New at Reason

David Weigel | October 27, 2006

Ronald Bailey sees dark cumulonimbi looming over California and the UK's new climate change agreements.

Comments

Mike Laursen|10.27.06 @ 5:18PM|#

At least in liberal Northern California, there's a tangible feeling among the citizenry of no longer fitting in as part of the United States. It seems perfectly reasonable from that perspective that California is negotiating international treaties.

|10.27.06 @ 5:23PM|#

Govenator Schwarzenegger is negotiating international treaties in order to get himself reelected by the oh-so-green liberal Northern Californians. And it's going to work, too.

|10.27.06 @ 5:27PM|#

Chuck your goddamn Hummer, Arnie, or else shut the fuck up! Hypocrite...

|10.27.06 @ 5:48PM|#

So the U.S. senate won't approve a treaty that nobody is going to live up to anyway. Hard to believe that sounds like wisdom.

|10.27.06 @ 5:53PM|#

Make that "Hard to believe, that sounds like wisdom".

|10.27.06 @ 6:04PM|#

I love federalism. Libertarians should look into it.

Arnie isn't doing this for re-election in liberal northern california -- he's got the election in the bag. He does however have to go back to Hollywood from the dusty hellhole that is sacramento after his reign ends...

Mike Laursen|10.27.06 @ 6:11PM|#

Right about the time he was elected, Schwarzenegger got a moderate amount of publicity by declaring he was going to convert his Hummer to use hydrogen. I can't find any references, though, that he ever followed through.

|10.27.06 @ 7:17PM|#

"Of course, man-made global warming is a global problem."

Good lord, its nice to see Bailey make some progress on this at least. It reminds me of the pro-life hacks:
"Well of course contraception (which we fought hard as long as it was politically possible) is OK, we just think abortion is bad."

|10.27.06 @ 7:27PM|#

U.S.Constitution, Article I:

Section 10

1. No state shall enter into any treaty, alliance, or confederation;...

3. No state shall, without the consent of Congress,.... enter into any agreement or compact with another state, or with a foreign power...

Any Californians sufficiently honked off at what Ahnahld is doing should take the state to Federal court.

Kevin

|10.27.06 @ 7:59PM|#

Californians are either a)blissfully unaware, b)amusedly waiting for the next act in the farce or c)angrily waiting for the EEEEVIL CORPORATIONS to have to PAY to clean up the WORLD.

Personally, I fall into category b, since I like the cheekiness of it all.

|10.28.06 @ 2:49AM|#

"Is there an alternative to greenhouse gas emissions markets?"

Probably not, and greenhouse gas emmissions markets don't seem to be a very good solution either. The only real alternative is to wait until something goes very visibly wrong. Doom and Gloom aside, we just don't tend to be very good about making painful choices in the face of non-immediate-feeling risks. We aren't good at reliably measuring risk.

|10.28.06 @ 3:29AM|#

tokyojoe,

Did you read the whole article? Near the end Ron Bailey showed an alternative that sounds workable.

Of course, getting politicians to walk the walk instead of merely talking the talk is another thing entirely.

|10.28.06 @ 3:33AM|#

Woooo hoooo!!!! No server squirrels. Reason joins the 21st century.

By the way, I know I'm supposed to email suggestions, but c'mon get real, it ain't gonna happen.

My suggestions are:

1) Give me a preview button to hit so I can see what my message looks like.

2) Save my nic and email address so I don't have to type it in each time.

|10.28.06 @ 3:35AM|#

OK, third suggestion. Let us use html tags again please.

I'm sure you're just working out the kinks, those Davies brothers can be tough I suppose....

That said, thanks for no damn server squirrels. :)))

|10.28.06 @ 3:36AM|#

Enabling paragraphs would be nice too. :x

|10.28.06 @ 8:35AM|#

A Carbon tax may be easiest to administer but it would never go away. If Bailey is going to latch onto proposals like increasing taxes, I have to question his libertarian credentials. If global warming's worst effect is going to be a new coastline, I don't see how that is my problem.

|10.28.06 @ 1:22PM|#

Sounds like they just need a mechanism to discipline the number/amount of allowances ...which are currently made up on a whim every year.

Even then, IIRC the average western european produces %50 the CO2 of the average 'Merkin, yet lives about as comfortably. All that despite these shenanigans.

The Carbon market has also doubled in value...in jsut one year, from $11 Billion to $22 Billion, this is to be expected from an emerging market...a strong one. Not one that is 'unraveling'.

