Yes. One of the things that the income redistribution plan does not account for is the higher cost of American manufactured goods. So let’s say you raise energy costs by 20%, and give everyone a 20% rebate so it’s revenue neutral. Except that now a product made in China is X% cheaper than a product made in the U.S., so you’re biasing the market towards the Chinese product.
That’s the real problem here. Everyone is complaining about the loss of manufacturing jobs in America, and yet the Obama administration’s policies all work in one direction - driving up the cost of manufacturing in America. Between Cap and Trade, allowing Bush’s tax cuts on business and capital gains to expire, the Employee Free Choice Act, and his stated yet vague plans to ‘re-regulate business’, Obama is setting the stage to do serious harm to America’s manufacturing.
Well boys we really won’t get much farther here: we come at it from some very different base beliefs.
I no longer participate in threads debating the reality of global warming, its risks, and future costs if business is allowed to proceed as usual. To me there is no option of whether or not we do something now; the issue is just how we do it.
If my car’s oil light comes on and indeed my oil is critically low I cannot just say, well, stopping to get an oil change will slow me down and cost me some money. I understand that ignoring it may save some money right now but the damage that I risk to my car will otherwise cost me much much more later. I do not subsidize my current driving with car damage later. I can think about whether or not I want to go to my local gas station or the dealer or the Jiffy Lube. I can decide if I want a flush or just an oil and filter change. But not spending the money to take care of my car is not an option. And neither is not addressing global warming in a vigorous way now. If you think it is then you’ll have to find someone else to debate with; I am not interested.
DSeid, thank you for your as always interesting and thought-provoking comment.
I agree that the operational subsidies are the issue.
Where I have difficulty is with subsidizing intermittent sources. With a limited amount of funds, my preference is to give the subsidy to base-line sources (hydro, geothermal, nuclear) over intermittent (solar, wind, wave) unless you have cheap pumped water or other storage at hand. (As you know we are getting closer to that with liquid batteries and the like. However, other than pumped water storage of the type used at e.g. Niagara Falls it’s not ready for prime time.)
My personal belief is that intermittency is not an issue at the levels of market share that we are realistically talking about in the near term (maybe 10 -15% of power generating capacity in any individual local market) - at that minority market share it just displaces some other production, its potential variability swamped by other variabilities and managed as part of that balancing mix.
As its share increases current wind technology intermittency does entail some extra costs for system balancing with reserve power sources. Many potential solutions for intermittency at higher levels of market penetration are proposed - from linking together in HVDC networks - to combined wind/solar/biogas power plants - to building in natural gas capacity with the wind plants - to emerging storage technologies. In the Distributed Infrastructure thread I linked to a report by Joint Coordinated System Plan that figures a 20% Wind Energy scenario would actually equal 15% as “counted as a capacity resource for reserve calculation purposes” with current technologic standards applied.
Be that as it may. Those may be features that argue for nuclear cost-efficacy over wind. But then nuclear will win in a competition with equal subsidies won’t it? It does not need better subsidies than renewables to prevail if those do turn out to be significant or costly problems. It can win on the even playing field.
Or subsidize neither operationally and no longer implicitly subsidize coal either (ie make coal pay for its “external costs”). And return the money that pays (and will pay) for those subsidies to the pockets of our citizens.
10-15’% is HUGE chunk of the grid to rely on. In states like California there is ZERO overlap for intermittent electrical production.
It’s not that I’m against the technology but it needs to have serious long distance transmission infrastructure to make it happen so that grids have overlap to cover low production days. So in addition to meeting our electrical needs there has to be additional wind/solar plants to cover the overlap. If you have a goal of 15% and there’s 20% down-time due to low sunlight or wind then it will cost 18% in production costs. This is just basic common sense.
All this is in the face of a driving demand for electric cars which will need… a consistent source of electricity.
I’ll say it again, we have large clean coal reserves (some of them placed under Federal land by Clinton) that can be used in conjunction with bio-diesel plants. All it takes is a federal nudge toward diesel cars and we have stable energy independence that works and reduces CO2 on 2 levels (energy and transportation). The technology required for this is already in production. It gives the automotive industry a huge shot in the arm by introducing the same technology Europe relies on in the US.
