U.S. carbon dioxide emissions dropped 1.3% in 2006, as the Energy Information Administration reported yesterday.
President Bush immediately took credit:
"We are effectively confronting the important challenge of global climate change through regulations, public-private partnerships, incentives, and strong economic investment."
[Please, no laughing.]
In spite of the fact that Bush has actually gutted programs aimed at the promoting clean energy technologies, last year's emissions dropped because of:
- higher gasoline prices,
- a sharp drop in heating demand from an unusually warm winter, which helped bring about
- a decline in natural gas prices (and hence more use of this clean fuel for electricity generation).
Hmm. An unusually warm winter -- wonder what caused that. And high gasoline prices -- maybe the president does deserve credit after all.
Planet Gore chimes in that this means "we can indeed reduce our greenhouse gas emissions intensity (the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per dollar of economic output) at a rate that exceeds our economic growth rate." Well, yes, but contrary to PG's implied support of Bush's do-nothing climate policy, this fact argues for greenhouse gas standards and major clean technology investment -- so we don't have to rely on random fortuitous factors to get our emissions reductions to coincide with economic growth.
(If PG thinks Bush's policies are the cause of the drop, then then should be happy to take a wager on 2007 emissions. I'll give them $100 for every 0.1% emissions drop this year if they'll give me $100 for every 0.1% rise this year.)
This post was created for ClimateProgress.org, a project of the Center for American Progress Action Fund.
Climate-news poem: G8 edition
Climate-news poem: Breath-catching edition
Comments
View as Flat
GreyFlcn Posted 10:25 am
24 May 2007
Heh
Ah yes, "Green house emission intensity"
http://greyfalcon.net/denial
Queue in the video at 11:20
Gotta love semantics white lies.
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Biodiversivist Posted 3:15 pm
24 May 2007
Sorry, had to laugh
That picture is classic Bush.
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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WWAGD?! Posted 2:57 am
25 May 2007
Yes, exactly
This is what I've been shouting about.
Global Warming reduces our energy needs, and hence automatically reduces pollution.
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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WWAGD?! Posted 5:41 am
25 May 2007
You Like Pictures?
Here's another classic:
http://bilesnarksneer.typepad.com/bile_snark_sneer/images ...
John Bailo, The "Denier Guy"
You Read It Here First
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GreyFlcn Posted 6:23 am
25 May 2007
Condi Likie
Looks like Condolezza Rice liked her test drive around in the Tesla Roadster yesterday :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyKnDMtsqls
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YsZHYAZuzPg
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I am a Conservative Posted 12:09 pm
27 May 2007
Good for the Goose, etc.
You say:
"Hmm. An unusually warm winter -- wonder what caused that."
As you well know, the temperature change in any one year is, for all practical purposes, entirely stochastic, even in the presence of a long-term trend of about .008C warming per year.
Similarly, the change in GHG emissions / $GDP is any one year is, for all practical purposes, entirely stochastic, even in the presence of a long-trend of reduction.
Why do you (implicitly, at least) take one data point as evidence of a trend, but not the other?
Jim Manzi
(Planet Gore author and non-denier of AGW)
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David Roberts Posted 12:39 pm
27 May 2007
Jim,
Good point. And welcome. I've been hoping to lure more conservatives onto this site. I hope you'll stick around and that you'll both offer and receive civil (but vigorous!) arguments.
grist.org
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JMG Posted 4:44 pm
27 May 2007
Does not compute
What about for practical purposes like noting the presence of a persistent trend? Is discerning the presence of such a trend NOT a "practical purpose?"
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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David Roberts Posted 4:51 pm
27 May 2007
But JMG,
Joe didn't say anything about detecting a trend. He implied that global warming caused this latest warm winter in particular. Jim's point is that that attribution makes roughly as much/little sense as attributing a tiny one-year drop in carbon emissions to Bush policies.
