Comments Curtis Moore has made

The Obama budget will kill us--literally

The Obama budget proposal is stark, raving insanity--not because global warming is fiction, but because it is hard cold fact and neither he nor his advisors seem to understand our perilous situation.

First, the budget proposal addresses--unless I missed something--only carbon dioxide.  CO2 has a lifetime of 50 to 3,000 years, so slashing emissions--even if the Obama plan would have that result, which is a pipe dream--would have no near-term benefit. As Susan Solomon, one of America's most talented and experienced atmospheric scientists, explained recently "We have to think about it much more like nuclear waste than, like say, smog or acid rain," Solomon, a senior scientist for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, added "What we're doing with carbon dioxide is forever."

The result of the Obama budget will not be a safer future, but instead one that is vastly more dangerous. Indeed, a case can be made that enactment of a U.S. global warming law based on the Obama approach could prove to be a death warrant for the world's inhabitants, because as happens so often environmental matters, the first victim of politics has been science. Carbon dioxide is not the squirrel humanity should be chasing right now.

There are other causes of global warming with lifetimes of a few minutes to a few years. Black carbon, or soot, emitted in vast quantities by diesels and coal-fired power plants, lasts one or two weeks. Ozone, or smog, lasts two to three weeks and carbon monoxide, which indirectly causes warming, a few minutes. Other causes of warming last longer--methane, or natural gas, emitted by refineries, landfills, sewage plants--lasts 8 to 9 years. HFC-134a, used in the air conditioners of cars and trucks, lasts for about 14 years (its use in new vehicles is banned in Europe starting in 2011).

These pollutants are, in the aggregate, the cause of most warming currently being experienced, though carbon dioxide will be the dominant cause in the future. What is required is not a strategy that targets a single cause of global warming or, even six, as the Kyoto Protocol does, because global warming has not only arrived, its pace is accelerating.

Reducing these non-CO2 causes of global warming will yield immense benefits in addition to cooling. Black carbon, an extremely fine particle, kills people. Globally, indoor exposures to black carbon from cooking and other fires, kill an estimated 5 million children a year. Ozone causes and aggravates asthma, while increases in carbon monoxide are linked to death from congestive heart failure.

The need for immediate and substantial cuts in short-lived causes of global warming is urgent because the planet is racing toward so-called "tipping points," beyond which recovering the natural climate will be impossible. The air, ocean and soils are warmer (and the stratosphere cooler, because heat is being trapped at lower levels).

The Arctic and Antarctic are warming and melting, as are as glaciers and winter snow packs throughout the world. Animal and plant populations are shifting, coral is dying and so are planktons, tiny oceanic animals that are the base of the world's food chain. As tundra thaws, it releases methane and carbon dioxide, which causes even more warming. When ice or snow melt, dark soils or water are exposed, which absorb more solar energy, causing additional warming. As oceans acidify because of the carbon dioxide they absorb, the ability of small animals to turn it into shells--coral and sea urchins, for example--declines, make the waters even more acid.

The true danger of global warming, certainly in the near term, is not that the earth will warm gradually, but that it will fall over a cliff. Change in nature is rarely gradual. Snow crashes down a mountainside in an avalanche, lighting thunders through the air at the speed of light and the Twin Towers--some object to this comparison in poor taste, but I find that it causes a knot of fear in the stomach of listeners, which is what they should feel when discussing global warming--stood, stood and stood, then collapsed on themselves as some small tipping point was passed.

Attacking only carbon dioxide, or even principally carbon dioxide to the exclusion of black carbon, ozone, methane, HFC-134a, leaves humanity unnecessarily exposed to the dangers of tipping points and prolongs warming at a time when it could be slowed and perhaps even reversed. It also means that millions of people are being killed unnecessarily.

Auctioning emissions is not necessarily a bad idea, but rebating the money to individuals is.  The dough should be given to those who are generating electricity with less or even no air pollution.  This would provide not only a negative incentive for polluters, but a positive incentive to non-polluters.  Not a single cent should stick to the hands of the government--at least that is the majority view in the Scandinavian countries where feebates have been enormously successful.

Is there anybody out there who is paying attention to science?
On What percentage of auction revenue is rebated? posted 9 months ago 10 Responses

Wow, you folks sure don't have a memory.

