China Believes in Climate Change

[Red Arrow]

But if you look at how many stars had to align just to prevent Obama and Congress from passing a full version of Obamacare (as a for instance), I think the prospect is exceedingly dim that our democracy is capable of building enough consensus to make huge changes, either to our government or our economy. 

Different viewpoint.

[nathanm]

But Algore has also done just as much to hurt the image amongst skeptics, especially with made-up footage in his "documentary", living a different lifestyle than he espouses for everyone else, and his known ability to stretch the truth when it suits him.  That and the whole carbon credit scam he's reputedly heavily invested in.

So you're saying it's the CG polar bears that made people disbelieve? An interesting point of view.

What I really don't get is why it is that conservatives are so diametrically opposed to a market-based solution that has proven to work well for sulfur dioxide.

[Conan71]

So you're saying it's the CG polar bears that made people disbelieve? An interesting point of view.

What I really don't get is why it is that conservatives are so diametrically opposed to a market-based solution that has proven to work well for sulfur dioxide.

Oh and calving styrofoam on a Hollywood back lot, kyped footage from another fiction production, exaggerated claims which have been refuted or characterized as exaggerated by respected pro-warming scientists and his whole credibility issue to start with.  Why would that make for an interesting point of view.  If you wish to continue to trust a man who makes millions trading on trumped up fear, have at it.

What market based solution are you referring to which conservatives are supposedly opposed to?

[we vs us]

Different viewpoint.

But absolutely proves my point.  Consensus is great at producing moderation.  Not so great at engineering system-wide change.

[nathanm]

What market based solution are you referring to which conservatives are supposedly opposed to?

Cap and trade. The entire point of which is to align the profit motive with the environmental need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

[Conan71]

Cap and trade. The entire point of which is to align the profit motive with the environmental need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

Oh no, not crap'n trade again...

[guido911]

Cap and trade. The entire point of which is to align the profit motive with the environmental need to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

How is cap and trade a "market based solution"? Anyway, remember this from Obama?

If for no other reason I would support this tax only because your and all other Obamabots' electricity rates would go up.

[nathanm]

How is cap and trade a "market based solution"?

It creates a market for the right to pollute, thereby creating financial incentives to clean up your act so you can sell some of your carbon credits to somebody who would rather pay for credits than reduce emissions. There's a reason why Republicans had been strongly in favor of that solution rather than a straight carbon tax for years and years..until Obama got elected and they decided obstructionism was the way to go on every issue.

I don't remember some vast increase in electricity rates after the sulfur dioxide credit trading went into effect, and that pretty much only applied to large power plants.

Basically you've got three options: cap and trade, a carbon tax, or arbitrary limits enforced by large fines. Which one would you prefer?

[Conan71]

Ahh, but Guido, don't you know there will be a government-subsidized system which will comp part of lower wage earner's electric bills and it will be paid for on the backs of the wealthy.

[Cats Cats Cats]

Oh no, not crap'n trade again...

Yeah, you wonder why Bush continued to use it.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/02/14/politics/main329372.shtml

[Conan71]

Oh, you mean this successful little program?

"The Journal (WSJ) reported that the cap-and-trade market for sulfur dioxide (SO2) emissions in the United States, created in 1995 in response to what was thought to be the connection between SO2 emissions and acid rain, had "collapsed" in spectacular fashion.


Changes in EPA guidelines -- caused by court rulings -- rendered current SO2 emission allowances useless. Allowances that once traded for as much as $1,600 per ton were trading at less than $3, and traders predicted that they would go to zero shortly.

Spokespersons for environmental advocacy groups pushing for a cap-and-trade program for carbon dioxide (CO2) claim that the failure holds no lessons for their proposal, but they could hardly be more wrong. The SO2 market arose from concerns remarkably similar to those behind the push for CO2 markets, and the mistakes leading to the collapse of the existing market portend disaster for the one on the drawing board.

The market for SO2 emission allowances was created to address widespread concern that SO2 emissions from power plants were causing acid rain, which in turn was acidifying lakes and damaging forests. That connection, though heavily hyped by environmental groups and the media and still regarded as an article of faith in both circles, was never scientifically proven. Shortly before the cap-and-trade legislation was enacted, a massive research project called the National Acid Precipitation Assessment Program found that most of the damages attributed to acid rain were in fact due to logging and natural processes. But it was too late: Congress didn't want to be confused by the facts.

The parallel to global warming couldn't be clearer. Congress is taking up cap-and-trade legislation for CO2 emissions even as the scientific community backs away from the sensational claims by Al Gore, James Hansen, and the like. Even one-time leaders of the alarmist side of the global warming debate, such as Phil Jones, now admit that the warming of the 20th century was not unusual or evidence of a human impact on climate. Estimates of the effects of "man-made global warming" on sea levels, wildlife, and weather have all been called into question or scaled back dramatically in recent years.

