“Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is going to cost a lot (both in terms of dollars and effort), and it is going to produce few if any demonstrable climate results for decades to come (if ever).” 

The scientific community—or especially that part of it which holds the opinion that not enough is being done to mitigate potential climate change—is struggling with why the general public (and hence policymakers) are not heeding their call to action on global warming.

In a recent post, I pointed to one reason: the fast diminishing role that any U.S.-side mitigation would have in curbing greenhouse gas emissions enough to measurably affect global climate. This is a classic bang-for-the-buck evaluation. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is going to cost a lot (both in terms of dollars and effort), and it is going to produce few if any demonstrable climate results for decades to come (if ever).

In short, a mitigation (versus a wealth-is-health adaptation strategy) is a tough sell given even the most alarming climate change projections, and becomes nearly impossible under more modest climate change scenarios.

The role of climate change science has been, and continues to be, in arbitrating between the potential climate outcomes. And although there are some who argue that the science no longer matters as far the politics go, a lot of other scientists who make at least a partial living studying climate and climate change (including myself) would like to think otherwise.

And many of us have taken the additional step of not only producing science, but also translating our results (and that of others) into more layman’s terms, describing what implications the results have on the bigger picture of climate change, and then suggesting what, if anything, should be done about it. With mixed success (depending on who you ask).

AGU Confab: Curry’s Voice of Moderation

During the annual fall meeting last week of the American Geophysical Union (AGU), several talks and sessions were focused on this theme of (climate) science communications, exploring how scientists could better get their ideas across to the public at large. The general idea being that if the public were better informed and better educated about the issue, the better would be their decisions.

Most of the AGU talks were aimed at addressing the perceived failure of climate change communications—a failure gauged by the lack of political action on the issue. After all, if the science were being effectively communicated, then the perils of climate change would be obvious, and surely the general public would be imploring their elected officials to do something about it.

Climate science researcher-cum-climate science communicator Judith Curry was in attendance of many of the AGU presentations on this topic, as well as being a presenter herself. But her take on the issue was quite a bit different than most of the presenters.

Over at her blog Climate Etc., Curry gives her opinion about many of the climate communications talks at the AGU, and also makes available her presentation.

The main gist of her talk concerns the distinction between the “linear” approach to science communication and that of a more “circular” approach. The former is more akin to preaching, the latter with engaging.

In the linear approach, the communicator is basically telling the audience what to think about a topic of the communicator’s choosing. Basically, here are our results, here is what (we think) they mean, and here are the actions that (we think) should be taken.

In the circular approach, the interests of the audience feed back to the communicator, and each takes part in the discussion. As Judith Curry describes it:

Unlike the linear model that focuses on the messenger, the circular model views the receiver as an equal partner in the communication and focuses on the process of engagement (which includes dialogue and feedback).

With the benefit being:

When a messenger actually makes the effort to understand why an individual is unconvinced, this inevitably leads to both deepening and broadening the discussion to address complexity and uncertainties. The end result can be raising the level of the public dialogue.

Judith has embraced the circular approach over the past couple of years after coming to the conclusion (with the help of insight gained from the revelations contained in the climategate emails) that her previous linear presentations backed by IPCC science weren’t nearly as clear cut as she had thought.

Her switch from preaching to engaging has not been well-received by those more inclined towards establishing a storyline and sticking to it. Said one: “Judith decided a while back that the judgment of the community on what was interesting and what was not, was not itself to be trusted.”

But as someone who has spent much of my scientific communications effort trying to illuminate things that the “community” may have not found to be “interesting,” I applaud Judith for her new-found pursuit.

Below is reproduced the narrative from Judith Curry’s AGU presentation, titled “Engaging the Public on Climate Change” (the accompanying slide set is available here), in which she explains why she chooses to tackle the issue the way that she has. It is well worth rereading. She is history-in-the-making, her’s being a courageous voice at a time when the climate profession has been going hard toward alarmism/policy activism.

Engaging the Public on Climate Change

- by Judith Curry

In his talk yesterday Michael Mann summed up the frustrations of communicating climate change in three words: WHY NO ACTION? Opinion polls show that many people are unconcerned by climate change. And there has been a failure of the public to act on the risks perceived by the climate scientists.

So what is the solution to the climate communication problem? At this Conference and in this session, we are hearing a number of ideas re improving communication:

• Better messengers?
• Clearer message?
• More exciting presentations?
• Better educated populace?
• Squashing skepticism?

These ideas for improving communication are consistent with the linear model of communication, whereby science plus communication and translation of the science, should lead to action. The current buzzword for this is “actionable science.” The communication part of the linear model generally include simplified message, appeal to consensus, effective presentation, and translation for relevance. The focus of the linear model is on the message and messenger, as a disseminator of information.

In spite of substantial efforts in communication, many people remain unconvinced.

There is another model of communication, which is the circular model of communication. Unlike the linear model that focuses on the messenger, the circular model views the receiver as an equal partner in the communication and focuses on the process of engagement (which includes dialogue and feedback).

When a messenger actually makes the effort to understand why an individual is unconvinced, this inevitably leads to both deepening and broadening the discussion to address complexity and uncertainties. The end result can be raising the level of the public dialogue.

To engage effectively with the public on the issue of climate change, we need to recognize that the public salience of climate science is intimately connected with perceived risks and the costs of potential solutions, which are filtered through an individual’s world view and politics.

The goal of engagement is not just to inform, but to enable, motivate and educate the public regarding the technical, political, and social dimensions of climate change.

In the context of a circular process, experts and decision-makers seek input and learn from the public about preferences, needs, insights, and ideas relative to scientific topics, climate change impacts, vulnerabilities, solutions, and policy options.

There is a growing community of people that is demanding such engagement, not only on the policy issues but the scientific issues as well. The idea of the extended peer community has been around since the 1990’s, from the work of Funtowicz and Ravetz. When stakes are high and uncertainties are large, there is a public demand to participate and assess the quality of the data and research. There is a segment of the unconvinced public that consists of technically educated people who want to think for themselves. They are not prepared to cede judgment on this issue to the consensus authority.Further there is a growing number of scientists and other academics from an increasingly broad range of disciplines want to bring their expertise to climate research

The size of the extended peer community associated with climate change has grown substantially in the wake of climategate, which made many lose trust in the judgement of the IPCC experts.

New information technology and the open knowledge movement is enabling extended peer communities. These new technologies facilitate the rapid diffusion of information and sharing of expertise. This newfound power has challenged the politics of expertise. Climategate illustrated the importance of the blogosphere as an empowerment of the extended peer community.

My communication efforts have targeted the technically educated scientifically literate non-experts, many of whom are unconvinced by the IPCC’s arguments. The people that I have been engaging with include engineers, statisticians, physicists, chemists, medical doctors, lawyers, and economists.

Why am I targeting this group? In terms of absolute numbers, there are a small fraction of a percent of the population. However, this group includes many opinion leaders. Failure to pay attention to this group (particular engineers interested in data quality and statistical analysis) arguably led to Climategate Further, these experts from diverse fields have much to contribute to the research, communication and the public debate.

The forum for my engagement with this group is my blog Climate Etc. at judithcurry.com. My blog is a forum for engagement of technically educated people. My role is lead with topics for discussion, many of which are suggested by participants. Sometimes I make my personal opinion known and sometimes I do not. I most definitely do not try to tell people what to think. My blog is unmoderated, where the discussion is for the most part unconstrained. I’ve tried to establish a fair place for an open debate.

The end result has been thousands of interested bloggers, laypeople and scientists interacting, arguing, disagreeing, and learning. I often feature papers that are skeptical of aspects of the consensus science. In addition to responding the concern that skeptical papers are discriminated against by the mainstream community, I find that very interesting discussions can be provoked by considering a skeptical paper.

About a month ago, I received an email from a scientist who wanted to do a guest post on two papers that he recently had published on the topic of surface temperature data. I agreed to host his post, since his papers were relevant to the discussion we had been having on the analysis of the Berkeley surface temperature data. This particular scientist was a prominent member of the German skeptic group EIKE.

One of the first comments on this thread was from an IPCC lead author who thought that these papers were deeply flawed, and thought I was irresponsible and peddling disinformation by hosting this post.

This controversy was picked up by a number of different blogs, and there was a particularly good discussion on this at collide-a-scape. The argument on this topic was a classic clash between the linear and circular models of communication: scientists as gatekeepers of information to be disseminated to the public, versus scientists as facilitators of a free-wheeling dialogue.

A well known climate scientist and blogger wrote this statement on the collide-a-scape:

“Judith decided a while back that the judgment of the community on what was interesting and what was not, was not itself to be trusted.”

My judgment on what is interesting to the broader community has been formed by actually listening to them and trying to address issues of their concern. The community that I am interacting with on my blog is interested in these issues:

• Natural climate variability and nonlinear dynamics
• Climate model verification and validation
• Data quality
• Statistical analysis, uncertainty, logic of arguments
• Scientific method and responsible conduct of research
• IPCC
• Skeptical arguments

This is a different list of issues than the climate establishment has decided are interesting. 3 years ago, I wasn’t focusing my attention on any of these issues. Over the past 2 years, I have focused extensively on these issues on my blog, and increasingly in my published academic research.

