Hello world. It’s your friendly neighbourhood denialist here. Look, we need to talk. I think we got off on the wrong foot. You’ve got me all wrong. I’m really an open-minded guy. All I’m asking for is evidence of your AGW claims. Surely that’s not too much to ask?
And please note, that when I say evidence, I mean:
1) Nothing that was recorded by instruments such as weather-stations, ocean buoys or satellite data. Since all instruments are subject to error, we cannot use them to measure climate.
2) Nothing that has been corrected to account for the error of recording instruments. Any corrected data is a fudge. You must use only the raw data, which is previously disqualified under rule #1. Got that? OK, moving along…
3) Nothing that was produced by a computer model. We all know that you can’t trust computer models, and they have a terrible track record in any industrial, architectural, engineering, astronomical or medical context.
4) Nothing that was researched or published by a scientist. Such appeals to authority are invalid. We all know that scientists are just writing these papers to keep their grant money.
See? I’m a reasonable guy. I’m perfectly open to being convinced by real evidence — you know, the kind that doesn’t rely on scientific instruments, or corrected data, or computers, or results recorded by other scientists. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and I’m sure you’d agree that any evidence which meets my criteria would be extraordinary indeed.
And before you accuse me of hypocrisy, I apply all these rules to myself. For example, I have perfectly good evidence that the ETS will destroy the economy. I haven’t relied on any measurements, or projections, or the advice of economists in making this prediction. Therefore my evidence for this prediction of economic doom is water-tight. (On a related note, how can you predict the climate next decade when you can’t predict the weather next week? And did you know I can predict economic doom from the ETS next year, even though I can’t predict the stock market tomorrow?)
Before I go, here are some corollaries that devolve from the above 4 rules:
A) Any previous errors in climate science are automatic proof that new data is also wrong. For example, if you produce results which show a reduction in ice coverage, or a warming of ocean temperatures, all I have to do is shout ‘Hockey Stick!’ and the new data is instantly dispelled.
B) So, before I will accept your new data, it must retrospectively correct any errors in past data, and erase them from the space-time continuum as though they never occurred. Furthermore, if you do manage to perform this feat, your data will be invalid because corrected data is disqualified under rule #2.
C) Al Gore is a big fat hypocrite and a liar and a fraud who jets around the world and has a big house and eats puppies for breakfast. And will you please stop the ad hominem attacks on Ian Plimer?
D) Will somebody, please, somewhere, anywhere, address the science in Ian Plimer’s book? I mean, surely that’s not too much to ask? By the way, anybody who addresses the science in Ian Plimer’s book is just a nit-picker who hasn’t addressed the main issue.
E) Please, spare me your conspiracy theories. It’s not my fault that AGW is a giant hoax perpetrated by Big Green to take over the world in a socialist plot. I’m just trying to uncover the truth here, with the assistance of a lot of commentators, media personalities, corporate executives and hired scientists who just happen to share similar political views to my own.
F) Your position is based on religious faith, not on the science. I can tell because you pay attention to the scientific instruments, the corrected data, the computer models and the writings of published scientists, instead of what I know, deep in my heart to be the truth: that AGW is a giant hoax and a fraud.
G) If you ever refuse to debate with me, that is proof that your position is untenable, you’re frightened of the truth and you don’t have the evidence. And, by the way, when will Burt Newton respond publicly to the claims that he’s a trans-gender vampire who was regenerated in a vat from a single hair of Vlad the Impaler? His silence on this issue is telling…
—-
I’m so glad we could have this chat. I’m sure if we can just conduct this discussion using the rules and corollaries above, it will be an enlightening and fruitful enterprise that is well worth the time and effort of everybody involved.
I look forward to having this debate, at every opportunity, on every forum, on every website, from now until the end of time.
Yours truly,
The Marquess of Queensbury
Finally!
[Claps] [cheers]
[applause]
Ok, thats fine, but what set of information or results would disprove AGW as a scientific theory?
What observation would satisfy posters here that the theory was in some way incorrect? (And I dont mean nit picking over a few sections of data).
What would discredit this as a theory? Remember even great minds have had theories disproven before, so fess up.
If the reply is “nothing, we know all about it” then you are taking a faith based position.
Similar (or no better than) a denialist that claims “that one piece of data was incorrect, therefore the whole theory is disproven”.
*Dips hat*
Mole, you’ve also got to factor in the consequences of inaction into the assessment of data.
If , for example, despite the existing scientific evidence, you personally would ONLY be satisfied by a longitudinal study over the next 30 years – well, what if if turned out todays’s scientists were actually right, and waiting for that study took us through the tipping point?
Why would policy makers be wise to adopt your approach?
See – even if I am wrong, cleaning up carbon emissions will do no harm. Clean the air up a bit, less pollution, fewer illnesses among kids, etc. No problemo.
If you are wrong, however: life on this planet could well be reduced to a few green sites supporting half a billion people – instead of 6 billion – by next century.
You see why doubt-mongers are losing this debate? And that that is a good thing?
Thank you Mercurius. Just yesterday I was talking to a friend who’s intelligent, well-educated and still he’s totally bought into Plimer’s argument. I shall email him some links, especially the ‘Science Show’ ones.
I know where you’re coming from Mercurius, I would suggest strapping those grant grabbing scientists into a lie detector chair on some national radio station, to prove the lies. Apparently we can’t do that any more.
Come back George B, we love you. You would know how to dispose of this scientific WOMU, this weapon of miss understanding.
Lefty E
If you check my comment I havent disputed anything, merely playing devils advocate. I thought I had been reasonably careful to exclude “background noise” data (short term/ single reference stuff)
What data set or projection would disprove AGW as it currently stands?
No theory is foolproof, which doesnt mean they are junk, but it can mean adjustments can be made.
The Pro AGW side does itself no favours by telling the other side to “shut up the science is settled”, what needs to be done is honest “yes that was slightly incorrect, but the theory as a whole is still valid” type communication.
I understand that is harder to sell to the general public, but a “small lie to sell a big truth” is stull a lie.
The Sydney Morning Herald publishes an article today by Australian climate scientists.
http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/climate-change-poised-to-feed-on-itself-20090731-e4gi.html?page=-1
Well there are 15 crazies we need to get onto the truth machine straight away. And if they all appear to be telling the truth then we will know that the conspiracy is broader than ever imagined, and now involves brain implants to enable people to control their physiological responces to our just inquisition. We have to go back and re sift the dunes of “facts” to find the REAL truth. George B was so right, those truth bombs are there, somewhere.
Mole as Brian observed on the last thread, this is not a science blog. It’s a public policy blog. The weight of scientific opinion is sufficiently clear to be an overwhelming case for acting to reduce CO2 levels. If it turns out that it was a false alarm, terrific. Some people might be a little poorer than they otherwise would have been but nobody life will have been seriously affected. If on the other hand the majority scientific opinion turns out to be correct, then prudent measures taken now might possibly prevent the deaths of millions and the immiseration of millions more.
The fact that anyone can even think of opposing action in the light of this situation is staggering. That so many continue to do so speaks volumes for either their incomprehensible selfishness or their pathological hatred of environmentalists.
NO, agw (as it is known) is an article of faith among the urban left, principally amongst those whose lives are largely without a practical aspect. When those who actually live with nature, and whose lives have a primary practical application on a daily basis (ie, who do something for a living other than talk or shuffle paper) start to believe, THEN agw will have credibility.
Points (1), (2) and (3) have so many holes in them that just debating any one of them (never mind all three) could take ages.
“The Pro AGW side does itself no favours by telling the other side to “shut up the science is settled”, what needs to be done is honest “yes that was slightly incorrect, but the theory as a whole is still valid” type communication.”
Fully concur, fairly amazing that such a piece of infantile “I’m right, and don’t anyone dare disagree” actually says more about the writer and the fawning applauders than adding anything of value to the issue. Is it any wonder a growing number of people are looking for reasons to turn against the AGW lobby regardless of the seriousness of the issue.
“See – even if I am wrong, cleaning up carbon emissions will do no harm. Clean the air up a bit, less pollution, fewer illnesses among kids, etc. No problemo.”
The above again highlights the arrogance of the faithful..Yes a cleaner world will obviously will benefit all but to say the process will create no harm, particularly in the short term is an obvious and repugnant untruth. Many thousands of people will have their way of life uprooted, jobs lost and income suffer. The bloke whose job will be sacrified is hardly comforted by the vague promise of a “green job” for someone else in another place nor does he miss the arrogance of some self appointed earth saviour writing him and his family off ..as “no harm..no problemo”
Until.. the AGW clerics understand the above their battle will become increasingly impossible. Don’t underestimate the ability for the scorned to “cut off their nose to spite their face”
“but to say the process will create no harm, particularly in the short term is an obvious and repugnant untruth. Many thousands of people will have their way of life uprooted, jobs lost and income suffer.”
There’s a name for this process Oigal – in which inefficient industries and modes of production are replaced over time, causing dislocation of working people from redundant industries, and the rise of new ones to employ them.
Its called ‘capitalism’.
And while we’re worrying about employment in unsustainable industries, should we mourn the loss of typesetters, night soil collectors, and steam engine drivers from our workforces? Or was that ‘progress’?
Well said Ken Lovell@12 and Lefty E@6
While I strongly believe that an adequate evidentiary basis exists for robust CO2 mitigation measures to be pursued, even if one wanted to entertain some lingering doubt about aspects of the science, one should look both at the implications of action and inaction for the people lving duriung the coming hundred years and longer.
If it turned out that the impact of AGW over the coming century or so was not as serious as we are entitled to suppose right now, so that with hindsight the targeted measures did not have a measurable impact on the current and projected temparature anomaly, we would still get the benefits of
a) cleaner air, with fewer lost working days due to respiratory disease, less heavy metal poisoning, actinide toxicity, ozone-related asthma attacks etc
b) fewer coal mining related life-years lost
c) a return of the oceans to a more base solution
d) societies that were less dependent on finite energy resources; consequently less expenditure on wars over fossil resources and associated morbidity, iner-communal conflict, corruption of governance etc. Also forecloses impact on economies of oil price volatility
e) less road trauma (as a result of the reductions in personal vehicle transport associated with emissions reduction) Less time spent sitting in traffic
f) cleaner agriculture
g) protection of biodiversity; recovery of forests
h) more global equity
Any one of these ends would justify a serious program of abatement. The fact that we get all of them, as well as the foreclosure (possibly) of a catastrophic reversal in the biosphere’s ability to sustain human life means that we don’t really need to be confident that there is anything to the AGW hypothesis, though of course we are. We should really have started this in the 1950s. Had we done so, we would now be in an immeasurably better position.
Attempting, in 2009, to subvert policy in this area based on nothing which could be called scientific and without persuasively demonstrating that the consequences of abandoning the mitigation policies and their associated consequences above would produce net public goods is simply misanthropic. That really is the challenge for the proponents of inaction.
Fran
.
Wonderful Mercurius.
Mole #9,
this is what the science does all the time. You’re being disingenuous, confusing advocacy with the scientific method to make your point.
If you like, here are some AGW busters
1. CO2 and associated gases do not absorb short wave radiation.
How would we tell? The Earth is about 40°C cooler than we thought. Ooops. Is that an ice-sheet in my garden? Or, the greenhouse gases do not absorb radiation in lab experiments. Then we would have to explain why The Earth is as warm as it is. And why the physics in the lab is different to that of the outdoors. This would also mean that past climate change is shown to have an unknown amplifier that is not greenhouse gases.
Hmmm, it’s going to be very difficult to build an alternative theory from all that.
2. If we accept that The Earth has a greenhouse effect and that gases have amplified climate in the past, we have to explain why greenhouse gases from fossil fuel emissions and land clearing do not warm the climate when natural emissions do.
This means finding out that the geological principal of uniformitarianism, that processes that work today are the same as processes in the geological past does not hold. Unfortunately that means a few fundamental changes to the physics of those processes.
3. We have to find a negative feedback effect in the atmosphere that reflects longwave radiation into the atmosphere counterbalancing the absorbtion of short-wave radiation by greenhouse gases.
This is difficult to prove because it needs the capacity to measure a global energy balance. It cannot be measured directly. It requires a great deal of technology used in planetary observation systems. At present a number of lines of instrumental evidence are explored in models, which provide (most scientists think) a convincing picture of global energy balance but with measurement uncertainty. But as Mercurius said above, this is unacceptable because both instruments with adjustments and models have been used.
4. We have to explain the current industrial age warming through natural means.
Unfortunately there is no viable candidate for this. Notwithstanding quaint theories about solar effects, which strangely enough, haven’t ever been measured.
5. Please note that all of the quibbles about recent temperature fluctuations, instruments, models are essentially irrelevent in “disproving” AGW, until an alternative theory can explain points 1-4 better that mainstream climate science can.
All the
in the scientific literature and public communication by working climatologists can explain the objections to AGW based on temperature measurements, hockey sticks, correlation and causation. There remain a great many uncertainties, but the underpinning science is “rock solid” to take a truism from geology.
You will find people who argue all of these points and some of them have scientific qualifications, but as science, it’s pretty much stand-up comedy.
No you are lying.
No Adrien. It is you who is the one who is lying. And, moreover what is that case, most importantly of all, is that your spelling and punctuation are greatly lacking in accuracy. Furthermore, everything you have said leads me to the conclusion that you possess deep personal character flaws that I will now publicly speculate upon, proceed to diagnose and then for which I shall propose a treatment regime that involves anatomically improbable realignment of cranial and other orifices.
A wonderful summary of Teh Rules, Mercurius, and amazingly, you have flushed out a few more who wish to illustrate them in all their glory.
Oigal, why don’t you trot over to interact with the nice folk at Deltoid? There’s nothing they like better than a stoush with flat-earthers.
Excellent work btw, Mercurius.
@STAP
Is that some kind of noble savage thing?
And the anti intellectualism in your comment is noted.
Oh, and…..
Phil@23
It’s classic rightwing populism Phil
Re point G) above, Fielding embarrasses himself again:
http://www.stevefielding.com.au/news/details/think_before_you_vote_fielding/
I suppose I don’t really need to register my approval, given my comments in the ocean warming post.
Mole – simply put would what convince would be the following:
1. Actually stable, or falling temperatures on a global scale
2. Steady, or increasing rates of glacial advance
3. Steady or decreasing oceanic ph
That’s for starters. But this is just a silly game. It’s like, “what would it take to persuade you that gravity doesn’t exist” kind of stuff.
I mean decreasing acidity, of course, and therefore increasing ph…
This is a brilliant and hilarious post, Mercurius! I invite you all to give input to the discussion on Ian Plimer’s book here. Thanks.
Mole,
One example would be credible evidence of an effect that increases the Earth’s albedo when temperature rises above a particular level. If there were any evidence for Lindzen’s “iris effect” for instance. A completely hypothetical example would be an effect where increased energy in the lower atmosphere led to more wind, thus to more thick salt spray and whitecaps on the ocean, and therefore a higher albedo.
