I'll have to admit that sounds a bit more like a desire for ideological punishment rather than a scientific point of view.

As I understand it... regulation, technology, money, whatever it takes, aimed at methane reduction in the early years would have the greatest impact in lessoning catastrophic dangers.  That and possibly addressing black soot.  The effects of CO2 itself are much longer lived and more an issue of long term trends.  Cutting X tons evenly over 5 years versus having it somewhat back loaded isn't nearly as big an issue as the shorter lived gases... right?

Are the climate scientists weighing in on this and saying a relief valve is unworkable.  I'm sure a relief price would have to rise a lot quicker than 5%... but isn't acknowledging price stability concerns for the economy important?  I guarantee making the capital investments necessary to address global warming will be a lot harder if the economy becomes destabilized.

I'm about as true blue believer in the serious dangers of climate change as anyone.  I for one believe the end target of this cap is probably not low enough.  But I think you're misjudging the change that would be brought by a new administration and some turnover in Congress.  I think some concessions to address economic concerns will still be on the table because I think a lot of mainstream Americans that believe something needs to be done, also believe it's not unreasonable to try to mitigate economic pain.

Why not accept a relief valve (30% yearly increase anyone) and use the proceeds in the first few years to implement agricultural and other programs to target methane and other high impact, short lived sources?  Isn't there some flexibility that would still be consistent with the science?

But when you ask for market forces to be applied reducing carbon emissions, they either try to deny it entirely, or cripple it so that it doesn't have any effect.

-David Ahlport

The easiest way to avoid market shocks is to allow emissions reduction credits to be Banked from year to year.

(Scrolls up a bit and reads further)

Yeah, like Romm just said ;D

-David Ahlport

What is the analysis on which the conclusion is drawn that a particular regime for banking and borrowing would be better than a safety valve... I truly am interested if you have some info on a comparative analysis. It is not at all going to be easy to get a consensus that will rise to the challenge with which we are faced.  My personal belief is that everyone is going to have to be as creative and flexible as possible if we have any hope of turning this thing around.

BTW... I hope you weren't thinking I am an elephant?

it would be nice if a few at Grist were to take sides in a useful way

instead of constantly bleating about the moral imperative of an immediate tax and rebate bill, which will never pass and never come close to passing

It's unfathomably complex, designed by lobbyists for trading firms, built to maximize their bottomlines.

Could Ralph highlight the notion of shifting corporate subsidies over to checks for homeowners who install solar panels, farmers who put up wind farms, and municipalities who harvest biogas from waste?  10 cents per kwh adds up to big green job stimulation.

Solar installation companies in California are already running short of trained workers.  Get on that vocational education system!  I bet they already are, but are way short of funds.  Ralph could bargain for things like that.

Get Gore to go to Barack and let him know that a large green faction is about to back Ralph.  He better listen to eco-reason if he wants to heal the split in the party before and after the convention.

Barack wants to bring us all together?  Does he mean bring all the clean coal, nuclear, and agribizz lobbyists together in his administration?

Let him prove he is really green.  With an incorruptable, direct to the taxpayer subsidy plan, instead of hedge fund designed, "free' market  GHG climate management.  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

Barack's not perfect, but he's a hell of a lot better than another 4-8 years with a Republican in office.

Especially when you consider, that if McCain gets elected, a lot of the staff will be the very same thats been in office for nearly the past decade.

A President doesn't run a country by himself.

-David Ahlport

One little problem I have with relying too heavily on this concept of subsidies or feed-ins for individuals is that I happen to be one of the people that the system would seem to provide no financial benefit and potentially harm.  The German system for instance is basically rewarding those who put up solar with an ability to make a nice return on the investment.  That cost is spread out among all the rest of the rate payers.  As the percentage of people taking advantage of this goes up, it certainly raises the price that has to be charged to the remainder.

So then there is the question of those that rent, have condos, or houses that simply are not suitable for solar.  I'm willing to pay some extra to subsidize others' home solar, especially if it's in climate zones where the panels are maximizing the amount of CO2 free power produced... but I do have constraints as to how much I can help subsidize something I cannot take advantage of myself.

I live in CA and pay about $0.095/kWh and CA is approaching 50% CO2 free power... so to me the current big utility model seems to be working reasonably well.  I do consider myself a serious environmentalist, but I'm forced by the constraints of my own life to at least ask questions about the financial impact of differing approaches to address climate change.

