FREE Insights Column
What’s Next for Climate Change?
By Guest Writer, 3-18-10
Domestic and international efforts to reduce CO2 emissions are dead in the water. Many will think this is bad news. I don’t. Here’s why.
Policies such as the Kyoto Protocol and U.S. cap-and-trade legislation focus solely on reducing CO2 emissions. But these are symbolic acts, mere posturing, while doing little or nothing to achieve their stated goals. Stubborn reliance on this approach is now the main barrier to an effective climate policy.
The 1,200-page American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, known as Waxman-Markey, is an example. It sets an ambitious target of reducing total U.S. greenhouse emissions 83 percent by the year 2050. In 2005, the year chosen as the baseline, the U.S. emitted about 6 billion tons of CO2. An 83 percent reduction by 2050 means that U.S. emissions must be just over one billion tons.
The American Enterprise Institute’s Steve Hayward puts this in context. He writes that the U.S. last emitted one billion tons of CO2 in 1910, when our population was 92 million and total GDP (in 2008 dollars) about $572 billion. (2008 GDP was $14.2 trillion.) In order to reach the target, per-capita CO2 emissions will have to be no more than 2.4 tons. The last time U.S. citizens emitted this low level of carbon was 1875. These kinds of reductions are so absurd they will not even be seriously attempted.
Current U.S. per-capita CO2 emissions are 20.7 tons. France and Switzerland have the lowest at 6.59 and 6.13 tons, respectively. This is more than twice the level the U.S. must achieve to reach the Waxman-Markey target. These numbers are low because France generates 79 percent of its electricity from nuclear power. Hydropower meets more than half of Switzerland’s energy needs with nuclear contributing another 39 percent.
Green activists deserve much of the blame for all this. Alarmist rhetoric combined with demands that politicians support policies whose costs far outweigh the benefits have profound consequences. Walter Mead sums up: “The climate change movement...adopted...unrealistic and unreachable political goal, and sought to stampede world opinion through misleading and exaggerated statements.... Foundation staff, activists and...journalists cocooned themselves in an echo chamber of comfortable group-think, ...they thought they were making progress when actually they were...digging themselves into an ever-deeper hole.”
Adding to the problem are questions about the reputation of the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change; it’s clearly not an honest broker regarding the science of climate change. Shoddy work includes irresponsible, inaccurate claims that 80 percent of Himalayan glaciers will vanish by 2035 and bogus predictions of increased hurricane damage. Also, multiple revelations of an advocacy driven agenda trumping honest science destroys credibility.
Climate change is not a pollution problem. It is an energy use problem. Since economic activity drives growth in CO2 emissions, and governments are loath to pursue policies that limit the economic opportunities of its citizens, efforts to reduce carbon emissions must come through either improvement in energy efficiency or decarbonisation of our energy supply.
Fortunately, some policy entrepreneurs are proposing alternatives. They follow Gwyn Prins, of the London School of Economics, who observes: “Worthwhile policy builds upon what we know works and upon what is feasible rather than trying to deploy never-before implemented policies through complex institutions requiring a hitherto unprecedented and never achieved degree of global political alignment.”
Daniel Sarewitz of Arizona State University writes in Nature: “A successful climate policy regime will match short-term costs with the real potential of short-term gains. These gains can come from reducing vulnerabilities to climate impacts, and increasing security and wealth generation from energy-technology innovation. Both paths call on the government to do things that most people see as appropriate: to provide public goods and promote innovation. Both paths also allow climate change to be understood not as impending doom that requires deep sacrifice to ensure survival, but as an opportunity to continually improve society.”
Ultimately, such ideas will break the status quo inertia.
Pete Geddes is Executive Vice President of the Foundation for Research on Economics & the Environment (FREE), based in Bozeman, MT. Contact him at pgeddes@free-eco.org.
NewWest.Net welcomes guest columns of all stripes. Submit yours to editor@newwest.net.
[End of article]For most of the 20th century school kids were taught in science class that Glaciers appeared and melted on a regular schedule due to the tremendous difference in climate between ice ages and interglacial warming periods. Since then a tremendous amount of evidence supporting natural cyclic climate change has accumulated from investigating the geologic record. Suddenly we are confronted with a new theory that humans are causing climate change by increasing atmospheric CO2 supposedly confirmed by computer models of the earth's climate system. Producing CO2 has become the secular equivalent of original sin. But the idea that anthropogenic C02 will lead to apocalyptic climate change is faith based not science based.
