From the “pay and your sins shall be forgiven” department…
FROM KTVU-TV in Oakland:
Officials Approve Controversial Greenhouse Gas Tax
SAN FRANCISCO — Air pollution regulators in the San Francisco Bay area voted overwhelmingly Wednesday to approve new rules that impose fees on businesses for emitting greenhouse gasses.
The Bay Area Air Quality Management District’s board of directors voted 15-1 to charge companies 4.4 cents per ton of carbon dioxide they emit, an agency spokeswoman said.
Experts say the fees, which cover nine counties in the Bay Area, are the first of their kind in the country. The new rules are set to take effect July 1.
The modest fee probably won’t be enough to force companies to reduce their emissions, but backers say it sets an important precedent in combating climate change and could serve as a model for regional air districts nationwide.
“It doesn’t solve global warming, but it gets us thinking in the right terms,” said Daniel Kammen, a renewable energy expert at the University of California, Berkeley. “It’s not enough of a cost to change behavior, but it tells us where things are headed. You have to think not just in financial terms, but in carbon terms.”
But many Bay Area businesses oppose the rules, saying they could interfere with the state’s campaign to fight global warming under a landmark law signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.
Soot, Co2, all comes from the same man made sources, the burning of fosil fuels. Nice to see you agree that human activities are causing the arctic to melt rapidly!
“There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws.”
Ayn Rand; Atlas Shrugged 1957
This has nothing to do Global Warming or saving the Polar Bears and everything to do with being made inmates in a planet wide Gulag. If they want to treat us like criminals then let us all strive to be the very best criminals our talents will allow.
Mike
leebert,
You forgot to mention (and MikeK seems to have ignored as well) the extent of Antarctic sea ice reaching ‘uprecedented’ levels, i.e., an all time record for sea ice extent last year and it continues this year unabated.
MikeK, I’m wondering why you think the ‘natural cycle that’s masking AGW’ will end soon? Given that Solar Cycle 23 is 12.5 years and counting with the no major activity on the Sun since 2005 and Cycle 24 expected to be quiet (usual behavior after an extended cycle) I don’t have the expectation of any warming for at least the next 10 years and I have to say it seems to me that this is showing rather pointedly that the climate is not as sensitive to CO2 as the IPCC would have us believe.
MikeK,
From about 1980-1999 NASA (you know, Hansen’s mob) claim that the Arctic was losing 193,000 km2 per year. Starting about 2000 that number tripled. Using all their neat satellite and other data acquisition, they determined that the primary reason for this tripling was a change in winds that loaded the annual broken up ice into normal currents that swept it to warmer waters where it melted. The longer this occurs the less thick old ice is left and the easier it is for the next year to melt further.
http://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/lookingatearth/quikscat-20071001.html
I don’t see a heck of a lot to blame people for in that scenario, do you??
Soot, Co2, all comes from the same man made sources, the burning of fosil fuels.
Nice try, MK. Soot is an actual pollutant, caused by incomplete combustion. Most of it comes from south Asia and is readily lofted to the NP. A great deal of it also comes from the burning of biomass or vegetation. Clearing of rain forest in order to grow corn, soy, etc. for biofuels is a large source.
AGWers love, love, love to conflate C02 with pollution, but it’s all a big lie.
Bill,
It was a quick one-off post.
Indeed I expect the Arctic to show some kind of ice recovery b/c of the approx. 2:1 annual emissivity-to-insolation of open water near the poles. I’d also think the reversed currents & warm AO will shift as well, help ice recovery. I keep reading conflicting reports about unusual new faults in the last big ice shelf so I’m staying a bit agnostic about it all – thick ice vs. thin ice, etc. KuhnKat however, made an excellent point.
The reason I push the point about soot is that there are real field data demonstrating its net heating effects on ice and in the air.
The field data against CO2, on the other hand, are sketchy b/c of complexity … the seeming inability of the field to gather definitive field data on water vapor feedbacks and ocean heat content doesn’t favor a case for strong evidence of a worst-case CO2 warming scenario (2.6+ degr C).
MikeK:
> Soot, Co2, all comes from the same man made
> sources, the burning of fosil fuels. Nice to see
> you agree that human activities are causing
> the arctic to melt rapidly!
Thanks for sticking with us.
The difference between CO2 & soot is that soot is readily abated from smokestack & tailpipe emissions.
