Ummm, wouldn't one want to know the CO2-per-tons (of goods shipped) figures before drawing any conclusions?

I'm going to take a big lead off first here and guess that shipping things by sea and land is, oh, at least a bazillion times (technical term) more energy-efficient than shipping by air (the term "air frieght" being a synonym for needless, earth-destroying waste).

The only things that should be shipped by air are organs (hearts/kidneys/etc.) needed for lifesaving transplants.

Also--exactly why is a claim that US GHG emissions doubled in 14 years "an obvious exaggeration?"

5% annual increase doubles the base value in 14 years.  Is there some obvious reason that I should not believe that US GHG emissions increased by an average annual rate of 5%, even as population increased, car sizes and VMT shot up, consumption shot up, house sizes shot up, etc. etc.

I'm not saying it happened, I don't know the figures offhand.  But there's sure nothing "obvious" that says it couldn't have.

It is fine to play with numbers, but recent work done by consultants for the EU, EPA, and California ARB seem to indicate a major descrpancy between fuel sold and fuel burned - with the conclusion that use of marine bunker sales are virtually useless numbers when estimating CO2 emissions.  In short, the new, improved methods for worldwide shipping fuel consumption and emissions could be much higher.  The debate is about how much, such as 30, 50, or whatever.

In other words, marine bunker fuel sales data are junk science that can lead to under-estimation of any air emissions.  Dr. Corbett of University of Delaware has an excellent paper on this very topic.

Sammie

Onward through the fog

It is also worth remembering that because plane travel takes place at the top of the troposphere and bottom of the stratosphere that water vapor emissions from it are a forcing not a feedback. This combined with NO2 emissions means that emissions from plane travel have a much greater effect than the same emissions would at sea level or on land. The usual average multiplier used for plane travel is 2.7, and many people think this is low. So air travel is responsible for a lot more warming that shipping, and also is responsible for a lot more than you would think simply looking at emissions.

Incidentally air travel also is an example of both the strength of market based controls and the need for supplementation.

Suppose the air travel industry had to pay for their emissions either by paying a carbon tax or by buying permits. In either case they would pay for emissions in their fuel, and also for the additional effect caused by the emissions being at high altitudes rather than the lower troposphere.

Would that reduce their emissions much. No - because while we have some techical subsitutes for air travel, we don't have the technical means to reduce emission much during actual flights. So what would the result be? The airline industry would reduce flight as little as possible, pay the carbon tax or outbid others for permits, and then reduce other costs - labor, maintenance and such. (Most analysis agree that that airlines have substantial opportunties in these areas.) In additions, to the extent that flights do rise in price, a fair number of people would continue to buy tickets - especially for international travel, which is expensive in any case.

I've argued against the idea of having both a combined trading and tax structure: but air travel really looks like a place where there would be a good case for doing both. If air travel rises as projected in the business as usual scenario, it as an industry will eventually end up producing most of the emissions the world as a whole can afford. Because of a combined willingness of people to pay high prices for air travel, and the ability of the air industry to find places besides  emissions to cut costs, even under an emissions trading or carbon tax, you could find the airline industry still producing a high percentages of the emissions of a BAU scenario, leaving very few for other purposes. In other words we could find ourselves needing to cut almost all of our remaining allowable emissions just to make up for air travel under a system that relied only on carbon taxes or emissions trading.

It looks like you need to take a sectoral approach here. If you wanted to stick to market mechanisms as much as possible you could put a seperate higher carbon tax on air travel, or put in place a supplementary emissions trading strictkly for air travel emissions, where air lines would have to trade among themselve, and could not slurp up all the emissions from all the other sectors.

Alternatively this looks like  a case where you might want to supplement a carbon tax or trading system with more old fashioned quantity based regulation - for example by limiting total airport space, total runway space, total air miles - regulating some easily measure proxy to limit total flights.

bingo!
co2 per ton (tonne) is the obvious measure. surely theres some analysis out there...!

I am not convinced that jet travel could not be much less damaging with existing infrastructure.  I question whether slower jet speed could save fuel, and lower altitude plus lower speed could save the upper atmosphere and save fuel.  The only costs would be more passenger air time and more air noise.

The same goes for ships, i.e. speed and motor sails (sailing plus engines during doldrums).

And also lower speed limits for cars, trucks, etc.  Can't we all just slow down and enjoy life on Earth?

I contend that, instead of focusing emissions tracking efforts on the airlines, shipping companies, etc. the focus should be on their client.  I contend this same focus from a power perspective would be best served.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why the initial rollouts of the California legislation, EU ETS and the like are all focused on power generation, etc. WITHOUT being focused on tracking the end use, that of the client using the power.

If we really want to reduce emissions from air travel, power generation, etc. we should be requiring the commercial sector to full under the cap and trade and/or carbon tax.  First though, we should be requiring them to track their emissions footprint.  From a corporate transparency perspective to total disclosure, why we are not making efforts at the tracking of GHG footprint by a commercial end user is really puzzling.

I know if the pressure were put on a large company, pick any one - IBM, McDonalds, Safeway, etc. - to adhere to an emissions cap through their direct and indirect emissions, it would have a much larger benefit, in my opinion, than focusing on the power generation/business travel/emissions source alone.

If I'm a company who has to adhere to an emissions cap, I will take a broadbased approach to emissions reduction focusing on the entire breadth of opportunities.  It would be a greater impact.

OK, glad to know that the world's biggest emissions pig only increased those emissions by 18% during one particular recent period cited.

But, to return to my question about why you said it was "an obvious exaggeration," I'm old enough to remember being taught that we had to plan for 7% annual electric demand increases forever.  

If by obvious you mean "readily apparent to those who actually already know the contradictory fact" then I would agree that Vidal's statement was an obvious exaggeration.   But that doesn't seem like how anyone I know uses the word.

But I maintain that there's still nothing obvious (as in, apparent on inspection, or on its face) that says that US GHG emissions couldn't have doubled in 14 years.  

Is there something I'm missing here, something that explains why it is obvious that the cited factoid was bogus?

You said Vidal was normally good but had to be watched closely because of "an OBVIOUS exaggeration" he had made.  This concerns me, because it means that something that is OBVIOUS totally eluded me and continues to do so.

>For the life of me, I cannot understand why the initial rollouts of the California legislation, EU ETS and the like are all focused on power generation, etc. WITHOUT being focused on tracking the end use, that of the client using the power.

Because if the utility or airline has to pay a carbon tax or buy permits, they will pass the cost on to the end user  - giving the end user incentive to reduce their use. Tax or having emissions caps as far upstream as possible provides the same incentives as downstream with the following advantages:

less red tape

lower transaction costs

most accurate measurements - less opportunity for gaming