Another completely hypothetical example would be more energy in the lower atmosphere making for stronger winds and therefore more overturning of the upper levels of the ocean, so the ocean thermocline becomes a bit deeper, so the ocean stores a (proportionally) lot more heat leading to a smaller overall temperature rise.
I could keep going like this for hours, and also produce numbers of these just-so stories which lead to more warming. The trick is finding one of these stories for which we have some evidence.
Great stuff Mercurius! Solid foundation. I have one question though. Item “D”, it states “Will somebody[...]address the science in Ian Plimer’s book?” I am sorry, but it seems kind of confusing. In item “F” it states “Your position is based on religious faith, not on the science.” Do you even need item “D”? To ask someone to address the science and then say there’s not real point in addressing the science, is like saying do something then don’t.
perfect. thanks!
Accepting AGW is similar to saying there is a gun to my head and some probability that there is a bullet in one or more of the next 5 chambers. Thus I better make the effort to move my head. and the sooner the more likely I am to survive.
Those denying AGW are either saying there is no gun or deny human induced AGW or that there is anything we can do about it and suggest ringing an ambulance instead if and when we ever need one. They are saying lest wait and see if it is a gun and if so if it is loaded and goes bang.
Not suprising that many seem to push it as an article of faith given what could be at stake.
Steve at the pub
who do you mean?
If you mean farmers, then come to the bush sometime. In my area, farmers have changed calving times because of the shift in the seasons. Others have changed their production because they recognise that the changes in climate means that their previous crops are no longer viable (and we’re not talking drought). Others report to me that they are seeing the lowest rainfalls and river levels in the 150 years their families have been keeping records — and the highest temperatures.
They’ll say,”I’m not a scientist, I don’t know what’s causing it, but the climate is changing.”
They’re not interested in causes, they’re interested in getting advice and assistance to adapt.
If you’re not talking about farmers, then who are you talking about?
I think there’s one missing caveat on those rules for discussion: “unless they show that there isn’t any AWG”. Then they would trust it wholehearted (old MSU UAH, short-term RATPAC, we know nothing about clouds but Spencer’s model can explain GW by clouds responding to PDO…) Because the only real criterion of skeptics to balance the evidence is: wether the data/corrections/models/papers back (or not) AGW. That’s why they find so many [emphasis added] arguments; because they don’t need to follow any coherence or internal logic, so it’s not a problem that their arguments are (always) mutually exclusive.
More on this topic:
http://chriscolose.wordpress.com/2008/12/20/will-the-real-skeptics-please-stand-up/
http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2009/07/litmus-test-for-naysayers.html
OK, Mercurius,
if you won’t accept that type of stuff, what if me little brother knows a bloke who reckons it’s been a bloody cold winter and besides carbon dioxide isn’t carbon monoxide so what’s the problem??
Strictly speaking, patrickg, ocean Ph really doesn’t say anything about AGW. It’s merely an indicator of CO2 levels and fluxes. Indeed, given that warmer SSTs make it harder for oceans to act as CO2 sinks, oceans reversing the current trend and becoming more base might simpy reflect this rather than cooling.
This is not the least of our problems in managing the current anomaly. We cannot assume the oceans will continue to take up CO2 at the rate they historically have and that has serious implications for mitigation policy.
Well said Mehitabel. Most of the hard-core deniers are as urban as any latte-sipping elitist.
Very few people on the land are among them.
I recently had one bright spark say to me “and how can they say we’re emitting however many tonnes of CO2? It’s a gas so it weighs nothing!”
Sigh…
That’s like that joke Go Troppo: “What weighs more: a ton of feathers or a ton of bricks?
Mecurious is right. Arguing climate science is a waste of time, particularly over short timespans, because it is too easy to challenge both data and interpretations. Perhaps the real debate is between short and long timespans. If you take a long term view the dominant issue is the risks associated with climate change. From this viewpoint the risk/costs of doing nothing far outweigh the risks/cost of of acting to reduce emissions. It also makes sense to talk about how far net carbon emissions need to drop before we are out of long term danger.
By contrast, if the focus is on what happens between now and 2020 the picture is quite different. In this case the perceived risks of acting (job loss etc.) far outweigh the risks of short term climate change. This suggests that it makes more sense to talk about the debate in terms of LWAS (let’s wait and see) vs LAN (Let’s act now) factions. It is worth keeping in mind that some of those, like me that might be in the LWAS faction will be AGW supporters with a long term view who think that the fight to reduce emissions will not be helped by the introduction of dud systems that will give the whole emissions reduction drive a bad name.
If we are serious about getting serious action started we need to focus on the next 10 years and support proposals that that people can understand and see what effect they are going to have on prices, jobs and quality of life. We cerainly shouldn’t be supporting something as complex as CPRS. CPRS simply makes it too easy to scare the Steve Fieldings of the world. It is worth looking at McKinsey Report on cost of reducing emissions It argues that we could progress emissions reduction without any net cost after taking account of energy savings
Well done, Merc.
Denialists – pwned!
How easy folks are to derail. Almost as if you hadn’t read The Rules. Mole asks what would convince you that AGW was wrong, and you answer.
Reread The Rules. Or at least notice that Mole never does say what would convince it that it was wrong about the science. Given that it rejects the overwhelming majority of professional knowledge, you have to figure that it’ll take something pretty spectacular.
A commenter noted that this was not a science blog, which I’m glad to see. We need some serious public policy oriented blogs as the fundamental issues regarding climate change are not ones of scientific question any more. The science has moved, as usual, to more subtle issues. The basic ones — there is a greenhouse effect, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, CO2 levels are rising, the cause is human activity, and you expect warming from that increased CO2 — were all established anywhere from 50-200 years ago and have never been challenged scientifically. Whether and what public policy actions can or should be taken seems to be a pretty wide open question.
On the science side, I’ll mention that I’m yet another scientist blogging about science. In particular, climate-related things. The novelty is that I try to keep it accessible to jr. high students. Don’t know that I’m very successful at that, but it does mean that you won’t see as much math as is typical (or as I’d really like to be using).
BTW I love your blog!
This is kinda amusing.
Robert G @ 42 posted the comment as it appears and it duly ended up in the spam bucket. Without the last line, which is commonly used by spammers, it came through just fine.
So I released the one in spam and deleted the one that came through. Luv ya too, Robert
Brian
I’ve noticed that if I use a word which is the opposite of ‘immoderate’ and begins ‘mode…’ then my comment goes to moder***on. But I don’t use it as he verb, “to moder**e”, I use it as the opposite of extreme.
Then someone has to waste their time “moder**ing” it.
cheers
Quiggin comments that Wordpress mods out social**m. Amazing.
Quiggins’ mod filter is actually modding out “cial*s”, a drug that is a favourite with spammers. In so doing, it notoriously mods out “special*st” as well as “social*ism” for example.
I’m not sure that WordPress actually has a built in mod filter, but if he’s added on a standard list of spam terms then “cial*is” will definitely be on it. The Akismet spam filter is a bit more sophisticated, but it sometimes hiccups as well.
Still, no political agenda, just an anti-spammer agenda.
Phil (23): Quick, PhotoShop a pic of Wassup and Bolt with their hair on fire. The preliminary count of total U.S. monthly high temperature records in July was over three times the number of lows, and the number of all-time high records was infinity times the zero lows.
Thanks tigtog — that makes sense. I hadn’t considered that.
We are screwed.
For me this comic sums it up.
http://www.salon.com/comics/boll/2009/07/30/boll/index.html
Clear the table. Douse the Rules. From Capital Climate comes the answer. And it is just a number. It is a number like date, or like time. You can see it, you can ignore it, you can obsess over it, you can think of it as art. But however you perceive it, it is always changing. Give it a go. I think that it is fascinating.
http://co2now.org/
Ken Lovell #12: If it turns out that it was a false alarm, terrific. Some people might be a little poorer than they otherwise would have been but nobody life will have been seriously affected. If on the other hand the majority scientific opinion turns out to be correct, then prudent measures taken now might possibly prevent the deaths of millions and the immiseration of millions more.
Ken, so with this assessment we have a situation where maybe nothing might happen or maybe millions may die? You’ve just described why the committed ‘warmenist’ argument is arbitrary – you’ve just admitted that no one has any idea of exactly what is happening (if anything), the consequences to humanity, or what we should do about it (other than continue to try to understand it). Don’t you think that if there was evidence to suggest any particular course of action then that evidence might be a little more narrow than from ‘business as usual’ to ‘armageddon’?
Furthermore, acknowledging public opinion of people such as yourself and the desire for the government to take pre-emptive action like you lot suggest, viable solutions have been put forward such as a carbon tax. This buys your ‘insurance’ by starting to make a reduction in carbon output, it will provide price incentives to speed the development of alternative technologies, and you will have one of the best mechanisms set up and in place ready to go if there turns out to be a problem. Furthermore, the disruption to human quality of life will be minimal in the ‘pre-emptive insurance’ stage if the carbon tax is offset through reductions in other taxes, while still achieving the ‘insurance’ objectives.
Yet, despite this being an idea that most of the political spectrum could swallow, it hasn’t caught on with the warmy crowd. Why is that? I think it might be because there’s more to the Global Warming belief set than the warmers claim. I think it might be because AGW provides a justification for overarching and intrusive bulk blocks of legislation that can be used to shake down rich folks, attack big business, justify government funded ‘green’ jobs and generally further the left-wing agenda. Conservatives love a good war, the War on Terror being our current example, because it allows blanket legislation that curbs people’s behaviour and keeps them ‘in line’ and provides a ‘legitimate’ basis for legislative limits on what those smelly hippies and towel heads can do. This site is quick to point out that, despite there being an unquestionable need for the government to provide for the security of Australians, certain unscrupulous people will use this fear to further their right-wing political agenda. But when it comes to AGW this site is more than happy to exploit public fear, because the agenda is left-wing.
Actually, nearly everyone who takes this issue seriously supports a carbon tax, and are deeply critical of complex and ineffective ETS-style approaches, Michael.
I’m not sure where that leaves the rest of your point. Aside form saying this: I’d like to see libertarians get on board. I mean, why should business freeload and not pay the true submerged costs of their own production – after all, this distorts prices.
Frankly mate: your side has been lazy. Its obvious weve got to do something about this problem, and the Green movement is the only game in town. you can make it a two horse ideological race – or you can sit around on yer behind whining that youve already lost – and just playing spoiler by pretending it aint happening, and wheeling out a crank or two.
If you see my point here – we’d love to to see the political right step up to plate. You guys are still shirking, and failing humanity here.
Michael Sutcliffe @ 51, I’m having trouble deciding whether you’re a coal industry shill, or just extremely stupid. (Not that those categories are mutually exclusive, of course. Just look at Mitch Hooke.)
“I’d like to see libertarians get on board…your side has been lazy…we’d love to to see the political right step up to plate. You guys are still shirking,”
Conflation alert – libertarians aren’t the political right.
“I mean, why should business freeload and not pay the true submerged costs of their own production – after all, this distorts prices.”
My argument exactly.
Lefty E@52
Count me in the number who regards a carbon tax as a soft and inefective option. In practice it is simply sucker bait which would wedge and discredit those who favour emissions reductions whilke closing ranks amongst those opposed.
David Irving@53
Mitch Hooke isn’t stupid. He’s trying to play a difficult hand as well as he can. He will proibably succeed in getting quite a bit of featherbedding.
So venal and disingenuous? Yes. Stupid? No.
I stand corrected, Fran. Venal and disingenuous has the advantage of being more insulting as well.
Michael you are discussing solutions. My comment, if you had bothered to read the thread or the original post, concerned those who deny there is even a problem.
You CO2 haters kill me. Literally.
Bastards.
Stromatolite@59
You don’t also post under the name Addinall in another place do you?
If so, I claim a spotters’ prize.
David Irving@57
Either way, it’s accurate. This ought not to be about hurling the most hurtful insult — I can think of worse things if freed from the need to be accurate.
We should call things by their right names and leave the idiotic ad hominem to the other side.
Nope.
What is this “other place”?
Is it run by oxygen breathers?
Michael Sutcliffe;
I prefer a cap-and-trade scheme because of its natural counter-cyclical nature. I also generally prefer market-based prices rather than prices being dictated by governments.
It also worked pretty well with SOx and NOx.
However, the best (or little bit better) is the enemy of the good – if a carbon tax can get up politically and cap-and-trade can’t, bring on a carbon tax.
Stomatalolite@62
Bound to be … how’s oxygen working out for you?
FB,
You have clearly not heard of the carblogosphere. Oxygen breathers think they invented everything. But we stromatolites don’t get round much. The intertubes are just a convenience for the O2 community. They are essential for the CO2 world.
But we’ve been on the O2 intertubes for ages.
Stromatolites run many AGW-denialist sites.
Ian Plimer is
a useful idiotan icon and a hero in our world.You are quite right Micheal @ 51. You don’t have to look very hard to find AGW supporters who also happen to be left wingers, vegans, greens etc. And yes, some of what they are putting up (or opposing) as solutions to AGW is influenced by other, unrelated agendas. Sometimes too they become distracted by discussions about long term targets instead of focussing on what the targets between now and 2020 should be and what the best way to meet them is.
However, what this all means is that there is a need to seriously challenge some of the proposals that are being put up. For example, we need to challenge the idea that the future of people transport has to be all about public transport and push bikes or that progress requires a significant drop in our quality of life.
We also need to challenge your lazy idea that we have to put a price on carbon and to commit to some comprehensive scheme such as CPRS to make serious progress.
Think about it for a minute Micheal. Malcolm Turnbull acheived an 80% improvement in the efficiency of household lighting by using regulations instead of pushing up the price of electricity/putting a price on carbon. Most of the growth in clean electricity generation here and in Europe has been acheived by putting a price on clean electricty, not by putting a price on dirty electricity. (Thus avoiding the need for any sudden jump in the price of electricity.) We are currently encouraging the retrofitting of solar hot water with subsidies. We should only put a price on carbon when we have checked that this is the only way of dealing with a particular problem.
AGW supporters can help reduce the opposition to doing something now about climate change by convincing more people that the science supports AGW and/or convincing people that the effect of doing something about emissions is not going to make them a lot worse off. My take is that the science is too complex for AGW to have a convincing win, particularly with people who are worried about what happens to them in the next few years. In addition, CPRS is too complex for anyone to work out what effect it will have on their life.
The best way of progressing climate change action is to concentrate on doing something in a very limited number of areas for which low cost technical solutions are available now. (Such as electricty and car emissions.) If we chose, we could acheive a reduction in total emissions of over 40% by simply cleaning up electricity.
Actually, nearly everyone who takes this issue seriously supports a carbon tax, and are deeply critical of complex and ineffective ETS-style approaches, Michael.
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Do the Greens?
