it to the EPA is a surefire way to totally screw this up. The EPA can only block things; they can’t move anything forward.
Well, we do have McCain/Warner, though I’m not sure what its status has been since it passed committee.
There is a bit of a debate at the moment regarding pushing something moderately weak now (to get around a possible veto) versus waiting till the next congress/president to push something stronger, the concern being that a weak bill now would make it more difficult to strengthen later.
Well, you can tell them to get off their righteous bums if you want, but please yell at them, not us when they don’t get it done. Just becuase we won’t make it easy on them doesn’t make it our fault. And I think you know who we are. 😉
Not that I believe it is “desperately self evident”.
On another note, I doubt anything they do would do anything meaningful anyway:
http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2007/11/20/the-big-secret-climate-bills-result-in-no-meaningful-impact-on-global-temperature/
here is the real problem. Recently lucia has done some analysis of short term climate trends 6-7 years of data
and every climate scientist howls. Too short, we need more time. 10 years, 15 years.
Let’s garnt their argument. It takes 15 years to see a change in warming trend.
Now suppose, a politician, or a political body elected for 4 years, enacts a policy to cut GHG and thereby
curb a warming trend.
How long before we can test whether the policy works? 15 years? According to the argument that it
takes 15 years to detect a trend, it would take 15 years to decide is a policy worked. Would people
wait 15 years? what if temps shot up after 4 years, would they demand more measures? What if the plumetted?
few measures.
Essentially, if the climate is a sytem with LONG time contants and Noisy data, and sensitives gains,
then you have a nasty control problem.
I’m mystified, Lucia. Over countless lucid posts here and elsewhere you have demonstrated a deep understanding of the limitations of the GCM’s, the bad statistics behind many climate studies, etc. And still you come down in favor of aggressive intervention. Why? If you have summarized your thoughts somewhere, could you point to them? And if not, could you please take some time to do so.
FWIW…I think we should do nothing. I think oil at $100/barrel provides ample incentives to develop renewable energy technologies and adopt them when they work. I believe the expected value of any large-scale carbon reduction policies is *enormously* negative. It won’t “solve” AGW, because the apocalyptic-feedback form doesn’t exist and the simple-direct-gain form (1-2 degrees C per doubling) doesn’t warrant hasty action. But policy changes will, with near-certainty, cause enormous economic disruption, most notably by forcing people to pay too much for energy. Since energy is at or near the foundation of modern life, that pointless cost will be passed through in *everything*. It’s hard to imagine a more regressive tax. I believe it is foolish, and possibly immoral, to impose these costs based almost exclusively on the torrid fantasies of GCMs.
Obviously, my policy recommendation depends entirely on my opinion/understanding of the GCMs. I simply don’t believe the high positive feedbacks that rage therein. Do you? Again, if possible, can you point to a prior post where you explain?
And while I’m here…thank you for your many informative posts. You have a gift for clearly explaining technical issues, and I enjoy your prose style (sassy) immensely.
James says:
I did not interpret Lucia’s post that way. The EPA is set to regulate CO2 as a ‘pollutant’ now as a result of a bone headed decision by the supreme court. This is the worst possible situation for AGW skeptics since the EPA cannot properly balance the cost vs. benefit of CO2 reduction. It would likely take the approach that CO2 must be eliminate no matter what the cost or consequences. Lucia is calling on politicians to stop passing the buck and create some coherent policies. I would assume that any politician that is forced to be accountable for the policies put in place will likely place a heavy emphasis on subsidizing alternate energy sources and avoid heavy taxes on existing energy sources.
Raven,
I agree that her main point in this post is that she would prefer that Congress set the policy rather than leave it to the EPA. But, unless I’m missing something, Lucia does believe that some action *should* be taken. Lucia, have I misunderstood?
Having said that, your comment does inspire me to modify my recommendation:
“I think we should do nothing. To achieve that given the SCOTUS decision regarding the EPA, I think Congress modify the EPA mandate to specifically prohibit the EPA from acting on CO2, thereby eliminating the ambiguity about “pollutant” that eventually led to the Supreme Court….”
James–
Ahh… but all mysteries are resolved when you know the steps I favor. 🙂
First, if someone in congress sits down and starts to write legislation, they will have the opportunity to start a discussion on what to do.
If it’s true (or even if it’s not), what should we do? I think the correct path has little to do with imposing carbon limits. The correct path is to do things like this:
a) revive the research and development for nuclear power
b) put more money into figuring out how to better deal with commercial nuclear waste and
c) work to encourage various plants to co-generation and waste heat where available. (The Dupage County plant has a nice CoGeneration plant http://www.dupageco.org/publicworks/generic.cfm?doc_id=878 My brother-in-law came up with the idea, persuaded his boss, and made presentations to the board etc.