This is the difference between linear and circular communication.

So where do I see all this going? I think that social media, particularly the blogosphere, has enormous unrealized potential to:

• facilitate understanding of complex issues
• provide transparency
• identify the best contributions
• increase the signal and filter out the noise
• drive public policy innovation
• reduce polarization

Climate scientists are increasingly experimenting with the climate blogosphere, in a variety of different ways. It is something that I have found to be enormously rewarding and educational on a personal level. I will leave the impact of my efforts to be judged by others.

In closing, I will state that I hope to see many more climate scientists developing their voices and communicating publicly in the blogosphere. To quote Chris Mooney: you have nothing to lose but your irrelevance.

“[T]he impact that emissions reduction efforts in the U.S. will have on global emissions totals–and by extension, global climate–is quickly diminishing.”

The just-released numbers for last year’s carbon dioxide emissions (not including land-use changes) show why forcing large cuts in carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions is not very high on the priority list of the U.S. powers-that-be (including voters).

In 2010, the total global CO2 emissions were the highest on record, ~9.1 PgC (33,400 million metric tons). The U.S. contribution was ~1.50PgC, about 16% of the global total—percentage-wise the lowest on record (since 1959) and falling rapidly.

Unilateral U.S. CO2 mitigation strategies, in other words, are doomed to increasing irrelevance–and even unintended consequences should carbon rationing at home result in industrial transfers to less regulated areas.

A picture’s worth a 1,000 words

Fig. 1 shows how the picture has evolved since the late 1950s. An increasing amount of the global carbon dioxide emissions are being produced from outside of the U.S. Since about the turn of the 21st century, this divergence has picked up pace as global emissions have steeply increased while U.S emissions have been rather flat.

Figure 1. Annual carbon dioxide emissions, 1959-2010 (data source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center)

Fig. 1 is pretty good at illustrating why, despite the clamor raised by some prominent clamorers, the U.S. people and government aren’t particularly motivated at trying overly hard to reduce carbon dioxide emissions to any large degree. When it comes to pressing issues, getting a lot of bang for the buck is what plays the best. And what the chart above shows is that no amount of twiddling with the type of fuel used to run our country (and the expense that will result from it) is going to produce any meaningful impact on the growth of global CO2 emissions.

When “global warming” first came en vogue, back in the late 1980s, the U.S. was annually contributing about 22% of the global CO2 emissions, by 2010, our contribution has dipped to 16% and continues to decline (Fig. 2). This means that the impact that emissions reduction efforts in the U.S. will have on global emissions totals (and by extension, global climate) is quickly diminishing.

Figure 2. Percentage contribution of U.S. carbon dioxide emissions to the annual global total, 1959-2010.

In fact, the only meaningful contribution from any large U.S. CO2 emissions reductions will come from exporting our solutions/technologies to those countries which are becoming the primary drivers of the upward CO2 emissions trends. I say this because, as can be seen in Fig. 1, global emissions have increased by an amount greater than the total annual U.S. emissions in just that last 6.5 years. So at best, completely eliminating all U.S. CO2 emissions now and forever would only set back global emissions by a bit more than half a decade.

In the bang vs. buck tally, this is little of the former for a lot of the latter.

The U.S. recession has certainly played a role in the dip in U.S. CO2 emissions during the past several years (Fig. 3), but the recent decline in the U.S. percentage of global emissions (Fig. 1)—after being steady through the 1980s and 1990s—started about a decade ago. This was several years prior to the U.S. economic slowdown, evidence that the declining contribution from the U.S. is not just a temporary condition that will reverse with a domestic economic recovery, but one that is being driven by the energy appetite of the rest of the world—primarily from the developing countries like China and India.

Expect this appetite to continue to expand. Again, when it comes to bangs and bucks for energy, fossil fuels produces the most for the least—but has the consequence of driving up global emissions totals. So, it seems highly improbable that the U.S. will ever again be a dominant driver in global CO2 emissions trends.

Figure 3. U.S. annual carbon dioxide emissions (data source: Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center).

Bottom Line

Ten to twenty years from now, long past the latest estimates of the point of no return for avoiding climate catastrophe (for those who buy into such pronouncments), an updated Fig. 1 will look little different than the current Fig. 1. This is not to say that interested parties should not pursue new technologies in energy production, or that someday the primary energy production for the world will take the form of something other than net CO2-releasing methods, but that “someday” is not upon us anytime soon.

In fact, a large gap in time stands between us and the wide dispersal of such technologies. Fig. 1 will retain its character into the foreseeable future, with or without, any actions in the U.S. aimed at reducing domestic emissions. Consequently, the drive to reduce emissions, especially forcefully, will most likely wait until we’ve dealt with a great many more immediate concerns. It is only in times of relative luxury that we can pursue actions whose results are far greater in the future (several generations hence) than they are in the present. Unfortunately, those times are not upon us now.

The Republican invitees were Richard Lindzen, Patrick Michaels, and Judith Curry.

The first two are stalwarts of the let’s-just-hold-on-a-minute view of catastrophic anthropogenic global warming. And, true to form, at the hearing each presented compelling evidence as to why anthropogenic greenhouse gas emissions might not rapidly push up global temperature—not now, nor in the future. The testimony of Lindzen and Michaels can be found here and here respectively. And while their arguments are met with considerable opposition from the global-warming-is-a-dire-problem types, the ideas espoused by Lindzen and Michaels are scientifically compelling.

The third Republican invitee, Georgia Institute of Technology’s Dr. Judith Curry, is a new addition to this group (her testimony can be accessed here). In fact, not too long ago, she was starring for the Democrats at Congressional hearings. She also endorsed Joe Romm’s book, Come Hell and High Water, upon its release in 2006.

But all this changed about a year ago, when Dr. Curry started delving into the contents of the Climategate emails (which just celebrated the one-year anniversary of their release). She did not like what she found and spoke up.

At the time, when expressing her initial concern about the behavior on display (and its implications) in the Climategate emails, hers was one voice among several that came from folks who were typically apart from the usual (critical) suspects.

However, as time went on, the other voices have grown dimmer, while Judith’s has grown louder—primarily because of her continued investigations and her conviction borne upon what she has found.

Her primary interest, as of late, concerns the recognition and representation of uncertainty in our scientific knowledge. She holds the opinion that the level of true uncertainty is suppressed in the IPCC documents, and that its full revelation is essential in presenting a fair description of the state of scientific knowledge.

Her frank discussion on this topic has made her rather unpopular among her past supporters (she was at one time deemed the “high priestess of global warming” but now labeled a “heretic”) and is what has landed her in the anchor seat of the Hearing last week.

Here is a snippet of how she describes her personal journey:

The overall evolution of my thinking on global warming is described in the Q&A at collide-a-scape (the relevant statements are appended at the end of this post.) My thinking and evolution on this issue since 11/19/09 deserves further clarification. When I first started reading the CRU emails, my reaction was a visceral one. While my colleagues seemed focused on protecting the reputations of the scientists involved and assuring people that the “science hadn’t changed,” I immediately realized that this could bring down the IPCC. I became concerned about the integrity of our entire field: both the actual integrity and its public perception. When I saw how the IPCC was responding and began investigating the broader allegations against the IPCC, I became critical of the IPCC and tried to make suggestions for improving the IPCC. As glaring errors were uncovered (especially the Himalayan glaciers) and the IPCC failed to respond, I started to question whether it was possible to salvage the IPCC and whether it should be salvaged. In the meantime, the establishment institutions in the U.S. and elsewhere were mostly silent on the topic.

In Autumn 2005, I had decided that the responsible thing to do in making public statements on the subject of global warming was to adopt the position of the IPCC. My decision was based on two reasons: 1) the subject was very complex and I had personally investigated a relatively small subset of the topic; 2) I bought into the meme of “don’t trust what one scientists says, trust what thousands of IPCC scientists say.” A big part of my visceral reaction to events unfolding after 11/19 was concern that I had been duped into supporting the IPCC, and substituting their judgment for my own in my public statements on the subject…

If, how, and why I had been duped by the IPCC became an issue of overwhelming personal and professional concern. I decided that there were two things that I could do: 1) speak out publicly and try to restore integrity to climate science by increasing transparency and engaging with skeptics; and 2) dig deeply into the broader aspects of the science and the IPCC’s arguments and try to assess the uncertainty. The Royal Society Workshop on Handling Uncertainty in Science last March motivated me to take on #2 in a serious way. I spent all summer working on a paper entitled “Climate Science and the Uncertainty Monster,” which was submitted to a journal in August. I have no idea what the eventual fate of this paper will be, but it has seeded the uncertainty series on Climate Etc. and its fate seems almost irrelevant at this point.

(The full article from which this quote was excerpted is here)

For those interested in following her continued investigations into uncertainty and other topics of climate change, I recommend stopping in from time to time on her excellent blog, Climate Etc.—which, currently, hosts discussions of climate issues that includes the widest range of participants and viewpoints.