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I prefer a cap-and-trade scheme because of its natural counter-cyclical nature. I also generally prefer market-based prices rather than prices being dictated by governments.
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Isn’t that a contradiction?
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Count me in the number who regards a carbon tax as a soft and inefective option. In practice it is simply sucker bait which would wedge and discredit those who favour emissions reductions whilke closing ranks amongst those opposed
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That’s apt. But the Cap n Trade systems I’ve seen are so complex that it’s hard to ensure accountability. And all of them appear to let the major polluters off the hook. Shit, here they appear to be gifting them with our money.
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I reckon some of the objection to Carbon Tax comes from the anxiety rooted in the absence of a central plan to ensure a cut in emission. But against that I have to say that the market is very innovative especially when there’s money involved. If you make producing carbon more expensive – for everybody. Those people and their dogs will all be trying to conserve power.
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And it’s simple. No farnarkling. It also creates revenue for serious research into renewables.
John-D@66
Low hanging fruit doesn’t count. It was worth doing this but one can’t extapolate to future cases.
Unless a suitable price is put on emissions, then no business, this siude of swingeing regulation, will have an incentive to internalise what is currently free in its costs.
Fairly obvious really.
We also need to challenge your lazy idea that we have to put a price on carbon
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Why lazy? There are senior business people who’ve gone on the record to say that this is exactly what we need.
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Think about it for a minute Micheal. Malcolm Turnbull acheived an 80% improvement in the efficiency of household lighting by using regulations
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Turnbull didn;t improve efficiency. People who make and sell stuff like LED lights do tho’. But has there been such an increase in efficiency? I’d like to know.
Adrien@67
You’re mixing up two things — the structure of the system and the auditing and compliance involved.
You’re also neglecting the invetibale problems of maintaining a system in which the choice of structure is at the feet of government rather than located in tradeable assets. That’s why cap & trade is a more secure system both politcially and in terms of reaching targets.
Robust and consistent auditing is of course indipensible, as with any tradeable security, but this is still a lot simpler than the argy bargy around taxation and concession.
You’re mixing up two things — the structure of the system and the auditing and compliance involved.
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Isn’t the system inherently one of auditing? I don’t see how you can seperate them.
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You’re also neglecting the invetibale problems of maintaining a system in which the choice of structure is at the feet of government rather than located in tradeable assets.
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I thought I was arguing that it would be better to by-pass those problems.
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That’s why cap & trade is a more secure system both politcially and in terms of reaching targets.
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I’m not sure you’ve given adequate reason there. When I look at the Cap n Trade system I’m seeing: nepotism by which resource companies are compensated or let off the hook, a Byzantine system of accounting that cannot be followed by anyone who isn’t a statistics geek, a fobbing off onto the 3rd world of developed world responsibilities, a really good reason for a about three thousand billion petty arguments in the corridors of Universe Masters Conglomerated.
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Robust and consistent auditing is of course indipensible, as with any tradeable security, but this is still a lot simpler than the argy bargy around taxation and concession.
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I’m not sure. It seems to me that if you introduce a tax. Make it more expensive. Everybpdy. Then that is very simple. No argy bargy and no concession – a hard line.
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Perhaps I’m wrong.
Fran @68: You say:
So why not? There are a lot of low hanging fruit and many of these can be dealt with by the use of simple regulations without the need for any artificial price increases. For example, we could use regulation to drive down the average fuel consumption of new cars, reduce the current 10% of household power lost to standby power, increase total computer related emissions below that of the airline industry etc.
If you are interested in what other, significant low lying fruit are available have a look at the link I gave to the McKinsey report above @40. In addition, this report argues that the cost of reducing emissions is quite low.
Putting a price on carbon may not be very effective way of reducing emissions. For example, a large UK study into the effect of fuel price on fuel consumption estimated that a 10% increase in the price of fuel would have resulted in a 2.5% drop in total fuel consumption after one year (rising to only 6% after a long time.) The reality is that the consumption of basics such as fuel and power are not very price sensitive. People will cut back on other things first.
When we are talking about encouraging investment in clean alternatives “putting a price on carbon” is a very clumsy way of “putting a price on the clean alternative”. It gets even worse when you want to use a speculative permit market to set the price of carbon.
Can anyone give me an example of a significant opportunity to reduce net carbon pollution that they think may be best handled by putting a price on carbon?
That was a great post. I do love satire.
Regarding the falsifiability of AGW – this post is fantastic, by Michael Tobis: http://initforthegold.blogspot.com/2008/05/falsifiability-question.html
AGW is not a theory as much as it is a logical product of theories – the greenhouse effect, radiative forcing, etc. The real question is, “How could we not be changing the climate?”
And the only way to disprove that would be to disprove the fundamental physics involved.
Take it up with Fourier and Arrhenius.
I’d love you guys to come check out my blog, which deals primarily with how the public view of climate change differs from what’s really going on in the scientific circles, and why.
Link is on my name above. Thanks!
Bless you my son.
You have perfectly described my inbox.
a tax inevitably leads to govt trying to pick winners. it does not directly reduce emissions and the government has to price carbon, two significant risks. emissions trading permits capital to chase solutions without government having to pick or risk, while being able to directly issue emission permits (which will inevitably be tighter than those bandied around in 2009). maybe that’s why the government and the opposition prefer trading.
massive compensation for the fossil industries is disappointing but once the scheme is in place the fossil types will find it harder and harder. especially if CSS proves a failure as seems likely. i bet mass market renewables will deliver cheaper energy than coal within 10 years.
John D@72
While there obviously is a fair bit of low hanging fruit, =which we should certainly grasp your mistake lies both in seeing these as alternatives to the more thorny things we have to do and in assuming that the best way to grasp them is through government mandate. As a leftist, I almost feel dirty pointing this out, but sometimes, something very much like a market mechanism may be the best way to do this.
Take the idea of cleaning up landfills — which contain, I understand, about 1 tonne of putrescible waste for every member of the Australian population every year. Much of this produces methane — a powerful greenhouse gas but one which could be used to produce energy and supplant coal-fired power. One could mandate this through policy, but the simpler way is to make the emissions from landfills a cost upon the operator of these sites. Ditto sewage treatment plants. Put a cost on dirty power and suddenly there’s an incentive not to pump sewage long distances, but to deal with it locally and to use it to create local energy sources and to leave business, subject to regulatory oversight, to find the most cost-effective way to do this. Instead of huge rafts of swingeing law, you get one simple standard — a cost on emissions and benefits in avoiding them, which washes through the whole economy, including public lighting, use of waste heat, insulation etc. All the low hanging fruit is taken up. Building standards start changing without fiat in an attempt to get around the cost of emissions.And yet, when emissions really are unavoidable, the system goes on passing on the price until someone devises a cost-effective work around.
You speak of inelastic demand in transport fuel markets but you neglect an obvious point — the capacity to use funds raised from costs on emissions to make demand for transport fuels more elastic. Obvious options are reconfiguration of cities to make it possible to travel by private vehicle less without significant cost in time or money. And of course one has to get costs to a threshhold level. Here in Australia, the jump in the price of fuel last year from around a dollar to about $1.40 a litre put a huge dent in fuel imports. The impact on traffic in Sydney was very noticeable. If we’d had scope to do so, more low emissions buses would have been a very good idea.
Adrien@71
I believe you are. If you make it a tax, then everyone subject will raise an argument for exemption, as was the case with the G&ST. And because it’s a tax every government will have to justify it on an ongoing basis. Every lobby group will argue that it is making us uncompetitive with others with no tax or less tax. And how do you rebate those who are sequestering carbon dioxide in forests or elsewhere? Does there have to be a government committee to do that? What do you do about something like biodiesel, for example? Of course, those subject to the tax can’t trade their obligations offshore either.
When you create an asset — in this case tradeable certificates — then you force businesses to guess what the future cost of permits will be and you make the enemy not the government, but their business rivals. If they guiess on the high side, they buy more. If they guess low, they take a risk. You give nearly everyone holding the certificates an incentive to restrain the state from backsliding and devaluing the assets they hold or the measures they’ve taken to abate emissions. That’s a huge political wedge.
Kate #73 -
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Thank you. Finally! Again thanks. Truly.
Fran – The second para is interesting and I have no answer to it, maybe later.
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As to the first: Altho’ I find that the govt does not have to justify tax on an ongoing basis (what justification could there possible be for payroll tax?), I believe that they should. To justify carbon tax is simple: link it to warming.
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And the trouble with the GST is that there were exemptions. These were granted to assist the socio-economically disadvantaged. It also disadvantaged businesses by greatly contributing to their already huge mountain of paper-work. I’ll leave that debate to the side. But don’t grant exemptions. Like getting govt to justify taxes this is much easier said than done.
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We do have to bite the bullet on this one. And as far as I can see a CPRS scheme will do a lot more harm to competition than a tax. But your second para gives me pause for thought.
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To be continued.
Nice post Mercurius, sad about the ring of truth it contains.
Nice blog site Kate, I’ve bookmarked it.
Fran: And because it’s a tax every government will have to justify it on an ongoing basis.
Shouldn’t a government have to do this? So you’re for reducing government accountability – ’cause that’s what you are doing?
When you create an asset — in this case tradeable certificates — then you force businesses to guess what the future cost of permits will be and you make the enemy not the government, but their business rivals.
So we set up a system like taxi licences, where an artificial asset is created that only has value so long as government enforcement is maintained. And when the market finally gets cornered, a powerful lobby group will result. Rather than creating a market where new players can enter and new ideas can be tried, you can bet this lobby group will be very determined to keep the status quo and maintain the value of their artificial asset. And unlike a tax which can be altered, removed or adjusted relatively easily, a government will not be able to just cancel the value of these artificial assets easily, it will need to do something in time, such as buy them out at great expense to the taxpayer, (like it would have to do if it wanted to modify the taxi license scheme now). Yeah, artificial assets, what a terrific idea.
JohnD66 and FranB68,
John, Howards light bulb change was a good initiative, but entirely window dressing. A desperate facade that he hoped would make him more Irish looking while he got on with expanding white coal sales and nuclear power. Talking solar water heating IS much better. But where you later say that addressing electricty supply in total, goes right to the core of the problem. If Turnbull comes out tomorrow with a comprehensive plan to CSP solar power Australia by 2050 (which can be done), he has my vote. He would still have to figure out how to fund it, though. I’ve proposed a 20% retail electricity price levy which I have demonstrated will achieve the objective. What do the Libs think will work?
Fran, putting a price on carbon solely to provide a consumption deterent is not working and never would have. The only thing that would work partially is fining the hell out of carbon users AND throwing them in jail. Look at drink driving as an example. What did it take over how many years. And still people do it where they know the risk of being caught is low. And the wishful thinking economists, who seem to believe that looking at the past will provide a solid solution for the future, are dreaming. Even the mechanisms that they believe that they understand comprehensively only work in a narrow band of circumstances and routinely fail when outside of that shallow spectrum. Interest Rates. Having interest rates at 0% failed to stimulate the Japanese and the US economies. The whole economist’s wet dream CPRS saga only has any meaning if, and only if, all of the proceeds are put to the purpose of providing an alternative to Carbon Derived Energy. With out convenient alternatives people will keep using whatever dirty stuff that they can get their hands on. In Nigeria people resort to drilling holes in fuel pipes to get their hands on petrol despite the huge risk of mass immolation. The economists are speculating that alternatives will some how magically evolve. Given sufficient time that MAY happen. I wonder how economists many would stake their life on it, though?
Having said all of that, it is time to check the Carbon Clock, again.
http://co2now.org/
Tick tick tick tick tick…
I think that I just saw it move upwards, again!
Michael S@81
You quote me:
Then add:
The government should be accountable for the cap and perhaps the context but not for the minutiae, otherwise you open the door to sweetheart deals.
Yes … we want ongoing pressure from business to maintain the integrioty of the asset. The system doesn’t stop new players entering. One can always create value by devising schemes for abating carbon at less than the cost of the certificates, but the market has an incentive to see that these efforts are real not mere vapourware. That of course pushes the cost of the certificates down and eases the pressure on those for whom abatement is difficult in practice without compromising the target as a whole.
Have you noticed that over at “Warming Oceans” they are talking about Rules, whilst here at “Rules” the talk is about what causes “Warming Oceans”?
Human behaviour to predict, difficult it is!!
BilB@82
There are indeed some behaviours that are not price sensitive, in part because people rate their chances of paying the price as low. You cite drink driving, but the real price here is not being apprehended by the police but being seriously injured or killed, or injuring or killing someone else, possibly someone you care about. Sadly, some people think it so unlikely, that they dismiss the risk so the cost is zero, at least in their minds. In a way, this is what we are seeing in the climate change abatement debate. People find it hard to personalise the costs and so there is resistance to paying to foreclose them.
Paying on the spot on every occasion makes the cost real and explicit and tangible. I’d be in favour of ensuring that every packaged good or service had its carbon cost specified as nearly as possible so people could be made aware of just how much they were paying.
You speak of expanding CSPs but then ask — where will the money to do this come from? Plainly it has to come from people getting a free ride on dirty energy — hence a cost on emissions. If the cost is not emissions related then it’s a cost on everyone, regardless of source. Simultaneously pushing up the cost of dirty energy and using the money to fund clean energy tips the balance. Money for compensation can be used to fund passive solar water heaters and better public housing, effectively ensuring that people’s compensation does what it is supposed to do — bring about abatement amongst the socially disadvantaged without sacrificing equity.
The basic principle is clear — if you make a valuable resource free or very cheap people will use it wastefully. When issues of equity are involved it is more efficient to target those who would be disadvantaged unreasonably and assist them to get what they need after the cost has been paid.
The government should be accountable for the cap and perhaps the context but not for the minutiae, otherwise you open the door to sweetheart deals.
So there’s no risk of sweatheart deals in your system? Taxi licenses aren’t open to sweatheart deals?
One can always create value by devising schemes for abating carbon at less than the cost of the certificates, but the market has an incentive to see that these efforts are real not mere vapourware.
True, but a tax achieves exactly the same effect. Furthermore, every private individual in this market is motivated to to see non-carbon technologies emerge. That’s not the cast in your market.
That of course pushes the cost of the certificates down and eases the pressure on those for whom abatement is difficult in practice without compromising the target as a whole.
If a powerful group has significant wealth invested in these carbon certificates, and the artificial asset they hold is essentially the right to emit carbon, what do you think they will do when confronted by emerging technologies that devalue the artificial asset they hold? Remember we’re talking powerful business interests with lobbying power, and emerging technologies are the ones coming from a position of weakness who are struggling to find a foothold in the market.
“The basic principle is clear — if you make a valuable resource free or very cheap people will use it wastefully. When issues of equity are involved it is more efficient to target those who would be disadvantaged unreasonably and assist them to get what they need after the cost has been paid.”
This is a very important and very basic point that should be the starting point for a lot of these discussions. Incidentally, it also holds true for water, which is abysmally cheap. The result – water rationing by fiat, instead of self-selected and self-imposed rationing that suits your own particular circumstances. A very silly state of affairs.