Not that I have any vested interest to support something because it would enrich the bottom line of lobbyists and traders... the fact that they might benefit is also simply not a concern for me.  I'm only interested in 1) the environmental necessity and 2) experiencing the least personal suffering that adequately addresses 1).

I'm posting these comments not to simply to be contradictory, but to point out the view of people like myself, which may make up a larger portion of the environmental support base than you figure.  I'm fully open to hearing the rationale of why I should support a scheme other than cap and trade... which has until now been what I support.

As far as I understand it, the only reason that the bill would get GWB's assent would be its potential to screw up the UNFCCC negotiations,
partly by freezing the US diplomats' freedom of manouvre.

The idea that the US is going to be buying emissions-permits on the global market doesn't seem to have got onto the radar yet -
not of the Pres. candidates' speech-writers, nor the MSM interviewers, not the Grist authors and posters -
this bill is even deciding where, within America, to spend its permit-sales' revenues !

As for the bill's escape clause, unless every nation of earth has got one,
(which would mean in practice, under the economic extremis of PO+GW,
that there would be no disciplined effort for the GHG Cap),
it is surely just a further negotiations-spoiler against the requisite global "Treaty of the Atmospheric Commons."

Professor Garnaut's recent interim report for Australia's new government gave insight on the relative negotiating strengths within the UNFCCC,
as well as remarking the merit of the global climate policy framework of  Contraction & Convergence :

Garnaut Climate Change Review -- Interim Report - February 2008

Contraction and Convergence

"It is clear already that per capita allocation will have to play a strong role in principles for national [emissions] budgets. Indeed, it appears inevitable that if global per capita emissions fall to the level required by stabilisation scenarios, then the current stark divergences in national per capita emissions rights will inevitably diminish-- though variation in national emissions levels will be possible through the trading of emissions rights.

Some argue that a population-based allocation encourages environmentally damaging global population growth. This is unlikely, as population growth is decided by far more fundamental economic and social determinants. This argument is not at all relevant to countries - mostly developed countries and first of all Australia and Canada - where population is growing through immigration. As discussed later, a focus on per capita allocations is essential for equitable treatment across developed countries with and without high levels of immigration.

The more important point is that any allocative formula that does not emphasise population over current or past emissions levels as the basis for long-term emissions rights has no chance at all of being accepted by most developing countries.

One approach worth considering, consistent with giving weight to population and with the need to allow time for adjustment, would be the "contraction and convergence" approach that was developed by the Global Commons Institute in the early 1990s, and has been discussed favourably in Germany and the United Kingdom in recent times."
(WGBU, 2003; RCEP, 2000).

Full text (pdf) at:
http://www.gci.org.uk/briefings/Interim_Report_Feb_2008.p ...

Just in case Garnaut's words need repeating :
"The more important point is that any allocative formula that does not emphasise population over current or past emissions levels as the basis for long-term emissions rights has no chance at all of being accepted by most developing countries."

In light of this imperative, I'd urge Gristers to do whatever they can to halt this tawdry bill,
and instead put their time into getting young Americans registered to vote !

Regards,
Billhook

Perhaps Bill or someone else could explain it in layman's terms.  Is there part of this bill that prevents the U.S. from joining a comprehensive international cap and trade system?

If you followed the link you just said "oh shit."

Report  after report after report comes in a piles up and the evidence is that we are past whatever climate tipping points there were and into a phase shift. It's time to wake up a realize that we need something like 110% yearly reduction in global CO2 output. We need to frantically claw our way back to a lifestyle for humanity that isn't going to push the species towards extinction.

Carbon credits and itty bitty carbon taxes are just not going to get there. What has to happen is a massive and coordinated refocusing of our economy towards energy efficiency and clean power production. The technology is all there. There are plenty of people in the world partially or poorly employed. There are even the resources available if we just used the mechanisms we use to build cars to build power generation equipment.

A Stirling engine is, surprise, a piston engine not too different in principle than the one in a car. A geo-exchange heat pump system is essentially a water pump, a refrigerant pump, a bunch of piping, a well, and a controller that's way less complicated than your cell phone. A solar concentrator is a shiny satellite dish. These technologies that are all completely off the shelf and modular.

Here's the nasty secret. We can't convert to a carbon neutral economy and produce massive profits for speculators also. The planet cannot support the jet set and prepare the rest of us for a clean environment; it's either/or. We don't have much time to make up our minds.