Additionally, we get things like this in the news:
http://tinyurl.com/yczhvh
"Nicholas Stern told Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet colleagues on Thursday, in a preview of a report he is due to deliver on Monday on the economic consequences of climate change, that it would cost the world one percent of its annual GDP to fight off global warming.

Doing nothing, however, would cost between five and 20 times that amount."

An additional thought...if conservatives think that the carbon market is failing, then why not abuse it a little to gain a few points for the elections?

|10.29.06 @ 12:29AM|#

"Is there an alternative to greenhouse gas emissions markets?"

How about technology prizes for (non-tokamak) fusion?

1) Five prizes of $10 million each for generating 10 fusion watts for 1 hour, within a factor of 10 of breakeven.

2) Five prizes of $50 million each for generating 100 fusion watts for 1 day, within a factor of 3 of breakeven.

3) Three prizes of $100 million each for generating 1000 fusion watts for 1 week, within a factor of 2 of breakeven.

4) Three prizes of $200 million each for generating 10,000 fusion watts for one month, above breakeven.

5) Three prizes of $1 billion each for generating 1 megawatt by fusion, for one year, at at least 10 percent greater than breakeven.

If all of the technology prizes were awarded, the cost would be $4.2 billion...and there would be at least 3 different (non-tokamak) fusion systems that had demonstrated 100 kilowatts of greater-than-breakeven energy generation for a year.

If none of the technology prizes was awarded, the cost would of course be zero.

Further, if the federal government stops all the money it plans to spend on the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), that would be essentially the same amount of money as in the fusion technology prizes.

|10.29.06 @ 12:38AM|#

"Nicholas Stern told Prime Minister Tony Blair and his cabinet colleagues on Thursday, in a preview of a report he is due to deliver on Monday on the economic consequences of climate change, that it would cost the world one percent of its annual GDP to fight off global warming.

Doing nothing, however, would cost between five and 20 times that amount."

Didn't Nicholas Stern used to be handling the Enron account for Arthur Anderson?

;-)

Can someone name what they consider to be the top 5 damages from global warming, and provide an estimate of the annual amount of damage resulting from each?

Hypothetical example: "1) Hurts coral reefs...damage $200 million per year." And so on.

One percent of global GDP is currently about $600 BILLION per year. (So "5 to 20 times that amount is $3 to 12 TRILLION.)

I'd be hard-pressed to think of damages that even add up to $60 billion per year (i.e. 0.1 percent of GDP).

|10.29.06 @ 7:56AM|#

Mark B., My dad spent most of his life chasing fusion. He thinks it will be a long, long time before it breaks even. But I like the idea of bigger awards. I'm not sure what the Nobel prize pays, but it was enough to keep my mom on Dad's back about it. With your prizes, she might have gotten us past breakeven, or killed him trying.

|10.29.06 @ 8:27AM|#

"Mark B., My dad spent most of his life chasing fusion."

By what particular means?

"He thinks it will be a long, long time before it breaks even."

Well ITER (International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor) is being designed to produce 400 MW out, on 100 MW input power (as I recall). That's scheduled to be completed...oh sometime...maybe 2015? But even if ITER does exceed breakeven, I think tokamak fusion has so many problems, it will never be a cost-effective energy source.

Vince Page of General Electric offered the opinion that a fusion system had to be designed for a capital cost of less than $6700 per rated kilowatt in order to be competitive. (In contrast, a natural gas combined cycle plant has a capital cost of about $500 a kilowatt, and a Integrated Gasification Combined Cycle coal plant costs about $1500-2000 per rated kilowatt.)

http://www.physicsessays.com/doc/s2005/page_fusion051.pdf

Based on what I've read, I've been really impressed by "Focus Fusion.":

http://pesn.com/2005/11/02/9600199_Focus_Fusion/

The impressive aspects of it include:

1) Hydrogen-boron fusion generates no neutrons (or very few, anyway),

2) No need to use tritium (which is not widely available, and in the tokamak must be generated by the reactor),

3) Can produce electricity directly (rather than heating water to turn a turbine),

4) Can be scaled down to very (very!) small size, and still produce fusion (at least with deuterium).

http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0103-97332004000800054

I'd be interested in what he thinks about "focus fusion" (and pyroelectric fusion, sonofusion, and "cold fusion").

Regarding big technology prizes: The good thing about them is they can be made very large, but if no one can meet the prize requirements, they cost nothing.