Adrian:
I prefer a cap-and-trade scheme because of its natural counter-cyclical nature. I also generally prefer market-based prices rather than prices being dictated by governments.
Isn’t that a contradiction?
No.
And apologies for misspelling your name Adrien.
Michael S@86
Sweeheart deals?
No … I used to drive a taxi — for 15 years in fact (1978-1993) — and let me tell you, there were no sweeheart deals. In fact, in 1988 when a whole new bunch of licences were introduced by Bruce Baird to cope with the unrealised “bicentennial demand” plate costs collapsed. The government saw plates as a cash cow. Only later did they realise that they were killing the cow but the industry wasn’t strong enough to resist at the time. They weren’t in charge of the terms of issue.
They can require that the new technology’s ability to abate CO2 emissions be measured by a sound methodology, but that’s it. Remember that there is balance in the system. While the emergence of a new and cost-effective means to abate CO2 will reduce the value of certificates it will lower the cost of meeting targets and lower the need to purchase new ones in some cases. In other cases, it won’t be of any value (eg industries to which the technologies don’t apply) but they get an indirect benefit in lower costs — and they get this in something like real time –instead of having to put a case to government for tax relief.
But no matter whether new technologies emerge or not, there will always be tension in the system so that the system is kept honest and open. Everyone guessing they might not have bought enough certificates will be looking hard at reducing emissions and even those who have will want to be able to sell them at the highest price possible to offset the cost of implementing lower emissions technologies. And unlike the case of a tax, it’s in their interests to be able to reade these into markets offshore — which creates pressure for reconciliation within trading groups across noational frontiers.
Yeah, artificial assets, what a terrific idea.
Let’s get rid of land titles, fishing licenses, copyright and spectrum allocations while we’re about. And that pesky law stopping me from printing my own coins, currency and stock certificates.
oops … should read:
Apart from copyright, those are all tangible, natural assets. And if you vote for me, I’ll get rid of that pesky law stopping you printing your own currency!
Fran, so in all your experience has taxi licensing delivered better and cheaper services for consumers, and better conditions for drivers? Or has it made money for someone else while reducing services to consumers? And do you think the government could just release more plates to the point they significantly devalue the current ones even if the demand for new taxis was there, or would there be enough influence in the taxi lobby to make this difficult?
Furthermore, it doesn’t matter how many times you repeat your idea, the facts are still the same. 1. If you have a carbon tax, ‘new and cost-effective means to abate CO2′ will still lower the cost of meeting targets, because you’ll pay less tax, and 2. this still doesn’t interest the business groups on the other side of the equation, they will still use their influence to oppose new technologies that abate carbon, just like the current owners of taxi licences don’t lobby the government to release more taxi plates because they’d like lower waiting times and cheaper fares for consumers.
It would seem to me that your argument extols three virtues of your system: it has competitive tension, the price of carbon varies automatically without ‘having to put a case to government for tax relief’ and theoretically one day you could trade it internationally. I would suggest that all of these ‘virtues’ amount to very litle. As I’ve said above, the competitive tension is mostly because there will be groups who make money when the cost of carbon is high, and they will want to oppose new technologies. The use of market forces to set the price of carbon seems exciting and innovative at the outset, but it falls over after 5 seconds of analysis – the complexity of the market with an artificial asset, who’s value exists because of government legislation, will result in serious price distortions not in the interest of public good this system is supposed to serve. And similarly, the odds of this market being traded internationally over the long term in the sense of a market in real assets, is extremely slim with different lobby groups and different governments in different countries. And the same result can be achieved by agreeing on an international rate of carbon tax.
PSC: Let’s get rid of land titles, fishing licenses, copyright and spectrum allocations while we’re about. And that pesky law stopping me from printing my own coins, currency and stock certificates.
Some markets exist because people need them, and they would continue to use them regardless of government. For example, property rights are an essential part of human existence starting with your own body. Something like a taxi licence exists and is finite in supply simply because a government says it exists and is finite in supply. Now this may or may not reflect public need or some other aspect of reality (for example, if there were no taxi licences there would be more taxi operators and fares would be lower), so if we can avoid it it’s best that we do. For example, if fish stocks can be managed by no-fish areas, then this is preferable to a fishing license.
As for stock certificates, you can sell part of any asset you own – that’s just contracts, another essential part of human existence. As for coins, you can print your own currency (but you can’t pass it off as Australian legal tender, that’s forgery which is different because you’re telling lies), and this happens in this country from time to time, but the tax office does tend to pay attention if it gets up.
Michael S@94
Of course not, but that was because the system was devised to milk drivers of cash and was enturely arbitrary. It had nothing to do with pricing an externality.
You continue your objections but fail to show that what I’ve proposed is unsound either in principle or in practice.
The final paragraph in #94 is it, Fran. Your system is supposed to deal with the problem through harnessing market forces but it will do nothing of the sort. It will cost a lot of money, disrupt a lot of people’s lives, put people out of work and result in an overall lower standard of human quality of life (by some estimates, substantially so). If the government stood firm then for this enormous cost we would get a reduction in carbon emissions, but without even asking the obvious question if this is what human kind really we needs to do, what is the chances that the government will stand firm to all the pressure groups once they get the backing of a public who is starting to feel the pain?
Fran, for context, if we were in a hypothetical situation where the ability to emit carbon was something that needed to be managed to the lowest level across the world, for example, everybody went out and bought their carbon credits for the week so they could breathe, then I would agree a market based solution like carbon certificates would be the best way to manage a finite resource. But that is so far removed from the reality of our situation that it’s barely worth considering, and when you create this carbon certificate it’s so artificial it’s ridiculous.
Fran 85,
Your missing the point completely. Earlier you sited that petrol in Sydney got to 1.40 per litre, when it realy got to 1.70 per litre for the basic unleaded. premium was well over 2.00 per litre. And you say that the traffic thinned. Well I dispute that very strongly. I saw very little behavioural change. Some people moved to public transport (here I suggest that the change would have been way less than 6%) and some people changed to smaller vehicles including motor bikes. Weekend traffic may well have been more affected. But considering that there was a 60% increase in the petrol price the change was neglible. And for a very good reason. People had no alternative. Now don’t say that public transport is an alternative. PT only works for a handful of people’s movement needs in our high pressure life style. Of course that can change, but not in anything like the adjustment time frame that Global Warming Action requires. And certainly never with the weak trigger that CPRS provides.
I believe that people are perfectly happy to change. But. There has to be something to change TO. This is the essential point. And that change does not have to come at a price, or at least not a significant one. The main area for initiating change is with electricity production and consumption.
I did in fact say
“where will the money to do this come from”
and I answered it with this
“I’ve proposed a 20% retail electricity price levy which I have demonstrated will achieve the objective”
Since I put that proposal forward some months ago, electricity distributors have announced that there will be an electricity price increase of (up to) 20% this year. The electricity distributors are to take the $7 billion that the price increase will return, and there is absolutely no commitment to providing national solar origin power for the nation by 2050. Only a government administered levy with the returns applied directly to the building of new electricity infrastructure will achieve what is required in the available time. This is the only truly efficient pathway to a non carbon energy future for Australia which will meet the targets without distorting the economy while stimulating business. This is the only pathway that will provide sufficient carbon free electricity to service the future needs electrically powered transport both commercial and private. The levy plan fully implimented eliminates 50% of Australia’s CO2 emissions.
“Money for compensation can be used to fund passive solar water heaters and better public housing, effectively ensuring that people’s compensation does what it is supposed to do — bring about abatement amongst the socially disadvantaged without sacrificing equity.”
These aims, while laudable, do little to solve the problem. However in the levy proposal that was put forward funds for photovoltaic solar panels were to be redirected to at risk households (pensioners, disabled, low income large families) which were to receive up to 1.5 kilowatt of photovoltaic panels and solar water heating where applicable free. This level of support would bring these households in to a positive income position even after paying the 20% electrity price increase. Which by the way calculates out at under $5.00 per week for a family of 4.
I say that the whole argument that meeting global warming CO2 reductions will be costly and difficult is an exagerated reaction driven by misunderstanding and fear. The above solves 50% of the problem easily and with very positive outcomes in all sectors of the economy. The real challenge is the other 50%. Addressing the energy sector decisively and efficiently provides the backdrop for a properly considered platform of solutions for the many other CO2 and methane releases.
Fran,
“But no matter whether new technologies emerge or not, there will always be tension in the system so that the system is kept honest and open. Everyone guessing they might not have bought enough certificates will be looking hard at reducing emissions and even those who have will want to be able to sell them at the highest price possible to offset the cost of implementing lower emissions technologies. And unlike the case of a tax, it’s in their interests to be able to reade these into markets offshore — which creates pressure for reconciliation within trading groups across noational frontiers.”
This is all just so much gobbledy gook. Electricity is just a very small overhead for my manufacturing business. With the content in the materials that I buy to make up the products it is still small. Electricity would have to double or triple in price before it would severely effect my business. The price triggers that you speak of will have no influence at all in the production or sales of my product. And that would be the case for 80% of business, despite what the chambers of commerce are protesting. I buy electricity, I buy products with electrical content, I receive and despatch by fossil fuel powered vehicles (very minor overhead). These prices are fluctuation all the time, big deal. The only way that I can influence global warming in a positive way is if a portion of the monies that I pay out are used to BUILD CARBON FREE ENERGY INFRASTRUCTURE. Nothing else will have any impact whatsoever, other than going out of business and dropping dead.
An ETS will do nothing for the environment, will do nothing for the economy and will only make a bunch of “Carbon traders’ rich.
An ETS will be so convoluted, complex, ineffectual and damaging with truckloads of free credits and exemptions given to mates that my tip is it will the Labour government will be a laughing stock and booted out of office within three years of its introduction – regardless of the coalitions policy.
Fran I never picked you for a conservative voter! You’re not standing to cash in on carbon brokerage are you?
I really should proof-read my posts before I hit submit. ‘my tip is the labour gov will be a laughing stock’
BW@99
I don’t vote at all, and haven’t since 1977 so I’m not a conservatrive voter, but I do notice that most of those who reject AGW favour a carbon tax. That reflects the quite rational desire to concede the least effective, least ubiquitous and most politically tenuous scheme possible.
I don’t know whether the ALP will win in 2013 but I doubt the ETS will be a factor in the result.
but I do notice that most of those who reject AGW favour a carbon tax. That reflects the quite rational desire to concede the least effective, least ubiquitous and most politically tenuous scheme possible.
Fran, I hope that’s not the only reason you oppose a carbon tax. I support the carbon tax because it’s the most flexible and least corruptible solution.
Fran @76: you say:
However, regulations, carbon taxes and ETS are all by government mandate. What I would like to know is why you favour putting up the price of fuel to drive down the average fuel consumption of cars when you can use regulations to drive bigger changes without any need to push up the price of fuel at all?
I would also be interested to know why you want to use ETS to jump the average price of electricity high enough above the price of clean electricity to justify investment in clean electricty when you can achieve the same result with a much slower increase in the average price of electricity by putting a price on clean electricity?
And while I am at it what exactly is gained by using ETS or carbon taxes to drive up the price of something for which it makes more comercial sense to simply pay the money and do nothing at all to reduce emissions? People complain about the exceptions being proposed under CPRS but no exception CPRS is just creating pain for no gain and giving deniers a stronger case for claiming “we’ll all be runed”.
Power generation and cars account for over 50% of Australian emissions. They are en even bigger percentage of the emissions for which it is practical to do something about at this stage. for this reason, it makes sense to get on with doing something about these sources of emissions in the best way instead of introducing a comprehensive, incomprehensible scheme that is supposed to be the answer to everything.
It is hard enough to convince people to support action to reduce emissions without insisting that it has to be done using ETS for some questionable theoretical reasons.
Back in post 4, Mole asked what would make AGW supporters change their mind? There is a new book Poles Apart by Gareth Morgan, and while he was writing it he asked both sides what it would take to make them change their mind. I haven’t had a chance to see how much made it into the book, but part of my response was about stratospheric cooling. It is the stratosphere cooling while the surface temperature rises, that indicates a greenhouse effect (as identified by Arrhenius), not solar changes etc. Another part of my answer noted the possibility that some whole new line of evidence might appear, in the way that the magnetic data from seafloors suddenly made continental drift (re-jigged as plate tectonics) make sense.
BTW, no quite right in post 42 that AGW has never been scientifically challenged. Lindzen has made several challenges in serious scientific publications. But so far they have all failed under testing. (this is another reason that I believe AGW overwhelmingly probable — it has stood up to repeated challenges by a really smart guy — this is how science is meant to work.)
Mole:
Pretty simple if you understand the subject. One observation would be a zero or negative warming trend over a period of at least thirty years while CO2 increases and there is no decrease in forcing from other factors. If we look at the past we can see that there has been no falsification, e.g. the trend over the past 30 years is substantially positive. The trend over 1944-1974 was slightly negative but there was a decrease in forcing caused by an increase in aerosols.
Michael S@102
I would hope that the substantive reasons I’ve offered above would have made that clear.
I should also make clear that I don’t regard all who support a carbon tax as opponents of mitigation. I recall for example that this was initially Gore’s proposal.
I favour an ETS (not this ETS, which I’d favour voting down as worse than doing nothing) because I believe that a well designed scheme would be more effective and efficient at reducing emissions (speed and cost of adaptation) nationally and regionally and more politically durable. I would regard it as far more flexible and far less open to corruption than any tax scheme.
These rules are very good. For those who would say that the instrument readings and scientific theories using them, are still proof of AGW. I say. Even if the readings are accurate enough, conidering that we only have about 150 years of records, and the Eaerth, according to science is millions of years old. Just haow can 150 years of records prove that AGW is manmade or caused, and not just a natural cycle?
John D@103
You refer to me contrasting unfavourably a carbon tax with an ETS partly on the basis that taxes are an instantiation of government mandate then continue:
Of course, but the difference is that an ETS sets the regulatory environment but allows very considerable scope for emitters to make individual choices between emitting and purchasing certificates and avoiding emissions. It allows the price of emitting to follow progress in industry as a whole towards a definite target, so that some of the benefits of emissions reductions in one area actually assist other areas where reductions may be more technically difficult or costly to achieve to have relief. People worry about “the cost to Australian jobs” but under an ETS, ceteris paribusif householders or the transport sector find ways to reduce their CO2 footprint they can assist heavy industry or agriculture to carry on and remain competitive. Perhaps even more significantly, if a large number of people felt that industry wasn’t doing enough, they could themselves go into the market and purchase certificates — forcing up the cost. How democratic is that?