Of course the trends are what we care about, and temperature and carbon emissions are both trending up, but still.
grist.org
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sunflower Posted 5:12 pm
27 May 2007
0.008 C per year is cooking the books.
Implies 0.08 C last ten years, no?
Implies 0.8 C the next 100 years, no again.
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JMG Posted 5:44 pm
27 May 2007
A year is not a day
DR: I may be wrong, but I believe that Manzi was trying to state that Romm's musing was specious because it postulated that the weather in a given winter showed the fingerprint of global heating.
The classic truism is that the weather on any given day is random; I think Manzi has extended that much too far by saying that the weather in any given YEAR is purely stochastic.
Perhaps the truism once held. It appears not to be the case any more. As the statistical process control gurus would say, we appear to have a special cause of variation at work. The expected randomness is not found anymore.
Let's try this: anyone who thinks the the average global temperature in any year is still purely stochastic should have no problem taking the "colder" side this bet:
I'll wager $5, payable as a donation to Grist, that the average global temperature for 2007 will be HIGHER than the average global temperature for the past decade -- a decade which, after all, includes many of the hottest years on record! And I'll wager $10, again payable as a donation to Grist, that the average global average temperature for 2007 will be HIGHER than the average global temperature for the past 20 years.
Surely the colder side of that bet seems pretty safe if the average in any YEAR is "purely stochastic," yes?
Save the world: Reduce greenhouse gas emissions 5% annually.
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Biodiversivist Posted 1:49 am
28 May 2007
Jim, welcome
Joe's comment was a tongue-in-cheek rhetorical question. The fact that the temperature at any given hour, day, week, or year is irrelevant is irrelevant.
What exactly is a conservative anyway? How does one apply for the label and where should it be worn? I'm always in need of labels to wear depending on which crowd I'm in.
Remember when "conservatives" use to deny there was global warming? Most have given that one up for an easier to defend argument: Global warming may be real but we didn't cause it. That argument will soon give way to something new. I'm guessing it will be: It may be real and we may have caused it, but it is no big deal (massive human suffering and extinction of biodiversity).
Have you been to the museum yet?
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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tico89 Posted 12:36 pm
28 May 2007
Aren't there more important things?
Surely there are more important things to discuss than almost pure semantics. The original comment was merely a throwaway comment, an extra sentence added to the post. Yes, blaming one warm winter on global warming is as ridiculous as crediting one year of fallen emissions to the U.S. president. Can't we move on?
If I share initials with 'Global Warming', is that a sign?
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I am a Conservative Posted 7:40 am
01 Jun 2007
Thanks
David,
Thanks for the welcome.
Sunflower,
Your numbers are correct, over the past several decades temperature has been fairly steadily increasing at a rate equal to about 0.8C per century. The actual increase in temperature over the past ~150 years is about 0.6C. Obviously what will happen in the future is open to question.
JMG,
Look at it this way. Take Jim Hansen's paper that has a temperature history for the past several decades. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/103/39/14288
In this document, look at the past ten years of Station Data for average global surface temperature. You will find (by eyeballing it) 5 up years and 5 down years.
So there is a trend, but the average annual trend of .008C is so small vs. annual variation that the odds of any one year being up or down are very close to 50/50.
Biodiversivist,
I don't have an online subscription to the NYT (don't draw any special conclusions from that), but my guess is that your link is to the crazy creationist "museum". All I can say is that all coalitions have some pretty wacky skeletons in the closet (so to speak).
Tico89,
"Surely there are more important things to discuss than almost pure semantics."
I agree
Best,
Jim
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Biodiversivist Posted 9:17 am
01 Jun 2007
That's right
"All I can say is that all coalitions have some pretty wacky skeletons in the closet (so to speak)."
...and when you throw the whackos out what have you got left? A bunch of people tightly clustered on either side of the middle. Who needs divisive labels?
http://franz.org/quiz.htm
In the end, it all comes down to biodiversity. Poison Darts--Protecting the biodiversity of our world
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