What has been happening to Jim Hansen since his testimony before the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources in 1987 is exactly par for the course, and illustrates some important points:

One scientist willing to speak out can have an immense impact.  Hansen's testimony alerted the entire world to what is now recognized as a grave and imminent threat to human survival.  Before Hansen, F. Sherwood Rowland had the courage to say publicly that the industrial chemicals, chlorofluorocarbons--better known by the name given them by their developer, DuPont, as Freons--were destroying stratospheric ozone.

Before Rowland, Clair Patterson of CalTech had the courage and tenacity to review the history of lead dating back to Roman times, to demonstrate that all of humanity, indeed, the entire planet, had been irrevocably contaminated by lead, principally due to its use as a gasoline additive.

(One of the great ironies of history is that the same DuPont scientist who developed CFCs, Thomas Midgely, also developed the ethyl additive.  At the time, DuPont effectively owned General Motors, which later dismantled over 500 rail and streetcar systems in the United States. The company also managed the projects to develop the fission and fusion nuclear bombs, generating immense amounts of still dangerous waste in the process. For an exhaustive review of these and other DuPont-related events, go to my book, Saving Ourselves at www.saving-ourselves.com/.)

When Patterson was awarded the Tyler Price in 1995, he was lauded for "His systematic and far reaching research on the pathways by which lead finds its way into the environment and into living organisms is a paean to the impact of one person's persistence and precision."

  One of those lethal pollutants, by the way, is black carbon, a cause of global warming second by some estimates only to CO2.

Each of the four was viciously attacked by industry in attempts to destroy their credibility, and each managed to survive.  Patterson, sadly, was hurt most by the fact that the assault on him was led by a former student Jack Schmitt, a former NASA astronaut and U.S. Senator.

What makes Hansen's case different from those of Rowland, Patterson, Dockery and Schwartz is the persistence of the critics and the remarkable success they have had in creating an appearance of uncertainty where.  Industry has employed tactics developed by the tobacco industry and, especially, its public relations firm APCO, a subsidiary of the Washington, D.C. law firm, Arnold & Porter.  In an attempt to deflect growing public concerns over the effects of passive smoking, the industry--especially Altria, the owner of Phillip Morris--founded The Advancement of Sound Science Coalition (TASSC).  Knowing that TASSC efforts would be less credible if it were a single-issue group, the global warming naysayers were recruited.  (Again, if you want to know more about this, see my book, Saving Ourselves.)

The result was a critical difference: in the cases of leaded gasoline, CFCs and fine particles the attacks were transparently mounted by the industry with a vested interest in the outcome.  In the case of global warming here is no such transparency, and TASSC appears to be a group merely seeking outcomes driven by "sound science."

The point is that these people had the courage to speak out.  Their science was good and their conclusions have been vindicated over time, despite industry-funded assaults on their credibility.

With respect specifically to Hansen, another climatologist has concluded--

"My assessment is that the model results were as consistent with the real world over this period as could possibly be expected and are therefore a useful demonstration of the model's consistency with the real world. Thus when asked whether any climate model forecasts ahead of time have proven accurate, this comes as close as you get."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/han ...

My suggestion is that everybody who reads this get off of Hansen's case and starting heeding his warnings.  There is not, nor can there be, any credible dispute that global warming has not only begun, but is racing toward a dozen or so tipping points, or positive feedbacks.  Thankfully, the world heeded Patterson, Rowland, Dockery and Schwarz, and we would do well to do the same with Hansen.On Will U.K.'s prime minister act to address the biggest threat to Britain's youth? posted 9 months, 2 weeks ago 36 Responses

Guest post?

I have no idea how to do that.

I started responding to posts here on the recommendation of my son, who does some of this as part of his job.  I've been so frustrated by my inability to place the book and get people to listen to my fundamental message--we're in big, big trouble, but if we will get off our collective butts this is easy to solve--that I'm grasping at straws.On How awful does a bill have to get to lose your support? posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago 32 Responses

This Might Work

When I visit these blogs, I am amazed at the lack of serious thought that is given to solutions.  Here's mine (and by the way, re the acid rain trading program, the forests that were dead in 1990 still are, soils that were toxic still are and lakes incapable of supporting a normal ecosystem, still can't.  Trading is a fraud.).

