I made no reference to the IPCC with respect to methane. My point is that in most policy responses proposed for addressing alleged anthropogenic global warming, methane reduction is seldom included, yet any methane reduced has about 7X the greenhouse leverage of equivalent volume carbon reduction. Seems like it ought to be included in policy proposals.

With one exception… cosmic rays, which Phil thoughtfully included, somewhere up there. I’m not sure that cosmic rays are in the IPCC report or much of the other literature.

My recollection is that cosmic rays are mentioned in the IPCC report, but again, the IPCC isn’t the point of discussion in my post you are referring to, and I’ve not made much of that possible factor.

See, the problem with cosmic rays is that there’s no developed theory of Cosmic Ray Warming, no mechanism proposed, let alone understood or tested, no amount of squinting at the data persuades anyone that there’s any relationship at all, there’s just one or two astronomers-cum-atmospheric scientists who believe in it and none of the rest of us would have heard of is except that the American Enterprise Institute or some such similar outfit was able to seize on this and use it to swat at considered AGW theory. “Hey! No Cosmic Ray Warming Theory! Your Report Is Crap!”

My inclusion of cosmic rays in a list of additional climate inputs was both incidental and in response to a prior poster raising this as a distraction. I went on to focus my response on solar irradiance variability, which is well understood and increasingly documented. But the fact that only a small population of astronomers draw a connection between cosmic ray inputs and climate change does not by itself invalidate their postulate. You’ve done this before — position science as a popularity contest. Most of us know better. Cosmic ray influences are an open question.

Our “scant” contribution is 25% of the CO2 in the atmosphere.

This claim is based on the theory that our relatively small CO2 contribution is cumulative and somehow natural contributors are not; and further that the planet’s carbon assimilation capability is fixed. Vast natural contributors, which dwarf man’s carbon contribution, vary too.

Phil should get out and meet more greenies. One of the founders of Greenpeace favors additional nuclear power. The band should be playing, “The World Turned Upside Down,” as at Yorktown. But I guess that guy isn’t in Phil’s Rolodex.

Good for him. When the green movement is actively and loudly backing nuclear power I’ll consider them on board. The prevailing green position is deprivation and rollback, not advancement, as well as preference for utopia over hard practical choices. When I see greens picketing new coal plant construction with signs and chants demanding a nuke instead, I’ll know their thinking has changed.

Phil also mentioned CO2 sequestering… “extant and evolving.” I’ve read about this, off and on and it’s in demo-mode somewhere in Norway or some such place. Here’s the part I like… sequestering the CO2 takes 40% of the power generated by the plant. I don’t know of anyone who’s proposing this can be improved much in the near term. I mean, look at it… you’ve got a crapload of reeeeally hot gas going up a pipe and you want to liquefy it? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that’s going to require some sort of energy. You can do it but it makes your power 60% more costly. Seems like such a waste.

If you believe CO2 release from human-instigated combustion must be curtailed, then the energy required for sequestering is simply a cost that will decline. The energy-intensive nature of sequestering techniques is a start. As with every other new technical development, deployment will speed improvements. The state of the art today is not the limit of what will be. The point is, either you are serious about carbon reduction or you’re not. If you truly believe we have an emergency, then fixed-location power generation carbon sequestering is the fast track to addressing your alarm.

You overlooked the fact that a succession of my posts on this repeatedly point out that carbon reduction can be achieved with a mix of sequestering and transfer of fossil-based generation to non-fossil alternatives including large scale solar farming, mass adoption of rooftop solar, wind, etc.

The key point is that alpha leverage is not in attacking the automobile. Replacing the entire US automotive fleet with vehicles matching Prius-like efficiency would save only about 1/4th the carbon contribution that can be achieved through coal plant non-fossil substitution or sequestering. If you believe climate change is anthropogenic, then get your public policy response in line with means for real progress.

As for the personal car, mobility might be one of the keys to wealth creation but there’s more than one way to get mobility. The Japanese work overtime to keep people out of their cars and still, somehow, have a high level of economic activity. If the car goes into decline and we replace it with an infrastructure that is supported by public transit, I won’t miss commuting at all.

Japan has more than 100mm people occupying a land space about the size of California. We don’t, and won’t, have comparable population density. And while Japan has high GDP, domestically its people do not have concomitant participation in their aggregate wealth, nor American-style portability of opportunity. The matrixed nature of the American economy is part of its adaptive advantage, and that includes the fluidity of a population able to readily change jobs, network, collaborate in a freely portable manner. Public transit will never equal private transportation in this respect in a distributed society. For the average Japanese person, American-style flexibility and opportunity is a marvel.

And it’s wonderful to wax all poetic about wealth creation and the third world but they live a lot closer to the land than we do… changes in the environment are going to fall disproportionately on them.

Yes….if they stay poor. Economic expansion and further dispersed technical development enabled by spreading wealth creation are the only practical mitigators to environmental adversity regardless what’s instigated it.

I’m not sure what your intent was with the prior post.

Consequently, Phil, my respect for you, never very high, has dropped to precisely zilch.

Somehow I’m unperturbed. Perhaps this development is actually an achievement.

Phil

First, Phil, your remarks on methane indicate that you didn’t read the IPCC report and have no real clue as to the current state of thinking on AGW theory. The fact is, methane is considered. It would be very hard to read the IPCC report or most of the literature with any kind of intent to develop understanding without coming across SOME discussion of methane.

Consequently, Phil, my respect for you, never very high, has dropped to precisely zilch.

In fact, Phil’s tack here, to claim that so-and-so isn’t considered, so the report is crap, is often the case in “the debate”… but usually the yahoos objecting that so-and-so wasn’t considered aren’t quite as glib as Phil. I have yet, in fact, to read remarks from some yahoo to the effect effect that so-and-so was ignored, then look in the report and find that said yahoo was right, that so-and-so was not considered. With one exception… cosmic rays, which Phil thoughtfully included, somewhere up there. I’m not sure that cosmic rays are in the IPCC report or much of the other literature.

And I’m not going to look.