Actually electric cars, with smart grid technology and possibly vehicle to grid capability, is thought by many to be a major part of a solution. With smart grid technology a car can charge as excess power is available as it is parked overnight and during the workday, collectively provide for short term spikes in demands and short term shortfalls of supply, and still charged up again by the time it is needed. Wikipedia has a concise review:
Please explain what you mean by “In states like California there is ZERO overlap for intermittent electrical production.” … I honestly do not understand the statement. California has balancing management, operating reserves, etc. just like everywhere else. And dealing with the intermittency issue is something California is dealing with, challenge though it may be as penetration increases.
Adding a significant number of cars to the electrical grid is going to take power. It doesn’t come out of thin air. In my area that shut down an older power plant and transferred the load to a larger but aging plant. Peak use is provided by gas turbine generators. We need replacement plants NOW and Wind/solar is not an option in my area or any area close to me.
Are you implying California power needs have been met? Remember our discussion of carbon credits and environmentalists? Here’s a microcosm of what it will look like when national mandates are voted into suppository form. Tree huggers will clog the courts with this nonsense.
Texas has a pretty good system to handle this. They have customers who voluntarily sign up to be ‘interruptable’ in exchange for lower energy rates. When the wind died, they cut power to some of the ‘interruptables’ for up to 90 minutes.
This doesn’t mean it was without cost - those businesses still need power, they just decided that their losses would be low enough that buying interruptable power was a good bet.
Nonetheless, the problem has already surfaced, and Texas gets far less than 15% of its power from wind - it gets about 3%.
The Pacific Northwest happens to have lots of unexploited commercially viable wind power sites.
Which of course is my original point in this thread. Mandating that a certain percent be renewable across all states is foolishness. Some areas do not have as exploitable resources as others. OTOH the situation near you is also a result of our dillydallying on coming up with a stable regulatory approach. Your local utilities are not going to invest in new long term capacity in an uncertain regulatory future. They cannot make an intelligent decision about what kind of new plant to build until they know what the incentives and disincentives will be in the future. So instead of even building a cleaner coal plant they are just pushing more through a plant that they might otherwise at least substantially supplant.
Yup, each local circumstance needs to have a pretty good solution to handle such possibilities and each solution will have costs, be they adequate operational reserves, a large interconnected network, stored power, or individual consuming entities willing to be interruptable in return for discounted rates. It will affect how well wind can compete in a fair competition for utility investment on a playing field that includes “external costs”.
First off, the study shows that Western States aren’t up to the task. Woulda-coulda doesn’t mean squat right now. If it was such a great thing, California and it’s strict environmental laws would have a wind turbine on every corner. I agree that there is potential there but it hasn’t happened. And I call bullshit on the Midwest statement. It does not take into consideration real life scenarios where the grid is pushed to it’s limits in the heat of summer during off-peak hours. Everybody comes home and turns their air conditioners up. All this is academic because electric cars are a joke and nobody will buy them in sustainable numbers. They lack the utility of a real car. In the real world, winter will reduce driving distances of electric cars which will not be able to tow a kite or get out of it’s own way let alone provide any heat. A diesel can run 24/7 in all weather conditions with improved performance in every category. Instead of mandating a bunch of pussymobiles that serve a small niche, we need real cars that everybody can drive. We can produce ALL of our diesel using algae and the process scrubs CO2 out of coal. We need a sustainable fuel that our transportation grid (trucks) can use so it just makes sense to switch to a diesel standard.
I agree with you here but I think you’re missing my point. The nano-second government mandates new standards for CO2 it will unleash a Pandora’s Box of environmental lawyers who will sue the fuck out of everything that moves. It’s a snowball of legislation tossed off a mountain that turns into an avalanche of legal nonsense. Once set in set in motion it can’t be stopped. All of the pie-in-the-sky power grid planning will go up in legal smoke and legislators will be powerless to stop it. We’re seeing it in California now.
Look, I understand where you want to go. I want to see technological advances as much as you do to solve our problems. However, for it to work, government changes have to reflect human nature. You can’t mandate a lifestyle. Not only can you not legislate personal choice, it will backlash politically to a point that will reverse any forward progress. Instead of shoving overpriced, under-powered electric cars up our ass we need cars that people will flock to dealerships to buy. When people test drive a Volt next to a turbo diesel that is substantially cheaper the choice will be clear. They will buy a tested technology that performs better and is cheaper. All we need is a slight push, not even a major one, to pair up bio-diesel plants with clean coal plants. If the price of diesel can be stabilized and car manufacturers are producing the vehicles then all the money pouring out of the country for oil will remain in the economy and can be reinvested.