The environmentalist view on this is that the battle is against CO2 & soot will follow along. Taken on face value the claim that CO2 levels pose a hazard, if CO2 emissions can’t be brought down quickly then that much-cited window of opportunity will close. Soot abatement widens that window of opportunity by a significant margin, and its cheap, cost-effective and imminently feasible. For the time being, CO2 mitigation is not.
Note how the big environmentalists orgs are lumping CO2 & soot under the rubric of “carbon emissions.” I believe they’re doing this is for fear of diluting their message about CO2 (I remember EDF had a big blog entry on soot a year back). Soot is the carbon that must not be named.
If the environmentalists were true to their word they wouldn’t use the polar bears as the thin wedge in their campaign against CO2, they’d immediately cite soot as the bears’ greatest current threat. They won’t. So either the bears aren’t terribly threatened -or- the environmentalists are holding a gun to the polar bears’ heads.
Ask them about soot and they’ll reply that the evidence against soot isn’t established, is new, needs validation, etc. That’s baloney, the evidence against it has been piling up since 2001. That’s real field data, not weak circumstantial evidence underpinning a hypothesis that has been shown to have serious flaws. Even James Hansen has stopped using climate models in making his predictions.
The enviro organizations have galvanized their constituents and don’t want to shift rationale one iota. Is that cynical or battle strategy? I have to wonder. In the meantime, until some rationality is injected into the discussion, you won’t hear much about soot. I hope that will soon change.
re: David S (22:39:04)
7% is correct, for folks who made over $500,000 (in 1913!) Much lower for realistic incomes. The Wilson-Gorman Tariff Act of 1894 set a 2% tax on incomes over $4000. It was thrown out (imagine the SC tossing a tax out today) 16th amendment fixed that.
http://www.taxfoundation.org/files/federalindividualratehistory-20080107.pdf
How can a brand new tax be revenue neutral? What did they repeal?
As for all that soot: China is the largest consumer of coal and they are exempt from Kyoto. I doubt they have the same ash and soot recovery standards as the U.S. What’s al-Gore doing about that?
http://www.nationmaster.com/graph/ene_coa_con-energy-coal-consumption
Hi Bruce
Conflation is the tactic du jour. Polar bears be darned, soot is the carbon that must not be named.
Huge plumes of soot, mercury, arsenic, sulfates & nitrates from E. Asia are crossing the Pacific & are being further lofted into the Arctic.
I look at some of the unqualified statements made about CO2 and I have to wonder about the quality of science being done. For instance, the oceans are going to acidify from CO2 absorption, but their CO2 capacity diminishes substantially as they warm. That is the oceans are supposed to lose CO2 as they warm, not gain & become more acidic. So what could currently be making the oceans more acidic? Could it be sulfiric and nitric acid from clouds of aerosols instead? If 50% of the mercury deposition in the American West Coast is from China, what else is falling into the sea before it makes landfall?
Aerosols? Acid rain?
At least in my state, an unelected body may not impose a tax. The power of taxation cannot be delegated by an elected body to a non elected agency. Taxation without representation.
The closet thing I could find the the California Constitution was
ARTICLE 11 LOCAL GOVERNMENT
SEC. 11. (a) The Legislature may not delegate to a private person
or body power to make, control, appropriate, supervise, or interfere
with county or municipal corporation improvements, money, or
property, or to levy taxes or assessments, or perform municipal
functions.
Here is some more of that “AGW” my wack job neighbors in San Francisco are trying to fight!!
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/05/24/BA1210TB43.DTL
10 inches of snow in the Sierras closing passes that are normally open, sunny, warm, and dry for Memorial Day Weekend!!
Could be timely as the masking of global warming by the cooling phase of natural cycles will soon be over.
PDO is a thirty year cycle. Soon to be followed by a cool AMO. That’s around a 40-year cycle. (And then there’s AO, and NAO, also still on warm. But only for a while. Both multidecadal cycles.)
All this leaves out the as-yet AWOL Solar Cycle 24. And if THAT’s gone south, we’re–really–tooling for a cooling. (25% of the time since the Oort Minimum has been spent on the bum side of the DeVries cycle.)
The first rise in atmospheric methane levels for a decade could suggest that the melting of parts of the Asian permafrost are starting to release very significant levels of methane.
Methane is only 7.1% of the GH effect (().4% if including water vapor). It’s last on the list of the “Big Four” GH Gases. As you state, it has been very stable for a decade.
And if a cooling hits, the issue is moot, to say the least.
Any way the less fossil fuels burned the less money in the hands of OPEC, now that must be an incentive to conserve fuel!!