See, the problem with cosmic rays is that there’s no developed theory of Cosmic Ray Warming, no mechanism proposed, let alone understood or tested, no amount of squinting at the data persuades anyone that there’s any relationship at all, there’s just one or two astronomers-cum-atmospheric scientists who believe in it and none of the rest of us would have heard of is except that the American Enterprise Institute or some such similar outfit was able to seize on this and use it to swat at considered AGW theory. “Hey! No Cosmic Ray Warming Theory! Your Report Is Crap!” (*)

However, a few guys will eventually find a way to disprove the Cosmic Ray Warming Theory, or, possible work it into the model waaaay to far to the wrong side of the decimal point for it to have any meaning at all…

…at which time AEI will discover some other scientists who have discovered the Pixie Dust Warming Theory… And we’ll be back to Square One. (**)

CO2 and Man’s “scant” contribution. One must admire Phil for his ability to pick catchy words. And ignore the data. Our “scant” contribution is 25% of the CO2 in the atmosphere. And that’s not our respiration, that’s shit that we dug up and burned.

“Scant…” OK… here’s “scant…” You put 3 tablespoons of Folger’s crystals and a scant dusting of chili powder into boiling water to make a cup of coffee that’s just a bit zesty. However, what we have in atmospheric CO2 is 3 tablespoons of Folger’s and 1 tablespoon of chili powder in the water. I invite TTAC readers to try that recipe and let me know how it is.

When we get to policy, Phil goes with the One-Size-Fits-All Condemnation. NONE of use are serious because SOME of us are crazy. Well, not even crazy, they just favor policy initiatives that strike Phil as being of marginal utility.

Phil should get out and meet more greenies. One of the founders of Greenpeace favors additional nuclear power. The band should be playing, “The World Turned Upside Down,” as at Yorktown. But I guess that guy isn’t in Phil’s Rolodex.

I’m not particularly opposed to nukes myself, but they do carry big risks and I would like to see adequate safeguards.

Do you know who doesn’t like nukes? I mean, besides whoever you’ve picked to live next to it?

Power companies! Surprised? Don’t be. Power companies don’t like big capital projects and there aren’t too many capital projects that are bigger than nukes.

What’s a nuke today? $10 billion? More? That’s a crapload of bonds. It’s a craplod of interest before you get the first watt out.

Phil also mentioned CO2 sequestering… “extant and evolving.” I’ve read about this, off and on and it’s in demo-mode somewhere in Norway or some such place. Here’s the part I like… sequestering the CO2 takes 40% of the power generated by the plant. I don’t know of anyone who’s proposing this can be improved much in the near term. I mean, look at it… you’ve got a crapload of reeeeally hot gas going up a pipe and you want to liquefy it? You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that’s going to require some sort of energy. You can do it but it makes your power 60% more costly. Seems like such a waste.

However, SPV prices are poised to hit $1/peak watt, which has long been thought to be the Holy Grail of SPV pricing. That’s the price where it’s competitive with other forms of generation.

Windmills can now deliver power for $.05/KWH, competitive with everything but fully amortized nukes and hydro.

And, solar and wind power come on line fast. If you can get 2/10, net 30 on your SPV installation, you can hold the check until AFTER the first watt is delivered. No interest fees until it’s working for you.

As for the personal car, mobility might be one of the keys to wealth creation but there’s more than one way to get mobility. The Japanese work overtime to keep people out of their cars and still, somehow, have a high level of economic activity. If the car goes into decline and we replace it with an infrastructure that is supported by public transit, I won’t miss commuting at all.

And it’s wonderful to wax all poetic about wealth creation and the third world but they live a lot closer to the land than we do… changes in the environment are going to fall disproportionately on them.

And we’re the ones operating the big burners. We have the principal responsibility.

(*) I am exaggerating a little… Cosmic Rays are actually being studied but the mechanism and effects are 100% speculation.

(**) However, here, I am not exaggerating at all. The AEI or someone like them will propose ever more ridiculous objections, not to advance anything but to stall.

Yes, but we don’t know the current higher concentration is predominantly human-induced, and we can’t explain prior equally warm periods on CO2 concentration alone. The fact remains that the climate change alarmists’ reference of 1850 mean temperatures is also roughly matching a “modern” nadir at the end of a prior cooling cycle, and further coincides with the mid-19th century being the earliest point that reasonably accurate thermometers were deployed throughout the globe. Hmmm….

It’s also disconcerting to note that sudden high spikes in CO2 are associated with most of the mass extinction events in the fossil record. Which is not to say that we’re in imminent danger, but it does seem an argument against complacency. Just because the earth lived through things like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or the Permian-Triassic extinction due to natural events like methane clathrate releases or the massive volcanism of the Siberian Traps, there’s no need to repeat with a human-caused greenhouse gas spike.

We had a prior warm period — warmer — as recently as a thousand years ago, with no catastrophic results, no permanence and no human role. Yes, high spikes of CO2 have corresponded with extinction events. But, 1/ we don’t know current warming is human-induced; b/ if it is, we could and should first attack carbon release from fixed infrastructure; c/ grinding global economic progress to a halt only compounds other problems more threatening to human quality of life.

The net result is that we’ve altered the balance.

The range of estimates for annual human share of greenhouse gas release is 3% – 7%. Natural release varies more than that. Your 2ppm alleged differential isn’t firmly traceable to anthropogenic release alone, nor is carbon release the only input to climate change.

“Thousands” of scientists? I guess this is a reference to the sleight of hand petition from the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine”, where the petition and (misleading) supporting documents were made to look as if they came from the National Academy of Science. The one where there was no way to sign up for the alternative point of view. The one where the list of “scientists” included people like Dr Geri Halliwell (aka Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls). The one tha
t is now ten years old and hardly evidence for current attitudes.

Personally, I don’t care about the relative numbers of advocates for or against anthropogenic blame for global warming nor do I endorse NAoS misrepresentation. But politicians and other AGW alarmists wielded a nominal 2,300 or 2,500 or whatever number of scientists like a weapon, as though this license to whip up a reflexive frenzy. Only a minority of Al Gore’s cited backers were climatologists. The anti-Kyoto petition attracted science signatories approaching 20,000, and while you might find a Spice Girl in there, she wasn’t representative of the whole. Were they all qualified to take a position on climate? Surely not. But 8X+ as many skeptics as public supporters? Yup, it’s a 10 year old initiative. I don’t see evidence that the pendulum of opinion has swung so far as to eradicate scientists’ skepticism. Again, private conversation with climate scientists reveals the uncomfortable politicization resulting from the alleged “consensus.”

I am always amused to see real scientists writing about this issue, who wish to dispel skepticism about global warming having anthropogenic causes, finding it necessary to remind readers that scientific consensus is frequently wrong. It’s not a popularity contest. We’re looking for truth.