From a technological point of view, I see coastal states taking advantage of offshore wind turbines NOW and I see Western states building solar thermal plants NOW. Not too far down the road I see thin-film solar technology advancing to the point where it can be used for roofing material in place of shingles. If I could install a “tin roof” for $10,000 that lasts 50 years and produces electricity I would do it today. The thin-film technology is already in production but it’s still expensive. It’s coming.
Magiver the scenario they calculate out is the imaginary if all of America’s cars were turned into PHEVs overnight. And even though the Midwest and the East could handle all cars being electric now and even though across the country the grid, as is, with no added capacity, could handle 84% of all cars being PHEV the Pacific Northwest isn’t ready for all turning over at once now. Just some sizable fraction. The West would need to add capacity to handle it and its ample wind resources is a natural match.
It’s fine by me if you want to call bullshit on the Department of Energy. I tend to think of their analyses as being believable unless proven otherwise.
And you are very uninformed about what EVs, PHEVs, and EREVs are capable of but that would be a whole different hijack. (And we’ve had those threads.) I’ll leave it at this: they will sell if the price point is right and that is the big question. And I like the idea of biodiesel too, especially algal biodiesel. I suspect that the future of transportation will have several power sources in the mix and I have no desire to mandate any specific solution. (I would think that would be clear by now.) I do not prefer subsidies but until we remove the subsidy that we give to fossil fuels by ignoring their external costs (including but not restricted to CO2 emissions) subsidizing the other options is the only fair alternative.
A few minor points. First, he’s calling bullshit on the Batelle Laboratories, not on the DOE … it was a study done for the DOE, not by the DOE.
Also, I can’t find a copy of the study on the web. The press releasehas a link to the study … but the link is dead. Doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Batelle, but I digress …
Finally, the study says:
That’s a bit more than two-thirds … and that assumes that we could soak up every watt of off-peak power. A more reasonable assumption would be that only a part of the power used would be off-peak, as people would be recharging them during the day and the evening as well as at night.
Also … these are hybrid electrics. How much gas are they assuming that the hybrids use?
In the last century, the world has warmed by about a degree F. I see no gigantic negative effects from that. The world has warmed a couple of degrees since the Little Ice Age in the 1600s … I see no gigantic negative effects from that. Yet you think another couple degrees will be awful, terrible, nothing but bad …
In general, the warming seems to have been good for the planet … perhaps not, YMMV, but the idea that “WARM=BAD” is certainly not upheld by history. Cold kills more humans every year than heat.
So I must confess that your professed ability to put a number on the “external costs” of CO2 emissions seems … well … not all that well grounded in reality. We don’t even know the sign of the answer, much less the size.
Second, what external costs of fossil fuels (other than CO2 emissions) are you looking at, and how are you calculating those costs? It’s not clear to me that there is any solid theoretical basis for picking a number on those, but perhaps you have one.
This is the difficulty with “external costs” in general. What are the “external costs” of running a car, for example? Do they include the costs of repairing the damage from collisions? Do they include the human cost in lives, and if so, what is a life worth? Do they include the “avoided external costs” of not using cars? Are these “hidden subsidies” for car use? How should we account for them?
As an example, suppose we burn diesel to keep medicine cold in a rainy, overcast rural clinic in my third world country. If we don’t have the diesel, people die … is this an “external cost” of diesel? And if not … why not?
This is why I am always sceptical of people advocating analyses that use “external costs”. Somehow, the "external costs"tend to end up much bigger for everything but their favorite solution … probably just coincidence …
Are you counting all the dead plants under where new solar systems are installed, and the dead birds from the windmills as “external costs”? Should you count them? When you cut down on CO2, plants grow more slowly. Have you included that as an “external cost”? The air is generally drier downwind from a windmill (lower wind speed = less evaporation) … is this an “external cost” or an “external benefit”? The list goes on and on.
In addition, many costs are already included in the price. For example, I’ve seen analyses in which the number of deaths from mining coal is included as an “external cost” of coal, despite the fact that the deaths are already included in the price of the coal. (That is to say, if mining it were totally safe, coal would be cheaper.) How can you tell which “external” costs have already been factored into the market price, which have been partially factored in, and which have not been factored in?