A Global Warming Trading Program
That Might Work
Curtis Moore

1. Allow either trading of only CO2, or a set of single-pollutant-only trading programs.

Reason for Program Feature

Carbon-equivalent trading has been occurring under the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), a feature of the Kyoto Protocol that allows polluters to fund emissions reduction projects in the developing world.  Brokers and others involved in trading for business reasons are most interested in profit, not environmental protection.  In the cases of many CDM projects, brokers make a small investment of, say, $10 per ton, to destroy a greenhouse pollutant, say, HFC-23 which has an atmospheric lifetime of 11,700 years and a global warming potential (GWP) of the same amount.  Thus the 1 ton reduction at a cost of $10 has a market value of 11,700 x the price of carbon (about $10/ton), or $117,000.
Because the profits from trading CO2 for non-CO2 greenhouse gases are so attractive, money is invested in such projects instead of wind farms, energy conservation or other measures that would move the economy towards sustainability.  Moreover, because HFC-23 is a byproduct of the production of CFC-22, which will be phased out under the Montreal Protocol, these investments are merely accelerating by a few years a elimination that would occur in any event.

2. Allow trading only of emissions, not sequestration.

Reason for Program Feature

The putative purpose of a trading program is to encourage the adoption of new, low carbon  technologies and practices.  The effect of allowing credits for sequestration, whether by injection into oil and gas wells or the ocean, or for assimilation by forest plantations, is to encourage continued high-carbon energy and industrial practices.   Moreover, resorting to practices never before tried carries the risk of unforeseen and unpleasant consequences.  In the case of deep ocean injection, for example, carbon dioxide would extinguish forms of life that live near or on the ocean floor with unknown and irreversible risks.  Geologic sequestration on its face would seem safe enough, but again, this has never been conducted on a widespread basis.  With respect to the uptake of carbon by forest plantations, carbon dioxide is eliminated for only as long as the trees live.  After death, carbon re-enters the system, so the pollutant is being merely displaced in time, not eliminated.  What sequestration buys is not emission reductions but technology avoidance.

3. Restrict trading to only large sources.

Reason for Program Feature

The bulk of carbon dioxide emissions are from large sources such as coal fired power plants, cement kilns and the like.  Restricting a program to these would vastly simplify it administratively, thus reducing the likelihood a system being overwhelmed.  If it proved effective, smaller sources might later be included, perhaps by creating programs at the air quality management district level. Because all previous trading programs have dealt with a limited universe of sources--the largest, sulfur dioxide trading, consisted of roughly 1,200 emitters, for example--there is no experience with large numbers.  In contrast, carbon dioxide trading could potentially involve sources numbering in the tens of millions sources and billions of trades.  While it is true that stock exchanges handle trades of that magnitude, they have evolved over a centuries--the New York Stock Exchange, for example, was founded in 1792.  In addition, trading of stock, bonds or other commodities does not require emissions monitoring, disclosure of prices and profits or other requirements associated with dealing in pollution.

4. Set the cap at 20 percent of 1990 emission levels.

Reason for Program Feature

There is a consensus in the science community that the restore the atmosphere to an undisturbed state requires an emissions reduction to 20 percent of 1990 levels.  Every previous trading program has failed to achieve its stated health or environmental objectives because the limit--the cap, pool or whatever--has been set at a level that is too lenient.  As a result, either the goal was not achieved (e.g. protection of sensitive ecosystems in the case of sulfur trading, elimination of lead in the case of gasoline, or the ambient air quality standards in the case of RECLAIM.  In the latter two cases, the government was forced to intervene: Congress affirmatively banned lead in the 1990 Clean Air Act Amendments; and, the South Coast Air Quality Management District removed electricity generating facilities from RECLAIM and re-imposed stringent emission limits.  In the case of global warming, there is unlikely to be a second chance.

5. Require real-time measurement of emissions memorialized with hard copy records.   

Reason for Program Feature

One of the great flaws of other trading programs has been that information on emissions became publicly available only after the fact, sometimes years later.  In the leaded gasoline program, the information was deemed business confidential and never provided to the public, while in RECLAIM only employees of the South Coast Air Quality Management District had access to the information.  In the European carbon dioxide trading program, incorrect data was submitted by sources, but because there was no monitoring or record keeping, this was not discovered for several years.  Public availability of such information not only minimizes the possibility of fraud, but assures that information provided will be correct.  If it proves to be incorrect, records are available to prove this in support of felony prosecutions.

6. Prohibit any increases in emissions of non-CO2 pollutants or any change in the nature of the pollutant emitted (e.g. from PM10 to PM2.5) and require that the receiving source's emissions of hazardous air pollutants be reduced to virtual zero.