Have you talked with people who are directly involved in atmospheric research?

Yes. Moreover, this is not a new subject of interest for me. I was first exposed to greenhouse theory and the causal physics in 1964 when there was real science taught in elementary schools. It happened to interest me and I read deeply on the subject as years passed. I pursued qualified scientific insight when the global cooling scare was au courant and dismissed it. Through the 1980s I read steadily on the emerging debate about global warming, which went mainstream around 1989. I’ve witnessed the effects of politicization of this issue by listening.

Even the most skeptical of the skeptics will admit to a value of 1 to 1.5 degrees, arrived at by basically hoping that any and all positive feedbacks will be minor.

I’m not denying an extant warming trend. I’m questioning conclusions that human activity is the cause, and that the prescribed solutions are the right response even if anthropogenics were found to be right.

Consider that the most widely cited suggestion for response is the notion of “stabilization wedges”, different technologies that each promise something like a one gigation per year saving. Reduced auto emissions are just one of the many possible technologies – and we need many of these to make a reasonable response.

As I’ve cited elsewhere, automotive emissions are light on leverage against alleged AGW, and take a long time to realize whatever savings can be had. Fixed infrastructure power generation and rapid implementation of non-fossil energy where possible can drive much greater greenhouse gas reductions in much less time, while preserving the unique economic benefits of affordable personal mobility. The car is already on the mend environmentally.

A growing minority of environmentalists seem resigned to nuclear power as the least bad alternative,

A “growing minority”….”resigned”….this is the language of obstructionists. Where are the environmentalists willing to *advocate* nuclear power, or allocating 10,000 square mile plots in our southwest for large scale solar farming, for instance?

Not this old canard. Why do skeptics point to Mars or Uranus for solar radiation when there have been direct satellite measurements for many years? Could it be because the direct observations show that any changes have been insignificant? The skeptic alternative is to mutter something about cosmic rays or solar wind having an effect on cloud formations – but how would this also apply to the very different situations on Mars or Uranus (and why did you pick Uranus, Pluto is the usual cite among the outer planets?).

The Mars and Uranus data is quite recent, and is related to swelling solar irradiance singularly, not solar wind or other ancillary factors. The data is too new to be “an old canard.” The old canard is Neptune’s reflectance variables, but it happens to correspond. Meanwhile, Mars is in a polar melting period, reported most recently in 2007. There is some research indicating that solar irradiance variability overwhelms greenhouse explanations and that irradiance is heading into a cyclic decline that will put us in a disconcerting cooling period beginning 15 – 20 years from now.

I don’t think this is quite a “plague on both your houses” situation. When one
side squelches its more informed people, because on one point of partisan difference they might agree that, for once, the other side has it right, it would seem to say something about the merits of the case.

I don’t see squelching happening any less on the AGW / liberal Democrat / environmentalist side. And I’m a Democrat. The debate is politicized, so now trust is compromised. The prescriptions are political and the AGW believers are starting in the wrong place. If AGW believers want credibility and action, they have to refuse to be associated with poor policy, rather than sidle up to anyone who will crawl onto their AGW bandwagon. I don’t endorse squelching by either side.

Again, I am unconvinced climate change is anthropogenic. But I’ve reduced my domestic energy consumption by 20% in the past 18 months for other reasons. I have a tankless water heater. I don’t burn wood in any fireplace. I am heating less in the winter, and cooling less in the summer. I am reasonably insulated and manage my electricity consumption more carefully. Why? Because doing so can reduce particulate and real noxious pollution in Utah and other places that generate California’s power. My transit energy consumption has declined a bit because I routinely use videoconferencing to displace much of my air travel. I replace my vehicles about every five years even if I don’t have to, simply to drive more current cars with cleaner emissions. I would gladly pay my power company or allow my taxes to be used for large scale carbon sequestering at power plants. I’d gladly accept my government actively using my tax money to subsidize mass adoption of rooftop solar power generation. You get the idea.

But mobility is central to development and wealth creation. It is central to maximizing human intellectual capital. It has the same meaning for India, China, Africa and elsewhere that it has for Americans. Wealth suppresses population growth. It rolls back disease. It generates progressively cleaner technologies. I suggest a 5 – 10 year plan for meaningfully reducing carbon contribution, for those who think that’s important; not a pinprick gesture forced down the throat of automobilia that will still be of dubious value in 50 years. The policy responses to climate change are the bigger issue. If it’s about the AGW view of the science, then you should work to bring policy response in line with your objectives instead of backing a bureaucratic vendetta against personal freedom that will make little or no difference anyway, if your anthropogenic view of climate change proves correct.

Phil

Except most of the CO2 in the atmosphere was not put there by any activity man is accountable for. The theory of human blame rests entirely on a sliver differential.

Not a small differential.

By the numbers, over the last half million years or so, ice cores show CO2 levels varying from 200 to 280 parts per million. The variations seem part of a feedback dance with changes in Earth’s orbit and both respond to and cause climate changes.

It is not surprising that the low points tend to be in glacial periods, higher concentrations are found in interglacials.

Compare the 200 to 280 ppm range of natural values with the current 385 ppm number, and consider that the number is still growing, and at an increasing rate.

It’s true that the amount that humans put into the atmosphere is smaller than the amounts put in and taken out by natural causes. A look at the Mauna Loa records, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/ shows steep annual declines due to the northern hemisphere growing season, and steep annual increases as the growing season finishes and most of the trapped CO2 gets released again. A quick eyeball at the curve shows that natural variation would account for something like a 9ppm increase followed by a 9ppm decrease. Add in a human contribution of about 2ppm and you get a 10ppm increase followed by an 8ppm decrease, a consistent ratcheting up of CO2 despite the fact that the human contribution is a fair bit smaller than the natural effects.

Basic physics indeed. Except greenhouse effects aren’t the exclusive phenomenon driving global mean temperatures. Prior warm periods occurred recent enough for us to verify their existence, but distant enough for man to have been too feeble a factor by any reckoning.

Sure, there were prior warm periods that were nothing to do with us. That doesn’t mean the current warming is nothing to do with us.

It’s also disconcerting to note that sudden high spikes in CO2 are associated with most of the mass extinction events in the fossil record. Which is not to say that we’re in imminent danger, but it does seem an argument against complacency. Just because the earth lived through things like the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum or the Permian-Triassic extinction due to natural events like methane clathrate releases or the massive volcanism of the Siberian Traps, there’s no need to repeat with a human-caused greenhouse gas spike.