These questions have no simple answers, but they are the reason I get nervous when someone wants to include “external costs” in an analysis. Yes, it can be done … but there are more pitfalls, quagmires, and potholes in that direction than there is solid ground …
You think that much of Florida and California ending up underwater when/if the ice caps melt isn’t bad ?
But we appear to be headed into a new climatological epoch, an Anthropogenic Epoch which will be warmer than any period humans have been around to experience. You are also ignore indirect problems, like crop failure, or changing air and water currents doing things like turning Europe’s climate into something resembling Canada.
And “let’s pretend there are no external costs” is somehow better ?
Der Trihs, I think you are responding to someone else. I posted about the problems with calculating “external costs”. Your protest is an excellent example of one of the problems.
The IPCC forecasts that the sea level rise will be from 8" to 18" over the coming century. They did not include any possible melting of the ice caps (Antarctic and Greenland) in that estimate.
Why not? Well, because we don’t know enough about them.
Now, the IPCC is quite happy to forecast dire scenarios with very little evidence. So the fact that there’s too little evidence for even the IPCC to forecast ice sheet melting should tell you something.
If we don’t have enough information to forecast it, we don’t have enough information to cost it. For future events, expected cost is total cost times the probability of it happening … which we don’t know. Sure, we can pick numbers … but that’s just picking numbers.
In the 1600s, the earth got as cool as it has been in modern times. This period is called the “Little Ice Age.” It was a time of extreme human hardship. It was a time when witches were burned for causing bad weather, and crops froze and died.
Since then, the earth has warmed by something like a half a degree per century. So we don’t have to theorize about the effects of a change of a couple of degrees. We’ve seen it. We’ve seen all of the projected effects as well. We’ve seen storms, and floods. We’ve seen droughts and famines. We’ve seen cyclones and tornadoes. Were they due to the rising temperatures? Who knows.
So the question is: how are we to estimate the cost of the rise in both temperature and CO2 from say 1900-2000? That will give us a baseline. But what in all of that do you plan to count?
Depending on the location, the ocean rose from 8" to 12" over that time … how much of that rise was due to CO2? What costs do you plan to ascribe to that?
In general, growing seasons in the area where most of the world’s food is grown (NH extratropics) lengthened over that time. Surely you plan to include the increase in production in your “costs”?
Over that time, millions of dollars was spent enriching the CO2 levels in greenhouses. Rising CO2 levels decreased the grower’s CO2 costs … do you plan to include that? And more to the point, over that time, worldwide the increasing CO2 did the same thing it does in a greenhouse … increased plant growth. Do you plan to include that increase in bioproduction in your “costs”?
A warmer world is, ceteris paribus, a wetter world … in the 20th century, was that a net cost (floods) or a net gain (rain for thirsty plants)?
Come back with a list of the costs and benefits of the 1°F 20th century warming, and how much of each of them we should ascribe to CO2, and we’ll talk … on another thread.
I haven’t a clue what “let’s pretend there are no external costs” even means, for the simple reason that I never said it. You did. You’ll have to explain it.
I discussed a few of the difficulties with dealing with external costs. Let me explore another difficulty. Let’s leave CO2, and talk about say particulate matter. If you let people burn diesel without regulations, you get lots of particulate matter, and plenty of problems from it. It’s a clear external cost to society. You measure it in rural settings and compare it to the urban setting. You know how big the problem is. You know how much it costs to treat lung diseases. You know how much it costs to retrofit power plants to emit less particulates. You pick some number for the cost of an avoidable death. You have a handle on the size of the problem, to some degree.
The difficulty, of course, is that the cost to society as a whole includes the cost of compliance by society as a whole. Thus the cost analysis depends on the level of compliance required. This is exacerbated by the fact that costs rise exponentially as standards tighten, because all the “low hanging fruit” is gone.
So the externalized cost of diesel is an exponential function of the level of particulates allowed. And once again, we are picking numbers. If we set the level (in parts per billion) high, we don’t affect the problem as much, still some health costs, but it’s far less costly to implement. If we set them low, the compliance costs as a society may be huge, but the cost in health is low. Somewhere in between perhaps, before the cost/benefit gets too high …
But which of these widely varying numbers is the fabled “external cost” that some given person is using?