Reason for Program Feature

All trading programs have produced "hot spots" of air pollution.  Examination of increases in fuel consumption at a Mitsubishi cement kiln in the Lucerne Valley of California show that when it increased the number of used tires burned from 1.8 million in 2001 to 2.1 million in 2003, or about 16 percent, emissions of some pollutants rose by about 240 percent.  In the acid rain trading program, emissions of sulfur dioxide increased in 16 states, while recent studies have shown that some ecosystems are much more vulnerable to mercury emissions.  To assure that increases in emissions of carbon dioxide associated with trading are not accompanied by higher levels of local, toxic air pollutants, these should be reduced to a virtual zero.

7. Auction emissions every two years, one year in advance for the ensuing two-year period (e.g. in 2008 and 2010 for the two-year periods starting in 2009 and 2011).

Reason for Program Feature

Previous trading programs have issued pollution rights to current emitters because they were then-current emitters.  The effect of this is to convert a public good,  non-polluted air, into a private good, allowing it to be consumed up to a set amount.  This neither generates funds for the public nor promotes competition for the good being conveyed.     By auction air quality, funds would be generated and polluters would be required to bid against one another for, thus increasing the price.  In addition, trading programs have frequently failed to produce promised emission reductions because compliance was delayed until the conclusion of the reduction period.  Auctioning emission privileges in two-year increments assures that interim reductions are achieved.

8. Pay auctioned income to facilities that have reduced emissions of carbon dioxide over the previous two-year period.

Reason for Program Feature

Those who purchase emission allowances are, in effecting, buying avoidance and thereby continuing to engage in activity that is harmful.  To increase the efficiency of the incentives, firms that reduce their emissions should be encouraged to do so.  Such feebate programs have been remarkably successful in Europe, reducing emissions substantially with a matt er of months.

9. Require annual certification by the senior corporate official of the facility holding an allowance and by the broker that handled a trade that emissions have not exceeded allowances held.       

Reason for Program Feature

All major trading programs to date have experienced fraud.  Requiring certification that is criminally and personally punishable would provide a powerful deterrent.

10. Subject income in excess of 300 percent to a windfall profits tax.

Reason for Program Feature

Profits being realized by emitters and their brokers can and do approach returns of $117,000 for a $10 investment.  The effect of this is to encourage emitters to avoid installing, at a nominal cost, emission controls when facilities are constructed so the pollution can subsequently be sold, generating income for the polluter and trader.  The purpose of a trading program is to encourage economically efficient reductions in emissions by allowing profit on desirable behavior, not reward undesirable conduct.On How awful does a bill have to get to lose your support? posted 9 months, 4 weeks ago 32 Responses

Use coal to rduce emissions

New coal should be allowed only if

--it achieves an emissions rate of gas fired combined cycle used in a combined heat and power mode, as with the Vartan plant in Stockholm, which has been burning coal with 92 percent efficiency since 1991 (though it uses PFBC, not IGCC);

--the increased electricity is used to shut down Eisenhower-Kennedy era coal fired plants, which operate at about 34 percent efficiency;

--the plant operators obtain a additional reduction in emissions of pollutants that cause global warming.

In addition to sharply reducing emissions of CO2, such a strategy would also sharply cut emissions of short-lived greenhouse pollutants, such as black carbon, ozone precursors, carbon monoxide, etc; and, reductions in mercury, cadmium, vanadium and other toxins.On Kansas legislature reviving last year's coal fight posted 10 months ago 3 Responses

1,000 years of doom is avoidable

The majority of the warming that is now being experienced is a product not of carbon dioxide, but the many other pollutants that cause global warming: black carbon, tropospheric ozone, methane, the "F gases" (CFCs, HFCs, etc.), carbon monoxide, etc.  These pollutants have extremely short lifetimes--some are gone in minutes (CO), others in days (BC and ozone), and others in a few years (methane, F gases).

What the United States and the world require are two complementary global warming strategies, one for carbon dioxide, the other for the non-CO2 causes of global warming.  Trade CO2 if you absolutely must, but the others cannot be traded; they vary too much from place to place.  Ozone, for example, can be 80 parts per billion, twice that a few hours later and half that six blocks away. The second must rely on old fashioned command and control, feebates and other such measures.  But if the focus remains CO2, CO2, CO2 and trading, trading, trading, we are finished.

Eliminating these other pollutants is relatively simple and straightforward.  I describe many of the actions that can be taken with technologies and practices that have existed for decades in Part II of my book, Saving Ourselves, which can be found at www.saving-ourselves.com.On Revkin has leading system dynamics expert Sterman on NOAA's 1,000-years-of-hell paper posted 10 months ago 2 Responses

David, please name just one ...