So, we’re putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and it’s basic physics that this will cause a warming (with less basic physics as to how strong the possible positive or negative feedbacks will be). Seems pretty clear cut to me.

I see. Somehow *our* relatively scant CO2 persists in the atmosphere while the overwhelming quantity naturally emitted, is absorbed by plant life and banked in their tissue. And then there’s natural methane.

If the natural rate is 9ppm per year emitted, 9ppm absorbed, and we add 2ppm, it doesn’t matter if the plants somehow know to absorb only the naturally emitted stuff, or to absorb our stuff first, or anything in the middle. The net result is that we’ve altered the balance.

Thousands of scientists went on record to say the Kyoto Agreement mandates were not warranted by the facts nor our understanding of climate dynamics.

“Thousands” of scientists? I guess this is a reference to the sleight of hand petition from the “Oregon Institute of Science and Medicine”, where the petition and (misleading) supporting documents were made to look as if they came from the National Academy of Science. The one where there was no way to sign up for the alternative point of view. The one where the list of “scientists” included people like Dr Geri Halliwell (aka Ginger Spice from the Spice Girls). The one tha
t is now ten years old and hardly evidence for current attitudes.

There seems a long history of the “skeptical” side making dubious lists. More recently, Inhofe claimed “400 prominent scientists” who had supposedly spoken out against the consensus. The names included people like “Horticulturalist Alan Titchmarch”, a TV gardener from the UK (who started off by saying “I’m sure we are contributing to global warming, and we must do all we can to reduce that”), and “prominent scientist Ernst-George Beck”, a German high school teacher who trawled through CO2 measurements downstream of Ruhr steelworks and the like before pronouncing that CO2 had enormous natural variations (which mysteriously stopped the same time that the Mauna Loa observations started).

The experience of talking with academics and researchers privately is much different from the claimed consensus promoted in media and cited in literature. The politicization of climate change is suppressing informed dissent.

Have you talked with people who are directly involved in atmospheric research, or is it the bunch of people on the fringe? Whenever I’ve seen claims of dissent being suppressed (e.g. Wall Street Journal editorials), the backing evidence seems very thin (a lot thinner than the evidence that the current administration has suppressed unwanted research results and threatened careers). The ones I can remember were someone being called a hireling of the fossil fuel industry, a couple of Italian researchers losing funding some ten years or so ago, and someone past retirement age being eased out of his job. Hardly evidence of some kind of reign of terror by the apparatchiks of orthodoxy.

Those who are unconvinced of anthropogenic origin are not randomly assigning alternate causes. Basic greenhouse theory *is* fine: greenhouse gases trap heat in the absence of countervailing influences. It’s just not all there is to what drives climate. Cosmic rays, solar variability, ocean current dynamics are all large inputs that overwhelm man’s tiny emissions from combustion.

Sure, cosmic rays, solar variability, ocean current dynamics will all have an impact. But the idea that they would “ovewhelm” greenhouse gas contributions seems bizarre. It’s somewhat misleading to collapse things to a single number, but for the sake of discussion there’s the expected change in Earth’s temperature in response to a doubling of CO2. Current best estimates are that this is in the range of 2 to 4.5 degrees Celsius, with the uncertainty coming from the myriad feedback effects (e.g. changed albedo due to ice melt, changed cloud cover etc).

Even the most skeptical of the skeptics will admit to a value of 1 to 1.5 degrees, arrived at by basically hoping that any and all positive feedbacks will be minor.

Carbon is attacked while methane’s 7X greenhouse intensity is overlooked.
Environmentalists who believe in anthropogenic cause don’t want nuclear alternatives, nor windmills in sight of shorelines, nor large swaths of desert solar arrays, which is similar to saying you don’t want the problem solved.

As for “environmentalists”, what activists choose to pick on shouldn’t have any influence on how we assess the science, but in any case I think you’re inventing some insidious strawmen to justify your stance.

Consider that the most widely cited suggestion for response is the notion of “stabilization wedges”, different technologies that each promise something like a one gigation per year saving. Reduced auto emissions are just one of the many possible technologies – and we need many of these to make a reasonable response.

Methane has been often mentioned as the “low hanging fruit” that should be attended to first, while the longer term work to reduce CO2 gets under way.

A growing minority of environmentalists seem resigned to nuclear power as the least bad alternative, and it’s the cover under which it seems to be making the first stages of a comeback in Europe.

For windmills, there seems broad agreement with things like the recent UK direction for seven thousand offshore turbines – supported by people like Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, RSPB.

Some salient facts are that “global warming” or rise in solar irradiance are verifiable simultaneously and presently on Earth, Mars and Uranus.

Not this old canard. Why do skeptics point to Mars or Uranus for solar radiation when there have been direct satellite measurements for many years? Could it be because the direct observations show that any changes have been insignificant? The skeptic alternative is to mutter something about cosmic rays or solar wind having an effect on cloud formations – but how would this also apply to the very different situations on Mars or Uranus (and why did you pick Uranus, Pluto is the usual cite among the outer planets?).

The atmosphere of Mars is dominated by the effect of dust storms, and the changed albedo seems to account for recent changes.

In any case, heating due to increased solar output should result in warmer days, while the greenhouse gas theory predicts the bulk of the warming is due to warmer nights. Observations again provide a win for the AGW people.

Yes, well, that~Rs what happens when science is politicized. Both sides get unreasonable in a hurry. Neither side of the political aisle is has a lock on rational behavior on this issue, anymore.

I don’t think this is quite a “plague on both your houses” situation. When one
side squelches its more informed people, because on one point of partisan difference they might agree that, for once, the other side has it right, it would seem to say something about the merits of the case.

As for the rest – agreed, coal fired power stations are disastrous, auto efficiency is a minor, though highly visible, factor. But this is all well known to the people warning of the need for action, it only seems a paranoid reaction of many in the auto industry to think they’re being unfairly picked on (though of course they couldn’t expect to stand back and do nothing).

That’s about enough posting for one night.

I would love it if you were right. But I wouldn’t bet on that any more than I’d bet on visits by extraterrestrials.

The price of the overwhelming majority of commodities has gone well into double digits for the last six years. As a point in reference, back in the early 90’s I sold junk cars for the Salvation Army that would go for anywhere from $10 (junk generic car) to $100 (car that may be roadworthy with some minor work.