I am particularly chary when the “cradle to grave” accounting turns into “cradle to 2100” accounting. Cradle to grave we can kinda measure. We know how much it costs to hold emissions below certain standards, and we can put in some number for medical costs, and for avoided deaths … and of course, once again we are back into the realm of what to count and picking numbers. But with cradle to grave, at least we can measure various parts of it and make reality-based analyses and reasonable estimates.
Cradle to 2100 we can’t measure. It hasn’t happened. It’s a guess. There’s too much time and too much number picking for it to have any value.
So while it sounds good to say you want renewables to have the “subsidy” represented by the “external costs” of fossil fuel, as I show above that concept is infinitely elastic. Costs to meet what standard? Cost in which arenas? Which costs are included and excluded? Which benefits are included and excluded? How wide do you cast the net?
We don’t even agree whether a slightly warmer world is better or worse for society and the planet as a whole. I think better, myself. It’s far better to be dirt poor where it is too warm, than where it is too cold … I speak from cold bitter experience … and far too much of every part of the planet is dirt poor. But that’s just me, YMMV
It’s important to separate the arguments to be able to discuss this issue logically.
They are:
Is man causing additional warming?
How bad will it get? What are the costs?
What can we do about it?
What’s the best solution?
The problem with these discussions is that people like Der Trihs Make a big leap from 1), which is pretty much the current scientific consensus, 4), with the conclusion that draconian government action is required.
And while there is wide consensus on 1), there is no similar consensus on 2), because while current models may be able to give us short-term trands, they are still very weak when it comes to long-term feedback effects. Even the IPCC has estimates which range from modest warming with no overall financial cost to the planet, to significant warming with significant global costs. So this debate still has not concluded.
On to 3). Can anything be done about it? This is the elephant in the room. Let’s assume warming is happening, and that it will have real economic costs down the road. The fact is, lots of things have economic costs down the road, including the heavy borrowing almost all governments are engaging in. And yet, they still do it.
China is now the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases. And what’s worse, they act as a negative feedback against any policy the U.S. would implement on its own. If the U.S. cuts oil consumption, it will drive down worldwide oil prices and stimulate demand in China and India. If the U.S implements policies which have the effect of driving manufacturing to China and India, which are less energy efficient, it will raise the carbon footprint of those products.
This is not a problem to be handwaved away. It’s the key problem in ‘solving’ global warming through government rationing. If you can’t get a global solution, a local solution could do more harm than good.
Finally, if you can figure out a way to make the globe take part, it’s not clear that more regulation and government intervention in the energy markets is the correct solution. For example, the only possible way to ensure that oil stays in the ground is to come up with an energy source that costs less than oil. For this, you need a healthy market where people are free to spend their own capital and compete with each other for solutions. I have no faith that the government can manage energy policy in a direction which will lead to lower costs.
As already stated, I won’t even bother with debating that at this point. We’ve had enough past threads about it, please no rehash
You are correct in that no one knows exactly how bad it will get. We can only quantify relative risks. Think of it as the build-up before the financial melt-down and imagine that there was a consensus from experts who actually were paying attention that said that business as it was being done was risky, that it might result in a small downturn, or a global depression, but that the risk of the latter was higher the longer we left it go underregulated and undermonitored. The climate change consensus has that the probability is large of significant effects if we continue with business as usual and that there is a real risk of extremely severe effects. The question is not if they are sure of how bad it would get but how we manage those risks.
Which yes bring us to 3 and 4. What can we do and what should we do?
The risk of catastrophic change is real and prudent investment involves hedging against that.
China is indeed the biggest emitter (although America still is per capita) and they cannot be just handwaved away, tis true. But neither can fear that they will not play be used as an excuse for doing nothing at all. What you describe is the classic Tragedy of the Commons and yet we manage the commons all the time. Your assumption that they won’t play is as much handwaving away as those who would ignore the importance of getting them to be part of the answer.
I think that there are many reasons to be optimistic that China can be brought along. Chinese media (always somewhat controlled) is preaching the risks of global warming now. China is currently suffering from some climate related issues, such as severe drought and official government mouthpieces are beginning to express an understanding that they might be affected by climate change worse than most.