Since things like (c) simultaneously reduce methane emmissions, and reduce carbon, are distributed across the country, and use current technology ought to be encouraged. This is a better path than having EPA decree that CO2 is a pollutant and start imposing ill-targeted regulations.
Notice this technology does two things: Saves carbon by reducing fuel costs and reduces methane emmissions from the waste! Two for one.
There are many things that could be encouraged. But we won’t develop the ideas unless they are discussed.
Oh- James,
I should add: And if we start discussing what to do the conversation would include input from people like you.
Right now, the whole issue of “what to do” is being fought by proxy. And the proxies are in two places a) Arguing about the science and b) pushing the decision to the EPA.
The problem with (a) is: Science in inherently argumentative, and in some ways, inherently unresolved at all times. (There is always something unknown. The question is what.)
The problem with pushing the decision to the EPA, is as Raven said: It’s the worst possible way to deal with things. If you want to do nothing, leaving it to the EPA will be much, much further from what you want than getting Congress to act!
Provided congress does the right thing. they could do something ill advised and incentivize people to burn
their food for fuel and starve hundreds of thousands of people.
Someone needs to come up with the equivalent of the X prize for power generator and storage. The autonomous vehicle competitions sponsored by DARPA have also produced major advances. There are a number of alternative concepts for fusion that would be relatively cheap to investigate that could be spurred on by a competition for example.
I agree that congress needs to do something, but it’s pretty clear that Bush will veto anything now, as Zeke notes.
I agree with Lucia–more nuclear power and waste heat proposals. I think more needs to be done, however.
I also agree with mosh that corn based ethanol is a huge mistake. We are already in deep **** if something bad happens to corn crops, so putting our energy egg into our food basket is not smart. It doesn’t seem to save much–if any–on emission either.
I would also like to see a carbon tax replace the payroll tax, as Gore has suggested. Instead of lowering your tax bill by working less, you can lower it by installing green energy and conserving. And that saves you even more money. I like money too, you know.
Lucia,
Nuclear power plants really don’t need much in the way of govt-supported R&D. It was mostly done in the 40s, 50s, and 60s. DOE would just re-invent the wheel and waste a fortune. Nuclear power needs political support to thrive. And it still does not have that support.
Regarding the nuclear waste issue, it is not a matter of money. The utilities have provided the govt with, I think over $20Billion to figure out what to do with it, and the govt is still thinking. The problem is not technical – it is political. Note that the Majority Leader of the Senate is Mr. Harry Reid, (D. Nevada), who is absolutely CERTAIN that no waste will ever be buried in Nevada.
The real technical solution for nuclear waste is to reprocess it and re-use the Pu and U left to make more electricity. The fission product waste will decay to insignificant levels in a few hundred years. If you look hard at the plans for Yucca mountain, it is not supposed to actually be closed for 200 years. DOE understands that none of the power plant waste will actually be disposed of, but instead, will at some time in the future be recognized for what it is – a source of energy.
Regarding the co-generation issue, this is a good idea, and you could probably use nuclear plants in places like California to produce electricity and make fresh water from seawater with the waste heat, if you could get agreement to let the plants be built. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that there will be any plants built in California in the foreseeable future.
Burning natural gas to make electricity is the ultimate sin… (and I am not a believer)
rxc–
I agree the waste issue is predominantly political. And, I agree that we should re-process. Did I mention that I once walked over waste in K-basin? The guys who worked there told me you get used to the floor moving under your feet!
But the political question to ask is: How are we to limit CO2 if we don’t go nuclear? Or get back to reprocessing?
I’m for conservation. But conservation isn’t enough to get us where we want to go and it can’t get us there quickly. Ethanol has already led to high prices. And people aren’t looking at very real options we do have.
On the waste treatment issue: installing co-generation, the waste treatment plant used to burn natural gas to heat water to assist with treatment of the waste. So, with co-generation, they reduced the amount of natural gas burned by using the methane from the waste, create electricity to run the plant and then use the waste heat to assist with treatment. The do still burn some natural gas, but less than previously and they generate their own electricity!
However, plants don’t always do this because the initial capital costs are large. If a county or district can’t be certain of savings, or have difficulty getting capital, they just burn the gas to heat and buy electricity.
Cogeneration plants are being developed to provide clean water and energy in India. See http://www.chemweb.com/journals?type=issue&jid=00119164&iid=01960001
@steve mosher:
This appears to have been a true blunder!