Comment By Victor, 3-18-10Abnormally high levels of gases are being produced by human activity, which are accumulating in the atmosphere. High concentrations of these atmospheric gases prevent the Sun's energy from being re-emitted by Earth back into space, so it accumulates and warms up the planet.
* CO2 is a greenhouse gas
* More CO2 in the atmosphere will heat the planet
* We are emitting lots of CO2
* CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere
* The planet is getting hotter!
"CO2 is a greenhouse gas": 1. The climate system doesn't function like a greenhouse. It functions like a heat pump, removing ground heat upward and poleward. 2. Water vapor (relative humidity) and water droplets (clouds) account for about 95% of the greenhouse gas effect. "More CO2 in the atmosphere will heat the planet": 1. Looking back into the geologic record we see that CO2 doesn't always correlate with atmospheric temperature and that atmospheric temperature increases cause CO2 increases, not the other way around. "We are emitting lots of CO2": 1. Anthropogenic Carbon emissions into the atmosphere are about 5 to 8 gigatons annually, which is about 1% to 2% of the total 750 gigatons of Carbon in the atmosphere already. 2. There is no proof in the geologic record or otherwise that CO2 changes cause long term climate changes. "CO2 is increasing in the atmosphere": 1. Present atmospheric CO2 levels are about 390ppm which is over 2500 molecules of atmosphere for each molecule of CO2 not including water vapor molecules. 2. There is no law of physics that permits 1 molecule of CO2 to determine the temperature of over 2500 molecules of Oxygen, Nitrogen and other gases. 3. Atmospheric CO2 levels are the 2nd lowest they've ever been in the last 400 million years. As a matter of fact C02 levels have been over 2000ppm for millions of years at a time in earths history without a discernible negative effect on animal or plant life. 4. During the last 50 years increasing CO2 has increased plant growth on Earth about 20%. "The planet is getting hotter!": 1. According to some satellite data the planet is cooling slightly. 2. The IPCC is desperately attempting to prove a 1 degree C rise in the last century which, if it were true, would be in line with natural global warming during the last 6 interglacial warming periods over the last 1 millions years.
Comment By horst, 3-18-10One finally has to conclude that Sr. Garcia is but a paid propagandist.
Comment By Jay, 3-18-10Economists worthy of the term realizes our environment is crucial to any economic system; but capitalists realize, in the short term, saving the environment may be bad for business.
Comment By Tom Klumker, 3-19-10Horst, Mickey's information sounds like it is at least true science and not the propaganda science that Al Gore and the global warmers and climate changers keep trying to make people believe. Radical environmentalism is ruining our nation and is basically transforming it into a society we won't recognize in the future. What with the Center for Biological Diversity and WildEarth Guardians and groups like them are doing it doesn't paint a very pretty picture for our future unless you believe in some pre-conceived pre-Columbian utopia where everybody will be eliminated from the vast landscape and pushed into communes and large cities, with the large predators ruling that fairyland, except for the poor polar bears which will all drown in the melted ice caps.
Comment By Horts, 3-19-10Mr. klunker:
Ranchers--a class of Americans who have been subsidized for going on 150 years are the kind of people paying for what Sr. Garcia is peddling...
Horst, you really give liberal ideologues a bad name. I haven't decided whether you're a moron, an imbecile, an idiot or all of the above. No one is paying me to pedal anything. I review the arguments on both sides and decide for myself which side has the least facts and the most bullshit. At the depths of the last ice age, sea level was about 400 feet below present sea level. Where did all that water go? It was locked up in glaciers covering the polar regions. At the approximate end of the last ice age about 18 thousand years ago sea level was back up to 300 feet below present sea level. And of course present sea level is 400 feet above lowest sea level during the last ice age. Where did all that water come from? Returned to the ocean from melting glaciers. According to the geologic record, this ice age-interglacial warming climate cycle has occurred about 6 times during the last 1 million years on a regular basis, ice ages lasting about 100 thousand years and interglacial warming periods lasting about 15-20 thousand years, and there is no convincing evidence that this cycle is caused by variations in atmospheric CO2 or humans. Additionally there is no convincing evidence that there is an atmospheric CO2 catastrophic tipping point at around 300ppm. Check the evidence, ding bat.