Now the average junk car typically starts at $250 to $275. This is because the recycling return on just the local level for steel (selling it to a recycling company who resells it is $9.00 per hundred. That means the average 3000 pound car yields a $270 return (mathematically speaking, you need to add about 200 pounds to it due to the other materials) with just the steel alone. The aluminum, battery, copper, and various other materials along with the cat usually yields an extra $150. That means that an average junk car today is worth around $400 to $500 just on the wholesale recycling level.

I have a very good friend of mine who works at a tire store that his father owns. He usually yields over $2000 a month on just the stuff the mechanic shops throw away (engines, trannys, alternators, catalytics, etc.). It takes maybe five to six hours a week for him to round the stuff up and put it in his pickup that has an extended height steel cage.

Yup, no kidding. Except most of the CO2 in the atmosphere was not put there by any activity man is accountable for. The theory of human blame rests entirely on a sliver differential.

We can also do the sums to estimate how much extra CO2 is in the atmosphere or the oceans. Not surprisingly there’s a match, about half the CO2 from all the fossil fuels we’ve burned is in the atmosphere, the other half in the oceans (where decreasing Ph is mostly overlooked, but has the potential to have very nasty side effects if it keeps on as it has done).

Basic physics indeed. Except greenhouse effects aren’t the exclusive phenomenon driving global mean temperatures. Prior warm periods occurred recent enough for us to verify their existence, but distant enough for man to have been too feeble a factor by any reckoning.

So, we’re putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and it’s basic physics that this will cause a warming (with less basic physics as to how strong the possible positive or negative feedbacks will be). Seems pretty clear cut to me.

I see. Somehow *our* relatively scant CO2 persists in the atmosphere while the overwhelming quantity naturally emitted, is absorbed by plant life and banked in their tissue. And then there’s natural methane….

We agree creeping ocean acidity is not our friend.

The number of scientists who deny a significant role for human causation is small. I’ve followed the debate for a while, and it’s always the same one or two dozen names that keep cropping up. The amusing thing, if it weren’t so tragic, is that they can’t even agree on a consistent alternative theory (It’s cosmic rays! No, it’s solar variability! No, the basic greenhouse theory is fine, it’s just that they overlooked all those negative feedbacks! No, it’s long term changes in ocean currents! No, we don’t have an alternative but we know you can’t trust computer models!)

Thousands of scientists went on record to say the Kyoto Agreement mandates were not warranted by the facts nor our understanding of climate dynamics. The experience of talking with academics and researchers privately is much different from the claimed consensus promoted in media and cited in literature. The politicization of climate change is suppressing informed dissent. Those who are unconvinced of anthropogenic origin are not randomly assigning alternate causes. Basic greenhouse theory *is* fine: greenhouse gases trap heat in the absence of countervailing influences. It’s just not all there is to what drives climate. Cosmic rays, solar variability, ocean current dynamics are all large inputs that overwhelm man’s tiny emissions from combustion. Carbon is attacked while methane’s 7X greenhouse intensity is overlooked. Environmentalists who believe in anthropogenic cause don’t want nuclear alternatives, nor windmills in sight of shorelines, nor large swaths of desert solar arrays, which is similar to saying you don’t want the problem solved.

Some salient facts are that “global warming” or rise in solar irradiance are verifiable simultaneously and presently on Earth, Mars and Uranus. The reference year of 1850 roughly coincides with the end of a prior multi-century, naturally-induced cooling cycle. And while the rate of temperature increase is much of the instigation for finger-wagging in the direction of humanity, computer models indicate if *our* carbon is the instigator of catastrophic warming, we ought to be warmer now than we are. Arctic ice is receding (it’s receded before) yet Antarctica is still accumulating ice mass. Swiss glaciers have retreated higher in centuries past while today the southern cryosphere shows no recession.

But he and the other sane people were shut out, see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_03/010968.php

Yes, well, that’s what happens when science is politicized. Both sides get unreasonable in a hurry. Neither side of the political aisle is has a lock on rational behavior on this issue, anymore.

People who are legitimately unconvinced that climate change is anthropogenic can nevertheless agree with you there are other good reasons to improve energy efficiency and trim our appetites. It’s the anthropogenics’ priorities that give the lie to their seriousness, at least in the policy realm. The car is not the place to start if you want meaningful carbon reduction quickly. But it is the place to start if you want to use climate and energy as a lever for amping regulation and bureaucratic control. The automotive fleet takes two decades to change over and even at that, the carbon effects are merely incremental. The IPCC seeks a reduction of annual anthropogenic carbon emissions to *half* of 2005 global levels by 2050. Achieving that would mean about a 30 trillion pounds annual reduction in anthropogenic carbon emissions. Converting the entire US automotive fleet to Prius-like mileage efficiency will save a mere 670 billion pounds of annual carbon emissions. Either converting the US’ coal-fired power-generating infrastructure to non-carbon sources or sequestering the carbon of fixed-location power generation would yield about 4X the cited automotive savings. Add China and India and the leverage in sequestering or replacing fossil electricity generation mounts. Let’s start there, if you want real reductions soonest.

With aggressive commitment to the shorter paths, real carbon footprint reductions could be realized in the US within 5 to 10 years, with the right policy mix subsidizing carbon sequestering, mass adoption of rooftop residential and commercial solar, solar farming, slashing red tape holding back nuclear power, etc. It’s the stifling focus on the automobile as first priority that betrays the role of science behind the politicization of climate. The alarmists’ policy agenda suggests it’s not about the science at all.

Phil

Everything we know about climate further indicates that any extant warming trend isn’t permanent. Frankly, more scientists believe either this is not true or that the evidence fails to support anthropogenicism, than those who assign blame to man.

I don’t know what you’re smoking, but I’d like some.

We can do the sums to estimate how much CO2 has been emitted from the time of the industrial revolution, just a matter of going through those records of coal production etc.

We can also do the sums to estimate how much extra CO2 is in the atmosphere or the oceans. Not surprisingly there’s a match, about half the CO2 from all the fossil fuels we’ve burned is in the atmosphere, the other half in the oceans (where decreasing Ph is mostly overlooked, but has the potential to have very nasty side effects if it keeps on as it has done).

CO2 is a greenhouse gas, as originally determined in the Victorian era. Spencer Weart has an excellent description of the history, http://www.aip.org/history/climate/co2.htm

So, we’re putting greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, and it’s basic physics that this will cause a warming (with less basic physics as to how strong the possible positive or negative feedbacks will be). Seems pretty clear cut to me.

