With oil prices up over 80% since April 2007 you might think leaders of governments committed to CO2 emissions reductions would be happy that prices are restraining CO2 emissions growth. But if you thought that you would be wrong. The British Prime Minister wants OPEC to hike oil output (and does he seriously think OPEC can do this?).
Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Tuesday called on the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries to boost production to counter rapidly rising oil prices, adding his voice to similar requests from the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush.
"We are not producing enough oil ... and we can take collective action to persuade OPEC and others to get the oil price down," Brown said in an interview on Sky Television.
Does this sound like a guy deeply fearful of anthropogenic global warming? I think not. When you hear other politicians calling on Saudi Arabia and other oil exporters to scale up production you'll know they too are less worried about CO2 emissions and more worried about economic growth and living standards in the short term.
People who are sincerely worried about global warming as a massive threat to humanity right now ought to be thinking one of two thoughts about high and rising oil prices:
- Oh happy days, the world is running out of horrible polluting oil. Declining oil reserves are doing what 100 conferences of diplomats negotiating climate change treaties can never hope to accomplish.
- Oh happy days, luckily the oil exporters see more money to be made by restraining production rather than let the gluttonous oil consumers burn much more every year.
Yet as I listen and read I do not hear anyone singing "Oh happy days". Why is that? Or are you singing secretly "Oh happy days" in the anonymity of your daily shower? Anyone want to fess up to happiness about the rising prices of gasoline, diesel fuel, and heating oil?
In after market trading on Tuesday oil hit a new high of $114.08 per barrel. My own reaction was "Oh I hope I do not find myself homeless when oil production starts declining 4+% per year".
If we are lucky the price of oil will hit $130 by the end of the year but world oil production won't start declining this year or even next year. Why lucky? Higher prices without an absolute decline in oil production will wake up more people in time to do more preparations for when world oil production starts declining at 4% or more per year.
The more they know the less most people care. Anyone want to offer an explanation for this response?
COLLEGE STATION – The more you know the less you care – at least that seems to be the case with global warming. A telephone survey of 1,093 Americans by two Texas A&M University political scientists and a former colleague indicates that trend, as explained in their recent article in the peer-reviewed journal Risk Analysis.
“More informed respondents both feel less personally responsible for global warming, and also show less concern for global warming,” states the article, titled “Personal Efficacy, the Information Environment, and Attitudes toward Global Warming and Climate Change in the USA.”
The study showed high levels of confidence in scientists among Americans led to a decreased sense of responsibility for global warming.
The diminished concern and sense of responsibility flies in the face of awareness campaigns about climate change, such as in the movies An Inconvenient Truth and Ice Age: The Meltdown and in the mainstream media’s escalating emphasis on the trend.
The research was conducted by Paul M. Kellstedt, a political science associate professor at Texas A&M; Arnold Vedlitz, Bob Bullock Chair in Government and Public Policy at Texas A&M’s George Bush School of Government and Public Service; and Sammy Zahran, formerly of Texas A&M and now an assistant professor of sociology at Colorado State University.
Does just looking at Al Gore cause people to fall asleep? Or am I an outlier on this?
Maybe if people think scientists are all on top of it that scientists will figure out solutions. Someone's working the issue. Not to worry?
Maybe the perceived immensity of the problem breeds a feeling of hopelessness?
Maybe fear of the known is less than fear of the unknown? A well characterized problem strikes people as something they know how to work around? (don't buy that ocean front mansion in Fort Lauderdale - as if you could afford it anyhow)
I already think we should stop building coal-fired electric power plants for another reason: cleaner air down at ground level. We should switch to nuclear, solar, and wind. With excellent batteries we could shift most transportation to electric power and breathe cleaner air. I believe the amount of extractable oil and natural gas left is so small that only coal can cause climate problems. (and also see this PDF of a presentation by David Rutledge of CalTech)
An editorial in the Christian Science Monitor discusses the carbon tax idea as a way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
Economists agree that the real cost of burning fossil fuels – damage to the environment and health, not to mention the cost of replacing them as they run out – isn't reflected in today's prices. A carbon tax would directly send a market signal to reduce carbon use. And it would provide an incentive for investment in renewable sources, especially if the tax is set at the source: for natural gas, at the wellhead; for coal, at the mine entrance. Oil would be charged at the refinery because petroleum products create different levels of emissions when burned.
The World Resources Institute calculates that a tax of $15 per ton of carbon-dioxide emissions would double the costs for coal use and raise gasoline prices about 13 cents a gallon (or about 5 percent, at today's prices). Natural-gas prices would rise less than 7 percent. That would result in a 12 percent reduction in CO2 emissions.
