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Senate Democrats Introduce Their Job Creating Cap-and-Trade Bill
Senators Barbara Boxer
(D-Calif.) and John Kerry (D-Mass.) are unveiling their
proposed cap-and-trade scheme today. Their
bill aims to dramatically reshape America's energy economy by
rationing the emissions of globe-warming carbon dioxide produced
through burning fossil fuels. Boxer and Kerry have set an
even more ambitious goal of reducing overall emissions by 20
percent below the levels emitted in 2005. Waxman-Markey bill passed
by the House of Representatives in June would reduce emissions by
17 percent by that date.
Proponents and opponents of carbon rationing have come out swinging. Just in time for the Senate bill's release David Roland-Holst, who is an adjunct professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at the University of California, Berkeley, issued a report that finds that carbon rationing will create lots of jobs and boost incomes. The factsheet detailing the results of the study claims that the full adoption of the House bill's
...pollution reduction and energy efficiency measures would create between 918,000 and 1.9 million new jobs, increase annual household income by $487-$1,175 per year, and boost GDP by $39 billion-$111 billion. These economic gains are over and above the growth the U.S. would see in the absence of such a bill.
Simultaneously, Grover Norquist, head of the conservative group, Americans for Tax Reform, sent an open letter to Senators Boxer and Kerry, pleading with them "not to introduce a national energy tax bill (cap-and-trade) that will increase energy costs and cripple our economy." The letter was signed by 503 lawmakers, business leaders and citizen organizations representing millions of taxpayers. As evidence for economic harm that the Senate bill would cause, Norquist's open letter cited a report analyzing the less stringent Waxman-Markey bill from the conservative Heritage Foundation. That report found:
- Cumulative gross domestic product (GDP) losses are $9.4 trillion between 2012 and 2035;
- Single-year GDP losses reach $400 billion by 2025 and will ultimately exceed $700 billion;
- Net job losses approach 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing loses 1.4 million jobs in 2035;
- The annual cost of emissions permits to energy users will be at least $100 billion by 2012 and could exceed $390 billion by 2035;
- A typical family of four will pay, on average, an additional $829 each year for energy-based utility costs; and
- Gasoline prices will rise by 58 percent ($1.38 more per gallon) and average household electric rates will increase by 90 percent.
I don't know if the Heritage findings are anywhere near accurate. Everything depends on what the assumptions in their econometric model are. But with all due respect to brilliance of Berkeley economists, the Berkeley findings are just not plausible. It's very hard to understand how increasing energy prices and deploying a plethora of new regulations will create more jobs than they destroy and boost incomes, to boot.
The new Berkeley study mirrors the findings of a similar 2008 study by the California Air Resources Board that reassured Californians that they can make money hand over fist selling each other wind turbines and electric cars. However, using the California Air Resources Board's own figures, a report commissioned by California Small Business Roundtable found that the annual implementation costs of California's own cap-and-trade scheme would likely result in a loss of $182 billion in gross state output and 1.1 million fewer jobs. Harvard University economist Robert Stavins later pointed out to the Wall Street Journal that if these types of activities are a net boon for businesses and the economy, "why would you need to impose regulations like cap and trade?"
Look, we may need to limit carbon dioxide emissions, but proponents must please stop pretending that cap-and-trade schemes are really jobs programs in disguise.
Joel|9.30.09 @ 8:40AM|#
They'll need between 918,000 and 1.9 million new federal cops to enforce it.
Kyle Jordan|9.30.09 @ 8:48AM|#
"But with all due respect to brilliance of Berkeley economists,
the Berkeley findings are just not plausible. It's very hard to
understand how increasing energy prices and deploying a plethora of
new regulations will create more jobs than they destroy and boost
incomes, to boot."
It won't. They're lying in order to pass something that facilitates
their religion.
|9.30.09 @ 8:50AM|#
Claims that jobs will be created and wealth invented by such
mandates are of course ridiculous.
But the Heritage Foundation didn't do much better...
Net job losses approach 1.9 million in 2012 and could approach 2.5 million by 2035. Manufacturing loses 1.4 million jobs in 2035
In a mostly free market, those jobs are not "lost". People who are
displaced from these jobs will be able to get other jobs. Those
other jobs will simply be on net worse because the economy is
suffering losses due to inefficiency imposed by the mandates.
|9.30.09 @ 8:55AM|#
"In a mostly free market, those jobs are not "lost". People who
are displaced from these jobs will be able to get other jobs. Those
other jobs will simply be on net worse because the economy is
suffering losses due to inefficiency imposed by the
mandates."
Get other jobs from where, the job fairy? Those jobs are lost and
there is no gaurentee they would come back in all forms. If what
you were saying were true, government regulations would have no
effect on the unemployment rate just the quality of jobs. That is
simply not so. As we have seen in Europe, you can use regulations
to artificially raise the unemployment rate. That is what cap and
theft will do.
The only good news about this is that, unlike a healthcare give
away (welfare programs never go away) cap and theft is a tax and
taxes can and are repealed. The Democrats are truely suicidal on
this. Once people's electric and haeting bills double, there will
be hell to pay with the voters. I think they realize they are done
in 2010. And their plan is to pass as much horrible crap as
possible between now and then and then filabuster and veto to keep
in place after they lose Congress. As far as 2012 goes, they
honestly seem to beleive that the economy works like magic and will
return to form by 2012 despite their efforts to destroy it allowing
them to take credit and get BO re-elected. They have really lost
their minds.
@|9.30.09 @ 8:56AM|#
Should Barbara Boxer be killed?
• Yes
• No
• Maybe
• Only if she cuts my carbon
|9.30.09 @ 8:59AM|#
But with all due respect to brilliance of Berkeley
economists, the Berkeley findings are just not
plausible.
To be fair, much of the assumption behind these studies is that the
rest of the world will be forced to buy green technology and
product from the group being studied.
So if California becomes purveyor of half of the world's green
technology by 2020, then people studying California would find that
Californians are better off because of the mandate -- just as a
mandate to buy GM cars would make GM and its employees better
off.