The number of scientists who deny a significant role for human causation is small. I’ve followed the debate for a while, and it’s always the same one or two dozen names that keep cropping up. The amusing thing, if it weren’t so tragic, is that they can’t even agree on a consistent alternative theory (It’s cosmic rays! No, it’s solar variability! No, the basic greenhouse theory is fine, it’s just that they overlooked all those negative feedbacks! No, it’s long term changes in ocean currents! No, we don’t have an alternative but we know you can’t trust computer models!)

As for the comment about the “politicization of the argument”, it seems only in the US that things are politicized – because somewhere along the line it’s become an article of faith for many on the right that global warming is just an overblown panic being latched on to by a motley collection of socialists/environmentalists/Europeans/tree huggers/dirty hippies that want to bring down American Free Enterprise and sap our precious bodily fluids. Elsewhere the political right seem to have no problem in accepting basic science, and there are plenty of sane people on the right in the US – it’s just that they seem to have been drowned out by the crazies. For example, one might think that Vern Ehlers (R-MI), an honest to God physicist in his previous career, would be a natural for the Global Warming committee. But he and the other sane people were shut out, see http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/archives/individual/2007_03/010968.php

I first learned about global warming in 1988 in an introductory environmental science course. I figured we’d never last out the year, let alone the decade, according to the prof. Time sure flies, huh?
Might be a good idea to keep hard numbers out of these apocalyptic scenarios; it tends to make people cynical. Sometimes they even laugh out loud.

Clean coal technologies, extant and evolving, will allow for coal exploitation without concomitant carbon release. Fixed-location power generation is the ideal place to start with carbon sequestering (if you believe global warming is anthropogenic). But either way, it can’t hurt, right?

As I’ve written before, a warming climate at present isn’t the question. The cause and duration are the debate. The natural inputs overwhelm man’s scant contribution, and the new bleeding edge of climate researchers is long term cooling. We don’t know that’s anything more than conjecture either. I’d rather invest in coping strategies over strangling economic progress.

The car you drive isn’t going to affect this or any other planet’s mean temperature at the end of this century.

Phil

If Dan really says this, I think he’s dreaming. Even if he’s not, you have to consider that at the current rate of expansion, in 20 years China will be using more petroleum than the world does today.

>>> And that’s before we count up shale oil. US energy reserves in the form of shale oil under a relatively compact area of the Rocky Mountain region are estimated to be about 12X total Saudi oil reserves.

Yeah, and if Americans allow the destruction of even a small piece of the Rockies, I’ll join a monastery. Furthermore, the capital cost of extracting that stuff and turning it into usable liquid fuel is probably exorbitant. I’m not holding my breath.

>>>On top of that, the US has about a 400 year supply of known accessible coal.

I’m not going to argue with you about global heating, but I can tell you that earth would be cooked before we got very far into that. And within 5 to ten years it will be obvious even to you.

I agree CERA’s record on oil pricing is inconsistent. But their (and Yergin’s) record on oil availability is much better and much better than the Peak Oil doomsayers. This is what I was referring to.

Phil

This is not accurate, however: Cambridge Energy Research, which has an excellent track record specifically on oil supply prognostication estimates that a reserve of conventional oil massing ~3X all the oil pumped to-date remains recoverable in the planet. And that’s before we count up shale oil. The reality is that CERA has a terrible record on oil prices. The market is always well supplied. Prices are always about to go down.

Let me make it clear, I don’t suscribe to the Peak Oil religion that the linked reference seem to support. But Daniel Yergin has a laughable record, but somehow the MSM keeps quoting him.

The issue in question is not whether we are experiencing some warming of the general global climate, but whether this observed warming is anthropogenic and therefore susceptible to human mitigation. Everything we know about climate further indicates that any extant warming trend isn’t permanent. Frankly, more scientists believe either this is not true or that the evidence fails to support anthropogenicism, than those who assign blame to man. For reasons amply outlined by me and others in many threads here, plus new contributions here, anthropogenic climate change is unlikely, and certainly the politicization of the argument is generally leading to the wrong remedies if one genuinely believes we’re the culprit.

We know the price of oil can go down in real terms because it has in the past, against a rising tide of demand. The fact that rapidly industrializing countries with large populations are steepening the demand curve might put more persistence into the current inflationary pressure on supply, but both supply and demand fluctuation mitigate the risk that the upward curve is ceaseless and permanent. That said, we should not fear $200/barrel oil. At that price every known “alternative” oil (read, “difficult-to-extract”) becomes economically viable for recovery, which swells supply to a vast pool that looks more luxuriously buffered relative to demand than oil appeared to be anytime in the past 80 years or so. Moreover, if the fuel tax structure is left as-is, $200 oil results in US gasoline prices still cheaper than the price of same fuel in Europe today. Let’s get to it; but no, not through taxes.

We can handle $200 oil.

Cambridge Energy Research, which has an excellent track record specifically on oil supply prognostication estimates that a reserve of conventional oil massing ~3X all the oil pumped to-date remains recoverable in the planet. And that’s before we count up shale oil. US energy reserves in the form of shale oil under a relatively compact area of the Rocky Mountain region are estimated to be about 12X total Saudi oil reserves. On top of that, the US has about a 400 year supply of known accessible coal. Some people here discount CERA and Daniel Yergin, but they don’t have his track record for accurately diverting the intelligentsia’s gaze from doom.

If climate change Chicken Little psychology doesn’t derail us, we will be able to transfer our energy dependencies to domestic sources, and focus on implementing the cleanest possible extraction, restoration and combustion methods for tapping our hydrocarbons. This is the real choice Americans have — and taxation isn’t the answer. Will we be willing to pay now for enlightened exploration and exploitation within our borders that will change the geopolitical-econometric game? The US’ energy vulnerability — which even today is much less acute than the EU’s or Japan’s — is a condition of our own choosing.

Right now in California we are having a gasoline price recession. Our prices are still higher than the national average but the differential is much less than last summer and fall. In the past two years, that differential has been near +75 cents in some areas of our state. Our gasoline prices declined significantly since December because of the peculiarities of supply as affected by refineries. Californians have in toto trimmed gasoline consumption month-by-month for nearly two years and suddenly the state is awash in California-grade gasolines. The refineries are shipping California gasoline to non-California markets that don’t demand our formulations, rather than allow the oversupply to decrease prices further. They are also trying to empty the pool before they switch to mandated summer formulations in March. In California, our gasoline price volatility and the false floor in same is more influenced by a shortage of refinery capacity than it is by changes in the market price for oil.