It all depends if you prefer an Arab country to act like Qatar or Kuwait (lots of oil money) or like Syria (almost no oil money). There are exceptions (like Iran on the one hand and Egypt on the other), but I see no particular advantage to anyone if OPEC goes bust.
Soot, Co2, all comes from the same man made sources, the burning of fosil fuels. Nice to see you agree that human activities are causing the arctic to melt rapidly!
Yes.
Point is that particulates are one hell of a lot easier and cheaper to clean up than CO2. In 20 to 30 years, China and India will be affluent enough to do that part of the cleanup (for the exact same reasons the west did).
Then all it takes is one good layer of the white stuff to cover up the dirty stuff and the problem simply goes away. Not only the “grit melt” from the soot, but the albedo issue as well.
leeb: Yes, of course. Lord knows how much the brown cloud is contributing to ocean pollution through carbon fall. But that will only last as long as the cloud lasts. And that will be gone (or well on the way out) in three decades.
That sort of pollution costs very little to clean up compared with CO2 cuts.
These are almost never straight-line equations. They are s-curves, j-curves, and o-curves.
KuhnKat
The 1930’s ice recession
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2F1520-0442%282004%29017%3C4045%3ATETWIT%3E2.0.CO%3B2&ct=1
Even Andy Revkin over on his NYT “Dot Earth” column/blog points to dynamic – wind & ocean currents – phenomena, not “thermodynamic” ones.
“…First, the [polar bear] listing was a function of the projections, not current conditions. And second, I know of no sea ice experts who say the huge loss of multi-year floating ice in the Arctic Ocean has been mainly driven by soot, although soot is clearly one influence on snow (and ice) melt. The huge change in the Arctic ice cover was mainly driven by dynamics (winds, etc.), not thermodynamics, according to most of the ice scientists (more than 20) I queried last fall….” — A. Revkin, May 15th, 2008
http://dotearth.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/05/14/administration-polar-bear-threatened-but-co2-not-relevant/#comment-35523
I disagree with making too big a distinction between short- vs. long-term thermodynamic & dynamic effects on the ice. They compound each other, possibly along with the Arctic Haze phenomenon. Seems to me that contemporary soot thermal effects has made the ice extent more vulnerable to other dynamic effects. I can only guess but I’d tend to think that soot would likewise have a continued and ongoing effect on thin annual ice, etc.
The question I’m left with is whether CO2 will ever have the same impact that soot has had upon the Arctic. CO2 is a Johnny Come Lately compared to Soot, and as we know, the ultimate amount of CO2-driven warming is controversial. The more we learn about soot & aerosols, the more we find out their surface shading effects are misleading, that sooty/brown aerosols have a net heating effect in the air. On ice the evidence shows that soot has driven a linear long-term trend of ice loss. The effects of airborne aerosols are more variable and natural phenomena (the AO, wind, ice rotation) come and go.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080407132120.htm
http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0416/p25s01-wogi.html?page=1
With solar cycles we might be looking toward a 4+ decade dimming cycle, so we may realize a recovery of the icecap if soot mitigation is pursued.
What really bugs me about all this is that the AGWers make absolutely no mention of any of these mitigating factors, soot being the big one, the sun’s onset of a long-term dimming cycle another, the missing ocean heat yet another. I’m OK with known unknowns, but their neglect of these data counts as sins of omission.
retired engineer:
Via the Kyoto / UNFCCC CDM mechanism China is being paid for the actual use of clean coal plants. They are following Western clean air standards, but it’s only a start. As to the wisdom of subsidizing these projects it’s a quandary.
For a UN organ established under the premise that CO2 is dangerous it would seem self-contradictory for it to be helping fund coal-burning power plants. This is the mechanism that penalizes industrialized countries for emitting CO2, hence giving yet another economic competitive advantage to India and China and paying them to emit even more. EU member countries are already grappling with the prospect of cutting their own throats economically, particularly for the sake of an emergent hegemony of the Chinese Communist Party. The EU is now reconsidering self-inflicted punitive carbon taxes and warning of carbon tariffs if the outcome of these taxes will be the loss of industries and jobs to Asia. Labor and industry are looking at the prospect of these green policies and noting that if off-shoring CO2 along with production will accelerate globalization it’ll come at the expense of domestic industries, jobs and economic power.
If the best goal is soot & aerosol mitigation then it makes sense, but puts the lie to so many CO2 exaggerations and contrivances.