A new guard is forming to try to protect the integrity of science, and Judith Curry is one the front line. One can only hope that others will follow.

In his post-election press conference last Wednesday, November 3, 2010, the president gave some clues about what his future aspirations are for a climate/energy policy. It was most obvious in his response to a question put to him by the Wall Street Journal’s Laura Meckler, and indicates that his Dream Green Team playbook is still alive and well.

Question:

Thank you, Mr. President. You said earlier that it was clear that Congress was rejecting the idea of a cap-and-trade program, and that you wouldn’t be able to move forward with that. Looking ahead, do you feel the same way about EPA regulating carbon emissions? Would you be open to them doing essentially the same thing through an administrative action, or is that off the table, as well?

Response:

With respect to the EPA, I think the smartest thing for us to do is to see if we can get Democrats and Republicans in a room who are serious about energy independence and are serious about keeping our air clean and our water clean and dealing with the issue of greenhouse gases—and seeing are there ways that we can make progress in the short term and invest in technologies in the long term that start giving us the tools to reduce greenhouse gases and solve this problem.

The EPA is under a court order that says greenhouse gases are a pollutant that fall under their jurisdiction. And I think one of the things that’s very important for me is not to have us ignore the science, but rather to find ways that we can solve these problems that don’t hurt the economy, that encourage the development of clean energy in this country, that, in fact, may give us opportunities to create entire new industries and create jobs that—and that put us in a competitive posture around the world.

So I think it’s too early to say whether or not we can make some progress on that front. I think we can. Cap and trade was just one way of skinning the cat; it was not the only way. It was a means, not an end. And I’m going to be looking for other means to address this problem.

And I think EPA wants help from the legislature on this. I don’t think that the desire is to somehow be protective of their powers here. I think what they want to do is make sure that the issue is being dealt with.

Clearly Obama seems hopeful that Congress will step in and do the dirty work, but the threat of using the EPA to carrying the entire load is only thinly veiled.

However, going the EPA route is not going to be any easier than going the Congressional route.

A just-issued report by the Deutsche Bank Climate Change Advisors (DBCCA) summarizes the many climate-related lawsuits in the U.S. court system and highlights a large uptick in the number of lawsuits brought against the EPA in 2010.

The DBCCA provides these key points in summary of their analysis:

• The number of climate change lawsuit filings doubled between 2006 and 2007. They then reached a plateau for three years, but already in 2010 are on a path to triple over 2009 levels.

• The largest increase in litigation has been in the area of challenges to federal action, specifically industry challenges to proposed EPA efforts to regulate greenhouse gas emissions.

• From 2001 to date, 24% of total climate change-related cases were filed by environmental groups aiming to prevent or restrict the permitting of coal-fired power plants.

• Approximately 37 states have joined, or have stated their intention to join, either side of the EPA litigation challenge.

Figure 1, taken from the DBCCA report, shows the number of climate change lawsuits brought each year, divided into categories. The big jump in 2010 is obvious. While the filings have been dominated by activists groups in prior years, the tables were turned this year as industry groups have responded with their own lawsuits—mostly against the EPA and its subsequent rulemaking.

Figure 1. Climate litigation with time (through October 8, 2010) (taken from the DBCCA report).

And this is probably just the beginning of lawsuits against the EPA. As the DBCCA report puts it:

Every further move taken by the EPA is likely to be challenged in court by industry.

Therefore, is little wonder why Obama would like Congress to take up the issue.

Hanging energy legislation around the neck of climate change should be a losing proposition, as I have argued many times previously, and thus far it has been. And as others have argued here at MasterResource, the other ‘benefits’ of a ‘clean’ energy policy also seem vaporous.

So while Obama seems resigned that the cap-and-trade horse is dead (although there is still a possibility that the lame-duckers may take a few additional swipes at it), he obviously is eager to start another round-up. Whether what he manages to harness proves to be a stakes winner or a claimer remains to be seen, but it is important to remember that we all have a horse in the race, and thus the actions of the race organizers bear close watching.

The August 11 edition of Climatewire (subscription required) featured interviews with Exelon Corp. VP Betsy Moler and Resources for the Future President Phil Sharp, who lament that Republican lawmakers, the “inventors” of “market-based” environmental policy, turned against their own “invention.” Moler and Sharp are trying to spin GOP opposition to cap-and-trade as self-contradictory, hence as unstable, hence as reversible. As Climatewire reports, Moler is not ready to “throw in the towel” and Sharp entertains the hope that a “new kind of coalition” will emerge in the next Congress.

Now, let’s look at this notion, peddled by Moler and Sharp, that Republicans flip-flopped and trashed their own legacy by nixing cap-and-trade.

Climatewire offers the following account:

In an interview, Moler said that her deep disappointment was the rejection by Republican leaders in Congress of a market-based strategy for raising the price of carbon emissions, to speed transitions by power plants, industry and consumers to cleaner energy.

The Democrats called it “cap and trade.” Republicans labeled it “cap and tax,” and the change in one word proved lethal.

“The thing that just amazes me, confounds me, surprises me is how successfully the Republican leadership and a lot of the people who would be potentially negatively impacted have been in vilifying what have historically been market-based solutions,” Moler said.

Inventors Turn on Invention

“Cap and trade is really a Republican instrument that grew out of a lot of the Republican thought leaders as a market-sensitive, market-friendly, anti-command-and-control mechanism” to reduce sulfur- and nitrogen-based air pollution in the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments. “Now, some of the same people who invented it have turned on it as an energy tax,” she said. “It’s a huge missed opportunity. I don’t know where you go next.”

Moler’s regret is seconded by Philip Sharp, president of Resources for the Future, who, as a Democratic House member from Indiana, stood with Moler in the 1990s in the energy deregulation campaign. Sharp was a pivotal factor in Congress’ adoption of the 1990 Clean Air Act amendments and the 1992 Energy Policy Act, which opened the way for FERC’s electricity market orders four years later.

“I’m not here to say cap and trade is the only way to do this,” Sharp said in an interview. “It worked magnificently with SO2 and a couple of other instances.” Scaling it up massively to deal with economywide carbon emissions is another question. “We don’t know we can manage it as effectively,” he said.

“But what is really unfortunate in the public debate is that the current Republican leadership has overthrown one of the great Republican successes in this country [under President George H.W. Bush], to capitalize on the flexibility of the marketplace” in achieving regulatory change, Sharp said.

“I don’t think people appreciate the extraordinary challenge that represented and the difficulty of getting it done” in the 1990s, he said. Now, with the demise of that approach, Congress has invited U.S. EPA to step in on the climate front “and regulate the living [daylights] out of everything and see how well a modern economy works doing that.”

Moler and Sharp miss several key points.

Price Volatility

The cap-and-trade programs enacted under President George H.W. Bush are not ”magnificent” successes, if predictable compliance costs, which businesses need for long-term planning, are a criterion of success. As Yale University economist William Nordhaus points out in Life After Kyoto: Alternative Approaches to Global Warming Policies (Dec. 2005), sulfur dioxide (SO2) allowance prices have been highly volatile: “SO2 trading prices have varied from a low of $70 per ton in 1996 to $1500 per ton in late 2005. SO2 allowances have a monthly volatility of 10 percent and an annual volatility of 43 percent over the last decade.” For perspective, Nordhaus notes that, during 1994-2005, SO2 permit prices were more volatile than either crude oil prices or stock-market prices.

Source: Nordhaus, Life After Kyoto (Dec. 2005)

In Economic Issues in Designing a Global Agreement on Global Warming (Mar. 2009), drawing on more recent experience, Nordhaus reiterates that “quantitative limits [i.e. cap-and-trade schemes] have proven to produce severe volatility in the market price of carbon under an emissions-targeting approach. The volatility arises because of the inelasticity of both supply and demand for permits.” He continues:

I have reviewed the history of the market prices of tradable permits for both the SO2 trading system in the U.S. and for the CO2 system in the EU. These prices have shown an extremely high level of volatility. I found that the prices of U.S. SO2 emission allowances have been approximately as volatile as oil prices . . . .The volatility of CO2 allowances in the EU ETS is similarly large: in the period from October 2008 to February 2009 alone, ETS carbon prices have varied between €9 and €24 per ton of CO2 . . . .

Source: Nordhaus, Economic Issues (Mar. 2009)

Note also that, according to Nordhaus, “the volatility of allowances is not due to policy errors. It is inherent in this kind of instrument. The high level of volatility is economically costly and provides inconsistent signals to private-sector decision makers.”

Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) data also reveal high price volatility under cap-and-trade. SO2 permit prices fell from about $500 per ton in January 2008 to about $100 per ton in July. NOx allowance prices jumped from about $800 per ton in June 2008 to about $1,400 per ton in August, then declined to less than $100 per ton in late 2009.

In short, if predictable costs are a criterion of success, then it is hype to describe the SO2 and NOx trading programs as “magnificent.”