And they are certainly making noises like they want to be part of a global treaty, even if they are arguing for terms that are favorable to them. They may need to be negotiated with and compromises may be made along the way. Some creativity may be involved (sure importers of your goods will bear the carbon cap debit for your goods’ production but then those goods get taxed enough to cover the expected cost of buying the credits to offset it) … And they are providing significant rebates so that alternative fuel vehicles (EVs, HEVs and biofuels) are purchased. (Up to 25% of the vehicle cost.)
In short there is now more reason to believe that we can get a good enough deal from them than there is to believe that they will not play at all.
We can lead. The risk of doing so is that China ends up not playing along and indeed there may be some risk that some additional manufacture will move there for the sake of lower energy costs. Again it must be noted that the EU still had fine GDP growth while decreasing energy intensity significantly during implementation of the very flawed Kyoto protocol, so the risk does seem small, but some cost on GDP would be incurred, maybe even a small risk of enough shift to make a net harm even to global CO2 levels and climate change risk. Hard to quantify that risk. You think it is large, I do not, but we can agree that it is nonzero. Upside is that this is really the only potential play that can lead to significant cooperation in the long run and the play that has the best potential to decrease the risks of long term catastrophic outcomes. Big potential upside, modest downside risk. The alternative is to not lead out of fear that China won’t play or will cheat too horribly even if they sign on. Risk of catastrophic outcomes remain real and modestly horrible outcomes likely.
The risk of the sun going supernova is real. The risk of a new ice age is real. The risk of the financial system melting down is real. The risk of many things is real.
But that does not mean that it is necessarily “prudent” to hedge against a given risk just because it is real. Until we know the odds of something happening, and its cost if it occurs, and what we might practically do to hedge against it, and how much the hedge will cost, and when it is likely to happen, we cannot decide whether it is prudent to hedge against it or not.
Me, I’d say the risk of a new ice age in the next century is on the order of the same size as the risk of thermal meltdown from runaway warming. The cost of a new ice age would be stupendous. The risk, like runaway warming, is very small but definitely non-zero.
So is it also “prudent” to hedge against the next ice age? And if so, what should we do? I’d say it is the height of foolishness to hedge against either outcome, other than in a so-called “no-regrets” path. (That is a path where your actions are beneficial and valuable whether or not the feared catastrophe comes to pass.)
Will the Chinese play ball? Well, given how much money they made by not playing ball with Kyoto last time, and given that the Chinese are not noted for giving away opportunities to make money, and given that signing on will cost huge money and disadvantage them economically, and given that they like most nations are currently broke … doubtful. It’s possible they might sign something real, but very doubtful.
IF the nations who signed Kyoto had all met their targets, it is estimated that the billions of dollars spent might have made a difference of a tenth of a degree by 2050 … is that a “prudent hedge”? Not on my planet, spending billions on a tenth of a degree is the height of fiscal irresponsibility. It’s like an insurance policy that costs a thousand bucks a year, and has a payout limit of $25 … yes, insurance is a good thing, but not all insurance …
Given that the IPCC has steadfastly refused to dignify its forecasts with probabilities, what evidence make “modestly horrible outcomes likely”?
And as I pointed out, the US increased their energy efficiency by 3% more than the European average increase, while Spain and several other countries saw their energy efficiency drop. The fact that on average the EU increased during that time means nothing. What we need to know is how much they would have increased if there were no Kyoto … and you have said nothing about that. I don’t even know how you’d measure it …
Given that, your claim that there is only a “small risk” that the Son of Kyoto won’t negatively affect the signers seems … well … like it’s standing on nothing but air.
I say again, if you can’t quantify the risk, the cost is simply not calculable. It’s fine for you to claim that modestly horrible outcomes are likely, but nobody’s giving any odds on the outcomes. But let’s take you at your word, and follow where that leads.
Which of the possible outcomes are you describing? Floods? Fires? Famines? Sea level rise? Storms? Just what is it that you are so concerned about?
Why are those outcomes more likely than others?
How will they differ from the floods/fires/famines of the past?
How will we determine if they are partially caused by warming, and how much of the effect is due to warming?
How much will it cost if it occurs?
Given that a warmer world is generally a wetter world (more evaporation=more rain), and the world is generally short of water, how have you included that in your cost calculations?