Of course, it shouldn't take long to see who shoulders the burden
of this predicted cornucopia of green fortunes for the world's
richest people...
tarran|9.30.09 @ 9:03AM|#
The campaigns in favor of health-care "reform" and CO2
legislation remind me of the run-up to the Iraq war; the proponents
are trying to hurry things along with dire predictions if the
government maintains the status quo, implausibly optimistic
assurances that the proposed action will make things better with
little or no downside, the smearing of opponents etc.
It's as if the proponents recognize that time and reasoned
consideration is against them.
One may claim that this is a good sign; after all the Republicans
were largely discredited by the invasion or Iraq which was one
significant cause of their crushing defeat in the most recent
election.
Yet, on the other hand, Obama continues to wage war in Iraq, so the
pro-war liars got their way.
Such it will be with these destructive bills. No matter how
duplicitous, underhanded or outright false the claims of their
proponents turn out to be, once they are enacted they will be a
done deal. Witness the "keep your government out of my medicare"
movement.
|9.30.09 @ 9:06AM|#
Those jobs are lost and there is no gaurentee they would
come back in all forms. If what you were saying were true,
government regulations would have no effect on the unemployment
rate just the quality of jobs.
I think you would concur with me that the economy is ridiculously
overregulated, and that the increase in regulation between a
century ago and now is staggering. Yet the unemployment rate runs
in the single digits, just as it always has. Furthermore,
proportionally far more people are employed today when you look at
two-income households.
Plain and simple, in a mostly free market jobs are not
scarce.
As we have seen in Europe, you can use regulations to
artificially raise the unemployment rate.
Regulations on labor itself are another story and do indeed impact
employment rates. But generally regulations just make everyone
poorer: they don't make employment rates go up.
creech|9.30.09 @ 9:10AM|#
Sure, and Congress can start by reducing its own carbon footprint by 20%: cut staff, no reimbursement for any congresscritter not driving a hybrid vehicle, reporting personal utility bills with a reduction in salary if the bills don't decline by 20%; reimbursement for only 80% of trips home to their district, etc. Think of all the jobs this will create!
Rob Levine|9.30.09 @ 9:14AM|#
//I don't know if the Heritage findings are anywhere near
accurate
I can answer that: No. The Heritage Foundation "research" is nearly
always politically fixed baloney - but I bet you knew that.
Rich|9.30.09 @ 9:20AM|#
Only 801 pages.
See, its "pollution reduction and energy efficiency" are *already*
evident!
@|9.30.09 @ 9:30AM|#
Page 7 of the draft:
Congress finds that the United States can take back control of
the energy future of the United States to strengthen economic
competitiveness, safeguard the health of
families and the environment, and ensure the national
security, of the United States by increasing energy
independence...
It's swell that an act of Congress can guarantee the "health of
families and the environment." I haven't read all 801 pages but I'm
pretty sure the individual is never mentioned. He's the
one who will foot the bill.
|9.30.09 @ 9:34AM|#
Seeing as atmospheric CO2 has no adverse health impacts on people, I'm not sure how reducing CO2 emissions safeguards the health of families.
|9.30.09 @ 9:37AM|#
Get other jobs from where, the job fairy?
By the way, the reason I harped on that Heritage finding is that it
tries to ride the meme that job losses are a bad thing.
If jobs are lost due to increased productivity, so that fewer
people can produce the same output, that is a good
thing.
|9.30.09 @ 9:38AM|#
I'm not sure how reducing CO2 emissions safeguards the
health of families.
Fewer families will drown when the oceans rise overnight due to the
melting of the polar ice caps that will occur the day after
tomorrow.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 9:39AM|#
MikeP is right. Any study that claims cap-and-trade will affect employment rates either way in the long term is not worth giving a second thought to.
|9.30.09 @ 9:48AM|#
David Roland-Holst, who is an adjunct professor in the
Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics Department at the
University of California, Berkeley, issued a report that finds that
carbon rationing will create lots of jobs and boost
incomes.
Wow, an adjunct professor who believes in the broken-tractor
theory. Apparently he was absent the day his "Resource Economics"
program discussed opportunity costs. His factsheet makes no mention
whatsoever of the lower standard of living to be enjoyed by all
Americans due to increased costs.
ed|9.30.09 @ 9:48AM|#
Fewer families will drown when the oceans rise overnight due
to the melting of the polar ice caps
Screw you,
polar ice caps.
|9.30.09 @ 9:53AM|#
If jobs are lost due to increased productivity, so that
fewer people can produce the same output, that is a good
thing.
How long till we all start sharing jobs, cause there simply isn't
enough work that needs doing. Can't have people slacking about
getting a free ride from the remaining 10k people who do
everything.
I mean, once we get to star trek tech, it wont matter. It will be a
tough transition though. Hang in there people, only 1 more world
war and 300 or so years to go.
Hang on.....what?! You mean star trek ISN'T actual recordings of
the future?! Fuck.
|9.30.09 @ 10:00AM|#
High-growth economy, lost jobs easily replaced. Low-or-negative-growth economy, lost jobs not so easily replaced.
|9.30.09 @ 10:00AM|#
And let me supply a probably apocryphal, but nonetheless
insightful story, that illustrates the point that it is very easy
for the government to create jobs:
An economist who visits China under Mao Zedong sees hundreds of
workers building a dam with shovels. He asks: "Why don't they use a
mechanical digger?" "That would put people out of work," replies
the foreman. "Oh," says the economist, "I thought you were making a
dam. If it's jobs you want, take away their shovels and give them
spoons."
It's a lot harder to create wealth.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 10:01AM|#
Ron - Incomes, yes. But any study that generates net employment effects doesn't have a valid general-equilibrium model, so I'm not going to trust what it says about incomes either.
John Tagliaferro|9.30.09 @ 10:04AM|#
I'm not sure how reducing CO2 emissions safeguards the
health of families.
Let us be clear. It is not about the human families, it is about
the polar bear families.
Xeones|9.30.09 @ 10:07AM|#
It is not about the human families, it is about the polar
bear families.
Polar bears occasionally eat the weaker members of their families.