Because regulation is slow and ineffective. Governments in markets much larger than Australia’s have been trying from at least the 1970’s to improve fuel economy, but they have largely not succeeded. The car manufacturers and oil lobby have white-anted and defeated pretty much every measure. Retooling is a long and expensive business and even oil spikes have not been enough for manufacturers to change their ways. Then there is Jevons’ paradox, which you surely don’;t need me to explain, but for those who don’t … if vehicles become more fuel-efficient and less costly to run, then more people will use them when they might otherwise not. This then operates as a negative feedback mechanism on the end goal of reducing total fuel usage.
The really big falls in fuel consumption will happen when people reduce vehicle usage, both because much less weight is being moved about on the roads and because less congestion makes vehicles on the road more fuel efficient automatically since there is less stop start motion.
Moreover, there is a side benefit. If a greater proportion of people don’t use cars then road trauma declines, and there are savings in the health system and in lost working days. There are serious improvements in air quality and so forth.
These benefits are realised far earlier than if one simply regulates.
I’m sorry, but I don’t understand what you mean by putting a price on clean electricity. This would prejudice the usage of clean electricity, surely? Also I don’t want to jump the average price of electricity but of electricity associated with CO2 emissions, pro-rata.
This begs the question: Does it make[...] more commercial sense to simply pay the money and do nothing at all to reduce emissions?[typo corrected]
In most cases, the answer will be no, but in all cases one either gets reductions, or gets those emitting to pay a price that can be used to lower emissions by other means — quality low emissions public housing, revegetation of land, retrofitting of industry, development of better transport systems, improvements in lighting and refrigeration, development of second gen biofuels, roll out of bio char, development of biosequestration, improvements in urban water management, roll out of new renewable energy capacity at low cost with low interest loans etc … There would be nothing to stop the state from lending money to non-profit trusts committed to reducing emissions to acquire equity in companies that were simply being recalcitrant and force changes in management practice.
Fran
Dare@107
I won’t indulge your question here because the question has been asked and answered many times, including here. In the improbable event that you really don’t know, I’d suggest a visit to Real Climate or OSS Foundation or Grumbine’s where you can find lots of material.
I would make a couple of observations in general however. In science, when one sees an apparent anomaly (i.e. something that can’t be explained by known and attested causal factors), it follows that one’s understanding of the rules governing the behaviour of the thing one is studying are inadequate. Without CO2 forcing, there is no means for explaining the appearance of the 20th century temperature anomaly. With CO2-forcing, it maps very well to observed data on temperature. QED.
Not all anomalies need a scientific explanation of course. A couple of years ago, I was in Brisbane at the YHA Hostel. I was walking down the lane at the side to where my car was parked and I heard someone call my name. I turned and the person introduced herself as an old schoolfriend I hadn’t seen since the 1970s in Sydney who had recognised me despite the fact that my back was turned to her on the basis of nothing more than my voice. I was stunned at this. This was truly anomalous. Of course, I concluded that this was simple coincidence, but if I’d kept bumping into her in circumstances where I thought it improbable, I’d have drawn the conclusion that she was stalking me rather than that she had a really good memory and that I’d impressed her a lot while at school. In scientific terms, I’d have rejected the idea that this was anomalous and devised a new hypothesis to explain the phenomenon, and then I’d have sought more data to corroborate it, and I’d have done this because if the new hypothesis was borne out, I could be at some risk. How often would I have had to bump into her weirdly to change my view. In part this depends on how improbable the coincidences were. Of course, as Hume pointed out, the mere fact that something happens 10 times in a row doesn’t mean it will happen an 11th time. One can flip a coin ten times and get heads without having a two-headed coin. But of course, if one is gambling on tails, one will want to be sure that the coin toss is what it really is supposed to be.
So too it is with AGW. We could always make a case for more data, but if awaiting more data implies ignoring an increasing body of existing data and accepting the risks attendant on ignoring its implications, then we have to be certain that this risk and its costs don’t exceed any risks and costs of using it to inform policy, otherwise we are being irrational and reckless. Wanting more data in 1920 would have been justified. It might have been justified even in 1945, and possibly even in 1975 but from about 1980, we had plenty enough, and as I’ve said elsewhere, given the non-AGW-dependent benefits of most of the mitigation measures, starting on this in 1950 could have been justified on other grounds.
Dare 107,
In all probability global warming is a combination of natural fluctuation augmented by human activity. Science has determined that the human activity is the greater driver of the two at present and this can unleash secondary natural accelerators (methane release and failure of natural CO2 moderators). The end result no matter what happens will not send the earth plumetting into the sun. It will however make life as we know it impossible to maintain in the very short period of one life time. That is the science community as a whole talking, not LP. Think of it in terms of the Victorian bush fires, but with the raging fire as global warming. In your comfortable house where you have lived for 30 years you feel safe, there has been some hint of smoke but nowhere near, but someone who you have never seen before has just knock on the door and said that your house MAY burn to the ground in 10 minutes. What do you do? In considering your reation dress the caller in different outfits to see if that affects your belief level. try Scientist, fireman, neighbour, salesman, prime minister,,,to see how you feel and what you are prepared to do in reaction.
Jarrah – This is a very important and very basic point that should be the starting point for a lot of these discussions. Incidentally, it also holds true for water, which is abysmally cheap. The result – water rationing by fiat, instead of self-selected and self-imposed rationing that suits your own particular circumstances. A very silly state of affairs.
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I see your on your way to becoming an economist.:)
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I agree with the first. But the trouble with the second is that a human being needs water regularly or s/he’ll die. I’m not arguing for regulation or liberalization. I have no idea what I’m talking about. But, in my opinion, water should be a public good. At least where drinking it is involvd.
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Naturally we probably won’t have the luxury.
Please find below the conclusions from a science group Weblog.
This is for any LP reader interested; if your not interested don’t read it. I’ll leave it to the readers to form their own conclusions. There’s lots on this site that make interesting reading.
Climate Science: Roger Pielke Sr. Research Group News
“Main Conclusions
The Climate Science Weblog has clearly documented the following
conclusions since July 2005:
The needed focus for the study of climate change and variability is on the regional and local scales. Global and zonally-averaged climate metrics would only be important to the extent that they provide useful information on these space scales.
Global and zonally-averaged surface temperature trend assessments, besides having major difficulties in terms of how this metric is diagnosed and analyzed, do not provide significant information on climate change and variability on the regional and local scales.
Global warming is not equivalent to climate change. Significant, societally important climate change, due to both natural- and human- climate forcings, can occur without any global warming or cooling.
The spatial pattern of ocean heat content change is the appropriate metric to assess climate system heat changes including global warming.
In terms of climate change and variability on the regional and local scale, the IPCC Reports, the CCSP Report on surface and tropospheric temperature trends, and the U.S. National Assessment have overstated the role of the radiative effect of the anthropogenic increase of CO2relative to the role of the diversity of other human climate forcings on global warming, and more generally, on climate variability and change.
Global and regional climate models have not demonstrated skill at predicting regional and local climate change and variability on multi-decadal time scales.
Attempts to significantly influence regional and local-scale climate based on controlling CO2 emissions alone is an inadequate policy for this purpose.
A vulnerability paradigm, focused on regional and local societal and environmental resources of importance, is a more inclusive, useful, and scientifically robust framework to interact with policymakers, than is the focus on global multi-decadal climate predictions which are downscaled to the regional and local scales. The vulnerability paradigm permits the evaluation of the entire spectrum of risks associated with different social and environmental threats, including climate variability and change.
Humans are significantly altering the global climate, but in a variety of diverse ways beyond the radiative effect of carbon dioxide. The IPCC assessments have been too conservative in recognizing the importance of these human climate forcings as they alter regional and global climate. These assessments have also not communicated the inability of the models to accurately forecast the spread of possibilities of future climate. The forecasts, therefore, do not provide any skill in quantifying the impact of different mitigation strategies on the actual climate response
that would occur.
Adrien
Of course, but that’s not the main problem. Any charge you could conceivably place on water wouldn’t affect our ability to drink it very much at all. There’s no shortage of water anyway. What there is a shortage of is water in the places where it is most useful and in the right condition for our usages.
So unlike something like crude oil, which is limited and gets used up and turned into breakdown products we don’t like post usage, the real problem with water is water handling and transport. That’s what has to be charged for. Very little of the water we use is drinking water. Most of it is used for agriculture, or industry, and in our homes, washing and hosing down driveways and flushing toilets, not to mention parasitic losses in the water delivery system.
Sadly, it’s impracticable to have a system of parallel water delivery — drinking water, toilet water, washing water etc so we just have to come up with ways of not transporting water any farther than necessary and making maximum good use of water when we deliver it anywhere.
It occurs to me that if Rudd is going to roll out NBN to people’s front doors, then he ought to be getting in touch with other service providers so that pipes can be replaced at the same time, power cables undergrounded, gas mains done etc …
Too holistic I guess …
Nice rules, Mercurius.
Fran:
I’ve noticed this too, and wondered whether that was indeed the motivation. Although I have no way of knowing it certainly seems plausible. I’m also amazed that the market-loving libertarians typically favour a tax rather than a market-based solution. Go figure.
I suspect there are also a significant number of people on the greenie/lefty side of things who don’t like an ETS because they distrust markets and the people who make money from them.
Whatever, I must agree with you when you call a carbon tax a carbon tax a soft and ineffective option.
The need to guess the price elasticity of demand for the output of carbon-emitting processes (and the cost involved in getting that one wrong) makes a tax extremely problematic. That process also involves convincing industrial decision-makers that demand will respond as expected.
The argument about manipulation by and exemptions for special interests applies equally to both alternatives, ETS and tax.
Then there’s the problem of linking it to the ETS systems used by other countries. I’m not sure anyone would even know where to start with that.
Gaz@114
Yes, but the ETS is harder to tinker with in this way. All the farnarkling goes on at the front of the exercise because you can’;t change the rules of the game while it is in progress. That’s why a poor ETS is worse than none at all and probably worse than a poor tax.
It will arise out of the desire to reconcile and trade certificates across jurisdictions just as local money can be converted into that foreign stuff and vice versa.
Fran,
You still have made absolutely no connection between your ETS and the development of alternative energy sources other than to infer that they would magically appear. What in you plan is the quantifiable device by which this will occur. And what is the time frame? How can a government be certain that alternatives will appear at all? How is your target government going to prevent most affect industries from relocating?
Well BilB@116
As you know, I’m not in favour of this ETS and I didn’t vote for this government. I’m merely discussing how a system aimed at serious mitigation could work, were I designing it.
Clearly, some of the funds raised would be set aside to build new installed capacity and also suitable storage technologies — like pumped storage for example.
Look here for a discussion I’ve had on this.
Fran
Fran Barlow @109: “So too it is with AGW. We could always make a case for more data, but if awaiting more data implies ignoring an increasing body of existing data and accepting the risks attendant on ignoring its implications, then we have to be certain that this risk and its costs don’t exceed any risks and costs of using it to inform policy, otherwise we are being irrational and reckless.”
Exactly so!
That sounds very much like you are drawing a decision tree, with “cost of information” included on the “wait and see” branch, and “mitigation cost” on the “act now” branch? Both branches then bifurcate into “significant climate change” and “business as usual” with associated costs to society for the two climate change branches. Four alternative outcomes, easy to see on a single page, with expected costs.
I wish people would use decision trees more often. I like decision trees, because they can reduce a big pile of words to a clear set of alternatives. Some of us get lost in piles of text, and find pictures easier to interpret.
Mind you, I don’t like influence diagrams (sometimes used for similar purposes), because everything can be argued as influencing everything else… You wind up with a scraggly birdsnest, which doesn’t improve understanding IMHO but intimidates the hell out of most non-afficionados and makes the presenter think he is a genius. ;(
BilB @116: “You still have made absolutely no connection between your ETS and the development of alternative energy sources other than to infer that they would magically appear.”
Totally agree, unfortunately.
Perhaps the key is whether the additional costs can be passed on?
If the power company still has a monopoly on the grid, and they are allowed to pass on costs, then the hapless consumer is stuck with paying. Isn’t this just a form of indirect taxation for consumption? It may drive some economisation – people will use less power.
Where does the extra power cost to consumers, or the extra taxes on producers, go towards the replacement of coal-fired power? My eyesight must be going… the link isn’t showing up too well. “Invisible hand”, the economists say? “Free market economy” We saw how well that worked just recently.
So, where is the money coming from to drive the development of alternatives? Oh yeah, the government is going to give the extra taxes to green alternatives, after it has been through their bureaucratic mill, and after they have paid off all those who “need protection”. Who is being conned here?
Elise,
I think that the pass it on scenario is what will happen, as you suggest. It will happen because it will take a very long time before there is sufficient pressure to act on massive expenditure infrastructure. In between time the may be initiatives undertaken by other commercial groups, inititatives that subsequently fail, that serve to further stall initiatives by the primary energy providers. Example would be the difficulty to get geothermal underway with sufficient capital to do the job in a manner that will guarantee success. I see many possible false starts failing due to insufficient financial power burning up important lead time in a race with no time to spare. Remember the LA brownouts? That was the market at work. Our government seems to think that business will leap at the opportunity to invest hundreds of billions of dollars at the mere smell of infrastructure income.
Fran,
I will read you leader when I get back to work.
Who gets the proceeds from auctioning certificates Elise?
Fran Barlow @121, “Who gets the proceeds…”? Can I add three more questions?
* What are the certificates worth?
* How many are available?
* How effective is the auctioning process?
Well Elise
1. the price would be determnined at auction
2. The number to be auctioned would be driven by the cap
3. The auction wouild be a standard affair — perhaps closed bids
Fran Barlow @123, it didn’t work all that well in Europe, so you had better hope we have something radically different. Take care, Fran, that you don’t get bogged down in the details and lose sight of the final objective.
The problem remains that it is a VERY, VERY labour intensive and bureaucratic process.
The large companies have already been forced to collect data. From what I have heard from better half, it is a bureaucratic nightmare which is using up a lot of manhours on a paper-chase for every possible item used in a large operation, including trying to get all the contractors to do likewise.
And the net gain for all this paper-chase??? How much were we hoping to reduce emissions by???
Companies do cost/benefit analyses on every major consumer of manhours, which is a part of how they stay in business. Government wonks just issue edicts which don’t need to be justified, except in terms of looking good for the electorate. So they can get another term in power.
Unfortunately, in the longer term, we will all pay for it, if there are negligible results for significant cost.
The whole circus may simply be a consumer of manhours, both for businesses and for government paper-pushers, with negligible improvement in carbon emissions. This is ultimately a cost for everyone in our society, in terms of productivity.
Elise
In Europe the scheme basically handed out permits for free. The cap was a joke
Yes it will cost money to set up — espewcially at the start — same as for a G&ST but that would apply even with a tx.
And yes you need a serious cap with srrious penalties for breaching it.
You also need to hypothecate rthe funds to ensure they are bing spent only on stuff the run the scheme, supply the cleamn energy or other reduction measures of compensation in kind for those at the bottom of the system.