So get this: Some carbon tax advocates who want to prevent global warming advocate a carbon tax that will increase the cost of gasoline by a mean 13 cents a gallon. Is that all we are arguing over when we argue about whether to take any expensive steps to stop global warming? I've previously read references to an even higher $30 per ton carbon tax. That's double the $15 per ton and so lets go with that for a 26 cents a gallon increase in gasoline cost. Now we need some historical perspective on gasoline costs to see if 26 cents amounts to much in terms of reduced gasoline demand.
Check out this table of refiner wholesale gasoline costs from 1998 to 2007. Back in the good old days of 1998 gasoline sold at wholesale for a mere 53 cents per gallon. The cost has more than quadrupled to $2.13 per gallon for 2007 and probably right now it is even higher. At the retail level gasoline bottomed out slightly below $1 per gallon in late 1998 and early 1999 and is around $2.80 as of this writing. So the price of gasoline increased by $1.80 per gallon just due to market forces (though by only about $1.50 per gallon if adjusted for inflation). Doesn't that make a 26 cent a gallon increase from a carbon tax seem, well, somehow inadequate for the goal of reduced consumption it is meant to achieve? Recently gasoline demand in the United States went down .2% as compared to early October 2006. The rising price of gasoline has finally stopped consumption growth. But a pretty big increase was necessary to stop consumption growth. If a far larger increase in gasoline prices has only barely stopped gasoline consumption growth why should a carbon tax of 13 or 26 cents a gallon make a big difference? Granted, it will make a difference. But the difference won't be large.
Maybe a carbon tax of between $15 and $30 per ton will have a much bigger impact on the use of coal for electric generation. I'd really like to know how much a dollar of carbon tax increases the price of coal electric per kilowatt-hour. How big a carbon tax on coal would make nuclear power cheaper than coal electric?
But if a carbon tax isn't going to make much difference in US demand far more powerful forces are already pushing up the price of oil, reducing US demand, and these forces promise to push up oil prices even higher. Can anyone guess what I'm thinking about the future when reading this paragraph?
Market Saturation -- The U.S. has reached the unusual position of having more vehicles than licensed drivers -- 1,148 registered personal vehicles (cars and light trucks) for every 1,000 licensed drivers. Britain has 700; Mexico, 208. Brazil has 137 per thousand eligible drivers, and India has 11 per thousand. while China has just nine cars per thousand eligible drivers.
What happens to the price of oil when China reaches 100 cars per thousand eligible drivers? Chinese drivers are going to force US drivers into smaller cars, public transit, electric cars, and electric mopeds.
The New Jersey legislature has passed legislation that will require the New Jersey economy to cut greenhouse gas emissions and Governor Jon Corzine says he will sign it into law.
Under the new law, greenhouse gas emissions generated by every aspect of the state’s economy, not just electricity-generating stations, will have to drop about 13 percent, to 1990 levels, by 2020. The bill further requires that emissions be capped at 80 percent of 2006’s levels by 2050.
Whether the federal government will allow state governments to regulate emissions of CO2 and other gases for the purpose of avoiding climate change remains to be seen. California and a few other states have also adopted laws for greenhouse gas emissions reduction but none go as far as New Jersey's.
The eventual cap at 80% of 2006's level by 2050 is probably easier to achieve than the 13% reduction by 2020. Technologies developed in the 2010s and 2020s will greatly lower the costs of a switch to nuclear, solar, biomass, geothermal, and wind power.
The longer range goal is also easier to achieve because it is easier for energy-intensive industries to migrate out-of-state in the longer run. Companies can make plans to stop enhancing capital plant and not to initiate new plant construction, for example. Notably, this new regulatry policy will probably gradually drive much of the chemical industry out of the state.
If the US federal government allows individual states to enforce their own greenhouse gas emissions regulations then expect business executives to invest more in states that are big coal producers. Why? Because the states that are big coal (and oil and natural gas) producers have governments that favor the continuation of fossil fuels resource extraction and use. We see this in national politics where Barack Obama of Illinois favors federal subsidies for coal-to-liquid plants for example. West Virginia, Kentucky, North Dakota, and Wyoming all make good bets for energy intensive industries that want to avoid state-level green house gas emissions regulations and taxes.
What I want to know: Even if states gain some legal standing to regulation greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions how will that play out with electric power purchased across state lines? If, say, New Jersey requires a big reduction in GHG emissions in electric power plants can the state regulate utilities to require even out-of-state electric power brought into the state be made from plants that emit fewer GHG? My guess is the US constitution's Interstate Commerce Clause will pose an obstacle for that sort of regulation and therefore coal states like West Virginia and Kentucky might become big electricity exports to New Jersey and other northeastern states that also regulate GHG.