CO2 Is Different

However successful the SO2 trading program may have been, it is a dubious model for climate policy, because SO2 and CO2 are different. Utilities participating in the SO2 emissions trading program could meet all or part of their obligations by purchasing low-sulfur coal and/or installing scrubbers, a commercially-proven emission control technology. In contrast, as Kenneth Green, Steven Hayward, and Kevin Hassett of the American Enterprise Institute point out, there is no low-carbon coal, and no commercial technology to “scrub” carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions out of power plant exhaust streams. Thus, unlike an SO2 trading program, a carbon cap-and-trade program has a high potential to become a job-killing energy-rationing scheme.

The greater economic risk of carbon cap-and-trade schemes derives from another key difference as well. Unlike sulfur, which is an impurity in coal and oil, carbon is intrinsic to the chemistry of fossil fuels. Consequently, whereas capping SO2 does not logically entail an unlimited agenda aiming at the abolition of fossil fuels, capping CO2 does imply total suppression as an ultimate objective. The abolitionist impulse is audible in the apocalyptic rhetoric of the global warming movement, in petitions demanding that EPA establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for CO2 at 350 parts per million (not even a global depression lasting several decades would be sufficient to attain such standards), and in Al Gore’s campaign to “repower America“ with “zero-carbon energy” within “ten years.” Triggers for pull-out-the-stops, sky-is-the-limit regulation also lurk in the Waxman-Markey and Kerry-Lieberman bills’ escalator clauses, which all but ensure that the explicit emission reduction target (83% below 2005 levels by 2050) would be superseded by more aggressive requirements.

Climate Change Is Not Air Pollution

The health effects of SO2 and other air quality contaminants depend on short-term — annual, monthly, or even daily — emission levels. Thus, in theory, setting quantitative targets and timetables (caps) can produce significant, measurable public health benefits, making it reasonable to accept price volatility as an unavoidable risk. The same does not hold for climate “forcing” agents such CO2. The health effects of greenhouse gas emissions (if any) depend on the total stock of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, not annual emissions.  Thus, observes Willaim Pizer of Resources for the Future, “It cannot matter whether a ton of CO2 is emitted this year, next year or ten years in the future if all we care about is the total amount in the atmosphere.”

Indeed, not only is there no plausible public health rationale for capping annual greenhouse gas emissions, the costs would likely far exceed any public health benefits. As Chip Knappenberger shows, based on IPCC climate sensitivity assumptions, reducing U.S. greenhouse gas emissions 83% below 2005 levels — the Waxman-Markey bill target — would have a negligible impact on global climate change, averting a mere 0.05°C of global warming by 2050. Even if one considers global warming to be a serious problem, the benefits of capping emissions are too paltry to justify the risks, which in addition to volatile compliance costs include rampant opportunities for corruption, creative accounting, and rent-seeking.

Unsurprisingly, Pizer, Nordhaus, Green, Hayward, and Hasset all argue that carbon taxes (price-based constraints) are more efficient than cap-and-trade (quantity-based constraints) as a method for limiting the total stock of emissions over time. Carbon taxes are administratively simpler, the costs are more transparent to the public, there is less opportunity for corruption and rent-seeking, and, most importantly, the costs are fixed and therefore entirely predictable. Of course, nobody would accuse Republicans of being inconsistent for opposing energy taxes. A greenhouse cap-and-trade program, however, is just a sneaky, implicit, less efficient form of taxing carbon-based energy. 

Means Are Not Ends

Fourth, just because “market-based” approaches are more efficient, in principle, than command-and-control regulation does obligate Republicans to support Waxman-Markey or Kerry-Lieberman. Moler and Sharp confuse ends and means. Only if Republicans want government to raise energy prices, make coal uneconomical as an electricity fuel, or, more broadly, restrict Americans’ access to carbon-based energy would they be inconsistent to oppose a “market-based” strategy to accomplish those objectives. But those are the environmental movement’s goals, not the GOP’s.  

Moler and Sharp overlook the obvious — most Republicans oppose both market-based and command-and-control climate change mitigation strategies. For example, all 41 Senate Republicans voted for the Murkowski resolution to block EPA regulation of greenhouse gases via the Clean Air Act. Of the 154 co-sponsors of Rep. Marsha Blackburn’s legislation (H.R. 391) to preclude greenhouse gas regulation via the Clean Air Act, only one (Dan Boren of Oklahoma) is a Democrat. More tellingly, of the 125 House Members who have signed the discharge petition to allow a floor vote on the Blackburn bill, not one is a Democrat.

So it’s silly to say that Republicans “invited U.S. EPA to step in on the climate front ‘and regulate the living [daylights] out of everything. . .’” President Obama threatened to veto both the Murkowski resolution and the much weaker Rockefeller bill, which would merely postpone EPA regulation of stationary sources of greenhouse gases for two years. It’s the Democratic leadership, not the GOP, that has “invited” EPA to make climate policy through the regulatory back door.

The Dumb Party Ain’t that Dumb

Finally, Republicans betray themselves (ask former President George “Read My Lips; No New Taxes” Bush) when they advocate raising taxes. Because carbon is intrinsic to the chemistry of fossil fuels, a carbon cap-and-trade scheme is a virtual broad-based energy tax. The same cannot be said of the SO2 program, which was merely a virtual pollution tax. 

Moler and Sharp would like GOP lawmakers to believe they can win elections by becoming the Party of Energy Taxes. Fortunately, most Republicans don’t need much coaching to realize that is complete bunk.

And yet, as Jim Manzi’s recent exchange with uber-alarmist Joe Romm makes perfectly clear, even the latest IPCC report punctures holes in the alarmist claims. Perhaps without realizing it, Romm implicitly admits that the IPCC AR4 report never supported the alarmist view.

Manzi Uses the IPCC to Take Down Al Gore

In his relatively new position as “in-house critic” at The New Republic, Manzi criticized a characteristically alarmist piece that Al Gore had published in the same venue. Manzi wanted to show that Gore was misleading the public on what the “scientific consensus” actually had to say about the risks of climate change.

First Manzi quoted Gore who had written:

Over the last 22 years, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has produced four massive studies warning the world of the looming catastrophe that is being caused by the massive dumping of global-warming pollution into the atmosphere.

To which Manzi responds:

According to the IPCC’s currently-governing Fourth Assessment Report, under a reasonable set of assumptions for global economic and population growth (Scenario A1B), the world should expect to warm by about 3°C over roughly the next century (Table SPM.3). Even in the most extreme IPCC marker scenario (A1F1), the best estimate is that we should expect warming of about 4°C over roughly the next century. How bad would that be? Also according to the IPCC (page 17), a global increase in temperature of 4°C should cause the world to have about 1 to 5 percent lower economic output than it would otherwise have. So if we do not take measures to ameliorate global warming, the world should expect sometime in the 22nd century to be about 3 percent poorer than it otherwise would be (though still much richer per capita than today).

Prior to consideration of the more detailed economic issues—e.g., costs versus benefits of attempts to forestall the problem; the danger of worse-than-expected outcomes, etc.—pause to recognize that according to the IPCC the expected economic costs of global warming under the plausible scenarios for future economic growth are likely to be about 3 percent of GDP more than 100 years from now. This is pretty far from the rhetoric of global destruction and Manhattan as an underwater theme park. [Emphasis in Manzi's original.]

Manzi is entirely correct: If you wade hip-deep into the actual chapters of the IPCC AR4 report, you will find that yes, most practicing scientists in the relevant fields believe that human activities are leading to climate change, and in particular global warming.

However, you will not find that these trends are pushing humanity towards Armageddon. Contrary to Al Gore’s claim, the IPCC’s latest report does not support the alarmist case.

Joe Romm Punts the IPCC AR4

Of course, Al Gore is not a professional climate scientist. We shouldn’t be looking to him as the standard-bearer of the alarmist position. Instead, let’s see what Joe Romm had to say about Manzi’s critique.

First, Romm quotes extensively from John Bruno, who is “a marine ecologist, Associate Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.” In the interest of brevity, I won’t address each of his responses to Manzi, point by point. Yet if you follow the link to Romm’s post, you will see that Bruno doesn’t dispute Manzi’s numbers per se; he simply says that the IPCC’s official figures leave out many important considerations. (To be clear, Bruno quotes the IPCC report itself on what things it is leaving out of its calculations. So it’s true that the IPCC itself admits its assessments of the dangers of climate change may be understating the risks.)

Then Romm comes back to offer his own, further criticisms of Manzi’s treatment of Gore:

Let me amplify some of Bruno’s points about Manzi’s errors on the science and economics.

If Manzi knows the scientific literature well, he keeps it to himself . The science since the IPCC has evolved considerably, as I review here:  “An illustrated guide to the latest climate science.”  In a AAAS presentation this year, William R. Freudenburg of UC Santa Barbara discussed his research on “the Asymmetry of Scientific Challenge”: “New scientific findings are found to be more than twenty times as likely to indicate that global climate disruption is “worse than previously expected,” rather than “not as bad as previously expected.” It simply isn’t true that 4°C is the worst-case scenario.  Here are two of the best recent analysis of business as usual warming…

Obviously, the sea level rise estimates have jumped in most every recent study (see “Scientists withdraw low-ball estimate of sea level rise and “Sea levels may rise 3 times faster than IPCC estimated, could hit 6 feet by 2100”

And if you really want the plausibly worst-case, go here:  UK Met Office: Catastrophic climate change, 13-18°F over most of U.S. and 27°F in the Arctic, could happen in 50 years, but “we do have time to stop it if we cut greenhouse gas emissions soon.”