Fran @108: You say we shouldn’t use regulations to drive down the fuel consumption of cars
However, almost all the gains that have been made to reduce pollution in the past have been acheived by the use of regulation. In these cases the use of regulation had the attraction of giving clear outcomes without the need for artificial price increases that bear little relationship to the actual costs of reducing pollution. The trail breaking use of regulation to drive down smog producing chemicals in car exhausts was a clear sucess story that was folllowed by the rest of the world.
People often quote the use of cap and trade by the US to deal with acid rain. This is a comlex case where cap and trade is actually a logical way to deal with the issue. (The complexities arise because of power station location with respect to high and low sulphur coals, the potential to reduce sulphur in coal washeries and differences in the cost of retrofitting gas scrubbing systems to pwoer stations.) The problem is that people have latched on to this success and decied that there is the answer to everything.
There is no obvious reason why a regulation/offset credit system to drive down the average fuel consumption of new cars cannot be put in place wel before the next scheduled election.
You also asked what I meant by “putting a price on clean electricity”. All that i am saying here is that the decision to invest in clean electricity will be driven by the price the investor expects to get for the clean electricity. The price paid for dirty electricity doesn’t matter as long as the producer of clean electricity also has some sales guarantees. There are a number of ways by which price and sales guarantees for clean electricity can be acheived. My preference is for these to be negotiated during the competitve tendering for the supply of clean electricity. The contract approach gives predicatable outcomes and provides scope for controlling issues such as location and technology mix.
I have no fundemental objection to the use of small carbon taxes, levies on dirty electricity etc. to raise funds. However, the size and nature of these charges should reflect the fund raising needs, the importance of avoiding economic disruption and the desirability of avoiding the need for compensation. What i object to is depending on these charges to directly drive the necessary changes.
John D@126
That’s as may be. The gains have been pitifully small. Not only that they have been offset by resort to cat converters, which as you’d be aware, have their own nasty environmental footprint.
I also can’t imagine how you’re going to rig what amounts to a special tariff on clean electricity without having an arbitrary definition of clean and an arbitrary subsidy. Incidently, how do you separate the dirty market from the clean one if the price of the clean one is high? It doesn’t sound the least bit efficient. If the public don’t pay, why do they need to avoid waste anyway?
You haven’t thought this through and for a believer in market mechanisms, this is an odd position to take. Why bother with any of this? Why not simply bite the bullet and say all electricity will be supplied by the state — maybe getting competitive tenders for someone to do it and have at it that way?
Again your language (“small carbon taxes”; “avoiding economic disruption”) reminds me that what lies behind the carbon tax proposal is often a desire to concede the least the opponents of mitigation can so that when we all come to our senses and wonder how we can have accepted the IPCC conclusions we can dismantle the whole road show quickly.
I hope you can understand that AGW is not a fantasy and it’s not mgoing away anytime soon, even with major structural change. In their ignorance our grandparents and parents authored this mess and we too resisted because we liked the lifestyle. We have about 100 years of work to begin. We need to get cracking.
I just picked this up on George Monbiot’s blog at The Guardian:
It seemes that Plimer objected to debating Monbiot because Monbiot insisted that questions could be put to Plimer in advance and published in writing prior to the debate and Monbiot wanted a mock trial style format. Apparently, Plimer is averse to fact checking. He prefers to be able to answer the questions he’d prefer to be asked, and so he refused to debate. 1-0 to Monbiot.
Interestingly, one of the letters to Monbiot’s blog by someone called “Mark” posts a link to this post at Larvatus Prodeo. Mark Bahnisch?
Fran @127: My take on the science is similar to Brian’s – The science suggests very strongly that the sooner we get close to ZeroGen the better. However, what the public debate is about is a risk balancing excersize – The risks/potential damage of doing nothing vs the risks of doing something. Those who are opposed to to acting to slow down climate change talk endlessly about the risk to jobs, destroying the economy etc. We have to talk about minimizing these risks as well as the AGW risks.
Where I am coming from is a belief that CPRS is made for those who want to do nothing. It is difficult to understand, difficult for anyone to work out what effect it will have on them, their jobs and the jobs of friends and family. It comes with price shocks, uncertain permit prices and serious admin costs. Best of all you can claim that CPRS will result in just about anything you like, safe in the knowledge that no-one will be able to prove you wrong.
I can understand why market speculators think it will be a good idea but this doesn’t mean that it good for jobs, the economy or the environment.
You say that the gains from regulation “have been pitifully small”. I am talking about what has happened for over a 100 yrs. Imagine what the environment would have been like without all the acts and regulations that have been introduced over this period of time? I am old enough to remember well what parts of Newcastle were like before BHP was forced to clean up its act.
You also say
Sorry but I am a pragmatist, not a market mechanism tragic.
We already have a system that encourages investment in clean electricity by running separate markets for clean and dirty electricty and insisting that a certain amount of clean electricty goes into the mix. The heavy investment we see in Europe is the result of a different approach to “putting a price on clean electricity” (and is not the result of their ETS.)
The transition to clean electricity in Australia is going to take decades. During that time we will have an ongoing need for dirty electricity and a rational shutdown process. I think the issues associated with this transition are complex and will not be handled effectively by the current market system. So yes, it makes sense to give the state a significant role including the role buyer and seller of the bulk of electricity including dirty electricity, at least for the transistion period.
Sure, the approach I am talking about makes it easier to speed up or slow the clean-up process. Keep in mind that the Greens are opposing CPRS because it locks us into targets that are too low.
JohnD,
It is probably time to start a list of those people who will and who won’t be buying carbon credits. Anyone with any real knowledge please setp in here.
First up the public pays for every thing. But they only pay in the form of higher prices and will not be credit holders.
The government has exempted vehicles so most of the oil industry will not be holding credits. I am unclear what the status of heating gas is. Anyone?
1).Power generators will be buying credits but they will not be paying for them (guess). The credits will effectively be a limited license to release. These credits will over time be less available and power generators will suck back their CO2 and stick it underground, find some other way of generating electricity, or progressively wind their businesses down. The cost (free) of the credits will be passed on to the consumer in the form of higher electricity prices (20% this year) and the additional money will be passed to the government who will then hand that money out to pooorer households (to buy votes?).
2).Some how farmers will be required to have credits for land clearing (that one’s going to be popular) and the cost of those credits will come through in higher food prices.
3).I got nothing else ,Anyone?.
Fran Barlow @125: “In Europe the scheme basically handed out permits for free. The cap was a joke.”
Umm, Rudd/Wong’s special exemptions and concessions to all and sundry? Would that be rather similar to handing out free permits?
Umm, our current target of, 5% reduction was it? Would that also be a joke?
“Yes it will cost money to set up — espewcially at the start — same as for a G&ST but that would apply even with a tx.”
Looks like a Morton’s Fork argument to me. Offer people a choice between two unpleasant alternatives, and refuse to contemplate anything else?
Incidentally, the comment that “it will cost money to set up” hardly even captures what I have been saying.
It will continue to cost MANY manhours, EVERY year, to supply regularly updated data for the damn bureaucratic paper-chase. Not just for the setup phase. And to what end, in terms of the bottom line (carbon emission reductions)???
It will also support an endless plethora of non-productive lobbyists, lawyers, advisors and who knows what else, who will just drain the blood from our productive businesses.
I care about the environment, and want to see a change. But your proposed method STINKS.
Elise@131
In so far as your comments relate to the current ETS I’ve already stated that I oppose it and think it should be voted down. See for example my comment @106
All of the objections — the “man hours”, “unproductive lobbyists” etc apply to a tax with at least as much force as to an ETS and actually more so because once a scheme is in place it has a course to run. Taxes come and go but a long term scheme does not becuase business certainty is key.
If you take a look at the Beltway lobbyists in Washington it’s clear that pretty much every tax has a lobby along with many things that don’t relate to taxes but with a system of property rights — and that is what an emission certificate is, the possibility of amendment goes way down because change hurts too many people. Think of something like money. Is ther a lobby to get the governmnet to print more money? Less money? Print it in different denominations? Not really. What about housing? Is there a lobby to build more inner city housing? tear some of it down? If there are they are pretty small. Either policy would hurt some property holders.
It’s a wedge Elise. Like you, I want a scheme that works and that is political robust — and I know how those who want no change at all would operate. I want to cut the ground from beneath their feet.
John D@129
1. I very much support the Greens in voting down this ETS
2. I’m also a pragmatist. I believe that if the right people ran the world’s public policy we could do a lot better than an ETS, but realistically, that is not going to happen any time soon. Terrible, venal people are going to be in charge, people who will listen to very poor advice based on sectional interest. It was just this that allowed for example, the dismantling of public transport in the US and the consequent binge on huge petrol guzzling vehicles. So that is a given.
I want to wedge those people — to put them into conflict with each other so that a system of continually reducing emissions is set in stone and buttressed by a large and growing armed camp of supporters within the ranks of business. A tax doesn’t do that. A tradeable asset does.
Fran @132, humble apologies, I missed this bit “I favour an ETS (not bthis ETS, which I’d favour voting down as worse than doing nothing) {emphasis in original}”
Like you, I also want something that works and is politically robust.
However, I think we would get faster results from legislation that simply FORCED people to make and buy more efficient vehicles by setting limits, and FORCED companies to use more efficient power generation, by setting overall limits on their emissions per total kWh produced.
To give an example: to my knowledge, there is no elaborate permit system for smelter emissions of SO2, with trading desks and what-have-you. A company like Xstrata simply gets told what the maximum level is. If they exceed it, they get fined and bollocked by the state government. They can go figure for themselves how to stay within the limits – flue gas scrubbing, conversion of SO2 to sulphuric acid, reduced production, whatever. The main point is that the limits are easy to measure and control, and do not require an extensive paper-chase with SO2 tax or cap-&-trade.
I would argue that we don’t need to put the entire business community into leg chains, to get a major improvement in emissions.
We simply need to look where the largest emissions occur, and stop beating around the bush with CCS and ETS to hide the bleeding obvious. That assumes of course, that the real objective isn’t just hiding the bleeding obvious?
Ahh…now we come to to it Elise – you live in some parallel universe whereby command and control mechanisms are more efficient ways to reduce emissions than pricing the externality!
Clearly you don’t like the idea that emissions should be reduced where it is cheapest to do so, rather than enforcing identical reductions across firms with very different marginal abatement costs.
How straightforward do you think it is to calibrate emission standards for cars to a target reduction in GHG emissions? On top of that, you would have to have separate standards for each type of vehicle – passenger vehicles, light trucks, motorcycles. On top of that, they would have to be reviewed every few years because emissions have to be reduced significantly over time. What are the costs in terms of paperwork and regulation for that?
And that is only the start. Vehicles emissions are only around 20% of Australia’s total emissions. So then, you think it is efficient to simply set a limit on emissions per Kwh of energy produced? How complicated do you think it would be to calibrate that so that low-emission energy sources were phased in at the optimal speed without bringing about major supply disruptions for those electricity and gas producers that had emissions intensities above your threshold? Gee, that wouldn’t be a difficult regulatory task. And you would still need to measure emissions installation by installation to ensure that those firms were complying with the law.
And you can’t stop there – industrial emissions are a large enough share of the total that there would have to be regulations there as well. Besides getting around the complications from having to calibrate regulations to different industry settings, you would again have to measure their emissions to ensure compliance.
So, it isn’t clear to me how you significantly reduce the administrative and regulatory burden of the ETS by going down your intended route and on top of that, the information requirements for the government/regulators would be enormous given the amount of uncertainty that surrounds the calibration exercises that would have to be undertaken. Then there is the problem that the economic cost of meeting any given emission reduction target would be far higher than under the ETS. Then there is the problem that because you aren’t setting an overall cap – you have no way of ensuring that Australia’s targets would be met.
The free permit issue is a red herring. It has a small effect on the efficiency of the scheme, but it is mainly a distributional problem. If the cap is binding and set appropriately, then whether permits are handed out for free or auctioned has a marginal and quite possibly zero impact on emission reductions. The cap still has to be met and firms still face the opportunity cost of holding permits.
Don’t get me wrong, I prefer auctioning, but the primary efficiency problem with the EU ETS was that excess permits were given away.
The most important issue is setting the cap at the right level. But why do you think that the same government that has set a weak unconditional cap, and made major concessions to industry, would turn around and set CAC standards in a way that was optimal? I always find this funny because the same political economy conditions that have led to the current outcome would also infect the CAC policies.
Pricing the carbon exernality, and sending a signal that in the long-term the relative price of fossil-fuel intensive inputs outputs will rise in real terms is an essential element in efficiently reducing emissions. You can do that via a tax or an ETS. Both have their pros and cons. But both are market mechanisms in the sense that in one, you set a quota and let the market determine the price of permits, while in the other you set the price and let the market determine the quantity of emissions. Under both, emissions reductions are undertaken by those firms and households that find it substitution cheapest.
Labor Outsider: “Ahh…now we come to to it Elise – you live in some parallel universe whereby command and control mechanisms are more efficient ways to reduce emissions than pricing the externality!”
So then all the current limits for all sorts of other toxic waste are a parallel universe that doesn’t work as well as your own parallel universe?
And a giant paper-chase is the best way of dealing with externalities?
Probably you will get your wish – the idiot ETS will be installed because we have an imploded opposition party that fears a DD trigger. We will all then get to see just how effective it really is in reducing carbon emissions.
I reckon Rudd will be wearing it like a dead albatross.
BilB@130, Yes people will be paying a lot more for food, not because land clearing will require permits (farmers can’t do that now anyway – hooray we met our Kyoto targets!), but because the price of fuel, under any meaningful ETS scheme will have to go up. When the price of fuel goes up, more people in Europe and the US turn beans and corn into biodiesel and ethanol and there is less food for people to eat. Voila, less supply = price rise. Oh yeah, not to mention the fact that food is grown a long way from the city, in the ridiculous situation we find ourselves in where hardly anyone lives outside the major cities, and food has to be transported a long way to get to the consumer.
What would stop a wheat farmer at Walgett, where they grow very good wheat now, from, instead of growing wheat, paying the Carbon tax to get it to port or the cities and ending up with a whole lot less money,from converting his land over to some you-beaut grass for second generation biofuel? The farmer makes more money, there is less food in the world and again the price goes up.
I don’t think people have thought through the full ramifications of overlaying a carbon market upon the food market.
Dealing with GHG emissions is far more complex than reducing toxic waste Elise so there is no reason to believe that the same instruments should apply in both cases. Also, you should know that trading sulphur dioxide permits worked very effectively in the US.
I still have no idea why you call it a gigantic paper chase. It works by restricting the number of permits below what would be the case under the free market. Even the 5% reduction you hate is more than 25% below BAU. There will obviously be a regulatory bureaucracy needed to support the ETS, but that would be true of any comprehensive policy set-up to deal with the scale of the problem we face.
You are massively underestimating the regulatory cost of some CAC mechanisms and also underestimating that information barriers to designing them in a cost effective manner. Badly designed CAC mechanisms would given even less certainty about emission reductions at a higher overall cost.