Fuck polar bears, yo.
|9.30.09 @ 10:08AM|#
Berkley:
"would create [up to] 1.9 million new jobs"
Heritage
"Net job losses approach 1.9 million"
Berkley:
"increase annual household income by $487-$1,175 [mean=$831]per
year"
Heritage
"A typical family of four will pay, on average, an additional $829
each year"
That is uncanny. It's like they used the same models, but reversed
the signs. Is this what being a democrat/republican is about?
Oh, the end of the economy is consumption, not production. Do you
demand jobs? Do you pay to work? No. You pay for goods and
services. In layman's terms, talking about "creating jobs" is
"putting the cart before the horse"--unless you're game for
outlawing productivity enhancing technology and digging ditches (at
prevailing wages, comrades!).
Billy!|9.30.09 @ 10:08AM|#
Relax people, this is not a problem. I would bet money that no
CO2-limit scheme of any significance will ever ever pass. There is
no doubt in my mind that nobody will ever go along with any
reduction in lifestyle for a gain in something as nebulous as
climate change. Hell, our politicians are too afraid to tell people
that we should collect enough taxes to actually equal gov't
expenditures.
(The only problem with that bet is defining the term
'significant')
John Tagliaferro|9.30.09 @ 10:10AM|#
Polar bears occasionally eat the weaker members of their
families. Fuck polar bears, yo.
They also eat baby seals, who make great coats for the women in
your life. In the future, lab grown baby seal fur will fill the
retail gap that the hysterical environmentalists created. At least
that's the way I write it :)
|9.30.09 @ 10:13AM|#
There is no doubt in my mind that nobody will ever go along
with any reduction in lifestyle for a gain in something as nebulous
as climate change. Hell, our politicians are too afraid to tell
people that we should collect enough taxes to actually equal gov't
expenditures.
The only hope i have left to cling to.
God Bless Greed*.
*absolutely NOT snark.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 10:14AM|#
Claims that cap-and-trade will increase GDP are not necessarily
instances of broken-window-fallacy reasoning. The opportunity costs
of cap-and-trade are the costs paid to cope with global warming
over coming generations.
Nevertheless, all things considered, I suspect regulating
greenhouse gas emissions has a net cost to measured GDP. Whether it
has a net cost to human welfare is not so clear.
|9.30.09 @ 10:16AM|#
It's very hard to understand how increasing energy prices
and deploying a plethora of new regulations will create more jobs
than they destroy and boost incomes, to boot.
Ron Bailey, I see you do not care if my job is created or
saved!
|9.30.09 @ 10:40AM|#
proponents must please stop pretending that cap-and-trade
schemes are really jobs programs in disguise.
Why on earth would they do that?
It's not like they will ever be made accountable for their absurd
fabrications.
|9.30.09 @ 10:42AM|#
Great timing, guys. Practically on the day when the Mann hockey
stick was shown to be a complete scientific fraud.
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/27/quote-of-the-week-20-ding-dong-the-stick-is-dead/
Colin|9.30.09 @ 10:49AM|#
They'll never get 60 votes on this bill. Never.
Remember, a much weaker version in the House barely passed with a
majority vote -- and only when some Republicans jumped onboard.
|9.30.09 @ 10:51AM|#
Higher energy costs and job losses will not be a problem for proponents of Cap and Trade. They and the MSM will assure us that these have happened because of the selfishness and greed of corporations and overpaid CEOs.
|9.30.09 @ 10:57AM|#
Ron Bailey, will you please clarify your stance on Anthropogenic
Global Warming? You have indicated several times that you believe
human-derived emissions of carbon dioxide can lead to a net warming
of our planet's climate with subsequent serious consequences. Can
you please confirm that this is your belief, and if so, what leads
you to take that stance?
Thanks,
DanD
|9.30.09 @ 11:02AM|#
Ronald Bailey,
In 2009 we've seen a decrease in carbon emissions worldwide for the
first time in a long time (3%-4% as I recall). It should shock no
one that this decrease came in conjunction to a worldwide economic
crisis where factories, shipping, etc. is idled.
|9.30.09 @ 11:03AM|#
Dan, I am waiting for a rereversal in position from Ron any day now. Hopefully, once he realizes he's been lied to (IPCC hocky stick), his only rational choice is to go back to being a AGW skeptic.
John Tagliaferro|9.30.09 @ 11:03AM|#
Dear Senators Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) and John Kerry
(D-Mass.),
The impact of this bill on DoD needs further analysis. I believe
many cost savings and pollution reductions can be made within DoD,
so please include funding for additional analysis.
Yours Truly,
John Tagliaferro
Defense Analyst
|9.30.09 @ 11:04AM|#
some fed,
Oh, the end of the economy is consumption, not
production.
Thank you for pointing this out. It often gets lost in any
discussion of economics.
|9.30.09 @ 11:08AM|#
MikeP & Ecolib: And what about incomes?
As noted in my qualifications about the new jobs that those who
lose their jobs will end up taking, incomes under a cap and trade
regime will certainly go down.
|9.30.09 @ 11:11AM|#
High-growth economy, lost jobs easily replaced.
Low-or-negative-growth economy, lost jobs not so easily
replaced.
True that. And, of course, higher real incomes in the former than
the latter.
|9.30.09 @ 11:14AM|#
"They'll never get 60 votes on this bill. Never."
After the passage in the House of the cap and trade bill, Senator
Inhoffe stated that he could only count 37 votes at the most in the
Senate that would vote for a cap and trade bill.
|9.30.09 @ 11:17AM|#
Where's Neu Mexican to defend the crooked scienists offering bogus peer reviews?
|9.30.09 @ 11:19AM|#
"Great timing, guys. Practically on the day when the Mann hockey
stick was shown to be a complete scientific fraud."
It was shown to be a fraud years ago, but that didn't stop Al Gore
from using it.
|9.30.09 @ 11:21AM|#
If what you were saying were true, government regulations would have no effect on the unemployment rate just the quality of jobs. That is simply not so.
There's a short-run versus long-run effect, along with the fact of
sticky wages.