David--

Can you please identify--

-- one new technology that was brought to market by the sulfur or RECLAIM or leaded gasoline trading programs?

-- one new conservation program started because of the sulfur trading program?

-- one area where the soil cation level has returned to historic norms since adoption of the sulfur trading program or where red spruce have begun to regrow?

-- one wind power, solar pv, solar thermal or cogeneration system that was constructed to take advantage of sulfur trading? and,

--one new IGCC,PFBC, natural gas combined cycle or CHP system that was built and operated because of the sulfur trading program?

I've checked on all these, and the answer has been zero.

And please explain why the people of not just the United States but the world should believe that the very same corporations whose emissions have brought the world to the verge of oblivion should be trusted to save it?  DuPont?  The company that gave the world CFCs, leaded gasoline, Teflon flu, and derailed America is now deserving of trust?  American Electric?  Give us a break here.

I understand why you bust Joe Romm's chops--not one of my favorite guys either.  But let's be honest here: NRDC has signed up with the dark side, where Environmental Defense (a false description, if ever there were one) has been for 20 or so years.

I was amazed to to read the extraordinary amount of BS in your response to Joe Romm, but I suspect that it reflects differing views of what a public interest organization ought to do.  In my judgment, and I believe that of most Americans, you should identify what is necessary, rather than settling for what you believe is politically achievable.  You would be best off sticking to identifying what is required to save the world, and leaving the task of achieving that end to others.  Just think of all those kids who would be incrementally more intelligent today, the others in Los Angeles who would be able to breathe normally and those throughout the nation who would be alive had nitrate and sulfate levels been reduced as they should have been.

Harsh words? You bet.  Deservedly so?  You bet.

Having said all this, I recognize that you and I have very different views of what should be done in cases where the bad guys refuse to reduce leaded gasoline, sulfur emissions or greenhouse gases.  Your approach is legitimate, but it has repeatedly failed, and there will not be a second chance for global warming.  We live, or we die, and I'm not ready to write off my kids.

Take care.On NRDC responds to criticism of USCAP's Blueprint posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 29 Responses

Trading Turns a Huge Profit

Cap and trade turns a sow's ear into a silk purse--one stuffed with money.  Two examples:

Example 1: When the the world banned chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) because they destroy stratospheric ozone, industry switched to hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC)-22. (This was made possible because DuPont, NRDC and EPA went behind closed doors and renamed the chemical from CFC-22 to HCFC-22, subject of a piece I wrote in 1989 for The Washington Post, "McTruth: Fast Food for Thought," but that's another story.)

Making -22 produces HFC-23 as a waste byproduct.  It's a very, very powerful cause of global warming.  No big deal; just incinerate the -23. But if the incinerator is installed when the -22 plant is built, it costs about $5 million and is worth nothing as a trade.  Build the plant without an incinerator, however, then retrofit it with one, and the destroyed -23 can be traded for $500 million.  Not surprisingly, the Chinese build their -22 plants initially without an incinerator, cut a deal to install one and voila! somebody makes a $495 million profit.

Example 2: one of the Kyoto gases, SF6, is used as an insulating fluid for circuit breakers, switchgear, and other electrical equipment.  Old equipment may contain 100 pounds of SF6, but new versions have only, say, 1 pound. SF6 is the most potent greenhouse gas that has been has been evaluated, with a global warming potential of 22,200 times that of CO2 when compared over a 100 year period.

So your local utility has an asset that could easily be drained and destroyed at very little cost.  But if it is drained and destroyed as part of a cap and trade system, and a ton of CO2 is worth $10, a ton of SF6 is worth $222,000.

There are many, many more examples of how cap and trade makes polluters rich.  If you were them, wouldn't you support cap and trade? Maybe that helps explain why DuPont, which invented and made the CFCs and HCFCs that not only destroy strat ozone, but cause global warmin g supports cap and trade.  Maybe it also explains why several utilities support cap and trade.

What it fails to explain, however, why the people being appointed by Obama; and the Chairs of the respective House and Senate Committees; and some environmental organizations like NRDC and ED; and California politicians like Arnold Schwarzenegger, all support trading.

For more information on how companies plan to profit from our deaths from global warming, go to http://www.saving-ourselves.com/.  We can save ourselves, but only if we act now--and screw cap and trade.On NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 7 Responses

Market Failure: Cap and Trade

Several years ago I undertook an examination of the cap and trade systems that had been tried in the United States: leaded gasoline; sulfur (acid rain); smog (the Los Angeles RECLAIM program).  To the best of my knowledge, it remains the only truly objective critical examination of actual experience with trading.