Nature bats last.

 

Put the Carbon Back

Your rate would not go up due to subsidies to your neighbors.  On the contrary, with widespread roll out of solar and a renwable smart grid, PV panels would be payed off in a few years.

That means near zero cost per kwh for homeowners with their own panels.  that actually will tend to protect electric power from inflation.  no fuel costs ever.

Right now, with power based on fuel at ever rising prices you are at risk for energy cost inflation, just as gasoline keeps on rising so will coal and nuclear power.  supply and demand works against the consumer with fossil, fuel farmed, and nuclear power.

Supply and demand works for we the consumers with renewable smart grid fueless power and conservation.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

The brokered convention provides an opportunity for Gore to inject some green thinking into Barack's platform.

If Gore can honestly say to barack, "Look you have problems with many environmentalist faction on your support of clean coal, nuclear power, and fuel farming.  Some of them will go for Nader.  Take a look at a better energy policy that takes into account all of the problems we are seeinmg with your current position."

A stronger showing by hillary and a possible Nader run strengthens Gore's hand in green negotiations.  barack has no dount heard our objections to his cap and trade and other [plans to boost the wrong solutions to GHG.  he hasn't budged so far.  

We have no respect right now from either party, just as it's been for decades.  Give Gore a stronger hand and we might get somewhere.

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

No, a renwable smart grid powering plugin hybrids will not make us uncompetitive.  It would make us world leaders again and bring back jobs outsourced by your fearless leaders like Lutz and duuhbya.

They are the fools who made us unable to compete.  Autoworkers in the great bushwacked southland need diagrams to follow at the Toyota plant, they can't read.  because in a bushwacked america reading is deemed non-esential, after all duuhbya can't and he's president.

This is why new auto plants are being built in Canada instead of the US.  also because Canada's universal healthcare (which all good limboobs know is a commie plot) lowers their cost of production.  The cost of the healthcare per car for GM is equal to the cost of the steel it's made from.

So how can US auto makers compete with that?  

http://amazngdrx.blogharbor.com/blog John Schneider, Northern Wisconsin

As you may have gathered, it is a grave political weakness, in our politics, to admit that we may be willing to take seriously the opinions of those from outside the US.

Hence, thanks to the nature of US democracy, all policy proposals must be presented with a "US first!, Screw everybody else who stands in our way!" attitude, on top of a mortal suspicion of any wisdom from abroad.

Recall that, not long ago, it became a big issue, in right-wing circles, when a Supreme Court justice suggested he might look to decisions of non-American judges for insight on certain issues.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

You seem to think you are much smarter than GWB, but surely lie to soothe yourself that he must have bought his degrees from Yale & Harvard while earning higher grades than beloved Kerry & Gore.

What new auto plants are in Canada? Check your facts.

Did you know that the Prius accounts for 1% of U.S. sales, while Honda has dropped the Accord hybrid due to poor sales? That Toyota's growth is in larger more powerful, less fuel efficient vehicles because that's where the money is? That Toyota joined the Detroit automakers in opposition to increasing fuel economy standards simply because it forces them to be at odds with their customers?

You are right about the health care burden on the U.S. makers, but do you know it is the result of a multi-decade monopoly by one union on all the U.S. makers? The ever increasing burden could be sustained until off shore competition and Non-Union transplants arrived?

Do you really think the long, steady decline of U.S. manufacturing, particularly the Detroit 3, is because every single company is run by fools? Are you really that anti-American?

There is plenty of blame to go around, but if you insist on picking who caused our decline in competitiveness you can look squarely at one political party for advancing entitlements, unionism, and trial lawyers.

How do you feel about GWB's No Child Left Behind initiative that is intended to promote reading ability?

Let's hear you talk from both sides of your mouth now.

Bad things are likely to happen.  As Pangolin suggests, disasters are already baked in.

In that circumstance, what should we do?

You have to start.

The dirty little truth, often ignored by the free-est thinker, is that business is promoting climate change regulation for its own purposes.  Some businesses -- who see an advantage for themselves.

Without that business support. there is no hope of any significant climate regulation in the US for decades -- until horrors mount, and many worse have become unavoidable.

How do you demonstrate seriousness of purpose in that situation?

Politics make strange bedfellows.  Will Grist bed with business looking to make a buck off changing the economy, or will Grist stay in bed with Inhofe?