Certain types of regulation create structural unemployment, like
minimum wage (not worth it to hire low-skill people, so they get no
jobs), welfare (for a low-skill person, makes more sense to get
welfare than a low paying job), difficulty firing people (better
not hire someone if you can't fire him if he's bad), etc.
Environmental regulations and trade regulations don't, not in the
long term in equilibrium. What they do is make people take worse
jobs. Now, there definitely are people who are better and worse
off, especially in the short run, but it really only affects wages
by making people do less efficient jobs.
However, there are always so many structural changes going on in
the economy that we never actually reach equilibrium. Still, for
any individual policy, the economy eventually adjusts to it.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 11:31AM|#
The "hockey stick" was not shown to be a fraud, and that's not
what McIntyre is claiming. McIntyre is claiming that historical
temperature estimates based on tree-core samples have been proven
unreliable. The massive runup in temperatures since the Industrial
Revolution is well documented by instrumental measurements. The
only question is whether the late 20th century is warmer than all
preceding 2000 years. Despite the problems with the tree-sample
dataset, this proposition is far more likely to be true than
not.
The AGW deniers really need to get their story straight: is global
warming not occurring, or is it occurring but human activity isn't
responsible?
|9.30.09 @ 11:33AM|#
Support for cap-and-trade has evaporated. Daily I read
editorials, comments and letters-to-the-editor from all over the
nation. When the House passed the cap-and-trade bill it was maybe
2-to-1 against cap-and-trade, opinion now is off the charts against
it. The Senate will wise to bury this complex and risky
legislation.
Frankly, I don't see Americans supporting cap-and-trade or any CO2
regulation until we have our own Climate Truth Commission. We now
largely out-source our climate science to the United Nations, a
political organization, dedicated to advancing their "consensus"
view that CO2 drives global warming. The problem is, their view is
neither a consensus and can't possibly be 100% correct because they
don't factor-in clouds and solar activity:
The FACTS:
1) The 600 climate scientists who worked on the UN's Climate Change
2007 report never voted on the 'drives' issue. That conclusion was
reached by only about 50 scientists plus UN bureaucrats.
2) The UN has a huge conflict of interest. The 'Kyoto Protocol' is
their's and they have a vested interest in demonizing CO2.
3) Thousands of knowledgeable people and climate scientists
worldwide tell us the UN is wrong.
4) Past climate changes--100s of them--were driven by Mother
Nature, not mankind. Yet, the UN took Mother Nature off the table
when they limited their evaluation to 'climate change caused by
human activity'.
5) There is no 'smoking gun.' The proof that CO2 drives global
warming is circumstantial.
6) The UN treats unproven climate projections as 'fact', yet UN
forecasts for the last 10 years do not fit what actually
happened.
7) The UN used faulty data to bolster unwarranted findings in the
past.
The United States needs our own objective, transparent climate
commission to think-through global warming. We need the advice of a
bi-partisan Climate Truth Commission before we burden our economy
with expensive energy. Both sides of the man-made global warming
issue should welcome such an approach. ...each is so sure of
themselves.
-- Robert Moen, www.energyplanUSA.com
CAPITAL LETTERS|9.30.09 @ 11:41AM|#
ecolittle, the skeptics aren't the ones with a hysterical story about how the sky is warming. or changing. try getting your story straight.
|9.30.09 @ 11:41AM|#
Ecolibertarian,
There is no "story" to the AGW deniers. There are lots of stories.
I would say that most of us are agnostics. We think that climate is
a complex chaotic system and hence is not predictable by computer
modeling, no matter how sophisticated.
The "massive run-up," which is a massive exaggeration on your part,
is in fact poorly documented. The data are in the hands of people
with an explicit political agenda, and they have and continue to
manipulate historical data after it has been gathered without
thoroughly describing the methodology they use to do so. The
instrumentation itself and its implementation is also rife with
problems that contribute to an overall poor record of
temperature.
You have to realize that the temperature within a single square
mile can vary up to 10 degrees F, and within a vertical space of
1000 feet it can vary another 10 degrees. Compound that with poor
instrument siting, poor records of instrument calibration and
maintenance, a data record that's been mishandled and manipulated
by several parties, and you're left with a pretty shitty record of
temperature.
The Mann hockey stick is only one of the most visible and notorious
examples of the terrible science behind the political issue of the
anthropogenic global warming suggestion.
You have a lot of catching up to do before you can pretend to know
what the "AGW Denier" story is.
|9.30.09 @ 11:45AM|#
EcoLib,
Here's some recreational reading for you. Just a few paragraphs and
you'll see what I'm getting at here:
http://books.google.com/books?id=09RtcSCGv7gC&pg=PA24&lpg=PA24&dq=benjamin+franklin+warm+winters+getting+warmer&source=bl&ots=SxmAIXrcLm&sig=vCMjlmbMMZEp4XLYebHWBH8IQLM&hl=en&ei=anzDSrz1LqmwtgfiqMTkBA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CCEQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=benjamin%20franklin%20warm%20winters%20getting%20warmer&f=false
|9.30.09 @ 11:48AM|#
I should have put the top on the Porsche last night. Now,
there's snow on the seats.
But this should knock down those fires in the park.
*"Weather is not Climate" blah, blah, blah.
Michael Ejercito|9.30.09 @ 11:54AM|#
"But with all due respect to brilliance of Berkeley economists, the Berkeley findings are just not plausible. It's very hard to understand how increasing energy prices and deploying a plethora of new regulations will create more jobs than they destroy and boost incomes, to boot."
It won't. They're lying in order to pass something that facilitates their religion.
This is an even worse idea than abstinence-only sex
education.
The opportunity costs of cap-and-trade are the costs paid to cope with global warming over coming generations.
How much does it cost to set off a few dozen hydrogen bombs?
|9.30.09 @ 12:08PM|#
I feel for ya, P. I hate it when I get snow on Porsche
seats.
I guess there just wasn't enough room for the Porsche in the
garage, what with both the Ferarris back from the shop?
|9.30.09 @ 12:10PM|#
The opportunity costs of cap-and-trade are the costs paid to
cope with global warming over coming generations.