The study results are posted below.  For those  interested in reading the entire report, about 140 pages, go to http://www.healthandcleanair.org/emissions/index.html.

And as you read this summary, remember there will b e no second chance to get it right with global warming.  WSe stop it, or we die.

Study Results

    Comparing and contrasting these programs revealed grave flaws common to all of them.  Finding the same failings in all trading programs--as well as evidence of the emergence of these failings in smaller or younger programs, even though they are for different pollutants, time frames and circumstances--suggests that the deficiencies are intrinsic to trading itself, not the result of faulty program design or implementation.
    Some of these failings have seldom, if ever, been discussed.  These failings will be explored in greater detail below, but briefly, they include the following:
    * Abandoning Protection of Health.  Implicit in trading of the "criteria" pollutants that cause sickness and death is the abandonment of protection of health as the single overriding objective of the U.S. Clean Air Act and air pollution regulation generally.  Instead of reducing pollution as fast as technologically achievable, trading allows it--and the illness and death that it causes--to continue for the express purpose of saving money for polluters.
    Trading Removes the Stigma of Pollution.      Air pollution kills and injures.  The stigma associated with such harmful action often acts as a powerful deterrent.  Trading affirmatively sanctions pollution, thus removing the stigma.
    * Killing Environmental Innovation.  Because trading focuses solely on reducing a single pollutant by an exact date and a precise amount at least cost, technologies and practices that deliver multiple benefits--new ways of burning coal, for example, as well as conservation and renewable forms of energy--are frozen out of the market.  While trading stimulates cost innovation, it has the opposite effect on environmental innovation, suffocating emerging technologies.
    * Trading Rigidity Bars Mid-Course Adjustments.  Trading  provides polluters with a degree of flexibility in choosing the means by which to reduce a pollutant and, to some degree, the timing. It is otherwise rigid, however, so as a practical matter it becomes impossible to adjust goals based on new information--new technology, for example, or the discovery of more substantial injuries.
    * Delay and Under-Control.  Emission reductions under trading regimes are uniformly smaller and later than they otherwise would be.  In the case of leaded gasoline, for example, the United States required 23 years to eliminate the fuel, which China accomplished in three.
    *  Fraud, Malfeasance and Secrecy.  While emissions allocations are public, trades and prices are not.  As a result, fraud is a constant threat.  In two of three trading programs examined, there was documented fraud, while the third has not been officially scrutinized.
    * Converting a public good to private property.  The effect of trading is to convert a common good--clean air--into a sump for waste by creating and then conferring on polluters the right to use it to dispose of their pollution.  Thus, what once belonged to all--air quality--is converted to private property.  The explanatory language accompanying one program, acid rain, characterizes this property as "right," while in others it is an undefined privilege conferred on polluters.
    * Health and Environmental Objectives Are Not Achieved.  In every case, trading failed to produce reductions required to protect the resource in question, requiring recourse to the very command and control mechanisms crafters had sought to avoid.On NRDC and EDF endorse the weak, coal-friendly, rip-offset-heavy USCAP climate plan posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 7 Responses

Don't be so dismissive-this has worked

Denis Avery is one of thousands of what I call "the voices" and the Hudson Institute is one of hundreds of corporate front groups that people like Avery call home.  They first started in the early 1970s when  Paul Weyrich, who died a few days ago, started what is now the Heritage Foundation with $250,000 from Joe Coors (the old man, not the son who ran for the Senate).  They multiplied like crazy starting in the mid- to late-1970s when William Simon, who been Secretary of the Treasury and energy czar for Nixon and Ford, took over the Olin Foundation, using its money to start what he called the "counterintellegensia."

There are now more than 300 front groups--the Cato Institute, Manhattan Institute, Reason Foundation, etc.-- and they have done yeoman's work for ExxonMobil on global warming, genetically modified crops for Monsanto and so on (Indeed, this is the first I've heard of Avery entering global warming.  His schtick in the past has been praising pesicides and condemning organic food, as author of Saving the Planet with Pesticides and Plastic: The Environmental Triumph of High-Yield Farming (Hudson Institute, 1995).  Avery's usual outlet has been John Stossel).