If anyone knows Richard Branson, tell him to reserve a billion dollars or two of his promise to fund "renewable energy" for fusion technology prizes. That way, no government money would be needed at all. (As every good libertarian could support. ;-))

P.S. Plus, if hydrogen-boron fusion works out, Richard Branson would have the perfect power system for his "Virgin Galactic" space company.

|10.29.06 @ 8:53AM|#

Mark, Dad researched fusion at ORNL, United Technologies, and McDonnell Douglas. He designed the EBT (elmo bumpy taurus) reactor. I don't know if it is a tokamak type reactor or not. I do know deuterium is the key element in the collision that creates the energy. I can ask him about focus fusion when he wakes up, but unfortunately tying his shoes is about the most complex process he can manage these days.

Dad retired fifteen years ago so hopefully he's wrong and new technology will come along sooner than he thought. The least Branson could do is pay to send all of our fission waste into space.

|10.29.06 @ 9:17AM|#

"Can produce electricity directly (rather than heating water to turn a turbine)."

Now THAT'S interesting.

|10.29.06 @ 12:37PM|#

A Carbon tax may be easiest to administer but it would never go away. If Bailey is going to latch onto proposals like increasing taxes, I have to question his libertarian credentials.

I have to question the scientific credentials of those who are ready to impose all manner of economic restrictions on the West.

There is no clear evidence that restricting our CO2 output will, at this stage of the game, result in significant future benefits. Plus, you can't even get people to "do the right thing" with Social Security. This stands no political chance in the West.

Besides that, China and India will more than make up for anything the West does to cut back.


Want to fund R&D for alternative technologies? Fine. Want to impose radical restrictions on the entire Western economy? Stupid. [except, maybe, for California that would be okay]

|10.29.06 @ 3:34PM|#

What we really need is software that can do dimensional analysis as well as spell checking

ITER dutifully looked at the hydrogen -boron plasma focus scheme Mark refers to; Michiya Shimada , the reviewer there , noted that the experiment consumed 160 kilojoules but yielded only 60 microjoules - two billion times short of breakeven.

Mark proposes a $100,000,000 reward for generating fusion megawattage for a year , but the plasma focus lasted ten nanoseconds , leaving seventeen orders of magnitude of room for improvement.

Mark Bahner|11.1.06 @ 9:13PM|#

"ITER dutifully looked at the hydrogen -boron plasma focus scheme Mark refers to;..."

I don't see how anyone at ITER has any time to study alternatives to the tokamak they're building. After all, they're on a pretty tight schedule, wouldn't you say Russell? Only 10 years and $10 billion dollars to build the ITER. Then only 20 years of testing.

Why don't you tell the Hit and Run readers how many terawatt-hours the $10 billion dollar ITER will put into the grid over its 20 year life, Russell?

And after you do that, why don't you get your calculator fixed...and learn some basic toxicology, to boot. Then you won't be blabbering nonsense like this:

"Not to be a spoilsport , but to avoid pushing the dystopic envelope backscenario in question, you have to deal with CO2 from now till 2040ish, during which the integral of your own GDP estimates is woefully smaller than the current dollar cost of the real cost ( sorry to put the order of magnitude back where it belongs) of real per $ CO2 capture in the fatest growing nations - i.e. China.Pleike's numbers pertain to thermal plants, not coal briquette woks in Xian or truck engines .

I suggest investing in a pocket calculator and a lifetime supply of soda-lime respirator cartridges"

Here are some questions to direct your thinking (assuming you're capable of that sort of thing):

1) What is the ambient concentration of CO2 that's dangerous to human health (i.e., that would require a respirator)?

2) What is the likely concentration of CO2 in the atmosphere in 2040?

3) Assuming Roger Pielke Jr.'s estimate is right, and that *****ambient**** CO2 scrubbers (ever heard of those?) would cost $200 per ton of CO2 removed, what would be the cost to get the atmospheric concentration in 2040 down to the pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm?

4) Assuming my calculation of a world per-capita GDP in 2040 of $31,000 is correct, and that the world population in 2040 is 8 billion, what percentage of the world GDP in 2040 would it cost to scrub CO2 out of the atmosphere down to the pre-industrial concentration of 280 ppm?

5) What is your estimate of the world per-capita GDP in 2040 (in year 2006 dollars), assuming value in 2005 was approximately $9,400?

Have you ever retracted the nonsense you were spouting about mercury over at the old Tech Central Station? (That was a real hoot...at least to someone like me who actually knows something about the subject.)