There are, of course, direct costs to cap-and-trade as well, but
leaving that aside, this formulation begs the $64T question: what
costs of global warming are we going to mitigate with
cap-and-trade?
How much will cap-and-trade reduce CO2, how much will that reduce
future temperature increases, and how much would those temperature
increases have cost us?
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 12:11PM|#
DanD - I've never understood the charge that climate scientists
have a secret "political agenda." Surely it can't be that
scientists want to demonstrate AGW so that they can obtain federal
grants from an executive branch that for the past 8 years was
clearly opposed to their research?
The instrumental temperature record has some inaccuracies,
especially further back in the series. But there is no reason to
suspect that these measurement errors are nonrandom. Poor
instruments should give higher variance (error) around the mean. Is
there any plausible scenario in which temperature readings in the
1800s were consistently biased downward, a bias that gradually
faded as technology improved?
And don't say urban heat island effects; those were corrected long
ago. Furthermore, the instrumental records available are from more
multiple sources (Hadley Centre, NASA, NOAA), and they all give the
same trends.
|9.30.09 @ 12:12PM|#
I guess there just wasn't enough room for the Porsche in the
garage, what with both the Ferarris back from the shop?
No Ferraris; just those *other* Porsches.
|9.30.09 @ 12:12PM|#
"The AGW deniers really need to get their story straight: is
global warming not occurring, or is it occurring but human activity
isn't responsible?"
As mentioned previously, there is no single AGW denier position.
The science is so unsettled that there are a range of viewpoints.
Some sceptics believe there is no AGW. Some believe there is some
AGW but it is not significant, that the biggest drivers are
natural. There is even a minority position that is predicting
future global cooling.
|9.30.09 @ 12:13PM|#
how much would those temperature increases have cost
us?
This is the only question which matters, as far as I am
concerned.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 12:18PM|#
what costs of global warming are we going to mitigate with
cap-and-trade?
We know (roughly) how to categorize those costs, but much less
about how to measure them. Rapid, sustained warming causes
extinctions of plant and animal species that do not have sufficient
time to adapt. Compensating victims of sea level rise, including
entire Pacific countries expected to fall beneath the waves, could
be expensive. On the other hand, there could be some benefits to
global warming, such as productivity gains in agriculture, a
year-round Arctic passage for shipping, etc. But the irreversible
losses to wildlife should trump these by several orders of
magnitude.
The fact that the consequences of GW are uncertain is itself a
consideration in favor of preventing temperature rises rather than
spending resources on coping with change. A world with less
fundamental uncertainty is superior to one with more.
Aaron Huertas|9.30.09 @ 12:19PM|#
The Heritage numbers are far from accurate. Some are simply made
up. And Heritage is disguising the fact that their analysis shows
that the economy will grow regardless of whether or not Congress
passes climate legislation. Instead, they talk about the difference
between a high growth and less-higher-growth scenario as if they
represent LOSSES from today's levels.
It's a completely intellectually dishonest exercise.
I guess they're afraid to simply advocate their moral opposition to
government regulation, so they hide behind made up numbers and
scientific disinformation.
http://switchboard.nrdc.org/blogs/ljohnson/contrary_to_the_heritage_found_2.html
Thanks,
Aaron Huertas
|9.30.09 @ 12:29PM|#
Loss of some species and relocating people? Is that all you have? You want to hand energy policy over to a bunch of fascist control mongers just to save some species and not have to live around pacific islanders? Shit, we just discovered one hundred and sixty three new species we never even knew about, and you are worried about losing species?
|9.30.09 @ 12:29PM|#
Rapid, sustained warming causes extinctions of plant and
animal species that do not have sufficient time to
adapt.
So what.
Gilbert Martin|9.30.09 @ 12:30PM|#
Blah, blah blah.
I don't need any "study" to know that it will subject me personally
to increased costs for electricity, gasoline,etc. and increased
restrictions on my economic freedoms via regulation - all for no
measurable benefit whatsoever to me personally.
And that's all I need to know about it to oppose it.
|9.30.09 @ 12:32PM|#
A world with less fundamental uncertainty is superior to one
with more.
Honesty, for a change.
Refreshing; but still, ultimately, deeply depressing.
|9.30.09 @ 12:37PM|#
We know (roughly) how to categorize those costs, but much
less about how to measure them.
So we don't know, but we should institute a massively expensive
program to increase government control of society and economy
anyway? Is that where we are?
Really, its enough to make me think maybe the AGW agenda is being
pushed by people who are more interested in control than they are
in the climate.
|9.30.09 @ 12:39PM|#
The same politicians that brought you ERON,TARP are now
unveiling their latest scheme, a 10 to 40 year subsidy for their
continued lack of concern for working people and our local
economy.
The new technology they rave about is not off the shelf
equipment.
The development expense in time and money is unknown.
The effective integration is unknown.
What is known is that money will flow into the pockets of insiders
and speculators, at rates we have never seen.
|9.30.09 @ 12:40PM|#
The fact that the consequences of GW are uncertain is itself
a consideration in favor of preventing temperature rises rather
than spending resources on coping with change.
You're not getting off that easy.
What if the costs of coping with change are relatively
trivial?
What if, as seems likely, we spend trillions on carbon control with
very little impact on the climate, so we have to cope with global
warming anyway?
The "we don't know, but it might be bad" justification works just
as well for living in a cave so you don't get hit by a meteor.
|9.30.09 @ 12:40PM|#
EcoLib,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mRQu1OO-BzU
You're draggin', buddy. I'll answer your assertions and then leave
you with a simple question.
The temperature record has far more problems than you acknowledge.
Again, to have any sort of idea of how--just how, not even why--
global temperature is changing, you need far more
instruments than we have now, you need to have them be 100%
consistent with each other in manufacturing, calibration, and field
lifetime. You have to have them at different altitudes above the
land surface as well as on the land surface itself, and you have to
keep the environment around them constant. That means no buildings,
no change in the surrounding flora, no changes whatsoever except
painstakingly rigorous calibration and QC checking and adjustments
of your instruments.
