Heck, give government complete control over power generation and infrastructure.
I’m sure the planet can handle a few more Chernobyls.
Bryan: That’s a lot of non-sequitors to pack into two sentences!! First of all, since when is regulating greenhouse gas emissions (presumably by a cap-and-trade system) anything close to “giv[ing] government complete control over power generation and infrastructure”?
Second of all, are you really so certain that nuclear power is more dangerous when run by the government than by private corporations? From the little I know, I believe in France it is government-run and has a good safety record. (My vague impression is that it is better than in the U.S. to the extent that such things can be determined.)
Cutting down on pollution is a wonderful and noble goal, but it seems more and more likely that global warming is caused by the sun, so the issue of warming may or may not be relevant to this debate.
Hey, just responding to the OP in kind.
It seems more and more likely that this is the case why exactly? Because Sen. James Inhofe (R, Oklahoma … but more affectionately known as the Senator from Exxon) says so and because a website called the Secrets of Survival says so!!! (There is some fun to be had in reading some of the other articles on that website though!) Yes, I know that one of the three websites you linked is actually respectable, i.e., National Geographic, but if you read that article you will note that they are just reporting and are careful to put this hypothesis in the context of counterevidence and note that most scientists consider it wacky.
Is this seriously where you get your scientific information from? How about trying the IPCC or the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the analogous bodies in 10 other major nations?
Oh, and here is a piece by an astrophysicist on the “global warming on mars”.
The main points to remember about the sun and global warming:
(1) There has been no significant trend in the sun’s luminosity, which is being carefully measured these days, in the latter part of the 20th century (and into the 21st century).
(2) In order to blame the current warming on the sun, one has to not only explain the mechanism whereby little or no positive trend in luminosity leads to the warming seen but also has to explain why the known mechanism by which greenhouse gases warm the earth is not occurring. It’s not like the warming that has been occurring over the last ~35 years came as a surprise and then scientists invented the idea of greenhouse gases to explain it. Rather, the theory proceeded the rise and predicted that such a rise would occur. (See here for the definitive history on the subject.)
Or far more likely, this is rent-seeking behaviour - pushing for government regulations that they believe will give them a competitive advantage.
General Electric has ‘gone green’ in a big way, heavily promoting green initiatives and technology. Do you think this is altruism on GE’s part? Do you think their report to stockholders says, “We hope the government regulates us for our own good, so we can spend more money for energy and lower our profits. But we’ll be helping mother earth.”
No, GE is heavily promoting environmentalism because GE was already well positioned to profit from it. GE sells nuclear power plants, wind turbines, CFL bulbs, automation controls, factory equipment, etc. Forcing power plants and factories to change their infrastructure means GE sells oodles of equipment. Nuclear and wind power gain market share when CO2 is taxed. Of course GE likes the government forcing this - it makes them big bucks.
Likewise, the car companies that are most inclined to support carbon taxes are the ones who already make the best small cars or have the smallest percentage of market share in trucks and SUVs. Carbon taxes push customers in their direction and play to their comparative advantage.
Always count on everyone to do what’s in their own best interest. That’s what makes carbon regulation so difficult. You can just never gain consensus, and even when you can get multinational agreements together, countries violate the agreements as soon as it’s in their national interest to do so, or in the interest of the most powerful influences in their country. Canada supposedly supported Kyoto during the Martin years, and it changed the increase in our carbon output not one iota. In fact, Canada showed bigger increases in C02 output per capita than many other countries, including I believe the U.S. over the same period of time.
Have a look at how well the debt cap in the EU seems to be working. Or the ABM treaty once the U.S. felt it was no longer in their interests to obey it. You will never get countries to agree to impose huge expenses on themselves - and have them actually carry out their promises.
That’s why the answer to global warming has got to be technology. The hard fact is that no matter what anyone agrees to, we will continue to pump oil out of the ground and burn it so long as it is profitable to do so. Even if we managed to reduce consumption in the most globally responsible countries, all that would do is drive down the price of oil and make our competitor’s energy cheaper than our own. They then use more of it, or are less efficient with it, and the same amount of oil gets burned anyway, or close to it.
The way you have to stop global warming is either to develop technology to sequester CO2 at the source, or scrub it from the air, or make it more expensive than cleaner alternatives. Then the market will push capital towards cleaner, cheaper energy investments and an infrastructure will start to appear on its own to support alternatives.
The other alternative is to push environmental policy by force - if not through military action than through tariffs and taxes and embargoes and other economic weapons. This would be very destructive and would be extremely damaging to world GDP.