And that is why scientists led by a former co-chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change issued a major report last year concluding the “net present value of climate change impacts” of $1240 TRILLION on current emissions path, making mitigation to under 450 ppm a must…

…The areas where the IPCC underestimated adaptation costs include water resources, health, infrastructure, sea level rise, and ecoystems.  Anyway, if you’re interested in the important stuff — the enormous benefit of stabilizing at 450 ppm — just jump to Chapter 8, page 103, here.

For a cost-benefit analysis of just focusing on US legislation, New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity demonstrated last year that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act (H.R. 2454) is “cost-benefit justified under most reasonable assumptions about the likely social cost of carbon.’” In “The Other Side of the Coin: The Economic Benefits of Climate Legislation,” the Institute for Policy Integrity finds that the “benefits of H.R. 2454 could likely exceed the costs by as much as nine-to-one” (see “Waxman-Markey clean air, clean water, clean energy jobs bill creates $1.5 trillion in benefits“).

Now that is certainly an intimidating list of new papers and findings, which would make the average person think that Jim Manzi was out of his league! It looks like disaster really is imminent, after all.

But hold on …. Manzi was NOT arguing, “Governments around the world should do nothing, because the IPCC says there is no threat.” Rather, Manzi was merely pointing out that Al Gore was wrong to claim that the IPCC report justified the alarmist calls for drastic and immediate action.

Ironically, Bruno and Romm implicitly agree with Manzi. Their position is that if you look at all the factors that the IPCC omitted from its analysis, and if you look at the literature that has come out since the AR4 was released, then you will see that the alarmists are correct.

Yet this defeats the whole (ostensible) purpose of having an IPCC process in the first place. The public has been told that the IPCC takes all the divergent views of expert researchers in various fields, and boils them down into a “consensus” that the vast majority of true scientists can support. This will help policymakers make informed decisions, because obviously a politician can’t decide whether Expert A or Expert B is a credible source on the issue.

When all is said and done, the IPCC AR4 report gave the very modest projections that Manzi reported, concerning the benefits and costs from taking government action to arrest climate change. Manzi certainly wasn’t claiming these projections were infallible, he was merely correcting Al Gore’s misleading statement.

Conclusion

The climate alarmists are trying to have it both ways. On the one hand, they use the IPCC as a weapon to bash “deniers” over the head with, claiming that “the consensus” is clear. But then when someone like Jim Manzi comes along and actually reports what the IPCC has to say, the alarmists point out all the shortcomings of the IPCC analysis.

It is certainly true that there are reputable climate scientists and economists who think that the central projections of the IPCC AR4 report are woefully optimistic. But on the other hand, there are reputable climate scientists and economists who believe its conclusions are woefully pessimistic, and that humanity will be just fine even if governments do nothing to impede emissions.

To repeat, the whole point of having an IPCC was to consolidate these divergent views into a “consensus” that most experts could get behind, and that policymakers could take as a firm foundation for making their legislative decisions. As Manzi has tirelessly documented, the latest IPCC report does not support the case for climate alarmism.

S.J.Res.26 would overturn the EPA’s endangerment finding, a December 2009 rulemaking in which the agency concluded that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare. The endangerment finding is both trigger and precedent for sweeping policy changes Congress never approved. America could end up with a bundle of greenhouse gas regulations more costly and intrusive than any climate bill or treaty the Senate has declined to pass or ratify, yet without the people’s representatives ever voting on it.

At a minimum, as former Virginia Gov. George Allen and I explain elsewhere, unless stopped, the EPA will be in a position to determine the stringency of fuel economy standards for the auto industry, set climate policy for the nation, and even amend the Clean Air Act — powers never delegated to the agency by Congress.

S.J.Res.26 puts a simple question squarely before the Senate: Who shall make climate policy — lawmakers who must answer to the people at the ballot box or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges appointed for life?

Precisely because S.J.Res.26 would restore constitutional discipline to climate policymaking, regulatory zealots are mounting smear campaigns against it. Climate Progress calls it “polluter crafted” (impossible, because the language and form of the resolution are fixed by the Congressional Review Act). MoveOn.Org claims the resolution will condemn many Americans to “smoke the equivalent of a pack a day just from breathing the air” (utter nonsense – just one cigarette delivers 12-27 times the daily dose of fine particulate matter that non-smokers get in cities with the most polluted air). Environmental Defense Action Fund says the resolution will give corporate polluters a “bailout” (also impossible, because S.J.Res.26 is not a tax or spending bill). 

Train Weighs In, Ignores Obvious, Knocks Down Straw Man 

A more sophisticated attack comes from Russell Train, who served as EPA Administrator under the Nixon and Ford Administrations (1973-1977). In a May 24 letter to Senate leaders, Train warns that S.J.Res.26 would “rollback Clean Air Act protections.”

Not so! Yes, the resolution would “prevent the EPA from regulating greenhouse gas emissions.” But from its inception in 1970 through the present day, EPA has not regulated greenhouse gas emissions, and its recently finalized motor vehicle emission standards do not take effect until 2011. Train confuses “rollback” with containment. The only thing S.J.Res.26 would roll back is EPA’s regulatory overreach.

Train also claims that, “If passed, this resolution would fundamentally undermine the Clean Air Act, overturning science in favor of political considerations.” Not so. Although some may oppose EPA’s endangerment finding on scientific grounds, S.J.Res.26 neither takes nor implies a position on climate science. The resolution would overturn the endangerment finding’s “legal force and effect,” not its reasoning or conclusions. The resolution is a referendum not on climate science but on the constitutional propriety of EPA making climate policy without new and specific statutory guidance from Congress.

Train, however, would have us believe that Congress already signed off on EPA’s greenhouse gas regulations. When? Why, back in 1970 – decades before global warming became a political issue – when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act. He explains:

Precisely because existing knowledge was so limited at the time, Congress broadly defined the term “air pollutant” and relied on the experts at EPA to evaluate individual pollutants. Congress also clearly established that the sole criterion triggering EPA action was to be a scientific one: whether a pollutant “may reasonably be anticipated to endanger” human health or welfare.

To illustrate the point, Train recounts how he, as Administrator, took action in 1973 to control lead pollution from gasoline combustion, even though the Clean Air Act did not list lead as a pollutant and Congress did not ban leaded gasoline until 1990. EPA used science to determine the dangerousness of lead pollution and then issued regulations. EPA is following the same process today with regard to greenhouse gases. Hence, Train concludes, the Act is working “as Congress intended.”  

But all this proves is that EPA has jumped through the requisite procedural hoops, which nobody disputes. That in no way demonstrates that Congress meant to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. Train ignores the obvious. Congress did not design the Clean Air Act to be a framework for climate policy, has never voted for the Act to be used as such a framework, and has never approved the regulatory cascade that EPA’s endangerment finding, if allowed to stand, will ineluctably trigger.

The imposition of costly Clean Air Act permitting requiements on small business (about which, more below) is only the best known part of the aforementioned cascade. In addition, EPA will likely have to establish national ambient air quality standards (NAAQS) for greenhouse gases set below current atmospheric levels. After all, EPA attributes endangerment to the “elevated concentration” of greenhouse gases, so the agency has already satisfied the substantive criteria for initiating a NAAQS rulemaking laid out in Section 108 of the Clean Air Act.

Unsurprisingly, environmental organizations are petitioning the agency to establish a NAAQS for carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million (roughly 40 ppm below current concentrations), and NAAQS for other greenhouse gases at pre-industrial levels. Train says not a word about this, yet when he was Administrator, he tried and failed to avoid establishing NAAQS for lead pollution. The Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that EPA had a mandatory duty to establish NAAQS for lead, because it had previously determined that lead endangers public health and welfare (NRDC v. Train, 545 F.2d 320, 1976).

Although NAAQS regulation of lead was both technologically and economically feasible, not even a global depression lasting several decades would suffice to lower atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations below current levels. As Train surely knows, EPA may not take costs into account when determining NAAQS. The endangerment finding thus sets the stage for eco-litigation groups to transform the Clean Air Act into an economic suicide pact. Yet by Train’s logic, Congress signed off on that too, simply because EPA has made an endangerment finding.

Train knocks down a straw man. No one denies that the Clean Air Act authorizes EPA to regulate pollutants not specifically listed in the text. No regulatory law can work if the administering agency is forbidden to use evolving knowledge to fill gaps in statutorily created regulatory schemes. However, there is a world of practical and legal difference between EPA filling gaps due to the inevitable limitations of “existing knowledge” and EPA initiating new policies solely on its own authority. Train’s example actually illustrates this key distinction.