Comment By Charles Malen, 3-19-10Mention global warming and all sorts of experts appear. It is like waving a red flag at a bull. One of the most vociferous is Mickey Garcia. Sneaking a global warming story past him is less likely than sneaking a morning past a rooster. I would suggest he post his CV so that we can ascertain the credibility we should assign to his posts.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-20-10Credibility is based on evidence not titles like "expert". In any case there there are plenty of degreed "scientists" who don't believe that global warming is anthropogenic or that present CO2 levels are a threat to humanity and some of them have their own websites for anyone interested.
Comment By horst, 3-20-10Sure you do, mick. I'm betting thought that your paycheck comes from the very same industries who're paying those degreed "scientists" who don't believe that global warming is anthropogenic or that present CO2 levels are a threat to humanity. The key word, I think, is believe.
Comment By Jay, 3-20-10Those sophisticated scientists whose primary concern is the sacred economy, have consistently sought to muddy the waters by pointing out that geological history is replete with similar temperature fluctuations.
They have ignored or refused to attend to the fact that this fluctuation is taking place at a time when large portions of the homo sapien population is at critical risk for the first time since the ember began to cool!
Were this just another of those many fluctuations--when coastal populations were not composed of sentient creatures with the odd lumps in front of their brain-stems--it would make sense to write off this circumstance as just another of Mother Nature's quirks.
It seems particularly odd and rather peculiar to me, that those same people who are most concerned that Sheriff Sam insist--by force of arms if necessary--that the entire world accept U. S. notions of behavior, are as well most resistant to the notion that our lesser brethren are at risk from our incessant seeking for comfort and convenience...
For those people willing to lay a foundation of actual science for this field rather than "a seat of the pants approach" see http://geoflop.uchicago.edu/forecast/docs/lectures.html
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-20-10Two separate thread here: 1.Follow the money: The amount of government grants awarded to scientists who are friendly to the climate change idea amounts to multiple billions of dollars over the last few decades, while government grant money going to scientist who are not so friendly to the idea of anthropogenic global warming is almost non existent. 2. A quasi religious belief that humans are destroying the Earth by wantonly over consuming and producing CO2: Everyone is free to make up there own religion but the evidence and the facts don't support this idea.
Comment By the real mike, 3-20-10The facts do support it. You're free to be the KKK (Ketchum Klass Klown in this case); but, don't be spreading nonsense when you clearly don't have any background to assess what the facts do or don't say.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-20-10Environmental Effects of Increased Atmospheric Carbon Dioxide:
http://www.oism.org/pproject/s33p36.htm
Anthropogenic Global Warming is Anthropogenic nonsense.
Comment By Horst, 3-20-10Is the real mike insinuating that you are an insecure little attention seeker from Ketchum, Sr. Garcia?
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-20-10You seem to have the intellectual depth of an Irish Setter. There are many more effective ways of getting attention than trading insults with you two nitwits. You claim to believe in Anthropogenic Global Warming but you don't have a clue about how the climate system, or CO2 works and you're attempting to cover up your lack of understanding by identifying my geographic location? That's pretty lame, fella's.
Comment By horst, 3-20-10I'm only wondering what you're getting for the pimping you're doing, Sr. Garcia.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-20-10I'm pimping for free, on behalf of no one but me.
Comment By horst, 3-20-10Insecure folks in Montana are starting to pack heat, Sr. Garcia. Had you thought about that?
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-20-10Enough heat to cause global warming?
Comment By the real mike, 3-21-10Mickey, it's not your geographic location that's at issue; it's the class clown part.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-21-10You know nothing about me other than the stories than you're attempting to project onto me which is a reflection of you own insecurities. In any case making up stories about personalities doesn't disguise your ignorance of how Earth's climate system works.
Comment By horst, 3-21-10We know you're lacking when it comes to credentials.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-21-10So are you and Al Gore. Additionally there is no assertions that I've made about climate change on the internet or otherwise that haven't been published by credentialed scientists.
Comment By Horst, 3-21-10The difference being, of course, that I have made no such wide pronouncements as you. I have only pointed out you are trying to be a big frog in a big pond--without the equipment.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-21-10Apparently you've got an ego problem along with a knowledge deficit and a short term memory problem. You also made a major pronouncement that Anthropogenic global warming is true without the comprehension of the climate process or climate history to back it up. That you see anyone who claims present global warming is not anthropogenic as attempting to be a large frog in a large pond is revealing and is beside the point which is that anthropogenic global warming is either myth or reality.
Comment By horst, 3-21-10Now I think you're starting to manufacture cover.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-21-10Unlike you, I don't need cover.