But, as bad as it is, if this blunder were due to EPA regulations, the cause would be obscured. As it happens, we know how our policies have affected things.
I’m for nuclear plants, and I hope we get more of them!
Lucia,
I have seen it written in a number of places that there is not enough nuclear fuel to support a massive build up of nuclear capacity. Do you have concrete numbers that would confirm or negate this point?
Raven,
When David Benson made that claim he provided a link to an article that described a) a short term shortfall of already processed fuel b)an estimate that there is quite a bit more if the price of fuel rises a bit and c) a discussion that indicates we would have thousands of years worth if we reprocess.
I pointed this out to him and the reply was that, we must assume we would never reprocess. Reprocessing is entirely possible. It reduces the amount of waste per/ unit energy and it permits us to stretch the use of fuel for a long time.
You can read a bit about Yucca mountain vs. reprocessing:
http://www.nevadaappeal.com/article/20080316/OPINION/946328900
rxc discussed it a bit above.
The reason we don’t reprocess, or fund research to improve methods etc. is entirely political. Congress could, if it so desired pass legislation to change things. Of course, this assumes the public wants it.
Lucia,
I knew your blog was getting popular but I never would have guessed that the whitehouse was reading it 😉
http://www.washingtontimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20080414/NATION/676175489/1001
Raven– I saw that today. Heh.
I don’t often agree with Bush. But dealing this through the EPA, the Endangered species act or NEPA is just insane. I get the connection between total ecological devastation and species extinction, but the Endangered Species Act just isn’t well focused to this.
I think the rising food prices probably brought this issue to the front burner for Bush. Our ethanol policies aren’t the only reason, and likely not the major reason for, for the shortages. But they contribute. It shows these things do need to be thought out.
My understanding is if we weren’t blocking use of ethanol made from Brazilian sugar, less corn would become ethanol. Starving people need corn more than sugar. So, this issue could be somewhat mitigated by congressional act. In contrast, the EPA, NEPA or the Endangered Species Act can’t do anything to suddenly cause us to use Brazilian sugar ethanol instead of corn ethanol!
I agree that it is hard to pin 100% of the food crisis on the ethanol policies, on the other hand, one cannot deny that these policies are hurting the poorest people in world the hardest. I see this a sign of things to come if the warmers succeed in their quest to make energy as expensive as possible.
I live on the left coast of Canada where we have a right wing government that ‘got religion’ on global warming and is introducing all kinds of anti-CO2 policies. What is frightening is the response from the left wing which objects to every measure from carbon taxes to nuclear plants. The latest joke was a run-of-the-river hydro project that got canned because some yuppies living nearby did not like the idea of power lines going through a local park.
I could live with CO2 emission reduction plans if they were developed by people who understand how the energy system works. Unfortunately, there seem to be very few people in power with the necessary knowledge.
These sorts of things are a big problem. You can’t say you want alternative energy sources and then block then too!
In the US, if we leave regulation to the EPA, this sort of thing is certain. the EPA can only block. They can’t encourage creation of alternative sources.
Lucia,
Thanks for responding to my questions. I whole-heartedly support the technologies you suggest.
I apologize for partially projecting onto you some of the fuzzy-headed nonsense that I usually hear from my fellow Californians.
Regarding nuclear…it’s some combination of galling and ironic that the industry was nearly killed by many of the same people who now bemoan the coal-fired plants that were built instead.
James
James– No problem! 🙂
I think it’s valuable for people who want to protect both the environment and avoid harming the poor to discuss what should be done. Clearly, there is risk associated with excess CO2 (and other GHG’s.) Do, discussing what practical steps to undertake is important.
Many well meaning, but muddle headed individuals want to believe the world can collectively tighten their belts and we can get out of this mess. But, I’ve lived in poor countries. Some people have no belts to tighten. And even in wealthier countries, people will always find ways to skirt silly things like cap and trade if it benefits them personally.
Build a nuclear plant, and we can heat and run appliances with no CO2. Tell people to conserve, and rest assured that some of my neighbors will find firewood and heat their cold houses with firewood. Many already have the wood burning stoves.
As a newbie here, I’m pretty impressed at the level of discourse. But there is a piece of this puzzle that I think is being neglected, unless I missed something in one of the above comments: energy recycling. I’m associated with Recycled Energy Development, a company that takes manufacturers’ waste heat and turns it into power. That cuts energy costs and GHG emissions at the same time. There’s essentially no reason not to do it. The issue is regulations: utilities are protected as monopolies, and inefficiency is rewarded. That’s the elephant in the room in this entire debate. Sorry for the plug, but there’s more info here if anyone is interested: http://recycled-energy.com/documents/media-kit/backgrounder.pdf
I plan to come back here; seems like a vibrant place.
lucia,
I have some questions for you and not sure where to put them. Since this thread is on CO2, I decided on this one.