The SO2 trading program had a fatal flaw that only a few astute observers (such as economist Jim Johnston, at the time working for Amoco and now retired) commented on at the time: It did not give emission allowance the legal status of private property. This meant the government could change the rules of the game without fear of being sued by businesses and investors whose allowances became worthless. Predictably, government officials couldn't keep their hands off the program, and their meddling with the rules since 2005 destroyed the system.

Johnston further predicted that the failure to give property rights status to emission allowances would discourage businesses from buying the allowances, causing the market to be too thin to have much effect on emissions. He was right again: The volume of trading never approached that of successful "real" markets. This remains a strange blind spot for many reporters: An illustration in the July 12 Wall Street Journal article, for example, shows the collapse in SO2 prices and refers to "the once-robust market in sulfur-dioxide allowances." But high prices don't reveal whether a market is "robust." Volume does."

http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/capandtrade_market_failure.html

In arguments over carbon trading, both sides often assume that past emission trading schemes have been notably successful. But in practice, trading schemes have lowered emissions more slowly than rule-based methods, and have discouraged rather than encouraged innovation. Even in the area where emissions trading shows some success -- lowering gross compliance costs to industry -- net costs are probably higher than rule-based alternatives.

Compare the success of the often-touted sulfur dioxide trading system the U.S., instituted in 1990, with the speed and quantity of reductions under rule-based systems during the same period. U.S. SO2 emissions dropped by 31% between 1990 and 2001 [1]. Over the same period of time, under old fashioned rule-based regulation, Germany reduced its emissions by 87% [2], Italy by 62% [2], and Western Europe as a whole by 57% [2].

In both absolute and per capita terms, Western Europe and the individual nations within it have less acid rain-producing pollution than the United States [3]. This was not true when they began their regulatory programs in 1982....

...emission trading has a record of producing slower results than conventional regulation, with at least one example of complete failure to meet a goal. But doesn't the increased flexibility at least encourage innovation? The empirical record says no:

The best empirical study of sulfur trading to date ("Regulation as the Mother of Invention: The Case of SO2 Control," Margaret Taylor, Edward S. Rubin, David A. Hounshell, Law and Policy 27, No 2, April 2005, pp. 348-78, p. 372.) says ...

... the majority of the performance and capital cost improvements in the dominant technology to achieve SO2 control occurred before the 1990 CAA ... 
Consequently, the weight of evidence of the history of innovation in SO2 control technology does not support the superiority of the 1990 CAA--the world's biggest national experiment with emissions trading--as an inducement for environmental technological innovation, as compared with the effects of traditional environmental policy approaches. Repeated demand-pull instruments, in the form of national performance-based standards, along with technology-push efforts, via public RD&D funding and support for technology transfer, had already clearly facilitated the rapid maturation of wet FGD system technology that diffused from no market to about 110 GWe capacity in twenty-five years. In addition, traditional environmental policy instruments had supported innovation in alternative technologies, such as dry FGD and sorbent injection systems, which the 1990 CAA provided a disincentive for, as they were not as cost-effective in meeting its provisions as low sulfur coal use combined with limited wet FGD application
So SO2 emissions trading helped produce no major innovations, and actually provided a disincentive for technologies on the verge of maturation.

http://www.grist.org/article/emissions-trading-a-mixed-record-with-plenty-of-failures/

Personally, I prefer the limit and fine type approach.  That's a pretty good incentive for utility companies and other large emitters to find rational solutions to finding and intalling lower emission equipment.  Since I work in the combustion industry and have multiple clients around the country in non-attainment areas, that approach has benefitted them and the company I work for the best, so I've got somewhat of a vested interest in the issue.  I also work with a lot of engineers in the field who view global warming through the same lens I do, with great skepticism.

[nathanm]

OK, then let's just limit carbon dioxide emissions. I honestly don't care how it gets done, only that it does. The assumption on the left has long been that the right would be much more willing to live with a market based solution.

FWIW, the lack of trading volume in a particular market does not necessarily mean it is not functioning robustly (although it can), only that the participants don't feel the need to make trades at that particular time.

[Conan71]

OK, then let's just limit carbon dioxide emissions. I honestly don't care how it gets done, only that it does. The assumption on the left has long been that the right would be much more willing to live with a market based solution.

FWIW, the lack of trading volume in a particular market does not necessarily mean it is not functioning robustly (although it can), only that the participants don't feel the need to make trades at that particular time.

Regs and fines help create market-based solutions all the time.

[guido911]

Regs and fines help create market-based solutions all the time.

That was where I was heading. There is very little "market-based" activity here; it's pure government strong-arming and coercion.

[we vs us]

So where are we then?  Neither straight taxes, nor market based incentives are acceptable.  What's left? 

Or do we plead gridlock and let China take the lead on this one?