The Clean Air Act directs EPA to identify and regulate pollutants that damage air quality. Lead is an air quality contaminant, so it fits perfectly within the statutory framework. However, search the Clean Air Act from top to bottom, and you will not find any Title, section, or subsection on global climate change, nor will you find the terms “greenhouse gas” and “greenhouse effect.” Just because EPA has authority to regulate lead as an air quality contaminant, it does not follow that EPA has authority to regulate carbon dioxide as a greenhouse gas.

Bureaucratic Supremacy

Train takes an uncontroversial thesis – that Congress wanted EPA to apply statutory authorities in light of evolving knowledge – and parleys it into a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy. As Train reads the Act, EPA has authority to regulate as it sees fit, and may do so in perpetuity regardless of the lack of any specific congressional mandate. In Train’s view, moreover, Congress must accept whatever EPA decides, otherwise Congress is “rolling back” and “undermining” the Act.

It’s not hard to understand why an EPA Administrator (past or present) might profess this doctrine. “It’s good to be the King,” as Mel Brooks famously observed. Congress, however, cannot embrace a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy without running afoul of the U.S. Constitution.

By putting lead, a gasoline additive, in the same regulatory boat with carbon dioxide, the inescapable byproduct of fossil energy use, Train obscures the singular importance of the power EPA is poised to exercise. The power to regulate carbon dioxide is nothing less than the power to determine climate change policy and restructure America’s energy supply system. It is also potentially the power to destroy trillions of dollars in cumulative GDP. Policy decisions of such economic and political magnitude are beyond the pay grade of any administrative agency to make.

Train argues as if EPA were an apolitical font of scientific objectivity. Yet, how can that be when EPA is both the agency that makes endangerment findings and the agency that writes and enforces regulations based on those findings? Does EPA have no incentives to expand the scale and scope of its power? A conflict of interest is built into EPA’s modus operandi.

Up to now, this ethically flawed situation has been tolerable because Congress clearly specified the types of substances over which EPA has regulatory authority – those that degrade air quality, those that pose acute risks of toxicity, and those that deplete the ozone layer. But when Congress enacted and amended the Clean Air Act, it never specified greenhouse gases as a class of substances to be regulated. As a feat of bureaucratic self-dealing, the endangerment finding is off the charts. 

Mass. v. EPA: Is the Court Infallible?

Train also cites the Supreme Court’s 2007 ruling, Massachusetts v. EPA (549 U.S. 497, 2007), as proof that Congress intended to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act. The Court, he notes, held that greenhouse gases “fit well within” the Clean Air Act’s definition of an “air pollutant.”

Members of Congress, however, have a duty to exercise their own judgment to determine what the law means. They cannot automatically defer to the Court’s interpretation without Congress ceasing to be an independent and co-equal branch. A doctrine of judicial infallibility is as alien to our Constitution as is a doctrine of bureaucratic supremacy.  

To reach the conclusion that greenhouse gases are “air pollutants” for regulatory purposes, the Court’s 5-4 majority had to bowdlerize Section 302(g) of the Act. Specifically, the majority had to ignore a key term of the provision’s first sentence and ignore the entire second sentence.

The first sentence of 302(g) defines an air pollutant as an “air pollution agent” emitted into, or otherwise entering, the ambient air. A common sense reading suggests that “air pollution agent” is a qualifier – a criterion for distinguishing pollutants from non-pollutants. To be an air pollutant, a substance must not only be “emitted” or “enter,” it must also be an “air pollution agent.” In other words, it must be a substance that causes or contributes to air pollution — something that fouls or dirties the air. 

It is far from evident that carbon dioxide is an “air pollution agent.” A clear, odorless gas that is  non-toxic to humans at many times ambient concentrations, carbon dioxide is an essential plant nutrient, and elevated concentrations boost most plants’ biomass productivity, water use efficiency, and resistance to environmental stresses such as ozone pollution. Carbon dioxide is certainly unlike any other substance EPA has previously regulated as an “air pollutant.”

Bush EPA Administrator Stephen Johnson was well within his Chevron deference rights to conclude that carbon dioxide is not an air pollution “agent,” hence not an “air pollutant” within the meaning of Section 302(g). The Court majority, however, cast aside Chevron deference, read the sentence to mean that anything emitted per se is an “air pollutant,” and concluded that greenhouse gases fit the bill. 

The second sentence of 302(g) stipulates that “precursors” of previously designated air pollutants are also air pollutants. This sentence would be superfluous if anything emitted is automatically an air pollutant, because precursors can form air pollutants only after being emitted. Courts are not supposed to assume that lawmakers pad statutes with superfluous verbiage, yet the majority made no effort to establish that the second sentence of 302(g) is irrelevant to the definition of “air pollutant.” 

The majority’s highly selective reading of Section 302(g) was in fact the lynchpin of their ruling, and it is sobering to reflect that the fate of the economy may hinge on such a dubious construction.  Treating “air pollution agent” as a superfluous term or as a synonym for “air pollutant” makes 302(g) hopelessly circular — as if the provision said, “The term ‘air pollutant’ means any ‘air pollutant’ emitted into or otherwise entering the ambient air.” This is not what Congress wrote, and is not likely what Congress meant, because circular definitions define nothing.

The majority’s selective reading also turns 302(g) into a formalism whereby a thing may be an “air pollutant” even if it does not degrade air quality. As Justice Scalia quipped in dissent, given the majority’s reading, “It follows that everything airborne, from Frisbees to flatulence, qualifies as an ‘air pollutant.’” Indeed, if anything emitted into or entering the ambient air is an “air pollutant,” then even absolutely clean, pollution-free air is an “air pollutant” the moment it moves or circulates.

From Misread Statutes Come Absurd Regulatory Results

Regrettably, the Court’s bowdlerization of 302(g) not only leads to absurd conclusions, it also set the stage for absurd regulatory results. Here Train ignores abundant new evidence, piling up in the aftermath of Mass. v. EPA, that Congress never meant to regulate greenhouse gases through the Clean Air Act.

Under the Act, each firm must obtain a Prevention of Significant Deterioration (PSD) pre-construction permit in order to build or modify a “major stationary source” and a Title V permit in order to operate such a facility. A stationary source is “major” under the PSD program if it has a potential to emit 250 tons per year of a “regulated air pollutant,” and “major” under Title V if it has a potential to emit 100 tons per year. These definitions make sense when applied to bona fide air pollutants, such as particulate matter and smog-forming chemicals, which are emitted in the threshold amounts only by large industrial facilities.

In contrast, an immense number and variety of previously unregulated entities — office buildings, big box stores, apartment complexes, small manufacturers, commercial restaurants, heated agricultural facilities, hospitals, churches, and schools — emit 100-250 tons per year of carbon dioxide. All become vulnerable to new regulation, penalties, and litigation under the PSD and Title V provisions once EPA’s greenhouse gas motor vehicle emission standards take effect and carbon dioxide becomes a “regulated air pollutant.”

Applying the Clean Air Act to carbon dioxide leads straight to a red ink nightmare, as EPA’s Tailoring Rule acknowledges. Specifically, the EPA and its state counterparts would have to process an estimated 41,000 PSD permits annually (instead of 280) and 6.1 million Title V operating permits annually (instead of 14,700). Such workloads vastly exceed agencies’ administrative resources. Huge, ever-growing backlogs would bog down environmental enforcement, block new construction, and thrust millions of firms into legal limbo. One reason these results are “absurd,” the Tailoring Rule explains, is that they conflict with and undermine congressional intent.

When a court decision leads to “absurd results,” there are only two possibilities. One is that the court brought to light a flaw previously hidden in the statute. The other is that the court misread the statute.

To maintain the correctness of the Court’s decision in Mass. v. EPA, one must suppose that when Congress enacted the Clean Air Act in 1970, it somehow inserted the statutory equivalent of malicious code into the text, the bug lay dormant for 40 years, and then suddenly the malware became active, causing programs that had worked reasonably well since their inception to go haywire, work at cross purposes with themselves and each other, undermine congressional intent, and jeopardize America’s economic future. And if the EPA Administrator, former or present, really believes that, then I have a bridge I’d like to sell him or her.

Conclusion: Uphold the Separation of Powers!

Train congratulates Administrator Jackson for taking a “measured approach” and demonstrating her “sensitivity to economic concerns” by exempting all but the largest carbon dioxide emitters from PSD and Title V permitting requirements for six years. But the Clean Air Act nowhere gives the Administrator the authority to suspend or revise the PSD and Title V applicability thresholds. The so-called Tailoring Rule is actually an amending rule.

To pound the square peg of climate policy into the round hole of the Clean Air Act, EPA has to play lawmaker and effectively rewrite statutory provisions. This breach of the separation of powers only compounds the constitutional crisis inherent in EPA’s hijacking of fuel economy regulation and climate policymaking.

Momentous decisions affecting potentially millions of firms, trillions of dollars in GDP, and U.S. energy security should be based on something more solid than a selective reading of the Clean Air Act’s definition of “air pollutant.” That is an absurd way to make public policy. It is not how the Framers intended for the Constitution to work.