Permute along with me.
- global warming exists and we must quickly do something to stop it. Result heavy concentration on non polluting industries and cars clean up the air and we survive. Air is cleaner.
- global warming is not so bad…But we mistakenly spend time and money developing low pollution systems and the air get cleaner.
- global warming exists-we do nothing and the planet goes into rapid disaster and we have millions die. The dirty air get dirtier and the known consequences get worse.
Treating global warming seriously is the only logical thing to do.
I know this is kind of a strange idea with its faults, but in order to make people more likely to accept a carbon emissions tax (at least in the future) is to educate our children. How exactly? Make a debate project a few times every year to make sure classes are educated on political matters like this global warming subject. I find kids can have so much enthusiasm on politics when its brought up in say, history class, but we can’t because we have to learn other stuff. I think one thing is to take advantage of this enthusiasm, and have this debate subject a time or two every month or something.
I reallize some states hold a debate club, but that doesn’t work, if you really want to get some enthusiasm. A lot of kids have their own curricular activities plus things and hobbies they like to do after-school, I think it’ll have some better results and enthiasm if we do it as an actual subject. I know it’s a very strange concept, and I have my second thoughts, but that’s the only thing I feel that might solve this problem.
Way to set 'em up and knock 'em down.
Permute with me:
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Global Warming exists, but has effects that would cost 1 trillion dollars to compensate for. Government regulations cost global economy 10 trillion dollars. Money that can not be used to buy food, health care, pay for educations, pay for scientific research, or be reinvested in the economy to create growth.
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Global warming does not exist. Government regulations cost 10 trillion dollars and got nothing in return. Money equal to 10 Iraq wars, 100 Apollo programs, or Lindsay Lohen’s weekly coke budget.
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Global Warming exists, government spends 10 trillion to ‘fix’ it, but the fix doesn’t work and the plan fails. Which would be the case with any current plans today.
In short, it’s about opportunity cost and intelligent investment. This is a big, big expense. CO2 reductions could cost a percentage point of GDP growth per year. Compounded over the next 100 years, it will mean the world economy will be less than half the size it would be if that money were not spent. So you’d better be damned sure that A) the problem exists, B) leaving it alone won’t cost less than the ‘fix’, and C) that there’s a fix that can work in the first place.
Cite?
Well, I think this argument was reasonable when there were only a few companies in any given industry who were pushing for regulations but it seems we have gone beyond that point.
And, they are well-positioned to profit from it in part because they were forward-thinking enough to recognize this is where the future lies. It’s not really a one-way cause-and-effect. It is circular.
I think that you have it exactly backwards. The technologies will come when there is a market incentive for them, i.e., once there is a cost to putting emissions into the air. (To some extent, the threat of a future cost may be enough to spur some technology although unfortunately not that many companies have this much foresight…and they are certainly not likely to bring the technology into practice until it is in their economic interests to do so.)
I don’t understand your statement regarding solar activity. We have cycles of solar activity and they affect our weather. It’s not just a function of luminosity but also of the radiation released in solar flares. I believe we’re coming off the tail end of one of those cycles so we should experience cooler temps in the next decade.
You obviously have a lot of time invested in researching global warming and that’s a good thing but I think it colors your outlook on cause and effect. We don’t know the causal relationship between CO2 and climate because we don’t have the information to back a conclusion. It’s not possible to examine co2 history on a planetary basis. The samples don’t exist.
If the current carbon-footprint craze fades into disaster-dejour history we will naturally evolve into less CO2 production anyway because of the nature of oil. It is has been used as a political weapon against consuming nations for 30+ years and it’s been a political weapon against the producing nations for double that. This year is supposed to see an uptick in diesel passenger cars in the US. With that will come bio-diesel which significantly alters the CO2 cycle by absorbing it in the growing process (as opposed to releasing CO2 in a stored chemical state).
I agree with your assessment of France’s nuclear power, which I believe represents 35% of total electrical production. The United States has so much unused land that it makes any argument against production or storage moot. We can locate facilities in the middle of nowhere and that applies to the spent fuel. The safety factor would far exceed anything Europe could do simply because of our unused land resources.
And while I don’t approve of current solar cell energy production (a recycling nightmare) I see the technology on the horizon for vastly cheaper and less bulky systems that could be applied in a cost-effective manner.