David S:
Six pack of Pilsner, and a 20 pack of Tim-bits (donut holes for you Americans)….final offer. The San Fran crowd will get along with the Vancouver crowd, but they should watch out for the rest of B.C. where oil and gas is starting to drive their economies.
Evan Jones:
We’re largely on the same page. I may not be quite as sanguine as some about certain aspects of climate change – either the nascent solar dimming, the potential rate of global warming or the newfound heating from aerosols – but I see no cause for alarmism either.
Who knows? That errant OHC may resume if aerosols are cleaned up. But since the SH shows less overall temperature anomalies and the SH is largely aerosol-free, I tend toward optimism on that count. If Trenberth is speculating that the missing OHC is disappearing into space, then perhaps we’re enjoying some kind of reprieve from a dimming sun. Ramanathan’s findings on the net warming effect of tropospheric brown clouds (soot + sulfates) have propelled even a staid and orthodox AGWer like himself to cite field data that contravenes IPCC conventional thinking. Its manifold effects of drought, glacier decimation, atmosphere heating and polar thaw are reason enough to qualify the skeptic’s premise. Likewise we don’t know how long a calmer solar period will last — 45 years? 90?
The AGWers will claim that none of this exculpates CO2. Perhaps they’ll be proven right in their worst-case scenarios (even though I don’t think so). But with opportunist shenanigans of the likes of Al Gore the skeptic sniff test becomes a big challenge for the AGWers. He’s their own worst enemy.
Even so I’m willing to grant provisional forebearance on their behalf in the form of soot mitigation. For now Kyoto & its successor be damned.
Soot mitigation should happen anyway. It seems a reasonable critical path option in a phased, but provisional and qualified, plan to phase into a cleaner industrial society less dependent upon fossil fuels. Soot *is* the right first step for the AGWer POV as well, as they should be ready to hedge against the great inertia of the entire human economy. Taken on face value, anything that widens their oft-cited window of opportunity would be sensible. Any ruse to subsume soot as just another CO2 is rightly seen as a duplicitious effort to protect CO2 as a PC cause celebre.
Soot *is* the carbon that must be named and it must be presented on its own and not under the counterproductive rubric of CO2. Qualified statements WRT CO2 are OK, but only in the context of risk assessment, not with soot riding on the cape of foregone conclusions made by minions of globo-soc.
This is why I make so much noise about soot, it’s feasible, doable, and will help further humanity at so many levels. But this means that priorities have to be balanced and applied in metered doses. As such sane risk-assessment is the only realistic path before us. Anything else is bound to fail either as a matter of a fool’s errand or missed opportunities.
“Further sins require further expense.”
RE: crosspatch (21:07:12) :
There was, and never will be, a vote by the SF Board of Sups (or boards of any other counties) on such matters. The BAAQMD rules by fiat – their “vote” is solely amongst their own board.
RE: crosspatch (21:08:23) :
SFO is located in Millbrae, about 17 miles south of SF.
RE: Bill (06:49:04) :
The tax is applied to all business in SF and the megalopolis it’s part of, impacting nearly 7M people either directly or indirectly plus all customers of said businesses world wide.
RE: Gary (08:04:42) :
CO2 is not pollution.
RE: Roads (11:34:12) :
The national administration have done much to perpetrate alarmism regarding AGW and Climate Change. They are in league with the philosophy of the BAAQMD. And you are in league with the whole lot.
RE: Mike K (06:34:34) :
How much of claimed 20th century warming is a result of natural cycles? And I would urge you to reconsider your false claims regarding areal extent of sea ice. The annual minimum is generally in August or September. There is no way current extent is lower than that. That’s assuming you even trust the “data.”
RE: KuhnKat (16:32:37) :
A very dangerous scenario, so late in the season. But, nothing to see here move along, drink the AGW kool aid.
leeb:
Bear in mind that soot gets cleaned up as a natural matter of course. No undeveloped country cleans up its soot. That doesn’t happen until poverty is a lesser killer than soot. By the time that happens, a society will make the economic decision to clean up its soot. No World Legislation required.
This so far has been the invariable pattern. A developing-process-plus-pollution followed by affluence-plus-cleanup. There are no exceptions to this rule I know of. And since it conforms with human nature, I doubt there ever will be an exception.
But don’t expect the soot cleanup before the affluence. Ain’t gonna happen.
The best way to deal is to help the UDCs to achieve that affluence as quickly as possible. Not only will this create the conditions for a “natural” cleanup, but the increased wealth and wealth-fueled tech will put us in a much stronger position to deal with ANY environmental problem. (Including AGW, if that turns out to be true.)