In life, we rarely get to pick the choices we must make.

And pretending that we won't pick just means we pick the default -- Inhofe, and no action.

Lots of emotion - no evidence of education in physical science or business.

Serious anti-Americanism.

It has been said:
The problems of the environmentalists are a complete lack of technical or business education and experience to draw conclusions and make decisions.

In the real world, decisions which control the life or death of an enterprise must be made based on accurate data. I often hear the phrase "If we could send a man to the moon, we should be able to...."-you fill in the ending.  Do you know that GM spent more than the cost of the Apollo Space Program to dramatically and rapidly downsize their fleet in the mid '80s to meet fuel economy standards that were not demanded by the market? What came of it? Customers ran away. Sales collapsed. Now Toyota, in particular, while currying a "green" image, has moved into larger and larger vehicle segments.  Honda's new Civic is larger than the original Accord! All imported vehicles have gotten larger, more powerful, and less fuel efficient, as they have gathered ever larger share of the market while benefitting from fuel economy credits earned when they sold only small vehicles. Everybody wants fuel economy/plug in electrics/et al but only until they have to pay for it. Now, thanks to human emmitted CO2 caused Global Warming hysteria, Congress has essentially banned the remaining market segments (trucks & SUVs) where the Detroit 3 can make any money. Thanks!

You spin as a prediction what is actually a "worst case scenario" the military often considers, even though highly unlikely.

The second report contains this statement:
"Much higher up the course of the glacier there is evidence of a volcano that erupted through the ice about 2,000 years ago and the whole region could be volcanically active, releasing geothermal heat to melt the base of the ice and help its slide towards the sea."

Are you now claiming GHG causes volcanism?

Report 3 may actually support your premise, but does in fact say:
"Greenland's ice mass has already contributed in part to 20th century sea level rise of about two millimeters per year,..."
At that rate, we will see a whopping 7.9 inch rise in sea level over the next century.

None of this supports the notion that humans are the cause of the almost certainly natural warming and cooling cycles that ebb and flow over geologic time. You do know that in the ancient past, there were no ice caps at all, don't you?

Never let real science get in the way of your emotions!  

The global requirement advised by the IPCC was to cut our global CO2 emissions by 60% to 80% to stop adding to the problem of the 37% excess atmospheric CO2. (384ppmv over 280ppmv pre-industrial).
This advice reflected the planet's sinks' erstwhile capacity to sequester between 20% and 40% of our annual CO2 output. (Wide annual variability).

Two hazards arising should be noted here -
first, the oceanic sink, which is by far the greatest, is in process of decline due both to the oceans' increasing acidity and to the emerging destabilization of plankton dynamics;
second, a range of positive feedback loops are accelerating, and include several that could grow to simply dwarf our emissions' impact if they are given further stimulus via global warming. There is a possibility that they will offset the 20% to 40% natural sinks' capacity, after which global warming would be entirely self-fuelling - and our belated good behaviour would be entirely irrelevant.

From this viewpoint it is plain that a plan to cut CO2 outputs by 80% by 2050 is, in reality, a plan to continue adding to the problem of excess airborne CO2 for the next 42 years, or 2 generations, until 2050.

Some highly reputable scientists calculated that a ceiling of 2 dC of warming would give a 50% chance of avoiding the feedbacks taking over, and would require a 90% global cut by 2050, keeping CO2 at no more that 450ppmv. For all this ceiling has been widely adopted, it was only produced as an incomplete scenario, in that it took no overall account of the diverse feedback loops, whose dynamic interactions have yet to be modelled reliably.

Hansen has publicized this goal's shortcomings, and proposed 400 ppmv instead, perhaps as the furthest edge of what the fossil-based status quo could comprehend.
I myself proposed some years ago (in New Scientist) that any goal over 320 ppmv is rhetorical rather than scientific, since the impact of elevated airborne CO2 on peat bacteria dynamics
(that have resulted in a 6% p.a. exponential rise in DOC [Dissolved Organic Carbon] in watercourses from decomposing peat, from whence that carbon outgases as CO2)
was first recorded in 1961, when airborne CO2 was around 320ppmv.

Given that this feedback will, if not controlled, be releasing ex-peat CO2  equal to our total global 2003 output by 2060, we plainly have to end additions and to recover airborne CO2 to get down to well below 320ppmv,
and what's more, we have to do so with extreme urgency if we are to outrun the overall posse of feedbacks.