When this is accomplished, you can gain an idea of how the
global climate has changed over the period of time that you have
kept an immaculate record. You probably can't understand
how because again, this is a complex chaotic system that
has a tremendous number of inputs, the known portion of which whose
effects have not been quantified.
What is in our record is not even close to that standard. It's not
even close to our own standards that have been established for it.
And the United States temperature record is considered to be the
world's best. The rest of the world has miserable data in
comparison, especially in the polar regions.
Is it noble and worthwhile to try to measure and understand our
Earth's climate? Absolutely! We should fund efforts to measure
temperature and to try to understand what drives changes in the
short and long term. The inherent difficulties should not dissuade
our efforts. But do we have any idea what has happened or even what
is happening? Well, it's a continual improvement but there are huge
gaps and problems in the data we're obtaining today, not to mention
what we have obtained in the past. To say that we can quantify our
past climate based on tree rings and ice cores is laughable. Again,
we can get a glimpse at this vast world through a very narrow
peephole, but to say any more than that is hubris and an insult to
the field and to science in general.
Climate research at various gov't agencies has been well-funded
despite the debate over AGW. Don't even try that angle with me or
I'll bust out the numbers and if I have to do that I'll be grumpy.
Some data are freely available, but the manipulations to these data
are not well-documented at all, if they are even documented, and
have not been subjected to acceptable scientific rigor.
So I leave you with a question. Admittedly, it's not as simple as I
promised, but here goes:
Is our current climate warming? How do you know? Over what time
scale are you basing your assertion? Will it keep warming? Are CO2
and other greenhouse gasses to blame for this? How do you know?
Explain the mechanism.
If you can answer that question with any degree of competence,
you're doing better than any climate scientist and you'll make a
believer out of me once again.
The Gobbler|9.30.09 @ 1:02PM|#
"The AGW deniers really need to get their story straight: is
global warming not occurring(?)"
No it's not. Thanks for asking.
or is it occurring but human activity isn't responsible?"
No it's not. Thanks for asking.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 1:03PM|#
Wow, lots of scientific ignorance to contend with at once. I'll
try to keep this brief so that I can get back to work.
Why should we care about thousands of flora & fauna species
going extinct? If I may indulge a little meta-commentary first,
it's not surprising to me that there is a strong correlation in the
general population between denying evolution and denying AGW, but
to find such a correlation on a libertarian site is pretty
astounding.
Mass extinctions threaten human welfare because they disrupt a
delicate balance of predator-prey relationships and other
ecological functions. As insects die out, we drown in shit and our
crops are no longer pollinated. As birds and bats die out, we have
to get ready for Planet of the Mosquitoes. As trees and forbs
disappear, our water supplies become less reliable, our pollution
becomes more toxic, our farmlands erode.
But don't worry - God will take care of it, right?
Again, to have any sort of idea of how--just how, not even
why-- global temperature is changing, you need far more instruments
than we have now, you need to have them be 100% consistent with
each other in manufacturing, calibration, and field lifetime. You
have to have them at different altitudes above the land surface as
well as on the land surface itself, and you have to keep the
environment around them constant.
Absolutely not. If random measurement error were intolerable, then
virtually no scientific inference outside extremely controlled
laboratory settings would be possible. The only way to impugn the
temperature record is to assert nonrandom
measurement error, that is, a consistent bias in temperature
readings that make a trend appear where there is none. Random error
is simply white noise; it widens our confidence intervals, which is
pesky, but that's about it.
In fact, the prevalence of random measurement error in the
temperature record strengthens the basic AGW
hypothesis, because, as I'm sure you know, random measurement error
in the dependent variable increases standard errors. If we're
finding statistically significant relationships even with random
measurement error, imagine how strong these relationships would be
without it.
|9.30.09 @ 1:04PM|#
How much does it cost to set off a few dozen hydrogen
bombs?
It has to cost less than what we spent to make them and the
continuous upkeep costs.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 1:05PM|#
What if the costs of coping with change are relatively
trivial?
The expected cost of coping with change is quite high. The standard
error of the expectation is also high. That means the costs of
coping could be small, or they could be astronomical. My point is
that if the expected costs of preventing warming and coping with
warming are the same, it is a consideration in favor of the former
that the standard error of the expectation for this solution is
smaller.
The Gobbler|9.30.09 @ 1:07PM|#
"DanD - I've never understood the charge that climate scientists
have a secret "political agenda." "
FUNDING.
Next.
The Gobbler|9.30.09 @ 1:12PM|#
"Shit, we just discovered one hundred and sixty three new
species we never even knew about, and you are worried about losing
species?"
You forget that we all miss the dodo everyday. And the lack of
passenger pigeons negatively impacts everyone everyday.
And the wooly mammoths? Don't even get me started on that one.
|9.30.09 @ 1:15PM|#
Speaking of scientific illiteracy, where are these mass
extinctions buddy? I agree that mass extinctions are a bad thing,
but you're using a doomsday scenario that is being pushed by
environmental advocacy groups. This is turn is based on speculation
about climate models, which are nothing more than very expensive
and very greenhouse-gas intensive speculation in turn. Speculation
based on speculation does not a good argument make .
I have a doctorate in Physics and I'm an engineer by trade. I say
this because I can safely assert that I know science when I see it.
Evolution is science. Anthropogenic global warming "climate
scientists" and climate models are masquerading as science to give
credibility to a political issue.
Your little rant about nonrandom error is charming, but it had me
chuckling. I'm not going to waste any more of my lunch break on you
because you just profoundly demonstrated your ignorance better than
I could. You have a lot to learn, young grasshopper. :)
|9.30.09 @ 1:16PM|#
Ecolib, have you ever cleared off a piece of land to only have to do it again every year. The resilience of life is way beyond your sad expectations. A delicate balance is what they teach in grade school, but the fact is life is like kudzu, almost impossible to contain.
|9.30.09 @ 1:18PM|#
Mass extinctions threaten human welfare because they disrupt
a delicate balance of predator-prey relationships and other
ecological functions. As insects die out, we drown in shit and our
crops are no longer pollinated. As birds and bats die out, we have
to get ready for Planet of the Mosquitoes. As trees and forbs
disappear, our water supplies become less reliable, our pollution
becomes more toxic, our farmlands erode.