The importance of the vote on S.J.Res.26 is difficult to exaggerate. Nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional system of separated powers and democratic accountability hangs in the balance.

Such is the conclusion implicit in the recent analysis by Joeri Rogelj and colleagues published in a recent issue of Nature magazine.

Rogelj et al. did yeoman’s work in collecting all the varied (non-binding) efforts pledged by all of the various countries of the world to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions under the Copenhagen Accord that came out of last December’s big United Nations Climate Conference. From these pledges (which only extend to the year 2020 and of which Rogelj et al. commented “It is amazing how unambitious these pledges are”), Rogelj and colleagues kludged together a set of emissions pathways into the future.

Since some countries had a range of pledges emissions reductions, Rogelj et al. developed both an “optimistic” and a “pessimistic” emissions scenario to the year 2020.

What is supposed to happen after 2020 is anybody’s guess.

Is Pessimism Too Optimistic?

Up until just hours before the final version of the Copenhagen Accord was agreed upon, there was language present that pledged support to a 50% reduction in total global greenhouse gas emissions (below the emissions in 1990) by the year 2050 (developed countries were going to be responsible for 80% reductions). But that language was dropped from the final Accord.

Still holding on to this possibility, Rogelj extended their “optimistic” scenario beyond 2020 by assuming this 50% reduction in emissions below 1990 levels by 2050. They extended their “pessimistic” scenario by assuming that everyone held their emissions constant at the 2020 pledged levels.

With these emissions scenarios in hand, the researchers then turned to a climate model to foretell the general pathway that global temperatures would take for the rest of the century.

What they found wasn’t pretty for the “2°C or bust” crowd (See Figure 1 below).

For their “optimistic” scenario—which they describe as requiring “unprecedented political will to drive the necessary technological and economic innovation”—they only report “at best” a 50:50 chance of keeping the total temperature rise (since the pre-industrial times) beneath 2°C. For their “pessimistic scenario” they find a greater than 50:50 chance that the total rise will exceed 3°C.

Figure 1. Projected range of 21st century temperature rise from Rogelj et al.’s “pessimistic” emission scenario (red) and “optimistic” emissions scenario (blue) (figure from Rogelj et al., 2010).

And Rogelj et al. themselves are not very optimistic about the likelihood that their “optimistic” scenario can be achieved with the stated Copenhagen Accord pledges. They write that even this “optimistic” scenario is “it is equivalent to racing towards a cliff
and hoping to stop just before it.”

Of course (the article was published in Nature after all), the authors go on to call for even stricter emissions reductions than those thus far pledged and look ahead to more U.N. confabs to get this all ironed out:

The prospects for limiting global warming to 2°C—or even to 1.5°C as more than 100 nations demand—are in dire peril. Many countries have acknowledged and called for what is required: a global and comprehensive agreement, with a robust and legally binding structure that provides the necessary investment environment for the private sector and the basis of trust between countries to reassure all that everybody is doing their fair share. The Copenhagen Accord is not that. Given that the negotiation mandates were extended, the possibility remains that countries can commit to more than the lowest common denominator — if not by the next summit in Mexico this year, then by further meetings in 2011. It is imperative that they do so.

Right. When pledging implausible emissions reductions, you may as well make them high enough that will actually achieve the pie-in-the-sky end results!

Rogelj et al.’s ultimate goal behind their analysis, no doubt, was to set everybody straight with this type of advice—you think you know where you are heading, but the path you are on won’t take you there.

The problem of course, is that the pathway to success via this route is impassible.

Or is Optimism Too Pessimistic?

But perhaps there is yet hope.

The great philosopher Yogi Berra had these applicable words of wisdom—“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”

Exactly.

We still might not get to 2°C, because there is a good possibility that we don’t know where we’re going.

Rogelj et al.’s temperature projections are given to them by a climate model which simulates a range of climate sensitivities that runs from 2.1°C to 7.1°C (90% range). This explains the probability range of the projected temperatures from the two scenarios shown in Figure 1. Notice that even the “pessimistic” scenario can result in a total temperature rise quite close to 2°C if the climate sensitivity is low (the lowest end of the red range in Figure 1).

And with the way that global temperatures have been acting over the past decade or so (little to no change at all despite large greenhouse gas emissions increases), there may be indications that even Rogelj et al.’s low end climate sensitivity is too high. And if this is the case, then the chances are improved that a future emissions pathway that lies between Rogelj et al’s “pessimistic” and the even more emissions-intensive business-as-usual still brings the 2°C target into play.

So, if you belong to the group that thinks 2°C is the upper limit to what the world’s climate can withstand without massive disruption (don’t count me among that group) all hope is still not lost despite the lack of any meaningful emissions reductions agreements.

Since we don’t know where we are going, maybe we won’t actually get there!

Reference:
Rogelj, J., et al., 2010. Copenhagen Accord pledges are paltry. Nature, 464, 1127-1128.

Higher Taxes Will Not Alter Climate Under Anyone’s Math

The proposed gasoline tax increase will have no significant impact on greenhouse gas emissions.  That’s because the demand curve for gasoline is rather inelastic.  Hence, a 15 cent increase in gasoline prices – presuming that the entirety of the tax is passed on to consumers, which may not prove to be the case – would not discourage very much fuel consumption at all. 

While I don’t have any calculations at hand to translate the likely amount of reduced oil consumption into a percentage reduction in global greenhouse gas emissions (although that would be a fine project to undertake if this idea ever finds its way into the bill), the figure is certainly below 1 percent.  How much cooler would the planet be given that emissions decline over the next 50, 100, and 150 years?  That figure would certainly be too small to even measure.

Regardless, the uninternalized “negative externality” associated with the impact of gasoline consumption on the climate is likely to be rather small in monetary terms.  After a review of the pertinent economic literature by economist Ian Parrry, Mr. Parry concluded that a gallon of gasoline likely does about 5 cents worth of damage to the environment via its impact on the global climate, assuming that the conventional narrative about anthropogenic climate change is correct.  Accordingly, a 15 cent increase in the gasoline tax to address climate impacts would likely do more economic harm than good even if you believe the scientific arguments forwarded by the IPCC.

Let’s assume, however, that James Hanson is correct and that the IPCC narrative about future warming is too conservative.  If so, the correct response (that is, the policy response that addresses the issue at least cost to society) is a broad carbon tax (or a broad cap & trade program that in any case would amount to the same thing) applying to all sectors of the economy equally.  At present, however, we are being offered a politically-inspired assault on emissions that targets some sources to varying degrees but not others.  This is not only economically inefficient; it’s environmentally counterproductive because it invites wasteful rent seeking, emission leakages will inevitably arise, and total emissions will be far greater than they might otherwise have been.

Other Tax Arguments: Bogus Too

Many might agree on with the above climate argument but argue for a gasoline tax on other grounds.  While public policy intellectuals like to burnish their intellectual street cred by waving this particular Pigouvian banner, I’m not buying it.  I co-authored a study on this subject not too long ago, but for those who have not committed that text to memory, let’s quickly walk through the arguments:

It will slow down the inevitable decline of petroleum supply – Well, that’s true enough, but there is very little reason to think that scarcity is upon us now or in the foreseeable future.  Regardless, when oil becomes scarce, prices will adjust accordingly and the “right” amount of conservation will follow.  And if you think that “Big Oil” (or their international counterpart, OPEC) is jacking up prices for profit, then send them a thank you note – they’re already attending to this “inevitable decline of petroleum supply” for you … no extra tax necessary.

It will reduce consumption and, thus, the impact of future oil price shocks – Supply shocks are less of a macroeconomic problem than many people think.  Aggregate demand shocks are a much bigger problem and a small increase in domestic gasoline taxes won’t do much to address that given that those shocks are most likely to come from demand growth overseas.  Regardless, price volatility is not a market failure and those that fear it can hedge if they so desire.  There is no need for a government response.

It will promote efficient energy use – Nonsense.  There is little evidence that consumers are irrational when it comes to the trade-offs associated with automotive fuel economy or driving behavior.  If a consumer believes that a gallon of gasoline provides more value to him/her than the cost of that gallon of gasoline, then it is efficient to consume.  That simple statement holds unless there are large uninternalized externalities.  On the climate front, there may be externalities, but – as Parry points out – they are not large.

It will reduce pollution – Yes it will.  But are the uninternalized (conventional) environmental costs of that pollution (when monetarized) greater than, less than, or equal to the proposed tax?  Economists find themselves in all three corners of that calculation, so we can’t say for certain.  But if you think that the uninternalized environmental costs of gasoline consumption are a major problem, then the right answer isn’t a gasoline tax – it’s an emissions tax.  And believe it or not, the former would have far less of an impact on the problem than the latter and prove more economically inefficient to boot.

It will reduce dependence on foreign oil – Probably not.  Who says that reduced demand will mean reduced demand for foreign oil rather than reduced demand for (more costly to produce) domestic oil?  Regardless, imported oil presents no more problems than, say, imported computer chips.  Trade is a good thing.

