Tuesday, November 03, 2009
The Climate Bill Is Doomed
The question is, could that be a good thing?
By Kevin Bullis
Last week
researchers and policy experts gathered at MIT to talk about geo-engineering--a
subject that's becoming more popular in the face of concern over inaction on
climate change.
The upcoming
United Nations climate change convention in Copenhagen seems unlikely to
produce the binding and stringent agreement needed to sharply curtail
greenhouse gas emissions. Meanwhile, greenhouse concentrations continue to
mount, driving scientists who were once opposed to the idea of tinkering with
the planet to reconsider it.
Now they've
got another reason to be worried. Earlier this year a climate bill that would've
limited greenhouse emissions and helped renewable energy sources compete with
fossil fuels seemed well on its way. In June a version passed the House. But
then other matters--mostly health care reform--distracted Congress, and a
Senate version of the bill got bogged down. The Senate recently took up the
bill again, but yesterday a report in the Washington
Post declared that "there is almost no hope for
passage" of the bill.
Democrats are
divided over the bill, and Republicans have been vocally opposing it. If the
report is right, countries meeting in Copenhagen will have even more reason to
criticize the U.S. for inaction, and to use that as a reason to delay a climate
treaty or water it down.
That's one
way to look at it, at any rate. Here's another: Copenhagen is probably doomed
already--why the rush to push legislation through? That's essentially what
Republican Senator George Voinovich (Ohio), who opposes the current bill,
reportedly said last week, "Wouldn't it be smarter to take our time and do
it right?"
It certainly
is hard to be against getting something right. But will slowing things down
lead to a better climate bill? Probably not, as long as the chief objection is
that the bill will make energy more expensive, something that seems
unavoidable. But if the delay can lead to a better system for distributing
those costs equitably, and if along the way inefficient subsidies can be weeded
out and emissions caps tightened (wishful thinking?), it could be worth the
wait.
Comments
This is because we have, albeit unintentionally, been tinkering on a grand, ever increasing scale with the atmosphere for the last 150 years. We now emit 1% of the global total of CO2 yearly, and have for last 40+ years. We cut forests globally, changing albedo (sunlight, heat reflected off planet) and build black pavement colored roads that absorb heat. We fly planes so much that on 9/11 global temperatures dropped a large amount more than usual as very few planes were spewing cloud cover versus normal days where they are crossing the US and the planet by the minute.
Star trek episodes aside, where Piccard comes back and mentioned the weather control bureau, looks like we should plan or account for the effects whether we limit them or not. And certain weather modifying schemes are now within reach of the world's wealthiest individuals, who could perform 'weather terrorism' and decide to unilaterally build plants to spew sulfur clouds, etc.
Me, I'd just like to quietly retire to (soon to be) tropical beachfront property in Montana by 2050 :)
erbium
11/03/2009
Posts:110
You do know the global temp went UP (not down) for the several days after 9/11, because the particulate matter emitted by planes was not there to reflect more sunlight back into space.
colinnwn
11/04/2009
Posts:43
cheadrick
11/04/2009
Posts:2
Observer10
11/03/2009
Posts:2
The US Senate voted not to ratify the Kyoto treaty by a vote of 99-0, and as such, we're not a party to its foolishness. I doubt that we would ratify any treaty out of Copenhagen either, and that's good to know since, unlike other countries, we're bound by our constitution to uphold the treaty as the law of the land.
kstauff
11/04/2009
Posts:94
and costly(for no reason) piece of legislation.
A lot of what has been pushed about climate change
is slowly showing itself to be wrong...and contrary
to statements of some...the debate is not over.
devassocx
11/04/2009
Posts:53
wcfloyd
11/04/2009
Posts:9
The Copenhagen Agreement is the one you're thinking about. It has a number of potential penalties for industrial countries. For the US it could be 0.7 - 2.0%. Obama may sign it, but the Senate won't ratify it. That doesn't mean one of the unelected, unconfirmed czars won't implement it anyway.
That's why the vote in 2010 is so important. Our economic survival is at stake.
RD
11/06/2009
Posts:114
You're either unaware or glossing over recent history. The House climate bill BARELY passed by 7 votes IIRC. The real problem with this ridiculous legislation is that Americans see through the charade of AGW.
As you noted in your posting, CO2 levels have been increasing, yet there has been no correlating increase in temperature to match the increase in CO2. True, there have been minor spikes in temperature, and minor troughs as well, but overall, temperature increase has been flat relative to CO2 increase. So the theory of AGW simply isn't holding up. Here's hoping any further taxation of energy fails.
And if there was any real desire to keep energy costs low while not producing CO2, the proponents of AGW would look seriously at nuclear. Since they're not, I can only conclude that they're insincere.
kstauff
11/04/2009
Posts:94
so don't blame people against the concept that mankind has a significant impact on climate as being anti-nuclear.
RD
11/06/2009
Posts:114
In Maryland, a new study in the International Journal of Climatology – by researchers from the University of Maryland, Purdue University, and the University of Colorado in Boulder – found that “most land-use changes, especially urbanization, result in warming. A clear exception is conversion of land from other uses to agriculture, which produces relative cooling, presumably because of increased evaporation.” Human-induced changes (warming) in climate have been viewed by most scientists as primarily the result of increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases. The current paper is the latest of a number of studies in recent years that are shedding light on the climate change impact of land cover change.
“What we highlight here is that a significant trend, particularly the warming trend in terms of temperatures, can also be partially explained by land-use change,” said Niyogi, a Purdue earth and atmospheric sciences professor and the Indiana state climatologist, who is the corresponding author of the article.The study found that, the more vegetation covering an area of land, the cooler its contribution to surface temperature; Conversion to agriculture results in cooling, while conversion from agriculture generally results in warming. Deforestation generally results in warming, with the exception of a shift from forest to agriculture.
- from biofuelsdigest
And...
Landmark study re-models soot impact in climate change, rivals carbon
US researchers have remodeled soot emissions, concluding that soot is causing nearly 60 percent of the global warming impact of CO2, and because soot has a shorter lifecycle than carbon emissions (that can last for up to 100 years), tackling soot offers a “faster win” against climate change than carbon strategies.
The article, in Nature Geoscience, concluded that previous soot models had not previously accounted for the absorption of reflected sunlight. In possible confirmation of the data, significantly higher soot concentrations are found in the Arctic than Antarctic, and observations in the northern polar region show higher ice-melting rates not previously explained by the carbon emission model of climate change.
“Between 25% and 35% of black carbon in the global atmosphere comes from China and India, emitted from the burning of wood and cow dung in household cooking and through the use of coal to heat homes. Countries in Europe and elsewhere that rely heavily on diesel fuel for transportation also contribute large amounts,” commented nature.com on the sources of soot emissions.
So let's halt the CO2 legislation, and fix the real problems - aerosol pollutants, and deforestation.
RD
11/06/2009
Posts:114
TooMany
11/15/2009
Posts:47
kstauff
11/17/2009
Posts:94
lasertekk
11/18/2009
Posts:78
kstauff
11/19/2009
Posts:94