But don't worry - God will take care of it, right?
You've got me pegged, all right.
Riddle me this: if all change is bad, and adaptation is a myth
(just like DinosaurCowboyJeeezus!), why isn't this planet as
lifeless as Pluto?
|9.30.09 @ 1:27PM|#
as lifeless as Pluto
You sad silly deluded fool. Did you spend all of science class
drawing on your jeans?
|9.30.09 @ 1:35PM|#
Drawing on my jeans? Hah!
I spent my time drawing fiery animated car crashes on the page
edges of my Earth Science textbook.
|9.30.09 @ 1:41PM|#
And exploding V-2 style rocket launches.
So... pictures of "powerful" penile symbols then. How did this make
you feel? Why did you resent your father's penis? Did your mother
spurn you for another man after he left?
|9.30.09 @ 1:47PM|#
"My point is that if the expected costs of preventing warming
and coping with warming are the same, it is a consideration in
favor of the former that the standard error of the expectation for
this solution is smaller."
The problem is that we don't know there will be catastrophic
changes so why destroy our economy to prevent something that we
don't even know will happen? Also, if climatic changes are brought
about mostly by other factors besides the level of CO2, what change
we bring about in the level of CO2 will not have much effect on the
climate.
|9.30.09 @ 1:48PM|#
No, no, no. You've got it all wrong.
This was an early manifestation of my inchoate
anarcholibertarianism, taking shape as a desire to destroy the
existing order of the world.
Sheesh.
|9.30.09 @ 1:57PM|#
It's just me against the world, Sugarfree.
If I may be allowed to substitute "world" for "Ron Hart's
sockpupppet legions".
|9.30.09 @ 2:01PM|#
"In fact, the prevalence of random measurement error in the
temperature record strengthens the basic AGW hypothesis, because,
as I'm sure you know, random measurement error in the dependent
variable increases standard errors. If we're finding statistically
significant relationships even with random measurement error,
imagine how strong these relationships would be without it."
Land temperatures are overstated because of urban heat effects and
because many temperature stations in the former Soviet Union are no
longer operation which has raised average temperatures because less
of those cold temperature stations are still operating. Satellite
temperatures don't show the greater increase in temperature that
average ground temperature shows. This is why the IPCC has chosen
to cherry pick that data instead of the satellite data.
|9.30.09 @ 2:04PM|#
I thought the tapioca remark was out of bounds. Everyone knows that's a glandular condition.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 2:07PM|#
DanD - Does this mean we both get to whip out our PhDs and see
whose is bigger?
In seriousness, I've often found that many physicists are not
familiar with the methods of inference used in other scientific
disciplines. Much physics is deductive, and much of the rest
operates on highly controlled laboratory environments. Very little
physics research involves testing probabilistic hypotheses on data
collected from real-world, macro-scale phenomena. To be frank, I'd
trust a randomly selected economist's comprehension of the GW
research before a randomly selected physicist's.
if all change is bad, and adaptation is a myth (just like
DinosaurCowboyJeeezus!), why isn't this planet as lifeless as
Pluto?
I won't defend either of those conditionals. Adaptation happens
over many generations. Unprecedentedly large shocks to any
population doesn't allow time for the normal adaptive process to
occur.
I've got a feeling many libertarians reject the science of AGW
because they don't like (what they believe are) its conclusions.
Why should beliefs about, say, financial regulation correlate with
beliefs about global warming? But they do...
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 2:11PM|#
bookworm - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7e/Satellite_Temperatures.png
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 2:15PM|#
The problem is that we don't know there will be catastrophic
changes so why destroy our economy to prevent something that we
don't even know will happen? Also, if climatic changes are brought
about mostly by other factors besides the level of CO2, what change
we bring about in the level of CO2 will not have much effect on the
climate.
Why put the burden of proof on doing something rather than doing
nothing? Doing nothing really isn't an option after all - it's
really doing something to slow climate change, or doing something
to cope with rapid climate change. I don't see why the burden of
proof should rely on advocates of either solution. Go with whatever
solution has the highest expected benefits, with some risk aversion
built in (the standard error point made earlier).
|9.30.09 @ 2:17PM|#
Why should beliefs about, say, financial regulation
correlate with beliefs about global warming? But they
do...
Are you referring to reluctance to trust government planners and
large scale centralized authority? I see no inconsistency,
there.
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 2:19PM|#
I'm referring to beliefs about whether AGW is occurring or not. Why should "reluctance to trust government planners and large scale centralized authority" entail a belief that AGW isn't happening?
|9.30.09 @ 2:21PM|#
Claims that cap-and-trade will increase GDP are not
necessarily instances of broken-window-fallacy reasoning. The
opportunity costs of cap-and-trade are the costs paid to cope with
global warming over coming generations.
That isn't the basis of the Berkeley report's claims. Berkeley's
claims are based on the notion that people will be employed in the
"green energy" industry. That is, using more people to produce
energy through less efficient means will "produce jobs". There
isn't anything in there about costs averted by preventing global
warming. It is pure broken window fallacy.
The broken window fallacy underlies a great deal of leftist
economic reasoning. They opposed, for instance, factory automation
on the grounds that employing robotics would put people out of
work, neglecting the benefit to the economy in general of making
more stuff with less labor.
Producing energy less efficiently might be the price we have to pay
to reduce carbon emissions. But you cannot sell it as a jobs
program on the basis of the jobs "created" making solar panels.
Higher energy costs will inevitably make goods manufactured in the
US more expensive, reducing demand for our products. The whole
"green energy" project by definition directs resources away from
other productive endeavors and towards a less efficient use.
|9.30.09 @ 2:26PM|#
The expected cost of coping with change is quite
high.
That posits, I believe, that there will in fact be catastrophic
global warming, a hypothesis currently in search of proof.
