The 400-plus club!

There are those who believe that global warming is a hoax created by the Chinese government, and their fearless leader wants to be the leader of the free world.

We live in strange times where facts are for losers!  We started going down that road when a previous leader of the free world trusted nothing but his instincts, not realizing that he was like "a blind man in a room full of deaf people,"

Those folks will gloss over this fact:

2016 will be the year that carbon dioxide officially passed the symbolic 400 ppm mark, never to return below it in our lifetimes, according to scientists.

Perhaps never to return below 400 in our lifetimes.  I am sure it is a hoax being propagated by the Chinese government that works hand in glove with climate scientists all around the world.

So, how do we know about this 400 ppm?

September is usually the month when carbon dioxide is at its lowest after a summer of plants growing and sucking it up in the northern hemisphere. As fall wears on, those plants lose their leaves, which in turn decompose, releasing the stored carbon dioxide back into the atmosphere. At Mauna Loa Observatory, the world’s marquee site for monitoring carbon dioxide, there are signs that the process has begun but levels have remained above 400 ppm.

Visit your favorite glaciers that you have listed in your bucket-list, thanks to the gorgeous photos that you have seen, before the Chinese government starts melting them away!

In the deep blue state that is north of us, the November election will include a ballot measure to address global warming:

Washington voters will decide in November whether to introduce a carbon tax on fossil fuels and electricity from coal and natural gas, with the goal of slowing global warming while reducing taxes on sales and manufacturing and keeping total tax revenue flat overall.

A deep blue state. Environmentally conscientious--even fanatical--electorate. So, the measure has big time support and will win easily, right?

Wrong!

Here, for instance, is the Sierra Club:

Sierra Club has adopted a Do Not Support position concerning Initiative 732, rather than Support, Neutral, or Oppose. 

How about that?  It is not a stand of "Support, Neutral, or Oppose" but "Do Not Support."  Talk about linguistic jiu-jitsu.  And you thought Bill Clinton's dancing around the word "is" was unique?

So, what's going on?  Why aren't the environmentalists embracing this initiative?

The ​resistance comes not just from the usual opponents on the right, but even more strikingly from the left. The reason: Many environmentalists see climate change as an opportunity to remake the economic order. They want to use carbon taxes to fund renewable energy and green technology and bolster the incomes of workers and communities they say are most hurt by climate change. Whatever the merits of these goals, the effect is to equate climate policy with bigger government, which makes it harder to achieve broad-based support.

Seriously?  Environmentalists oppose it because of their larger social engineering agenda?

But the main reason is that I-732 sends its revenue back to taxpayers, whereas environmentalists would like the revenue for other priorities. The Washington Environmental Council, which doesn’t support I-732, says revenue from any climate initiative should be plowed into the “clean energy economy…infrastructure for clean, abundant water and healthy forests” and assistance for “the most vulnerable workers and communities.”

So, party on, folks!  Make sure your party is on high ground so that you don't have to deal with the rising water levels.

Reduce, yes. Re-use, yes. Recycle? Hmmm...

Even though the garbage trucks come to our neighborhood every week, I have opted for trash pickup only every other week.  Not because there is a huge cost savings--the rate differential between weekly and biweekly service wouldn't even pay for a latte at the coffee place that seems to serve a blackish liquid that looks like it came from charcoal!  I consume very little, and throw the recyclables into the blue bin.  There is very little of trash for me to worry about.

Over the years, I have been convinced that even the recycling that I do is more for my own feel-good benefits than for anything else.  I blog often, like here, that I am a hypocrite for worrying about the environment.  I have joked often with students, and even noted once in an op-ed, that my annual flights to visit with the people in the old country contributes immensely more to pollution than I could ever pay for through the recycling.  Yet, the world too is way more impressed with my recycling, instead of being concerned that I take too many trips that are fueled by carbon-based energy sources.

All these are why I did not take any offense with this op-ed in the NY Times, in which the author writes:

To offset the greenhouse impact of one passenger’s round-trip flight between New York and London, you’d have to recycle roughly 40,000 plastic bottles, assuming you fly coach. If you sit in business- or first-class, where each passenger takes up more space, it could be more like 100,000.
Even those statistics might be misleading.