They have found their way into mainstream press which uncritically accepts their self-characterization as "conservative think tanks" or "free market advocates."  Their work is sloppy and unprofessional, rarely published in peer reviewed journals.  They're as dishonest as frogs are ugly (except to other frogs, of course).  But for a press grown so lazy that its idea of enterprise reporting is to reach across the desk for a press release, they're perfect.

I wrote a piece on them for Sierra magazine a while back, which you can probably find by  searching for my name and Sierra.

If you are interested in learning even more about the voices, go to the site for my book, Saving Ourselves: How We Can and Why We're Not: The Roles of Corporate America and the Republican Party in Perpetuating Global Warming or to the following:
http://curtismoore.files.wordpress.com/2008/10/the-echo-c ...

But do not dismiss the guys.  They have been incredibly effective, and will continue to be unless somebody or something intervenes.  Personally, I would love to see Jerry Brown, California's attorney general, file criminal charges against Lee Raymond, ExxonMobil's former president, for the felony of knowing endangerment of humanity by funding the voices' lies and half-truths.  It will never happen, of course, but the Walter Mitty in me relishes the prospect of seeing Raymond in an orange jumpsite, behind the bars of a supermax and being careful not to pick up a bar of soap.On Lou Dobbs works to make CNN viewers less informed posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 8 Responses

Cost Benefit Analysis--Immoral and Unworkable

I wrote a lengthy article on this subject several years ago for the Tulane University Environmental Law Journal, "The Impracticality and Immorality of Cost-Benefit Analysis in Setting Health-Related Standards."

For cost benefit analysis to work, both the benefits and costs must be monetized and most often this is impossible.  In some cases, it can be said with fair certainty that this many lives will be saved and that many illnesses avoided, resulting in a decrease in the number of missed work and school days, for example.  It's not easy, but it can be done. Very often, however, the benefits can be described in only the most general terms: reducing carbon dioxide emissions will slow global warming, for example.  Projecting what might happen next, what economic benefits will flow from a cooler planet, is simply beyond the analytical capacity of humanity.

But even if such a calculation can be made, should it?  The United States is founded squarely on the principle that all persons have equal rights, and certain of these can be neither taken nor given away, as expressed in the Declaration of Independence:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with inherent and inalienable rights; that among these, are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness; that to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed; that whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles, and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness." --Declaration of Independence as originally written by Thomas Jefferson, 1776. ME 1:29, Papers 1:315

Yet the essence of cost-benefit analysis in the context of laws and regulations to protect life and health is directly antithetical to the principle of inalienable rights: if the cost of avoiding a death exceeds the monetary value of the life, then the life is taken.  The two simply cannot be reconciled.

Setting aside this fundamental conflict, however, there is another supremely practical problem.  Proponents of cost-benefit analysis assert, and many people accept without challenge, that the costs of complying with environmental requirements can be calculated fairly easily.  Experience, however, has demonstrated that this is simply wrong.

Meeting the emission requirements for cars proposed in the 1970 Clean Air Act, and subsequently enacted, was "technologically impossible," according to the president of General Motors.  When Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFÉ) were proposed a few years later, the Detroit car companies sad they would "outlaw full sized sedan and station wagons." A ban on CFCs, the industrial chemicals that destroy stratospheric ozone, would increase energy consumption by an amount equal to 43 percent of the oil production of the Alaskan North Slope. None of these proved to be true.

My personal conclusion is that industry executives who make such statements are either incompetent or out and out liars.  But the reality is that they will continue to make such statements and continue to be believed by some who exercise power.  Where Cass Sunstein will land is an open question.  He clearly believes cost-benefit analysis can be a useful tool.  I disagree, but perhaps he is right.

The gravest threat, however, is not that cost-benefit analysis will continue to be applied to relatively routine regulatory initiatives like new drinking water standards or emission limits for factories.  However fervently one supports cost benefit analysis, there is a subset of decisions to which it should not under any circumstances be applied: climate tipping points, a small change that can trigger sudden, catastrophic and irreversible change.

The rule in nature is for change to be stepwise: static electricity builds a tiny bit at a time, then suddenly there's a lightning bolt.  Snow collects by minute amounts, triggering without warning a massive avalanche.  Or, an example that I was once told was in bad taste but I continue to use precisely because it makes a vivid impression: the Twin Towers stand, stand, stand then collapse on themselves.

That can happen with global warming, and no action that might prevent reaching a tipping point should be subjected to cost benefit analysis.  Some risks are so immense that they should not be taken under any circumstances, even if the probability of their occurring is minuscule. Some of the tipping points that are known to exist are discussed in my book, Saving Ourselves: How We Can and Why We're Not: The Roles of Corporate America and the Republican Party in Perpetuating Global Warming at saving-ourselves.com.