I'm especially interested in how this gets applied to the electric power industry because at a national level electric power accounts for 39% of total energy-related carbon dioxide emissions.
The data in Table 11 represent estimates of carbon dioxide emissions for the electric power sector. These emissions when taken as a whole account for 39 percent of total U.S. energy-related carbon dioxide emissions; in calculating sector-specific emissions, electric power sector emissions are distributed to the end-use sectors.
What I also want to know: How much is this law going to cost? Already New Jersey's electricity costs 12.8 cents per kwh as compared to coal-burning West Virginia at 6.2 cents per kwh or less than half New Jersey's cost. The people of New Jersey could find themselves paying New York prices (16.19 cents/kwh) or even Connecticut prices (18.51 cents/kwh - ouch). Though perhaps nuclear and wind power will put a ceiling on medium term electricity price rises.
Also see my post California Bill To Cut Greenhouse Gases 25% By 2020.
The rapidly expanding Chinese economy now emits more carbon dioxide than the American economy.
BEIJING (AP) - China has overtaken the United States as the world's top producer of carbon dioxide emissions - the biggest man-made contributor to global warming - based on the latest widely accepted energy consumption data, a Dutch research group says.
According to a report released Tuesday by the Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, China overtook the U.S. in emissions of CO2 by about 7.5 percent in 2006. While China was 2 percent below the United States in 2005, voracious coal consumption and increased cement production caused the numbers to rise rapidly, the group said.
What I want to know: how long will it take before China's emissions are twice as much as America's? Might be time to make a long term investment in a tropical Aleutian island.
China's per capita income and population size could grow for many years to come. If rising affluence make Chinese people more opposed to the One Child policy then China's population growth could accelerate and Chinese energy consumption could become a few times higher than that of the United States.
Massive construction in China is a major contributor to Chinese emissions.
Jos Olivier, a senior scientist with the Dutch environmental agency, said those statistics are the most accurate but that he and others wanted to find a way to get more immediate figures. He relied primarily on energy data collected by British Petroleum and added information about cement production, a major source of greenhouse emissions from chemical reactions.
Olivier said he believed his figures were fairly reliable. In a telephone interview from his office in the Netherlands, he said his calculations showed that carbon dioxide emissions by the United States declined 1.4% in 2006 — very close to the official figure of 1.3% released in May by the U.S. Department of Energy.
U.S. emissions declined partly because of mild weather in 2006, and partly because of increased use of natural gas instead of dirtier forms of fossil fuel, the Energy Department said.
My guess is that some of that carbon emissions decline in the US is due to rising energy prices. If we really are approaching "Peak Oil" (watch for news about production peaking of the Saudi Ghawar oil field) then we will shift toward coal in a big way. Total carbon dioxide emissions could rise during the early years after oil production peaks as more coal gets used.
To reiterate my basic argument on this topic: The best way to lower carbon emissions is to develop technologies that make other energy sources cheaper than fossil fuels. Photovoltaics and nuclear power combined with next generation batteries could enable us to shift away from fossil fuels for transportation.
The New York Times reports that as climate alarmist catastrophists have painted the threat from global warming in increasingly extreme terms a more scientific middle ground school of thought has developed in reaction to the catastrophists.
They agree that accumulating carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping smokestack and tailpipe gases probably pose a momentous environmental challenge, but say the appropriate response is more akin to buying fire insurance and installing sprinklers and new wiring in an old, irreplaceable house (the home planet) than to fighting a fire already raging.
“Climate change presents a very real risk,” said Carl Wunsch, a climate and oceans expert at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “It seems worth a very large premium to insure ourselves against the most catastrophic scenarios. Denying the risk seems utterly stupid. Claiming we can calculate the probabilities with any degree of skill seems equally stupid.”
I agree with this insurance premium argument. We can't prove either disaster or minimal impact. The amount of atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) increase is large and, with rapidly industrialziing China set to surpass the United States in CO2 emissions by 2009, the massive change in atmospheric CO2 content accelerating. It seems unwise to me to take a passive stance in response to this thread. I've been arguing that it is simply imprudent to do nothing.
My own argument for what to do: A massive research effort to develop cheaper non-fossil fuel energy sources. This approach holds several advantages, not least of which is that it will accelerate rather than decelerate economic growth in the medium to long term
Prometheus web log author Roger A. Pielke Jr. (who writes great stuff btw) says this middle group are not so much climate skeptics as they are heretics on what to do about it.