CAC mechanism should only be used to overcome market failures not overcome by pricing GHGs properly. They are complements, not substitutes in dealing with the problem.
Daddy can I have some money to go to Brighton with Oscar?
The Brown Wiggle@137
Your claims in relation to rising fuel costs and corn don’t hold up. In the US, corn for example attracts a subsidy and the mass corn growers are largely indifferent to the price underneath the threshhold. The main demand for corn reamins industrial feedlots and the convenience food industry and thereafter the million other uses for corn derivatives. One of the main reasons corn in the US and beet in Europe is used for biofuel is that the sugar price is protected massively in both markets (though more impressively in Europe).
Also, much of the corn feedstock isn’t edible (to humans) corn anyway — its corn mash. I also wonder about why you single out biofuels as the marginal factor. It would make much more sense to single out CAFOs or poptarts as the marginal factor, if one wanted to pick on something.
Of course, to the extent that the use of any other feedstock for fuels exercises downward pressure on crude oil it undermines cost pressures on food, which uses a lot of diesel fuel, so the reaoning here is suspect too.
Does that mean I support using corn or soy or any other food staple as biofuel feedstock? Of course not. That game isn’t worth the candle, but of course, if you put a price on CO2 emissions, you can foreclose people doing that because the CO2 emissions associated with most food staples are too great for these to greatly outperform crude oil.
I do think sources of waste biomass such as exotic invasive vegetation and fauna, mallee, groundfuel and also algae and of course organic matter fromj landfill and sewage are better targets for biofuel programs.
Labor Outsider @138: “CAC mechanism should only be used to overcome market failures not overcome by pricing GHGs properly.”
So what is a “proper” price for GHG’s? Says who, and on what basis?
Nobody even agrees on the critical CO2 equivalent level, when it will happen, or even the probabilities of reaching the tipping point for different CO2 equivalents. So what is a “proper price” on that basis?
You seem to be implying that the ETS is a market-based system that by inference will drive itself, and that setting maximum limits is somehow a totally different exercise in “command and control”. As I understand it, ETS will also be “command and control”, driven by the government.
ETS still requires prices and levels and exemptions, all to be set and controlled by the government. Much of this would probably be subject to argy-bargy, as Rudd loves to call it. Marvellous opportunity for political favouritism, and pork barrelling leading up to elections, I would think. To say nothing of a marvellous source of revenue for hiring extra public servants.
Look Elise, we have had these debates before on this forum. If you can’t see the difference between a permit trading scheme and setting emission limits for every large firm in the country by government fiat, then there isn’t much point in us debating the issue.
Your third para simply makes no sense. If we cannot know the critical CO2 equivalent levels, nor the timing, then how can we design any policies at all, including the thresholds for your emissions intensity limits? Scientists and policymakers should make educated estimates on the basis of existing evidence.
An ETS does not rely on knowing the answer to this definitively. The ETS will involve gateways that allow the long-term cap to be reduced over time if the evidence suggests it is necessary.
An ETS does not drive itself. It is a regulated market that sets an overall cap and allows the market to “discover” the price of permits that is necessary to meet the overall cap. If the cap is set too high, or is not enforced, then of course the price will not be socially optimal.
It doesn’t have to be a source of revenue for “hiring extra public servants” – it can also be a mechanism to reduce other more distorting taxes. Perhaps you should read up a bit on Pigou taxes and how they can be used to increase the efficiency of the tax system…
One of the facinating things about CPRS is that it doesn’t include putting a price on the carbon in fuel. Understandable given that Howard was threatened with losing an election until he backed right down on fuel excersize. Crazy, given the real risk of crippling oil shortages even if you don’t believe in AGW.
Sounds like an argument for looking for ways of driving down oil consumption that don’t depend on artificial increases in the price of fuel?
John D@143
There is no low cost politically viable way to achieve this quickly apart from the measure you eschew.
“Daddy can I have some money to go to Brighton with Oscar?”
If one has to beg one’s parents for money, then they haven’t got any.
“Sounds like an argument for looking for ways of driving down oil consumption that don’t depend on artificial increases in the price of fuel?”
Speaking of which, Google as part of its long term plan to dominate the Solar System has come up with this.
Given their track record so far, I’m willing to entertain it.
LO, I guess from your comments here you’re an economist, of the type who favours market solutions to most problems.
This isn’t meant to be insulting (well, not very, anyway), but your narrow view of the world doesn’t allow you to see that every market contains the seeds of its own failure. All it takes is a couple of spivs.
Labor Outsider @142: “Perhaps you should read up a bit on Pigou taxes and how they can be used to increase the efficiency of the tax system…”
Perhaps, smartypants, we might be more inclined to trust economists and their theories if they (a) managed to stop throwing rocks at each other (e.g. Stiglitz vs Summers) and (b) managed to predict and forestall some of the most cataclysmic economic events of our times?
Not that old chestnut Elise!!
So, your critique of Pigou taxes (derived from public finance microeconomics) is that they can’t possibly be sensible because a bunch of macroeconomists did not predict the extent and timing of the global financial crisis? Or that economists have disagreements with each other about economic theory and empirics? Hmm…that is a great argument you have going there…
And David, yes I am an economist. I don’t agree that “every market contains the seeds of its own failure”. And that is not coming from a narrow world view. Market failure and what to do in the presence of externalities has been studied by economists for decades. But not all markets are as prone to failure as others. Where there are clear cases of market failure – for example in health, education, banking and the environment – I strongly support carefully targeted government interventions and regulations that pass cost-benefit tests to either help the market operate more efficiently, or supplant the market if the market cannot operate effectively even with those government regulation or interventions.
Nowhere will you read me defending the US financial regulatory system – so there is no poiont in associating my views with those that favoured light touch regulation.
Overall, the capitilist mixed economies that we have now – markets allocating most resources, governments regulating where necessary, providing public goods and redistributing to improve equality of opportunity, have delivered enormous gains in human welfare. As you can guess from my other posts, I believe that policies could be tweaked to deliver better outcomes, but overall the model is a good one. I definitely think that the economic reforms delivered by Hawke and Keating were necessary and benificial.
Too often on this blog, people (not usually the original posters) sound off on topics they know very little about and suggest policy interventions supported by little empirical evidence and that are likely to have poor welfare consequences.
That is not meant to be insulting (well not very, anyway).
“because a bunch of macroeconomists did not predict the extent and timing of the global financial crisis”
They didn’t predict it all.
“Overall, the capitilist mixed economies that we have now – markets allocating most resources, governments regulating where necessary, providing public goods and redistributing to improve equality of opportunity, have delivered enormous gains in human welfare.”
That is true though.
So where the fuck are all the great stoushanauts of yesteryear? I’m outside a third of a bottle of the Macallan Fine Oak 15, the Cohíba robusto is drawing well and I’m ready to rumble. Yet these days, too many here seem have a hair trigger and thin skin yet no stamina.
I blame the banning of corporal punishment in our so-called education system m’self. And too much daylight saving. Or not enough.
No takers? Very well then, I’m off to 4chan to pick fights with Hentai tragics and then edit all youse wikipedia entries.
LO, this is probably off-topic, but since I’ve woken up with a nasty attack of gout, I’ll go for it.
All our increased wealth, or at least that part of it which is real (as opposed to the illusory wealth of the
casinoglobal financial market), over the last couple of hundred years, is due to the massive energy hit we’ve pulled out of the ground – a billion years of sunlight, gone in a flash.One cannot evaluate the contribution of fossil fuels without examining also the negative side of the ledger.
But for fossil fuels, most of the deaths and injuries in the last 100 years or so would not have happened. War would not have been sustainable on the scale that it was. Japan’s war effort was doomed once they were denied oil. Germany’s faltered too. One only has to look in the direction of the middle east to see that crude oil is the lifeblood of the conflict and the chief prop to a number of seriously
pernicious regimes. Does anyone think oil is not an issue in the conflict in Sudan? Nigeria? How much nof the benefit of oil trickles down to those at the bottom of oil producing societies? In many cases, all that trickles down is death and conflict. Oh … and also what is called “Dutch Disease” by economists. (Look it up)
And does anyone believe that road trauma would be what it was if oil had not become available? Would convenience food and a sedentary lifestyle have been possible on a mass scale without oil? Doubtful.
And then there’s coal — that other great killer, which all along the chain shortens lives.
Undoubtedly, fossil fuels made possible marvellous things, but at a terrible cost too. And right now, we are at the point where, precisely because we now have other options, we ought to phase them out as quickly as human interest permits.
Fran, I think you are wrong about your arguments that the oil price doesn’t affect the price of food (is that what you were saying?). You only need to look back to a couple of years ago when the oil price was $130/barrel. It was too good to be true for American corn growers who planted massive acres of corn to cash in on the similar increase in the value of ethanol. This took acres away from other crops and hence their production went down. And so we saw the price of corn go from around $3/bushel to about $9/bushel with a similar increase in wheat and beans. You see while ethanol on its own doesn’t use a huge percentage of the corn (and beans for biodiesel), the world already had a very tight supply/demand balance for grain, so any diversion into fuel makes a massive difference to stocks and hence prices. A little bit like CO2 in the AWG debate. There is only a miniscule amount of extra CO2 in the atmosphere, especially compared to the other GHG’s such as water vapour, but it is this little bit that reportedly makes all the difference. Fran, you probably won’t believe me and have some huge spiel full of generalisations ready, but I would just ask you to check a graph of oil price vs corn price (or wheat, or beans price) for the last 4 or so years, and keep an eye on it into the future. Grains, especially corn and beans, are now traded more as a fuel than food. Sad perhaps, but true.
On another note, subsidizing the ethanol industry is just a absolute no brainer for the American government. Without giving assistance to the ethanol industry, the US exports the majority of their corn for say $3/bushel. Their farmers complain about not getting enough money so they have to subsidize them as well. Instead of that, they can put that money into subsidising the ethanol indutry, the corn price doubles as a result, the US exports half as much (as they put a heap into ethanol) but still has the same export income, while at the same time not needing to subsidise farmers as much as their income has doubled. At the same time they’ve put a small cap on the oil price, so the oil they buy (which is less than it would have been due to the amount of ethanol) is cheaper, they’re not propping up corrupt Saudi’s, they’re less reliant on overseas for fuel and they’ve got a greener, more renewable fuel and less pollution problems in cities to boot!. The US government makes money by subsidizing ethanol! Of course it doesn’t do much for the one sixth of the world population who don’t have enough to eat.
And Fran, I think you’ll find that Europe relies mainly on oilseeds for their biofuels (biodiesel mainly from soybeans), while the US is predominately corn for ethanol. The Brazilians use sugar beet for ethanol when the price of sugar is low enough. If the price of beans goes down, they just switch that land to beans and make biodiesel.
Bw@154
No, it wasn’t. The oil price is an important input into the price of fuel, since much of the input for fertilisers and pesticides and grain sewing and harvest and transport (especially refrigerated) is connected to it. But the relationships are complex, because rising oil prices depress economic growth, which subverts food prices by forcing people to spend on fuel instead of food. Undermining the value of currencies in places that are net importers of fuel oil forces local prices up but staunches demand because all other necessaries also go up. So simply asserting a simple correlation that applies everywhere is mistaken. Biofuels have the potential to undermine crude oil prices, especially if they are not significantly drawing upon crude oil as an input, because obviously, you can use these instead of petroleum fuels both in agriculture and more generally. A developing country that was a net fuel importer that can do import substitution — say with sugar for example — may benefit from a strengthened currency, which makes both food imports and the inputs to local food production that are imported and loan service, cheaper.
Your assertion on corn is not right. While biofuels from corn probably drove corn prices at the margin, much more important factors were crop failures associated with drought and unseasonal rain, and increases in demand for beef — which is fed with corn so as to promote both rapid growth and that marbly look that some people like. In part, this reflected the growing purchasing power of China and their move to a more western meat-based diet. Plainly, if it were made illegal to feed cattle corn (it’s actually really bad for them and requires massive resort to anti-biotics to keep them from dying early) apart from costing the US government a fortune in Butz-subsidy, the price of meat would go up a lot and the price of corn would decline. Getting rid of corn in convenience food would help a lot not only with price but bearing in mind that HFCS is a major component in obesity … but I digress.
Oh for pity’s sake … Nope … I’m not taking the bait. I’ll just sigh loudly enough for people to hear … CO2 is up from 280 to nearly 390ppmv … you do the maths … and as to water vapour … no … I said I wouldn’t go there. If you really don’t know what is wrong with this old canard it’s because you haven’t been paying attention.
For the record, the aim of corn subsidies is essentially a way for the US government to pay off agribusiness and play to mid-western farmers. It actually hurts most farmers because the structure of the subsidy encourages them to mass produce regardless of price and the main beneficiaries are companies like Monsanto (who sell GM corn) and the people who sell fertiliser and chemicals and antibiotics and who turn corn into pop tarts and McDonalds and KFC … Biofuels are a spin off but corn would not be used as a biofuel at all if sugar wasn’t protected. Domestic price support for sugar helps the Republicans in the southern states.
You are mistaken about the feedstocks too. While most European biodiesel is from rapeseed, most ethanol is from beets followed by wheat (again this reflects the huge tariff on sugar). In Brazil only sugar is used as feedstock for ethanol. IMO, while using sugar is preferable to corn — since sugar isn’t really food in any meaningful sense and has better EROEI (about 10:1), cane can be used as cogen etc. I still would prefer second gen feedstocks.
IMO, all the subsidies and tariffs should be removed on corn, sugar etc and the market left to decide what to do with these things. A proper carbon dioxide emission price would also take care of much of the wasteful use of land, mass production of industrial beef, use of corn in junk food etc
Fran
How about this as a compromise Elise, John D?
One alternative to the government’s ETS might be to push compliance as close to the end of the chain as possible. Give every individual adult (and in the case of families — the household heads by proxy for their children) a carbon card that would have to be produced to purchase any service or good. Everyone could get a quota and if they exhausted it they’d have to buy more credit from someone who was under or from the state and a premium to the market. Every product would have to supply authenticated pre-purchase carbon costs (including carbon miles) so people could decide what they could afford. Properly authenticated offsets (eg in the case of landfill gas, waste biomass as feedstock) would be allowed. No card, no purchase. Pweople could check their remaining credit at shops and ATMs. People who found ways of avoiding using their rations could sell their surpluses on ebay or similar by auction.
Businesses could get a similar one based on world’s best practice in emissions at the time. This allowance would be decremented over time to meet the projected CO2 target. Businesses needing retrofitting funds could borrow from the government at a premium of 300 basis points to the OCA providing they could show a viable business plan, account for all expenditures and have results and methodology audited and publicly available. Every three years they’d be benchmarked against similar businesses by process and where improvements could be made, these two would be required within 2 years.