For the ease of argument, let us suppose that a round-trip flight between Eugene and Chennai will be about 60,000 plastic bottles.  (Of course, I don't fly business class. Not anymore!)  So, if I recycle about 500 plastic bottles a year (that's a stretch!) I have not achieved anything by recycling, have I?

But then you are thinking, "hey, lots of Americans don't fly that much."  My travel pattern is an outlier, I could claim.  For a regular John Doe, wouldn't recycling help?  And given that the John Doe numbers are far greater than the Srirams, surely recycling helps, right?  Well, it does not:

Despite decades of exhortations and mandates, it’s still typically more expensive for municipalities to recycle household waste than to send it to a landfill. Prices for recyclable materials have plummeted because of lower oil prices and reduced demand for them overseas. The slump has forced some recycling companies to shut plants and cancel plans for new technologies.

Recycling is a huge money loser.  Last week, one of the local trash hauling services announced an increase in the rate for curbside recycling!  The NY Times op-ed suggests that this is not the local company's fault:

The future for recycling looks even worse. As cities move beyond recycling paper and metals, and into glass, food scraps and assorted plastics, the costs rise sharply while the environmental benefits decline and sometimes vanish. “If you believe recycling is good for the planet and that we need to do more of it, then there’s a crisis to confront,” says David P. Steiner, the chief executive officer of Waste Management, the largest recycler of household trash in the United States. “Trying to turn garbage into gold costs a lot more than expected. We need to ask ourselves: What is the goal here?”

In a country like India, recycling can be a profitable venture, which is why the rag-pickers even search through the public trash piles.  But, as societies get more affluent, the relative cost of recycling climbs up rapidly.  

As a business, recycling is on the wrong side of two long-term global economic trends. For centuries, the real cost of labor has been increasing while the real cost of raw materials has been declining. That’s why we can afford to buy so much more stuff than our ancestors could. As a labor-intensive activity, recycling is an increasingly expensive way to produce materials that are less and less valuable.

I am especially drawn to issues like this because we are forced to think through the complications and question our own preferred ideas on how to make this world a better place for tomorrow.  A constant examination, a Socratic questioning, in which there is no sacred cow, so to speak.

But then we have this urge to do something.  Climate change is for real.  We know we have to reduce our carbon footprint.  Can we do anything at all?  We need to travel a different route for that:

It would be much simpler and more effective to impose the equivalent of a carbon tax on garbage, as Thomas C. Kinnaman has proposed after conducting what is probably the most thorough comparison of the social costs of recycling, landfilling and incineration. Dr. Kinnaman, an economist at Bucknell University, considered everything from environmental damage to the pleasure that some people take in recycling (the “warm glow” that makes them willing to pay extra to do it).
He concludes that the social good would be optimized by subsidizing the recycling of some metals, and by imposing a $15 tax on each ton of trash that goes to the landfill. That tax would offset the environmental costs, chiefly the greenhouse impact, and allow each municipality to make a guilt-free choice based on local economics and its citizens’ wishes. The result, Dr. Kinnaman predicts, would be a lot less recycling than there is today.

As you know very well, this is a road that politicians do not, and will not, take.  Whether it is in the context of trash, or the fossil-fuels that we burn, the incorrect price for carbon is the real problem.  Carbon tax, anyone?

Oh, btw, the op-ed's author, John Tierney, was following up on his own lengthy report for the NY Times from twenty years ago.  The title of that report?  Recycling is garbage.

Climate change, and the hypocritical and impotent US

After a long time, I swung by to have coffee with a retired colleague.  "Oh, lemme get a coat" she said as I started walking towards the car.

"It is rather pleasant outside, and you might not need one" I replied.  It was about 55 degrees outside. And dry.

So, no coat.  As we started driving to the coffee shop, I asked her if the temperature was ok.

"No, it is not.  This time of the year, it typically is much cooler than this.  The climate change is messing up our weather patterns" the scientist in her replied.

For all we know, this unusually warmer temperature has got nothing to do with climate change. Just as Hurricane Sandy had nothing to do with climate change. Just as the drought had nothing to do with ...

Even if all these weather issues are not related to climate change, there is that pesky issue.  Global warming and climate change and the role of carbon.