Point is, there is much active management of fuel prices that reach consumers, further influenced by hostility to new refinery construction.

We will not run out of oil. Price, demand and supply will react to each other, with any of the three subject to increase, reduction or moderating influence from the others, with some delays being normal.

Fixed location power generation is the place to focus near-term efforts to mitigate carbon release (if you care about this) and drive real efficiency that preserves liquid fuels for economically valuable mass mobility. Certainly nuclear power should play an expanded role in the US. Conventional solar capture and conversion is disappointingly expensive and inefficient, but is making real progress, and the US is well-sited and suited to large-scale solar farming.

Check out http://www.eSolar.com and http://www.energyinnovations.com. EI has developed highly concentrated solar “sunflower” capture and eSolar is improving both capture and control of micro-mirror arrays. This is just a sliver of R&D initiatives on their way to market.

The future is going to work out, folks.

Electric vehicles may become part of the mix that mitigates today’s inefficiencies. But serious improvements to battery chemistry have historically come slowly. Expect to be disappointed. Hybrid propulsion is essentially conservative with serial hybrid systems being the progressive wing of that stopgap. Expect to be patient. Meanwhile, internal combustion engine private automobiles are on a one-way path to diminished environmental impact and progressively greater efficiency, and will still be a mainstream transportation product in 50 years.

Phil

If you are interested in the details, read Robert Rapier’s take on it: Furthermore, it is much cheaper to expand existing capacity than to build new refineries. The API recently estimated that it costs about 60 percent as much to expand existing capacity as to build new capacity. And refiners are definitely investing in expansions. In just the past 10 years, refinery capacity has expanded by 2 million barrels per day. That is the equivalent of adding 1 decent-sized refinery each and every year for 10 years. You can verify those numbers for yourself right here.

It is also worth considering that while Big Oil as a group reaps profit from tight supplies, each individual oil company would lose market share if it did not expand capacity. So the key question is: Do the oil companies collude, or do they compete fairly? Well, let’s consider the evidence for fair competition:
1. No congressional investigation has ever been able to demonstrate collusion. Apparently that’s over 30 investigations, and no evidence of collusion. Either you have to believe there is no collusion, or you have to imply our elected leaders are very corrupt and involved in a huge conspiracy. No doubt some will choose the latter explanation. As for you rational people out there, please explain how this collusion can go on, undetected, for so long.
2. The increase in capacity mentioned above.
3. The US also imports a fair amount of refined products. So even if there is collusion, eventually all that would achieve is an increasing percentage of imported refined products.

The evidence makes it pretty obvious. If there is evidence to the contrary, please produce. Hint: Your gut feel of a huge undetected conspiracy is not evidence…

Agreed, solutions will have to be found – but as long as we remain oblivious to the potential “everything stops” nature of the problem, we’re only providing patches and not fixes.
Which is why I find the editorial too polyanna for my taste.ø

As you write, the public is voting with the wallet, and going for smaller, more efficient cars – which will (let’s hope) force certain Lutzian manufacturers to realize that’s happening in time. But apart from a possible short-term dip in oil prices due to a stagnating world economy (and the jury’s out on that one) there’s no way oil prices are going south.
What is true, though, is that there is absolutely no relationship whatsoever between today’s oil prices and the extraction cost. To wit: the obscene profits of the oil companies.

Excellent points. However…

1. Re the publics’ purchasing of wildly inefficient vehicles:

I think the mindset of car owners’ IS slowly changing. Perhaps not fast enough for worst case global warming scenarios, but it is happening.
Note that fuel costs are still a small fraction many peoples’ car costs. That’s especially true for more pricey vehicles.

2&3. Re oil sands’ and coal liquefaction environmental costs:
Until such costs are made highly visible, many don’t care (me & some) or don’t care enough to change their habits (most). And if the EU bans such petroleum products, so be it. The price is then lower for everyone else. (And will make it that much harder politically to ban them in other places – once the EU’s costs become transparent.)

4. Re enhanced oil recovery. New records are set regularly on how deep wells can go and where oil is found – where none was thought previously. I’m optimistic about oil being around a long time. Those with expertise on how to get it – like Exxon-Mobile – will benefit immensely.

5. Natural gas dwindling. I agree it’s a problem. The price is high and getting more supply to the market is tough given political realities about drilling and LNG terminals.

This may solve itself however- the marginal cost of electricity is becoming dependent on gas turbines. Electric (and maybe gas) shortages and high prices may be close. California was willing to throw Gray Davis under a political bus for screwing up the power grid. That in a state where the cost per KW/hour was mostly UNDER 8 cents – a bargain compared to the Northeast. I’m hopeful the rest of America will react the same way if things get just as bad.

Here are the viable alternatives:

1. Fuel efficient transportation,
2. Heavy oil/Oil sands,
3. Coal liquefaction,
4. Enhanced oil recovery,
5. Gas-to-liquids.

1 requires a major change in mindset amongst users of cars, who are presently buying wildly inefficient vehicles.

2 and 3 carry enormous environmental costs, at a period where awareness of these are at a zenith. Already there is talk of oil from tar sands being banned in the EU, for instance.

4 is an option, following as a result of an increase in the price of oil, without such an increase, no enhanced oil recovery.

5 Depends upon natural gas reserves meeting projections. At present there’s a major crisis in projected world gas delivery with major shortfalls as new fields are failing to live up to expectations.

It’s all a question of how successful a wedge-strategy designed to replace easily recoverable petroleum can be implemented. It’s really worth it to google and download the Hirsch Report.
Here’s an illustration of how these alternatives can come online “in time.”
http://www.oilcrash.com/images/hirsch/image_12.gif

And here’s an illustration showing projected increases in demand, and how the wedges will mitigate an oil shortfall, IF we begin acting in time. The longer we delay, the greater a chance of option three – a serious reduction in available energy.

http://www.ibiblio.org/tcrp/doc/art/scenario1.jpg

Until the wedges are in place, derlivering reliable substitutes for cheap oil, there is no longer such a thing as cheap oil. The price will just keep going north. A worldwide economic downturn may dampen demand for a while, but that will also delay the implementation of the wedges. Combine this with the energy nationalism we’re seeing now, where nations with petroleum are realizing it might be a wise thing to hedge their bets and not give it all away at today’s firesale prices …

Radical changes are afoot. Either we become more like Europe, or we become more like China – and not in a good way.