It is here that Cass Sunstein could do the nation and the world a great service by fencing such decisions off against not just cost-benefit analysis, but any economic review whatsoever.  Congress could do the nation and the world a great service by extracting such a commitment from him.On Obama's pick to head regulatory oversight agency draws criticism, sends Dave on tangent posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 3 Responses

Feebates Work Best

Sweden and the other Scandinavian countries rely very heavily on a wide range of taxes and feebates, and they work very well.

When Sweden, for example, divided sulfur-containing vehicle fuels into three glasses, sort of like the Three Bears' porridge, the dirtiest fuel was taxed and the money given those selling the cleanest fuel.  Within  six months Sweden had virtually cornered the world market on low sulfur fuel.

The same policy was applied to emissions of oxides of nitrogen for sources too small to be effectively equipped with NOx destruction equipment.  Relatively high emitters paid into a fund from which payments were made to relatively low emitters.  NOx emissions fell 40 percent, as employees were paid bonuses to make burner and other adjustments to reduce emissions.

The key to feebate successes was that they are revenue neutral: every kroner that comes in also goes out, with none sticking to the walls.
If the United States were to adopt such a program for, say, generating electricity, the price differential between coal and renewables would disappear, together with the need to think up ways of providing incentives.  The playing field would then be truly level.

The same could be done with vehicles, causing the prices of hybrids, plug-in hybrids and high fuel economy cars, trucks and buses to drop, while those of Hummers and other SUVs rose.  The information required to make such a system work is already collected and the system for operating exists too, because vehicles must be registered.

Sweden also repealed one half of its general tax and replaced the lost income with a tax on carbon dioxide.  Result: renewable energy took off like a rocket.  These success stories and more can be found in my book, Saving Ourselves: How We Can and Why We're Not: The Roles of Corporate    America and the Republican Party in Perpetuating Global Warming at saving-ourselves.comOn No to phony clean coal credits, yes to refundable, renewable tax credits posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses

Absolutely no need to wait for new technologies

Go with me to the Mojave Desert where solar thermal arrays generate enough electricity to supply the residential needs of a city the size of San Francisco.  The first segment was built in 1885 and has been providing power with zero or near-zero air pollution since (http://www.nrel.gov/csp/troughnet/power_plant_data.html).  Or let's hop on a plane to Stockholm, where the Vartan plant has been generating electricity from coal since about 1991 with roughly 92 percent efficiency, compared to about 34 percent for the average U.S. plant.  Or to Tokyo where in 1989 Toyota executives showed me the AXV, a Corolla-sized car able to travel 100 miles on a gallon of fuel.  Or to California where some Prius owners have converted their cars to plug-in hybrids that can that can travel 1,069 miles on 9.7 gallons of fuel.
Ships at sea account for as much air pollution as the entire continents of either North America or Europe because they burn bunker fuel, which is so thick with carbon, sulfur and other contaminants that at room temperature it is solid.  Switch those ships from bunker to fuels like distillate and slap pollution control devices on them, and the world's air pollution would be cut by roughly 12 percent.  There are literally hundreds of on-the-shelf ways to eliminate the pollutants that cause global warming--and some of these have atmospheric lifetimes of a few minutes or a few days--so the cooling benefits would be virtually immediate. Plus, millions of lives would be saved.
I've written two books on this subject--Green Gold: Japan, Germany and the Race for Environmental Technology in 1994--and most recently Saving Ourselves: How We Can and Why We're Not: The Roles of Corporate America and the Republican Party in Perpetuating Global Warming, which can be found at saving-ourselves.com (don't jump to the conclusion that I'm some rabid Democrat from La La land--I was Republican counsel to the U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works for 11 years after working several years for Delaware Republican Bill Roth).
We do not have the luxury of waiting.  The planet is racing toward a dozen or so tipping points, beyond which it will be impossible to return to a livable climate.  These, too, are explained at saving-ourselves.com.
Industries, and companies like electric utilities and car makers, do not want this information known because they stand to make literally trillions of dollars selling reductions as part of a "cap and trade" system, an utterly bankrupt approach that has failed every time its been tried, but that should be the subject of another comment.
On Steven Chu's stances on key energy issues: a primer for his confirmation hearing posted 10 months, 2 weeks ago 5 Responses