So, where stands the US on the global attempts to bring carbon dioxide levels down?

The supposed goal of the climate negotiations is to keep the globe's average temperature from rising by more than 2 degrees celsius over the pre-industrial average by capping the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere at 450 parts per million (ppm). Pre-industrial levels of carbon dioxide were at 280 ppm; it is now at 391 ppm. The poor countries are arguing that "climate justice" means that the 170 ppm (the difference between 280 and 450 ppm) must be divvied up based on population. As they see it, the rich countries have more or less already used up 110 ppm, meaning that the remaining 60 ppm should be allocated to the poor countries. This climate justice formula actually implies that rich countries would have to emit "negative" amounts of greenhouse gases.
However, in a supposedly off-the-record meeting U.S. chief climate negotiator Jonathan Pershing pushed back against these demands. The Times of India reported:

Pershing said, "It's a vision you can say that the atmosphere can take an X quantity of coal emissions and therefore what you do is you divide that number into percentages. The obligation it states is that you (the US) would have to reduce its emissions down to negative 37% (below 1990 levels). And the obligation of China will be a tiny bit, but India can still grow quite a lot. The politics of that quite frankly really don't work. I can't really sell that to the US Congress."
Suggesting that the US preferred to take the domestic constituency into confidence while making the commitment and not go by scientific requirements, he reasoned, "One way to think about it is what you could deliver. You say what you are going to do and you will be held to that. So how do you marry the reality of what you are doing with the reality of what is needed. To me, it's going to be a hybrid. It's going to be something between those two."
Unlike the Kyoto Protocol approach where the UN convention first decides how much reduction is required and then apportions the burden, Pershing suggested in what's dubbed not a new US position "that each country decides independently what it wants to do and put it on the global table."
Reiterating that US domestic political compulsions were paramount, he added, "Because if we can't take it home and sell it at home, in whatever political economy we are living in, we won't do it."

Way back in 1997, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution 95 to 0 that rejected the Kyoto Protocol which would have limited U.S. greenhouse gas emissions to 7 percent below their 1990 levels. The resolution declared the sense of the Senate to be that the U.S. should not consider any climate change treaty that did not include limits on developing country emissions and that would "result in serious harm to the economy of the United States."
The Obama administration evidently recognizes that such a treaty would is still not saleable to Congress and the American public.

Yep, it was ok for us to burn carbon and get materially rich.  But, to heck with those poorer countries and their peoples!

Now, one could argue that this maybe it is because the US politicians of all stripes don't care much for government intervention, and that they would favor using market mechanisms.  So, perhaps a carbon tax then?

Perhaps because a carbon tax makes so much sense—researchers at M.I.T. recently described it as a possible “win-win-win” response to several of the country’s most pressing problems—economists on both ends of the political spectrum have championed it. Liberals like Robert Frank, of Cornell, and Paul Krugman, of Princeton, support the idea, as do conservatives like Gary Becker, at the University of Chicago, and Greg Mankiw, of Harvard. (Mankiw, who served as chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and as an adviser to Mitt Romney, is the founding member of what he calls the Pigou Club.) A few weeks ago, more than a hundred major corporations, including Royal Dutch Shell and Unilever, issued a joint statement calling on lawmakers around the globe to impose a “clear, transparent and unambiguous price on carbon emissions,” which, while not an explicit endorsement of a carbon tax, certainly comes close. Even ExxonMobil, once a leading sponsor of climate-change denial, has expressed support for a carbon tax. “A well-designed carbon tax could play a significant role in addressing the challenge of rising emissions,” a spokeswoman for the company said recently in an e-mail to Bloomberg News.

See, a wonderful level of agreement.  Yay!  So, time to start discussing the carbon tax with voters and implement it?  Right?

Wrong!

Because:

One key player who has not embraced the idea is Barack Obama. The White House spokesman, Jay Carney, was asked about the tax last month, en route, as it happens, to visit storm-ravaged areas of New York with the President. “We would never propose a carbon tax, and have no intention of proposing one,” Carney told reporters.

WTF!