US oil imports for 2007 came for the following countries according to the department of energy (in thousands of barrels per day).

Canada – 1900
Saudi – 1500
Mexico – 1450
Venezuela – 1200
Nigeria – 1200
Iraq – 500
Angola – 400
Colombia – 200
Algeria – 180

Notice how a lot less comes from the middle east than you expected? I think that OPEC does not have as much control over the price of oil than they portray. OPEC is certainly not even close to being a cohesive unit. Many OPEC countries cheat. But, OPEC could not have anticipated such a windfall in their wildest dreams. Prices have more to do with market demand than OPEC supply management.

Cheap oil is done and gone. Until we tax gas like Europe, we will continue to use too much of the stuff. Even IF we tax gas, we still might not get a grasp on the huge demand for the stuff. America still (for now anyway) leads the world in many ways.

Question: do you think that developing countries will tax gas? Answer: no way. Certainly not if America as a first world country won’t do it. Therefore demand will continue to rise.

Oil/gas are used for many things. Plastics are used more and more. My ATV, generator, two boats and four personal airplane trips per year were certainly NOT part of my demographic 50 or even 25 years ago. Production of red meat uses lots of oil (the average meat eater uses more oil that an SUV/pickup driver driver – imagine readnecks that do both!)

More toys, more cars, more economic success overall for the world (in which USA is less and less important) all lead to expensive energy.

And yes, we are running out of the cheap stuff. Tar sands projects cost big $$$, which is big risk. Risk will only be undertaken if the oil companies expect to receive huge profits on that risk.

And who is building the new gas refineries? NOBODY. Oil companies know that they can make more money by keeping the supply tight. EPA rules make it hard to build new ones.

The only limits on the price of oil will be future regulation and subsidies to competitive sources of energy.

Global warming is happening. Things ARE going to change. Energy is still needed in our society, and will always be needed. And we will need oil for a long time yet, even though the use of the stuff is going to screw our children and grandchildren. And that is the main reason why many people can’t accept global warming. They are unwilling to believe that their actions are causing irreparable harm to the planet. So they don’t read the global warming books. They slam Gore. Etc.

But if you want to make money, buy oil companies NOW.

Will oil prices go south in the short term? I doubt it, but maybe. But $70 or $60 or $50 a barrel oil would not have been considered cheap just a few years ago!

However, a word to those of you who say “we are not running out of oil…”

That depends on how low the tank is before you say you’re “running out…” I could make the case that from the moment you fill up and start the car, you are “running out.”

And that is where I differ with y’all. Regardless of how large it is, the Earth is a finite object. That means there are LIMITS. Therefore, whatever is “inside” must also be of a finite, LIMITED quantity.

The geological forces that made oil stopped long ago. Because replenishment is not happening, every barrel we take therefore decreases the total available.

We take 85 million barrels a day. For the most part, we don’t store it; we use it up.

Zero barrels are replaced by natural forces.

The burn-rate is 85 million per day, or about 31 billion barrels a year. Historically, we have increased our demand every year.

The Earth has a finite volume left in the ground. That volume is not replaced.

I suggest that those who believe “we are not running out” reconsider the math. After all, even little kids understand the meaning of “all gone.” It’s inexcusable for grown adults to not have a grasp on this simple concept.

I’m not talking about tomorrow or next week. I take a longer-term view here.

I think the evidence and plain logic support my opinion that we are in fact “running out.” In 20, 200, or 2000 years…at some point in the future, it will EVENTUALLY be “all gone” (or not accessible, which, for all intents and purposes, is the same thing).

Even if we switch to another form of energy for transportation, we will still use oil for plastics, medicines, food production, and so forth. Our survival will still be heavily dependant on a finite resource that is NOT being replenished…

So to say “we are not running out” is to ignore the obvious…at least to most kindergarteners.

KBW :

“Ugh, I hate it when people trot out the global cooling myth”

It was not a myth.

It depends what you mean by myth.

It is true that there were a few stories in the media, on slow news days. It is not true that the scientific community thought that they understood things enough to give a clear warning, given the state of knowledge at the time.

There were two reasons to worry about global cooling:
1) The timelines of the ice ages were only just coming into focus, and a fairly naive look at those numbers would make it seem that we were due for a repeat “soon” in geological time, i.e. within the next few thousand years.
2) Humans were causing the release of large amounts of soot, SO2, CO2 and all sorts of other industrial by products. The CO2 would gradually accumulate and cause a warming, but most of the others would tend to cool – the same process as in the over-hyped nuclear winter scenarios. At that time, it wasn’t clear which effect would dominate.

So, plenty of material for speculation, but not much more than that. There was no scientific consensus that we were in for a prolonged cooling.

I was there in the Seventies, and have one particular reason to remember the topic. In ‘76 I entered a UK civil service fast track selection procedure. One question was, as best I remember it, “there is incontrovertible proof that an ice age is imminent and within a hundred years the UK will be under ice. Advise the minister…” I’d just finished my bachelors in physics, with some emphasis on geophysics in my final year, and almost burst out laughing at how preposterous the scenario was given the scientific knowledge of the time.

Later, windswords quotes various websites. The essential dishonesty of these is very noticeable, they talk only about mass media and avoid any evaluation of what mainstream science said then and now. It’s also noticeable that there’s a consistent political stance – the “American Conservative Union”, an article from “Boone Pickens Free Market Fellow” etc.

It’s a tragedy that in the US the science has got waylaid by politics in this way. It seems that in the rest of the world, the political right has no trouble in recognizing basic science, so people like Sarkozy, Cameron, Merkel all agree on the need for action. I wish it hadn’t been Gore making that movie, it makes again for a split based on partisan identity and not consideration of the facts.

But – for the free market acolytes – can we perform a little thought experiment. Assume, just for the moment, that the global warming people have it right. Your political philosophy has it that optimal solutions come from trusting the distributed decision making of the market (and I’m not going to argue for socialist central planning, I remember British Leyland). So, given the problem of how to contain greenhouse gas emissions, and the insight that markets are the best way to allocate resources, why try to avoid the question? Isn’t this an opportunity to show how markets can be harnessed to bring greenhouse gases under control at minimum cost and maximal benefits?

Erlich should have wagered about the inflation of oil through this decade. substituting metals is easy compared to substituting for oil.