AGW supporters have been warning us about those modestly horrible outcomes for twenty years now, and none have materialized. There’s no increase in droughts. There’s no increase in the rate of sea level rise. There’s no increase in floods. There’s no increase in tornadoes or extreme weather events. All I hear these days is “Well, increased cold can be a result of climate change, don’tcha know?” When do you think that the modestly horrible outcomes are likely to appear? How many years do we have before the sky actually falls? What are the first signs likely to be? Because after 20 years of these warnings … I’m getting tired of waiting.
Answer those questions, and we’ll have something to talk about. Saying that you find “modestly horrible outcomes likely” is interesting, but meaningless for the task at hand. How likely? Which outcomes? Why are they “horrible”? How will they differ from the past?
It’s the same problem I described above. Once you wander off of charted ground to look for “externalized costs”, you can make any claims you want to make about risks and expenses, it’s all just picking numbers.
And no, it is never “prudent” to hedge against anything imaginary.
No, it is never prudent to spend more on a hedge than your expected loss.
And most importantly, it is rarely prudent to hedge against something when you have no idea
a) how much it will cost if it occurs, or
b) what the odds are of it occurring, or
c) whether your so-called “hedge” will do anything at all to affect it.
Currently, as far as I can tell, we know none of those three … but if you feel you have a good handle on it, break out your numbers …
The problem with ‘leading’ is that if you unilaterially cut your own petroleum demand or your own greenhouse gases, you’re actually increasing the incentive for China to not cut theirs. If you make petroleum cheaper for them, then the relative cost of moving away from it goes higher. If you cut greenhouse gases on your own, you lessen the risk that China’s own emissions will do it serious harm.
There’s an analogy here with the cold war. The left at the time wanted to ‘lead by example’ and simply cut military spending and unilaterally freeze arsenals. The thinking was that if the Soviets just saw how peaceloving we all were, they’d realize that they didn’t need to spend as much as they did and voluntarily cut their own military, and we’d all just wind down. That didn’t work very well.
China is the ultimate country for practicing realpolitik. China, even more so than other nations, will act in its own interest and in no other way. So any effort to get China on board has to be grounded in making them realize that they will pay a price if they don’t, and that the price will be higher than the alternative cost of greenhouse gas reductions.
I don’t know how to do that. But I do know that any solution that doesn’t involve China and India right from the beginning, and which doesn’t include clear benchmarks and penalties for non-compliance, is a waste of time and possibly counter-productive.
intention, just one small item of clarification: there are numbers associated with the probability assessments given for each of the possible scenarios. Each phrase - medium confidence, high confidence, very high confidence - is associated with a probability of being within that range (50, 80, or 90% respectively). In many runs the 5% that fall above the top numbers have a long tail upwards as they run into feedforward forcing issues.
Which scenario will play out (a world in which we have global cooperation to develop solutions to “economic, social and environmental stability” and have introduced “clean and resource efficient technologies” - B1 - the “low case” - or a world in which we have convergence of standard of living and a reliance on fossil fuels albeit with quick spread of efficient technologies -A1F1 - the “high case”) is not open to scientific analysis. It is a geopolitical question.
But the difference between the top of the likely range for the low vs the high case scenario is the difference between 5.2 F and 11.5 F; a difference between sea level rise of 15 to 23". The difference in likely effects for the world between those outcomes are also contained in that report.
The Stern Review (which may have underestimated the risks) also breaks out some numbers if you want them.
I really have no interest in trotting them all out nor was the intent of this thread to engage in another one of those discussions. This thread is intended to discuss what are the most cost effective and perhaps politically effective (both domestically and internationally) means of reaching remediation targets.
Sam so you’d propose that we outspend the Chinese on this? That’s what worked in the Cold War, isn’t it?
I do not think that China is any different than any other country in being interested first and foremost in their own interests. My point is that informed self-interest may now be telling them that addressing global warming as part of the international community is desirable. I have offered up evidence that such may be the case. I also have no problem with an internationally coordinated and agreed upon consequence to be imposed upon them if I am wrong.
As far as making petroleum cheaper - I think in a moderate term it will be a moderately priced or higher as OPEC will decrease production to keep the price above a minimum floor. Of course if we did reach true peak oil then rises would be inevitable; I hope that oil is made fairly superfluous before then.