The New Yorker piece concludes thus:

In either case, the White House is making a big mistake. Pigovian taxes are rarely politically popular—something they have in common with virtually all taxes. But, as Obama embarks on his second term, it’s time for him to take some risks. Several countries, including Australia and Sweden, already have a carbon tax. Were the United States to impose one, it would have global significance. It would show that Americans are ready to acknowledge, finally, that we are part of the problem. There is a price to be paid for living as we do, and everyone is going to get stuck with the bill.

It appears that the US President and politicians are happy to stick the bill on the poorer countries!

Global warming is for real. Any which way you measure it.

The Economist reports about the latest study (Berkeley Earth):

as described in four papers currently undergoing peer review, but which were nonetheless released on October 20th, offer strong support to the existing temperature compilations. The group estimates that over the past 50 years the land surface warmed by 0.911°C: a mere 2% less than NOAA’s estimate.

Perhaps the deniers don't read The Economist too? :)

Out in the Republic of Texas, Rick Perry and his dashing cowboys wouldn't care:

Two Texas lawmakers have accused the state's environmental agency of censoring information about global warming in a state-commissioned report about Galveston Bay.
The Texas Commission on Environmental Quality is appointed by Gov. Rick Perry, who has questioned the validity of man-made global warming during recent presidential debates and appearances. Officials defended their actions, saying they did not censor mentions of global warming and that the information was not relevant to the focus of the report.

A researcher from the group writes in the Wall Street Journal:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.
Global warming is real. Perhaps our results will help cool this portion of the climate debate. How much of the warming is due to humans and what will be the likely effects? We made no independent assessment of that.

Perhaps the deniers self-censor this WSJ piece too?

Greg Mankiw, who was in Bush's economic team and is now advising Romney, yet again endorses the idea of a carbon tax when he approvingly cites this:

The need for taxes on energy externalities such as carbon emissions is central to our ability to reduce the harmful side effects of economic growth. It is striking how the political dialogue in the US has ignored a policy that has so many desirable features. Perhaps, in the near future, faced with the deadline of a dire economic situation, negotiators will formulate such a policy. It would generate substantial revenues while bringing so many long-run economic and environmental benefits. Simply put, externality taxes are the best fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints faced by the US.

I am sure the deniers think that Mankiw is a liberal hippie :)

Chart of the day: on how we don't pay for the energy we consume

But, of course, politics means that we can never have rational discussions on addressing the huge gap between the private and social costs of energy.  Not here in the US, and not across countries.

This NYRB article, from where I excerpted the above graphic, adds:

The need for taxes on energy externalities such as carbon emissions is central to our ability to reduce the harmful side effects of economic growth. It is striking how the political dialogue in the US has ignored a policy that has so many desirable features. Perhaps, in the near future, faced with the deadline of a dire economic situation, negotiators will formulate such a policy. It would generate substantial revenues while bringing so many long-run economic and environmental benefits. Simply put, externality taxes are the best fiscal instrument to employ at this time, in this country, and given the fiscal constraints faced by the US.

Unfortunately, ain't gonna happen anytime soon!

Greenhouse Gasbags

The title and the content outsourced to Heather Mac Donald:

More proof that greenhouse-gas environmentalism—for liberals, one of the main reasons for getting rid of the allegedly anti-science, religiously-driven Bush Administration–is just posturing.

The California legislature has been struggling to close a $41 billion budget deficit. This is the same legislature that insists on imposing its own emissions standards on Detroit auto-makers—safely out of sight and out of the voting booth–because it cares so much about global warming. Now, if ever, one would think, would be the time to increase gasoline taxes, a two-fer that would raise revenue and discourage greenhouse gas emissions.

So did a proposed 12-cents-a-gallon surcharge on gas make it into the crippling $12.8 billion in tax hikes which the California legislature finally passed yesterday? Of course not. Voters would raise bloody hell. Better, apparently, to kill all businesses slowly with a sales tax hike than to interfere with Californians’ right to cheap gasoline. Liberal politicians’ pious devotion to the science of global warming never translates into action, unless the costs of action can be safely transferred onto non-voters. And environmental groups are just as cowardly. I sure didn’t notice the Sierra Club or the NRDC protesting when presidential candidate Hillary Clinton called for a suspension of the federal gas tax last year.