My point is that if the expected costs of
preventing warming and coping with warming are the same,
Well, yeah, if you assume your conclusion, you can nearly always
get the result you want.
The problem is that the costs of reducing CO2 output are not
speculative, but real.
By contrast, the effect that this reduction will have on climate is
quite speculative, as is the effect of not reducing CO2 output, the
degree of global warming either way, and the costs of dealing with
global warming.
So, you have to assume away quite a bit of unknowns and
uncertainties to get to a point where you can even break even. No
thanks.
Why put the burden of proof on doing something rather than
doing nothing?
Because the cost of doing something is quite large, while the cost
of doing nothing is quite speculative.
Doing nothing really isn't an option after all
I beg to differ.
|9.30.09 @ 2:31PM|#
Why should "reluctance to trust government planners and
large scale centralized authority" entail a belief that AGW isn't
happening?
Why should I assume the only possible solution for a problem
(which, if genuine, has a highly speculative real effect) is
massive government intervention?
|9.30.09 @ 2:32PM|#
"Why put the burden of proof on doing something rather than
doing nothing?"
That's like a Christian saying we should commit ourselves to
Christianity just in case it's true so that we won't go to hell.
The burden of proof is on those who make the claim. Since the
global warming alarmists haven't proven their case that there will
be catastrophic consequences as a result of our output of CO2, why
should we destroy our economy just in case they MIGHT be right?
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 2:35PM|#
Why should I assume the only possible solution for a problem
(which, if genuine, has a highly speculative real effect) is
massive government intervention?
You don't. Feel free to dispute that mandatory reductions in carbon
emissions are desirable. I'm not fully persuaded myself. But it's
another thing entirely to claim that the massive body of evidence
in favor of AGW is fabricated. The only people who seem to claim
this are right-wingers (for some reason). Does ideology give them
acute insights into scientific research that others lack?
Ecolibertarian|9.30.09 @ 2:38PM|#
That's like a Christian saying we should commit ourselves to
Christianity just in case it's true so that we won't go to
hell.
No, it's like saying that you shouldn't try to drive through that
flooded street just in case the water's much deeper than you think,
even if there's some annoyance and inconvenience in taking another
route.
The burden of proof is on those who make the claim.
Both sides are making claims.
|9.30.09 @ 2:45PM|#
"massive body of evidence in favor of AGW"
What is this massive body of evidence? I'm willing to concede that
there might be some evidence that CO2 has some effect in global
warming and ofcourse, man is greatly contributing to it, but there
are other factors involved in pushing climate such as the Pacific
Decadal Occilation which none of the models that the IPCC uses
include in their estimates.
|9.30.09 @ 2:50PM|#
"Both sides are making claims."
There are some who claim that man contributes nothing to global
warming and others like myself who admit that man does contribute
some to global warming, but how much is not known. It is still
foolish to wreck our economy over something that has not really
been proven to be a serious problem. I say the burden of proof is
on the global warming alarmists.
Gilbert Martin|9.30.09 @ 3:09PM|#
"No, it's like saying that you shouldn't try to drive through
that flooded street just in case the water's much deeper than you
think, even if there's some annoyance and inconvenience in taking
another route."
Bad analogy.
Whether there is water covering a particular street is easily and
definitively determinable - even if exact depth of it isn't.
That isn't remotely comparable to the theory of AGW which has not
been definitively proven to exist at all.
deluded1|9.30.09 @ 3:21PM|#
The "massive body of evidence" is a large number of reports and
models without neutral peer review based off of questionable or
outright incorrect data.
I'm certain that ecolib is going to show up and say I'm wrong. When
you do, please provide links to the data. I'm sure you have them.
Please try not to provide any studies by Mann or Hudley
please...since they will not allow peer review and have been shown
to use...let's say questionable...data
|9.30.09 @ 3:44PM|#
Ecolib: I would be careful about citing the temperature data
from HadCRUT so confidently. They seem to have
misplaced some of it.
With regard to costs, I've looked at various projections for years
now. If you're interested, see my latest column on the topic,
Is Government
Action Worse Than Global Warming?
If you don't like what I have to say, you might consider reading
Yale economist William Nordhaus' A Question
of Balance. The first chapter is a good summary of the
projected costs of AGW versus the benefits of various proposed
policies that aim to deal with it.
On species extinctions, I note that biodiversity trends are
notoriously difficult to predict. In 1979, Oxford University
biologist Norman Myers suggested in his book The Sinking Ark that
40,000 species per year were going extinct and that 1 million
species would be gone by the year 2000. Myers suggested that the
world could "lose one-quarter of all species by the year 2000." At
a 1979 symposium at Brigham Young University, Thomas Lovejoy, who
is the former president of The H. John Heinz III Center for
Science, Economics, and the Environment announced that he had made
"an estimate of extinctions that will take place between now and
the end of the century. Attempting to be conservative wherever
possible, I still came up with a reduction of global diversity
between one-seventh and one-fifth." Lovejoy drew up the first
projections of global extinction rates for the "Global 2000 Report
to the President" in 1980. If Lovejoy had been right, between 15
and 20 percent of all species alive in 1980 would be extinct right
now. No one believes that extinctions of this magnitude have
occurred over the last three decades.
What happens to humanity if many species do go extinct? In a 2003
Science article called "Prospects for Biodiversity," Martin
Jenkins, who works for the United Nations Environment
Programme-World Conservation Monitoring Center, pointed out that
even if the dire projections of extinction rates being made by
conservation advocates are correct, they "will not, in themselves,
threaten the survival of humans as a species." The Science article
notes, "In truth, ecologists and conservationists have struggled to
demonstrate the increased material benefits to humans of 'intact'
wild systems over largely anthropogenic ones [like farms] … Where
increased benefits of natural systems have been shown, they are
usually marginal and local."
|9.30.09 @ 4:20PM|#
Ron Bailey
And let me supply a probably apocryphal, but nonetheless insightful story,...
Ron Bailey
That story is almost certainly apocryphal.
I've heard numerous variations on it, the first over forty years
ago.
But as you say, it is nonetheless an insightful parable.
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