It will reduce the flow of money to Islamic extremists and other foreign bad actors – To some (very small) extent, it will.  But is there any correlation between oil profits abroad and terrorist attacks or “bad acting” from suspect regimes?  No – none whatsoever.

It will reduce automobile accidents and congestion – Gasoline taxes are a very imperfect means to address accident costs because such taxes don’t vary with the density of the setting in which driving occurs or the extent to which a driver might be accident-prone.  Gasoline taxes are hopeless at addressing congestion because they do not correlate with use of congested roadways and, even when they do, they are not steep enough to deter use.  Witness high tax England where congestion in London was a hellish problem until congestion fees were instituted.  Again, better remedies – like congestion fees – are available to policy makers if they are serious about this problem.

It will help to pay for needed roads and bridges – To some extent, this is true.  But will they be the right roads and bridges?  The question arises because revenues from gasoline taxes are allocated based on political calculation more than true need or economic desirability (witnessed well-paved West Virginia versus chronically under-built Northern Virginia).  Moreover, too much of this money is spun off to bike paths, buses, and light rail – not the infrastructure being marshaled to justify the tax as a “user fee.”  If we want user fees for roads and bridges – and we should – then fine.  But let’s charge directly for use via tolls and keep the money where it is being spent. The gasoline tax, once again, is a poor second-best proposal.

Maybe Mr. Odum got his marching orders from The Hague (Netherlands), or maybe he really believes cap-and-trade is good for the oil (and natural gas) business. These are strange times. Confusion abounds in high places.

In this post, I provide a running commentary on Odum’s column.  Odum’s verbiage is indented; my comments follow in bold type. 

Today, Washington is having the wrong energy and climate debate, and the future of the U.S. economy may be the biggest casualty.

A rather amazing statement, considering that the party of cap-and-trade controls the White House and the leadership of both the House and Senate. Saint Barack, Czarina Browner, Lisa Endangerment-Finding Jackson, General Boxer, and Inquisitor Waxman occupy the commanding heights of energy and climate policy in the nation’s capital, yet ”Washington is having the wrong energy and climate debate.” How did they let that happen? Odum offers no explanation.

Rather than developing sensible legislation that creates a viable market for low-emission energy while developing more of our own oil and gas resources, Washington is engaged in a snowball fight over the science of global warming.

Yep, move along, nothing to see here. ”Snowball fight” indeed. Top IPCC-affiliated scientists conspired to bias the peer-reviewed literature they would assess, ignored research that did not fit into the “nice tidy story” they wanted to tell, and violated the UK freedom of information act to prevent independent researchers from checking their data and methods. These IPCC insiders repeatedly flouted U.S. Government standards of openness and transparency, rendering the IPCC reports  unsuitable as basis for policymaking, as Peabody Energy documents in its 240-page examination of the Climategate files.

In addition, the IPCC recently has been caught four times presenting false, biased, or unsubstantiated claims –that Himalayan glaciers will disappear by 2035, that hurricane damages are strongly linked to global temperature, that 40% of the Amazon rain forest is at risk, and that Antarctic sea ice is not growing significantly. 

More importantly, as Chip Knappenberger has shown (here and here), recent research calls into question the IPCC’s centerpiece assertion that “most” of the warming of the past 50 years is “very likely” due to greenhouse gas emissions.

Contrary to Odum, debating whether the IPCC really knows best is the right energy and policy debate. So is the debate over who should make climate and energy policy — the people’s elected representatives or politically unaccountable bureaucrats, trial lawyers, and activist judges. Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski’s Congressional Review Act resolution to veto EPA’s endangerment finding would safeguard not only our economy from regulatory excess but also the separation of powers and accountable policymaking (see here, here, here, and here). Murkowski’s resolution could come to a vote in the Senate as early as next week.  Although there is much debate about the Murkowski resolution, Odum says not a peep about it.

 Meanwhile, other countries are quietly going about building the vast infrastructure necessary to win the real fight — the one that will determine who will lead the new, clean-energy economy.

This is just a green variant of what Friedrich Hayek called the ”fatal conceit,” the belief that the “best and brightest” know what the “next big thing” is, and therefore should be allowed to rig the market via mandates, taxes, and subsidies to create the infrastructure of the future. Just describing this mindset should be enough to discredit it. If Odum and others are the visionaries they profess to be, they could all make a killing just by putting their money where their collective mouth is. Instead, they lobby for policy privileges because the future they envision utterly depends on the triumph of politics over markets. Their plan would lead to a net loss of jobs and wealth, as I discuss in a related post, Energy Secy. Chu’s convoluted climate economics.

Recent news reports concerning the withdrawal of three companies from the U.S. Climate Action Partnership have been cited as evidence that energy and climate legislation is stalled. If anything, these decisions indicate that we are closer to, not further from, enacting climate and energy legislation because difficult choices are being made about the best way to achieve legislation. The fact is, USCAP members continue to demonstrate a solid commitment to addressing the nation’s climate and energy challenge through strong cooperation among businesses, environmental organizations and policymakers.

This is whistling past the graveyard. Three companies withdraw from U.S. CAP, and “If anything these decisions indicate that we are closer to, not further from, enacting climate and energy legislation.” So if six members quit, that must mean we’re even closer to enacting climate and energy legislation. And if everybody quits, victory is assured!

So why has Shell Oil Co. remained an active member of this important organization? Consider that by 2050 the world’s population will increase 50 percent to 9 billion people and 98 percent of that growth will occur in what today are considered developing countries. In only 15 years’ time, about two-thirds of the world’s economic activity will be in these developing countries. Citizens there will naturally want the same standard of living we enjoy today — and this will create an enormous demand for energy.

These are reasons to oppose cap-and-trade policies! Cap-and-trade is designed to increase the cost and decrease the supply of fossil energy. Yet the pressing need in developing countries is to make energy more abundant and affordable. The top priority of the global warming movement is to stop new coal power plants from being built. Yet countries like India and China absolutely depend on the expansion of coal-based power to lift millions out of health- and life-destroying poverty (see here and here).

For Shell, the scale of our activities puts us on the front line of the global energy challenge. Shell operates in more than 100 countries, producing more that 3 million barrels of oil and gas every day. Worldwide, there are some 45,000 Shell service stations, selling transportation fuels to some 10 million customers a day. And we run more than 25 major refineries and chemical plants around the globe.

Yes, and that’s evidence of what exactly — that the world will need more fossil energy in the foreseeable future or that governments should gang up to restrict access to fossil energy and promote more costly, under-performing alternatives?

Our belief is shared by many, that in the coming decades all countries must find more energy at a much-reduced cost to the environment as we transition to a low-emission fuels economy. That transition will take time — decades. In the interim, a leading option is to expand access to oil and natural gas. Together these sources meet 60 percent of U.S. needs because they are reliable and abundant and technology has allowed new and innovative ways to lessen the environmental footprint of oil and gas operations.

Huh? How does “expand access to oil” help us ”transition” to a “low emission fuels economy?” Odum might as well say that drilling more oil will help us transition to a “beyond petroleum” economy. Yes, access to oil is critical to prosperity and wealth fosters innovation.  But that’s not what Odum means. He means that government should pick winners and losers. As soon becomes apparent, he wants government to hammer coal, which his company does not produce, in order to increase market demand for natural gas, which his company does produce. Such Enron-like behavior is par for the course at U.S. CAP.  

Natural gas, in particular, will play an important role. It is the fastest-growing and cleanest-burning fossil fuel, and some estimates say the U.S. contains enough natural gas resources to meet current demand into the next century. Shell and others are advancing technologies to safely access and develop these supplies. Enabling reasonable and environmentally sensitive access to these resources would strengthen U.S. energy security by making more domestic supply available to American consumers. It would also support the creation of American jobs and strengthen our economy while allowing research to continue on exciting new forms of energy, including biofuels and other alternative sources of energy.

Policymakers should lift moratoria and other political impediments to the development of natural gas supplies. But it would be folly for government to put all (or most) of our energy eggs in a single basket. Only a few short years ago, high natural gas prices were destroying manufacturing jobs and squeezing consumers. There is no guarantee this won’t happen again, especially if climate policies eliminate coal as an alternative to gas.

What does this mean for the United States? By working together, stakeholders, both individually and through organizations like USCAP, can set the course for comprehensive energy and environmental legislation that puts us on a path to a secure and sustainable energy future.

Okay, I’m sold, let’s all hold hands and sing Cumbaya!

It is easy to call for this kind of unified action. Delivering on-the-ground progress is a lot tougher. One thing is clear, though: Without cooperation across party boundaries and ideological divides, we run the risk of finishing the race for responsible energy and environmental legislation behind the pack.

Translation: Don’t let trifles like “party boundaries and ideological divides” hinder Shell’s quest for windfall profits!

And if there is one thing we all can agree on, it is that America cannot afford to receive the bronze medal in the race for our energy future.

The only race worth having is one in which contestants compete on a level playing field. Odum envisions a race in which government handicaps coal on behalf of oil and gas companies. If there’s a medal at the end of this race, it’s bound to be made of fool’s gold.