That urgency is one of the problems with the US climate bill.
Given a treaty encompassing Contraction & Convergence
(the contraction being the annual cut in a global GHG output budget to meet a target ppmv x target year,
and the convergence being the transition over an agreed number of years from the present national shares of emission-rights according to wealth to those national shares being set according to population, i.e. per capita)
the US Bill fixing 80% by 2050 would not matter a damn if we had several centuries to address the problem.

Note that the bill sets in US law a goal for the US, the greatest originator of the GW problem by far, that is less than the deficient 90% goal for the whole planet.

If America is only cutting by 80%, to get even to a global 80% cut by 2050 every other nation would have to make the same 80% cut.

So try telling that to Papua New Guinea, with its four ambulances and eleven trucks.
Or to Asia, Africa and South America, with their aspirations to raise their peoples out of poverty.

So, if (1) an 80% cut was sufficient to recover airborne carbon down to pre-industrial level,
and (2) if we had centuries in which other nations could follow suit in making that cut,
then (3) the bill's target might be workable,
but (1) it isn't, (2) we haven't, and (3) it ain't.

The US target cut could rise somewhat nearer 100% (in the absence of Congress clinging to the present bill) but not to a sufficient extent to bring other major IIIW nations on board. The variable that will have to be used is that of the target date for America to reach a deep cut - by the inexorable maths of convergence it will be brought forward greatly to allow the US to carry its fair share of the effort of rapid transformation, without which developing nations simply will not participate.

So, what is the chance of the bill, if it became law, being ditched overnight in favour of a more acceptable US target of, say, 95% x 2028, that will require the US to buy in large volumes of permit quite early in the treaty period ?

Even without the bill as a legal/emotional/media obstruction such a target will be problematic to get ratified;  
with the bill in place the US diplomats would be pretty well hamstrung as negotiators.  

Thus I would repeat that the attempt to get the legislatures fixated on an utterly deficient target of an 80% cut x 2050 is no less than a delayed-action spoiler tactic against the UNFCCC negotiations that will occur after Cheyney and his puppet are out of office.
_____________

Canis - thanks for your response re the `Murkan-supremacist tendency -
One useful line may be that of how there are far more decent, honest, well-educated, freedom-loving Chinese than there are Americans,
which is not at all surprising given that China has over four times the population . . . .
________________

Ce1907 - I don't recognize the limited choice of bedfellows that you propose.
First, there are numerous businesses that see the stark danger of Climate Destabilization, and are actively calling for massive Govt intervention via an effective treaty - (Royal Dutch Shell & Munich Re are two such)
and are doing so out of fear of the chaotic climate impacts on the business environment, let alone on people, and not from any identifiable wish to profiteer from the changes.

Just one such impact is the overnight loss of fixed assets' collateral value that is suffered by any business losing its weather-impacts insurance cover - and that is not a sole-victim event - every business trading with the one so hit is also affected to some extent, notably in terms of investment confidence as climate destabilization advances.

With regard to the ageing hooker Imhofe, to my mind this bill is being shaped by his patrons and is a classic obstruction of the vital global treaty, without which the fear of loss of competitiveness stymies most nations' will to act.

But maybe you think that the US will actually start making serious cuts without a global treaty having been agreed ? If so I think you're in for a long wait.

So if you want to climb into bed with Imhofe's owners in seeing this bill get past the senate, that's up to you - but its not quite the action I'm seeking.

Regards,
Billhook

Any bill the George Bush will sign on Climate Change would just be used as a blockade to prevent further, more rigorous action down the line. If you have any doubt about that just observe how health care in the US is sliced, diced, teased out and partitioned in order to maintain "profitable sectors" i.e. health insurance companies and big pharma while actually avoiding providing health care for all. So we get double the expense and none of the improved outcomes of a real health care system.

The very last thing that the fossil fuel industry wants to see is something like the endangered species act where the goal is the law and implementation is regulated as needed. What they want instead is a bill that allows them to do 95% of what they do now and apply for waivers on the last 5%. In that scenario you might as well buy your very own backyard home coal-gas-to-liquids kit and coke oven.  The end result would be the same.

So either support only a real goal for real climate change mitigation or stay home and focus on growing some really good herb; because either way we are really going to need something to kill the pain that is coming.

Put the Carbon Back