All of the above is happening now (except for increased nuclear energy in the US) and will naturally lead to a cleaner planet. If it turns out that we need to alter the temperature of the planet then it should be looked at as a problem to be solved. Currently the “crisis” has only 1 solution, which is to selectively screw countries into reducing CO2 emissions. That’s not a solution or even an attempt at a solution.
We already know we can alter the temperature significantly in a single day thanks to 9/11. The lack of jet contrails altered the amount of solar radiation heating the atmosphere. There are experiments going on that are designed to change the water temperature in the ocean. I believe we will have the ability to control the weather on a large scale within the next 50 years to the point that total atmospheric temperatures are adjusted and local events are reduced to less destructive occurrences.
To summarize, we can prepare for future events by developing solutions to the problem. The prospect of global warming should be addressed as a function of temperature. It doesn’t matter if the cause is CO2 levels. The solution is to reduce the temperature using the most efficient means possible.
There are lots of reasons for companies to pay lip service to Global Warming, none of which have to be that they really believe in it. They might do it because an anti-CO2 regime positions them better in the market, or simply because they are looking for PR gains. There is widespread public support for the Global Warming thesis, so companies jump on the bandwagon.
Now, some of them may truly believe it, but you don’t know which ones do, and therefore using a quote from an industry leader in favor of AGW is about as poor an appeal to authority as you’re likely to find.
I find it funny that those on the left who are always skeptical of statements from business will suddenly accept everything they say on Global Warming at face value, and even use them as authorities in arguments. I don’t recall a lot of people citing RJ Reynolds PR flacks when discussing the hazards of smoking.
Or because the vagaries of the market pushed them into that particular niche and left them with a bunch of technology uniquely suited to the current problem. GE didn’t invest in nuclear technology because it was thinking about a green future, it invested because it got government contracts for nuclear reactors for military vessels. It didn’t invest in factory automation hardware because it saw a wave of regulation coming that would force many factories to retool, it invested in it because it was a complementary business that supported other things they were doing.
Wind power is one area where I think you can legitimitely claim that GE was forward-thinking. GE Wind Power is a leader in the field and they spent big money on it before there was an economically viable model for wind power.
But the point is that if GE had found themselves heavily invested in coal technologies and SUVs, they won’t be championing ‘green’ initiatives.
What you don’t don’t seem to get is that you can’t FORCE the market to do this. Not this kind of market. A carbon tax may be a good idea, but unless you can get China and India and Russia to submit to carbon taxes (and you won’t), then putting carbon taxes on the rest of the people will simply have the effect of raising their energy costs and lowering energy costs to China. That will change the distribution pattern of oil, with more of it flowing to countries that do not support carbon taxes. All the oil will STILL be burned. Except now the economy is damaged and you’ll have less wealth for counteracting the effects of Global Warming or researching cleaner alternatives.
On the other hand, if you can make other forms of energy less expensive than oil, oil will be displaced throughout the world. It will be the people who stick with oil who will find themselves at a competitive disadvantage.
This is really the big problem I have with those who are clamoring for more regulation. More regulation isn’t a plan. It’s a spastic reaction. A demand to ‘do something!’ without knowing what really needs to be done is just stupid.
But maybe I’m missing something. Can you possibly articulate the plan to me? Can you explain exactly what regulations are needed, how you are going to get worldwide compliance with them, how they will lead to real reductions in the use of oil, and how much it will all cost? Because I sure can’t find that information. I hear a lot of handwaving about how we need to ‘do something’ ourselves even if China and India won’t play ball, and never any discussion about the ramifications of such a partial solution and whether it will do any good at all.
Well, sure if an RJ Reynolds PR flack tells you that smoking isn’t hazardous to your health, you would tend to dismiss him. However, if he told you it was truly very dangerous to your health, might you not sit up and take notice?
I’m not saying that the companies are not acting in ways that they see as being in their own self-interests. Clearly they are. However, when a company does something in their own self-interest that is also, in my view, in alignment with a larger good, I still think that is commendable and might even be telling us something.
And, on the flip side of your coin, it is interesting to see those on the right start talking about companies behaving in ways such as jumping on the bandwagon or just trying to get good PR! I’m not saying that this can’t happen…but I think if you look at the whole history of this, you will see that the business community as a whole, and particularly the fossil fuel companies, power companies, and auto companies were initially very skeptical and, in fact, formed the Global Climate Coalition to try to promulgate their skeptical views. So, yeah, when that sort of thing falls apart and the companies start endorsing regulation, I think it is significant…and more likely an indicator of a little more than PR and bandwagons. I give them a little more credit for hard-headed analysis than that and I doubt it is in many of their best interests to jump on bandwagons of a craze where the politics has gotten out ahead of the science.