Comment By J, 3-22-10Mickey Garcia is trying to have a debate about global warming; you know presenting a theory and defending it. There appear to be others that are less interested in debating the topic and more concerned with Mr. Garcia himself. Someone lays out info in an easily understandable way and they must be a paid agent of evil right wing puppet masters. Or it could be that he is fed up with all the B.S. coming from the evangelic global warming camp.
Comment By horst, 3-22-10Very brave statement, J.
Comment By Handlebar, 3-22-10All I read here so far is on person bring up some rational counterpoints to the global warming debate and the rest are a bunch of zealots who attack him rather than his points. Ironically very similar to the way that men of reason were attacked by the church
Comment By Neillos, 3-22-10Gases trapped in ice cores from the past 100000 years have shown a clear correlation between the concentration of carbon dioxide and global temperatures. Now, a correlation does not equal causation, but the striking connection requires explanation. Scientists have a robust theory to explain the connection. Where is yours?
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-22-10The explanation is simple. Cause and effect has been reversed using propaganda. Rise of CO2 is an effect of global warming not a cause. When air temp increases, plant growth increases in both quantity and speed. Tropical forests grow more biomass per acre per unit of time and of course more decay creating more CO2 than colder climate forests. When Oceans, which cover about 70% of the earth and are the dominate regulator of atmospheric CO2 by far, warm, they out gas a tremendous amount of CO2 into the atmosphere. Another piece of evidence that oceans are warming is that U.S. Rainfall has been increasing at about 1.8 inches per century since about 1895. When ocean surface temps. increase. evaporation increases creating more evaporation/condensation/precipitation. And of course the oceans are heated by two major sources, the Sun and sub surface geothermal activity. Since the atmosphere is warmed by the oceans not the other way around and ocean surface temps are the primary driver of long term climate change, atmospheric anthropogenic CO2 could not be causing global warming.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-22-10And finally if you take a very close look at that ice core data that has not been fudged you'll notice that CO2 increases lag Air temp. increases by a few hundred years.
Comment By jed, 3-22-10And Sr. Garcia is this rustic genius--who having a galileo complex--is second guessing the finest scientific minds of our time...
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-23-10"finest scientific minds of our time"!!? Most of these people are on the government payroll doing politically correct research for their daily bread, some of who are quacks and crackpots who are not above fudging research results because they dearly believe the Anthropogenic Global Warming Religion. The Scientists on the other side, and there are plenty, are completely shut out from these funds, which have reached multiple billions of dollars over the last 2 decades. I'm not a rustic genius. I'm just an average citizen with some scientific literacy who has looked at both sides of the question and who can tell the difference between bullshit and reality.
Comment By J, 3-23-10Number of people who have died as a result of man made climate change 0. Things that are killing people as I write and will continue to do so; malnutrition, access to clean water, easily curable or preventable diseases (malaria, AIDS). These are immediate problems with solutions that can be implemented with current technology. Even if climate change were real wouldn’t you want to do something about issues that are killing people right now? Who knows maybe its part of their plan less people on earth means less carbon emissions. The biggest carbon foot prints any of us will make are our offspring.
Comment By jay, 3-23-10I tend toward the notion that you are a fraud, Mickey.
Comment By J, 3-23-10Typical liberal tactic, don’t debate the topic and level personal attacks upon your opponent.
Comment By Horst, 3-23-10Only phonies debate scientific questions if they haven't any credentials.
Comment By Mickey Garcia, 3-23-10That's an interesting notion. "You're not qualified to dispute my opinions". Sounds kind of elitist to me.
Comment By Tom Klumker, 3-23-10Horst and J:
Go back to the top and read all the way down. Garcia has won the debate and done so with credible information and style, just not the info you guys or gals want to hear. Period.
Hey! What did you all think of my piece?
Comment By Jedediah, 3-23-10What piece?
Comment By Pete Geddes, 3-23-10:-(
Comment By J, 3-23-10I enjoyed it.
Comment By Pete Geddes, 3-23-10:-)
Comment By Justin Boggs, 3-31-10No matter how you look at it, Mickey has your punk asses whooped. Beside Mickey, Victor is the only person on here who has even attempted to argue facts.
As far as arguing scientific facts, eugenics and the idea that parents shouldn't touch or cuddle their babies were once dominant beliefs of credible scientists every where, as was the idea that we were all going to die from starvation brought on by an ice age.
All the people on the AGW side have are models, and weather models aren't worth anything. That's not just my opinion, it's the opinion of the VERY politically liberal chair of the physics department at Princeton.