So no specific costs for CO2 emission but still a CO2 ration related to a serious target.
I think it would be about as popular as the Australia Card and would probably smash consumer demand, but at a purely technical level, it would work.
Fran @156: I’m a fan of 80/20 solutions, low-hanging fruit, bang-for-buck, etc, Fran. I reckon we should identify the biggest culprits, and work on fixing those first. Then go after the small fry, if we need further reductions.
Everyone, including the Rudd government knows that the biggest source of Australia’s carbon footprint is the use of fossil fuels, and the biggest culprits there are: coal-fired power, transport (commercial and domestic). The other big culprit is the agricultural sector.
Instead of a solution which involves monitoring EVERY SINGLE business in the country, we could start by a more targetted approach to the MUCH fewer but bigger contributors.
To draw a long bow, imagine you owned an oil company with 365 oil wells, some producing a dribble and some absolute gushers. Say you had to review the performance of all these wells, and propose maintentance programs for them. Would you spend 1 day per well, thus 365 days for 365 wells, absolute-dogs and star-performers alike? Or would you put your efforts into tending the gushers, followed by trying to fix the semi-gushers?
I turned the problem inside out there, but sometimes it helps to see things from the opposite direction.
As an alternative to Rudd/Wong’s ETS, the recently proposed “baseline and credit” scheme seems to be more sensible, and would involve less accounting paperwork.
It apparently requires permits to be bought for a firm’s ADDITIONAL emissions over a set level, rather than ALL its emissions. Thus, all those companies with low emission levels need not get caught up in continuous accounting of costs and payments. That seems like a pragmatic solution, and probably less likely to drive the entire business community into rabid liberal voters within one term of ETS.
Further to an earlier discussion on CCS (carbon capture and storage), Fran, and your estimate of 35% thermal efficiency for old coal-fired power stations. If we tack on CCS, then reported estimates for capturing and compressing CO2 would increase the fuel needs of a coal-fired plant with CCS by 25%-40% (IPCC report, quoted in Wikipedia).
If we combine the two figures, then the old coal-fired power stations are probably going to deliver 25 – 28% overall efficiency. That is a certifiably dreadful performance.
The coal lobby can’t be seriously expecting us to buy that idea as a sustainable answer?
Fran @155. Your garbage knows now ends. You state that feeding corn to cattle makes them die early without the use of antibiotics. This is rubbish that I’ve experienced first hand. You really need to get out and experience things for yourself rather than relying on loony green propaganda.
You clearly didn’t read my post. By subsidising the ethanol industry, the US drives up the price of corn, meaning they no longer need to subsidise their farmers, who are producing a heap of corn because the price is good! That is a fact, it’s happened and is happening.
Then onto the rubbish about subsidies ‘only’ helping monsanto. Farmers are in no way made to grow GM crops, and they are in no way disadvantaged by not growing GM crops. If they choose to grow GM crops, it is because the product being offered has rewards greater than the costs. For the record, the Bt gene found in insect resistant corn is a naturally occurring protein found in the soil. When your kids eat a handful of soil, they are ingesting thousands of times more of this protein than you could ever get out of a plant. Also, the Bt protein is made into an organically certified spray for the control of helicoverpa. The growing of GM corn in the US must be the greatest proof that this GM technology is safe, since there has been billions of meals eaten across the world with this corn in it. In fact Fran, I’d go so far as to say that you’ve eaten countless meals of GM crops. Everytime you buy something with Soyabeans in it, it will be GM, as Australia is an importer of Soyabeans, and pretty much the whole world grows GM soy. Of course all that goes without saying that the greatest safety measures should be employed whenever a new GM product is to be released, as is done now by the OGTR.
There was a fair bit of other crap in your post to but I can’t be bothered countering it.
OK Brown Wiggle
Your reasoning is clearly flawed but I think I’ll just leave it there. Plainly, I’ve strayed into areas that you are sensitive about and I’ve no desire to provoke a flame war.
Thanks for the link to the google action plan Nabakov at 146. One of the interesting things google is doing is looking at climate change through silicon valley eyes. One of the reasons it has put $10m into kite power.
Fran @ 156: Carbon rationing is an interesting idea but it could become a vehicle for social injustice once you allow people to trade carbon rations either directly or indirectly. Once you can trade the rich will continue their public waste while the poor sell their rations and freeze in the dark. Don’t like the idea of business being given free rations – sounds like all the freebies to business that go with CPRS.
It is worth asking why the Brisbane water shortage story was such a success despite the rejection of water trading. It was easier for the community to be committed while the rich were unable to buy water for lawns from the poor.
John D@160
Let me say at the outset that I regard my compromise proposal as likely to prove nearly as popular as a snake in a lift, but since we were shooting the breeze so to speak, I thought I’d try and come up with a regulatory approach that didn’t involve collecting lots of money and still could achieve the other goals we were seeking.
IMO, the main problem would be that it would radically depress consumer spending –assuming one sees that as a problem — and as we have seen, the government does. Of course, that’s one of the reasons it would do its main job — reducing emissions, and it might well be that this threat alone would force spending on renewables, since businesses would then have to compete as much on CO2 as on price. A lot of those “cheap” Chinese imports would suddenly become expensive.
I don’t see the problem you do in poorer people selling their rations to richer people. I doubt they’d have a lot left over to sell, and what they did have left over would be the result of cuts to wasteful activity, like buying junk food, alcohol, cigarettes, frivolous use of the car, the lawnmower, the plasma TV etc. If they economised and got paid by middle class people for doing so then the measure would be egalitarian. And they might be healthier too.
If you thought I was giving business free rations you misunderstood. In essence, they’d be getting about what they’d get under an ETS with a cap of about 40% — the right to emit up to the cap. They’d get the right to emit at the level of world’s best practice and that would be reviewed every few years or so. Ultimately, once all the low hanging fruit goes out, the only way they can continue to cut their emissions is buying renewable energy, and so they are going to have to fund that to avoid going over the target.
Still, I don’t see the government entertaining such a radical scheme, given the reluctance to do right under CPRS, so it’s all rather moot. Personally, I think the only box it doesn’t tick is politically viable.
Elise@157 … you left out concrete, steel and aluminium in your culprits. The really dirty coal plants are supplying aluminium smelting — and these jobs are heavily subsidised.
I don’t think you can divide up businesses on size otherwise that just creates an incentive to create artificially small independent businesses and to outsource to get under the cap.
On thermal efficiency it’s the newer coal plants that are running at 35% — the older ones are closer to 25%, and yes, this does make CC&S a dead dog from the start. The estimates I’ve seen indicate that $100 per tonne of CO2 would probably make CC&S commercially viable but in that scenario NG would be even more viable as would be pretty much everything else.
I’d like to see some serious investment in pumped storage.
1. The aim of pumped storage would be to provide on-demand capacity for a slew of about 5% for two hours (or the likely slew in any intermittent capacity, whichever was the greater) i.e. enough time to allow thermal capacity such as NG to be brought online and/r demand management to be implemented.
Taking a figure of (for NSW) of about 15GW*0.05 = 150MW *2 hours = 300MwH
2. The Sydney area, for example comprises about 1600Km2. Assuming the creation of five pumped storage facilities each supplying treated water and/or power to the grid as required implies servicing an area each of about 320Km2 — an area covered roughly by a circle of with a 10km radius. Given average population densities of about 30 persons per Ha each area would service somewhere between 800,000 and 1 million people. Note: These densities are much lower than ideal. While Hong Kong is much too densely populated at about 300 persons per Ha to be desirable, somewhere between 75 and 100 would probably be viable for low cost infrastructure … but I digress.
3. Although you would, ideally choose locations as high as possible on stable ground in the relevant locality, given that you are going to need a low reservoir, one could simply achieve the difference in height one wanted by excavation. Assuming a 100 metre differential you’d need about 1.2 Gl of water stored or about 240ML capacity in each of the five locations. Each reservoir (upper and lower) would have to have a capacity of around 240,000m3. You could store a little more than that amount of water in a cylindrical vessel with a diameter of 86 metres and a height of 43 metres. Assuming the lower band of 800,000 people in a district and 2.4 per household that’s 333,000 households. Assuming your 200Kl each per annum that’s 66,600,000kl or 66.6Gl per annum or 182.4Ml per day — which would be about 75% of the capacity of the reservoir to be pumped in a day. Given the elevation and the nature of the sites, it would probably make sense to locate wind turbines at these points. Given the likely strong winds, VAWT might well be apt.
I should add that IMO the system should not merely or even mainly be reliant on the outflux of sub-potable water from households that have ultimately sourced that water from places like Warragamba. Instead, what I’d prefer to see is localised water collection from the rooves of residential, commercial and industrial buildings. At the moment, every serious rainstorm causes water to flood stormwater drains with debris and other plastic waste that either winds up in creeks or causes road hazards. Collecting this on rooves, doing basic primary filtration for PM locally, and then pumping that water to the local reservoir would not only massively reduce the call on the major dams, and abate environmental nuisance and road hazards but reduce the distance every cubic metre of supplied water was pumped, both at input to consumers and at outflow. We could radically cut effluent at ocean outfalls and save power and make it part of a system of localised power supply and storage that could lower the emissions intensity of our power grid. And of course, at higher densities and higher relative elevations, it would work even better.
What’s not to like about that?
Fran
Fran @162. I’d like to leave it there too. It would be good though if you refrained from talking about things you don’t have a grasp on – namely most things agricutural. You don’t do yourself any favours from people who actually do it for a living.
When studying at QUT from 1995-1999, the thermal efficency of coal fired power stations was of the order of 41-42%. Presumably it’s become a little better since then, although I would suspect not dramatically.
BW@163
IIRC, the best anthracite plants were running at about 45% last I heard — but the 35% figure was an average.
Nothing I’ve posted above is factually incorrect and your reasoning was also poor but I’m going to leave you to re-read what we’ve written when you’re sufficiently calm to reflect on it and see whether you wish to persist in your claims.
Fran @162, good points.
Aluminium has been called “solidified electrical energy”, IIRC. Agree that aluminium smelters really should be located where you have renewable power, like using hydro power in Norway, and using geothermal power in Iceland. We are mad to be using coal-fired power for such an energy intensive process. Works for Alcoa, but a tragedy of the commons…
Your reference to coal-fired power: “the older ones are closer to 25%, and yes, this does make CC&S a dead dog from the start. The estimates I’ve seen indicate that $100 per tonne of CO2 would probably make CC&S commercially viable…”
It is a mad concept, regardless of costs, to propose a process which uses a large proportion of what it generates, just to dispose of the flue gas. A fool’s errand…
The water pumping idea has drifted around for a few decades I think, but aren’t we a little short of the stuff these days?
Elise@165
The only reason I quoted a figure at which CC&S might be viable is to underline how far from reality the idea is. At the moment, industry people who don’t like an ETS are miffed at $25 per tonne and yet those same people are claiming that CC&S is a viable thing to pour money into — as long as it’s public money of course. They had years to pour their own money into this, if they’d wanted. So IMO, let those who think it’s worthwhile campaign for a price that makes it viable. Of course, then NG would be very viable. It’s already viable.
Not at all. We have lots of waste water i.e water that is below drinking standard. A pumped storage unit isn’t bothered by elevated levels of microbacteria or PM5. As above, I’d be combining with local water treatment so the pumped storage could double as a local supoply point for potable water sourced locally. The reservoirs themselves could likewise act as catchments. The aim would be to avoid moving water one metre further than necessary (ecept to recover power) since all that requires power from the system. Power saved is as good as power produced — better really since there are no parasitic losses.
One should note also that we are surrounded by water and the vast majority of us live within 50km of the coast in a handful of cities and large towns. That’s also where most precipitation occurs. Hmmmm
Fran
Fran @166: “They had years to pour their own money into this, if they’d wanted. So IMO, let those who think it’s worthwhile campaign for a price that makes it viable.”
EXACTLY SO!!! Couldn’t agree with you more!!!
Of course they have no intention of really taking this up. They would have done the numbers already. That is not the game they are playing.
It comes back to my far-fetched story about Bush and a hypothetical claim to leading the world on “gun control”. The idea isn’t to actually come up with a solution. The idea is to GIVE THE IMPRESSION that they are earnestly working on a solution, while continuing business as usual. The longer they can string out their story, the longer they can make profits.
It matters not a damn to the execs, because they will be retiring by the time their technologically-challenged and/or gullible audience realises they have been taken for a ride.
I don’t wonder at all at the motives of the execs. I mainly wonder if Rudd is in on the con-trick too?
Bound to be. Whatever he is, he’s nobody’s fool. In his case though I think cognitive dissonance is also at work. He needs to deflect attacks based on claims that fixing the environment will “destroy Aussie jobs”. Seeming to go after miners and heavy industry is a hugely useful wedge for a conservative opposition –one that makes Latham’s Tasmanian timber stumble look like a fairly minor (ha! an unintentional pun!) event. I mean, power workers and mining — it doesn’t get any more Labor heartland than that. The coal bosses know that and you will recall Barnaby Joyce implying that Green jobs meant unemployed miners were going to be sent to Nimbin to make wind chimes.
Essentially, this is a featherbedding social porkbarrell. The truth is that 20 years from now, the mines will still be operating and although coal-fired capacity will be much less many will have retired and the rest will still be employed in one of the new industries. But it’s impolitic to say that, so we have to pay up to keep Rudd from being wedged. The other side would do it too. I spoke to Empty outside Q&A one might in early 2008 and he was all for it.
Only Bob Brown has been straight on this.
Mole,
“What observation would satisfy posters here that the theory was in some way incorrect? ”
An experiment or observation proving that carbon dioxide does not absorb IR in the wavelengths at which the Earth emits.
Sky Hunter @169: Googled this data on Greenhouse gas absorption spectrums Some deniers are claiming that CO2 has reached a point where extra CO2 would make no difference. What is needed is radiation spectra from space. Googled “infrared radiation spectrum from earth” and got 162,000 hits. Had a look at a few but, so far, found nothing that gave a clear answer although there is obviously data there.
Given that geo’s use infrared pictures to detect minerals the idea of complete blocking at some wavelengths is a bit surprising.
What a stupid post. As if the Global Warming–err, Climate Change–lobby is interested in debate. What a joke. The hypocrisy of this article is laughable.
Fran @168, I think you are exactly right about what is going on.
As for Barnaby “implying that Green jobs meant unemployed miners were going to be sent to Nimbin to make wind chimes”, he has some of the best quotable quotes in parliament these days.
Regarding the ETS, Barnaby said something to the effect that the ETS is a “political fascinator” – “a bit of fishnet and a few feathers, stick it on your head, but it won’t keep the sun off”. Devastatingly apt!!!
Regrettably, it will be a very expensive little “fascinator”. Rudd and Wong aren’t paying for it with their own money, but they want to prance about with it stuck on their heads at Copenhagen…
Anyone else noticed that Wong’s negotiating style bears a certain resemblance to the CCP?