Well, a couple of answers:
(1) In order to create the market incentives, I don’t think that you have to make the use of carbon equally expensive everywhere. In the markets where it is more expensive, there will be the correct incentives. Sure, there could also be some incentives to switch production to China or something like that (although there may be things built into these treaties to try to prevent that)…but in practice the extent to which that can be done is limited and it neglects the very real advantages that keep production in the industrialized countries despite the cheaper labor markets in places like China. And, this same argument can be used to undercut any sort of environmental standards…but it still doesn’t mean that it is a good idea for the U.S. and other Western countries to adopt strict pollution control standards before the Chinese do. (There are admittedly some differences because CO2 is the true example of a global commons problem in that the effects of CO2 emitted is truly independent of where it is emitted whereas other pollutants often have more local effects.)
(2) I do think that we will need to get countries like China onboard too. Unfortunately, as a practical matter and a matter of fairness, it seems like it is necessary for the industrialized countries to “go first”. On the flip side of the coin, those countries will then be able to profitably sell their solutions to the Chinese and others when the time comes for serious emissions cuts in those countries.
Well, nobody said doing science was easy. Yes, we only have one earth and we can’t really run a controlled experiment. But, there are still various ways that we can understand the effects of CO2 and look for the fingerprints of the current warming to determine the cause. We can’t reproduce evolution either. (Well, sure on a small scale, we can see it happening…but, as you know, “microevolution” is not enough to convince a creationist that one species can turn into another.)
As for the solar hypothesis, there have been a number of attempts to try to come up with mechanisms that could amplify or otherwise make solar effects more significant. However, they really have not been successful thus far in most scientists views. And, of course, it would be necessary not only to come up with a hypothesis that works but then also explain why CO2 produces such a small effect…and how that is compatible to climate sensitivity estimates based on the last ice age vs. now and so forth.
I’ve got one word for you: COAL! Unfortunately, even if you assume we won’t use most of the oil that is available (especially the considerable amount available from unconventional sources like tar sands), there is more than enough coal to put us in “deep doo-doo”.
Well, the problem with that is that we are usually not very good at that sort of thing, i.e., the “swallow the spider to catch the fly” approach both because of other consequences of the cause that is the problem (in the case of CO2, ocean acidification seems like the most obvious example we know of now) and because of unintended side effects of the solution. It also tends to require more detailed understanding of the system than is needed to simply reduce our perturbation on the system (and, hence, it seems somewhat ironic to me that many people who point out that there are still considerable uncertainties in climate science are so enamored of solutions that don’t involve reducing our CO2 emissions).
Along these lines, see further discussions starting in the 5th paragraph here.
Your cite probably made more sense to you but I’ll have to read it a couple more times. Yes, Coal is the other CO2 shoe to drop but it has a huge advantage in that it can be scrubbed at the source much easier and cheaper than chasing car exhaust.
Going back to diesel, there are already eco-nazi’s whining about bio-fuel because it is going to starve the world. There is virtually no source of energy that some dill-hole isn’t going to complain about.
Who consumes the products made in China and India?
The Soviet Union and communist eastern Europe were amongst the worst polluters on earth and didn’t appear to be worried about it at all so you cant blame the state of the planet on capitalism alone.
As to the O.P.making some sort of case for dictatorships to get action this would demand a benevolent dictatorship for a start and a dictatorship that was actually interested in global warming as a problem that it wanted to solve.
Judging by the dictatorships within the world at the moment(N.korea,and Zimbabwe for example) the indifference is pretty overwhelming.
Besides themselves, pretty much the rest of the world. What’s your point?
-XT
Well, yeah, I don’t disagree with that. But, I don’t think the CO2 is going to get sequestered without constraints or taxes on carbon emissions.
I do agree that if we get the technology up-and-running to sequester CO2 from coal plants, then it does open up lots of options for running our cars with little or no CO2 exhaust by using plug-in hybrids or fuel cells.
Well, I am not so sure that it is only environmentalists who have raised the concern. I also think it was mostly for the specific case of ethanol produced from corn…and there really is some legitimate question of how much this particular fuel buys us. There have even been claims that the energy used in producing it is more than the energy that it produces, although I think the latest evidence is that the net energy equation is positive…but not that strongly positive. Cellulosic ethanol looks more promising.
I agree that choosing between energy sources becomes choosing the lesser of evils as any source will have some downsides.