A few months back I came across a paper written by Dr. J. Scott Armstrong and Dr. Kesten Green. Armstrong is Professor of Marketing at Wharton and Green is a Senior Research Fellow at the Business and Economic Forecasting Unit at Monash University in Australia. Armstrong is co-founder of Journal of Forecasting and International Journal of Forecasting and the International Institute of Forecasting. Green and Armstrong audited the forecasting methods of the IPCC and found them wanting. You can read their report at http://forecastingprinciples.com/Public_Policy/WarmAudit31.pdf An updated version of the paper was published by NCPA and can be found at http://www.ncpa.org/pub/st/st308/ See especially the page titled “Three Basic Forecasting Principles Violated by the Fourth Assessment Report.â€
I was recently in a discussion with James Annan about scientific forecasting. You can read the discussion here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:J._Scott_Armstrong#POV_wording James basically said I was ignorant because I trusted the back-of-the-envelope calculations from Schwartz and Chylek more than his. At any rate, I invited James to explain why certain principles of evidence-based forecasting did not apply to the physical sciences. Unfortunately, instead of rising to the challenge, he picked up his marbles and went home. It was almost comical. It would seem to me that if these principles could help deliver better forecasts, it is the responsibility of climate scientists to assess the principles to see what could be learned. Here are my questions:
* Do you think these principles apply to forecasting climate? If not, why not?
* Have you ever read anything about scientific forecasting before?
* Is there any reason why climate researchers would not be willing to learn from scientific forecasters?
Thanks in advance for your reply. Oh, and I would love to hear Steve Mosher answers to these questions also.
Ron,
I skimmed the paper, and I’m not sure what principles the author’s are saying should be applied to forecasting climate.
To your specific questions:
Do you mean these:
* Principle 1: Consider whether the events or series can be forecasted.
* Principle 2: Keep forecasting methods simple.
* Principle 3: Do not use fit to develop the model.
As for principle 1, sure. But presumably, those making the projections/predictions (which various people believe are or are not forecasts) believe whatever they think they are doing can be done!
Principle 2: Well…. one should keep the method as simple as possible. However, I’m not sure simpler is always better. It’s certainly better if one is doing nothing more than curve fitting. But that’s not quite what the climate modelers are good.
Principle 3: I’m not even sure what do not use fit to develop the model means. Physics based models are always going to be compared against some data. They are sort of “fit” to what they predict and sort of not. But, generally speaking, the modelers at least claim they don’t fit to GMST when developing AOGCMs. I think they entirely believe that claim, though, I would dispute it somewhat.
No.
Wouldn’t or shouldn’t?
Lots of people in one field don’t listen to people in other fields, so that might be a reason they wouldn’t. I don’t know enough about what other forecasters do to know whether or not the climate scientists could learn something from other scientific forecasters. I also don’t know whether they might not have already learned it.
My main view is that after forecasts/projections/predictions are made, they should be tested against data that is collected after the forecast/projection/prediction is made. The results should be discussed openly and formalized. I think the IPPC does a poor job of this, resorting to rather vague eyeball techniques. If there are really well done comparisons of projections to data, they sure aren’t getting highlighted in the FAR, SAR, TAR, AR4!
Hello Raven!
It is much worse here in BC than you can ever possibly imagine. Gordon and his Go Green Group are now grad students of the very dangerous econ Prof Marc Jaccard, who is using BC as his econ test lab and us as the guinea pigs.
He believes that carbon taxes can be used to alter our energy consumption, and he recommends increasing them until CO2 consumption declines. As you know nobody gets a free pass. How can you tax resource industries who export most of their products such the forestry and mining companies? How can you tax tourism? Does he plan to slap taxes on large commercial bakeries, like the one that makes Twinkies and Ding Dongs? Or the companies that make Cheetos and Doritos?
For most people energy consumption is inelestic, and we will just pay the higher cost for fuels but reduce discretionary spending for stuff like burgers, pizzas, movies, Tim Horton goodies etc. Will the ladies give up gold, sliver, diamonds. rubies, emeralds, saphires, etc? Not a chance!
Since electricity is dirt cheap in BC, the engineers will just figure ways of using electricity instead of fossil fuels.
Do you recall that during the ’90 that Prof Jaccard was an adviser to the NDP? I doubt that if he has changed his pink spots for green spots. Super natural, beautiful BC, the Place on Earth, ain’t broke and there is no need for these wackos to try to fix it.