There are enough experts holding such views that Roger A. Pielke Jr., a political scientist and blogger at the University of Colorado, Boulder, came up with a name for them (and himself): “nonskeptical heretics.”
“A lot of people have independently come to the same sort of conclusion,” Dr. Pielke said. “We do have a problem, we do need to act, but what actions are practical and pragmatic?”
One practical and pragmatic thing to do is to decrease methane emissions. Methane is a more potent greenhouse gas and the costs of lowering methane emissions are lower than the costs of lowering CO2 emissions.
Mike Hulme, Professor of Environmental Sciences at the University of East Anglia, and Director of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research says as environmental political activists have adopted a more catastrophist approach he finds himself getting criticised by catatstrophist believers as well as by warming skeptics.
It seems that mere "climate change" was not going to be bad enough, and so now it must be "catastrophic" to be worthy of attention.
The increasing use of this pejorative term - and its bedfellow qualifiers "chaotic", "irreversible", "rapid" - has altered the public discourse around climate change.
This discourse is now characterised by phrases such as "climate change is worse than we thought", that we are approaching "irreversible tipping in the Earth's climate", and that we are "at the point of no return".
I have found myself increasingly chastised by climate change campaigners when my public statements and lectures on climate change have not satisfied their thirst for environmental drama and exaggerated rhetoric.
It seems that it is we, the professional climate scientists, who are now the (catastrophe) sceptics. How the wheel turns.
Catastrophe movies are exciting and the prospects of catastrophe in real life even more exciting. Plus, lots of people want to think they are fighting in a moral crusade for a great good against evil and ignorance. They think they need to paint an extremely disastrous picture of the future in order to motivate people. So the prospect of global warming has a lot to offer. Plus, Mother Gaia is morally superior to us human enviro-sinners. Never mind that we are the products or creations of Mother Gaia. We fell out of Eden somehow or other when Mother Gaia's natural selection made us too intelligent.
The biggest problem with the catastrophe scenarios is that they involve projections of trends that will not continue even if governments around the world do little to alter current trends. While fossil fuel consumption will likely rise for a decade or two the march of technology looks set to obsolesce fossil fuel even without government intervention. Nuclear, photovoltaics, batteries, and wind will all get cheaper and eventually their costs will fall below the costs of fossil fuels.
But we have several quite compelling reasons to take steps to bring the fossil fuel era to an earlier end. For example fossil fuel usage produces conventional pollutants such as particulates, mercury, and oxides of sulfur and nitrogen. Why expose ourselves to pollutants? Why let the neurotoxin mercury accumulate in the food chains for fish? Why breathe carcinogens and stuff that makes our eyes sting and our throats hurt?
The deep skeptic school on global warming is also making an economic mistake. They correctly point out that restraints on CO2 emissions will raise the price of energy and therefore slow economic growth and lower living standards. But when they fail to push instead for a huge acceleration of nuclear, solar, wind, and other non-fossil fuel technology development they miss the opportunity to help create technologies that lower energy costs and clean up environments at the same time.
Additional advantages of a big R&D push comes from the effects on trade. First off, the need for expensive energy imports will vanish along with the need for oil. US trade deficits will get smaller. Also, my grandmother always used to say "Idle hands are the devil's workshop". That certainly holds true for Wahhabi Middle Eastern oil emirates where oil allows plenty of Muslims to live the life of Riley (or his Arab equivalent). Fewer people would become terrorists if more had to get up each day and go to work. The cut-off of money for Saudi Arabia would also cut off money now used to spread Wahhibi Islam around the globe.
We have the real potential for large technological steps forward (e.g. nanodevice replicators to produce incredibly cheap photovoltaics) to make oil obsolete and to make clean energy sources very cheap. The late Richard Smalley, nanomaterials researcher and 1996 Nobel Prize winner for his work on fullerenes ("buckeyballs"), argued for a $10 billion a year research effort on a wide range of energy technologies and believed such an effort would lead to big breakthroughs in cost and cleanliness of energy technologies. This effort is worth doing even if the global warming skeptics are correct. Lower energy costs, reduced flow of money to the Middle East, and a cleaner environment each by themselves will pay back the money spent.
If we fail to do anything to accelerate the development of new energy technologies and the projections of the global warming catastrophists turn out correct then we will not suffer ruin by any means. The nanotechnology advances we gain in the next 50 years will make movement of equipment into space much cheaper. Nanotech beanstalk space elevators will lower costs by orders of magnitude. We'll be able to move up massive amounts of materials to build big deflector satellites to cool off the poles to stop and reverse ice melts. Climate engineering technologies will save us from catastrophe. But we can become wealthier and healthier sooner by accelerating the development of clean and cheap energy technologies.