Guest post by Willis Eschenbach
The upcoming Copenhagen climate summit, officially and ponderously named “COP15 United Nations Climate Change Conference Copenhagen 2009”, is aimed at reducing the emissions of the developed world. The main players, of course, are the US and Western Europe. There is a widespread perception that if the US and Western Europe could only get our CO2 emissions under control, the problem would be solved. Nothing could be further from the truth.
To see the gaping hole in this idea, it is only necessary to look at the historical record of carbon emissions. Here is that graph:
While in 1970 the US and Western Europe combined to contribute about half of all CO2 emissions, at present this is far from true. In the past 35 years, the combined emissions of the US and Western Europe have risen only slightly. Globally, however, CO2 emissions have risen steeply, with no end in sight.
So it doesn’t matter if Europe signs on to a new Kyoto. It doesn’t matter if the US adopts Cap and Trade. Both of them together will make no significant difference. Even if both areas could roll their CO2 emissions back to 1970 levels, it would not affect the situation in the slightest.
These are meaningless attempts to hold back a rising tide of emissions. Me, I don’t think rising CO2 levels are a problem. But if you think it will be a problem, then you should definitely concentrate on adaptation strategies .. because mitigation simply isn’t going to work.
TA (10:05:59), thanks for taking this idea further:
Actually, adding in Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand makes little difference. In the graph above, the US and Western Europe are 28% of the global emissions. This is a bit less than a third of the total.
Adding in Canada, Japan, Australia, and New Zealand brings it up to 37%, or a little more than a third of the total.
The main point, however, is not the total amount. It is that the increases in CO2 are not occurring in the developed world. They are happening in the developing world.
And anyone who thinks that:
a) the developing world will sign on to binding reductions, and that if they do
b) signing on for complex restrictions to reduce CO2 will make any difference in countries where the simplest restrictions are routinely ignored
is simply not following the story.
The EU tried it with Kyoto and failed miserably … and people seriously think that Bangladesh and Borneo and the Congo will succeed? Seriously?
I have posted up the graph including those countries here.
TA,
In your comment at (07:57:32) you deduce that US + EU emissions combine to appx 4 gigatonnes of carbon. You are misreading the graph, as the green line represents the combined US and EU emissions at appx 2.3 gigatonnes for the most recent data. 2.3 divided by 8.2 is about 28%.
Willis Eschenbach (11:37:12) :
“Unlike the chart at the top of this thread, the table has nothing to do with CO2. It measures “energy intensity”, which is the amount of energy used to produce a dollar’s worth of goods.”
I took the liberty of using CO2 as a proxy for energy… not unreasonable given the global importance of fossil fuels. But in your comments you equate “energy intensity” with efficiency. It’s no such thing as it’s so influenced by say the type of economy eg service oriented vs industrial. Otherwise the ultimate efficient society would consist of bankers, management consultants and lawyers wearing wooly hats to keep warm, although the UK for one seems to be going that way.
I have no disagreement with your main article at all.
Son of Muldur, you advance an interesting argument, viz:
Again, I would encourage people to check the numbers before making claims. Modern western economies do not differ a whole lot in the makeup of their GDP, with services making up around three quarters of most western industrialized countries’ GDP. Here are the sectoral breakdowns of the GDP of some countries from the top to the bottom of the energy intensity list I showed above (data from the CIA Factbook):
Country, Agriculture, Industry, Services
Iceland, 8.4, 15.6, 76
Norway, 4, 22, 74
US, 1, 20, 79
France, 2, 21, 72
UK, 1, 26, 73
Note that the service sector of all of the countries are within a few percent of three quarters of the economy.
So, obviously, there is no correlation between the size of the service sector and the energy efficiency of a country. The UK has one of the smaller service sectors, and yet it has one of the lowest energy intensities … go figure.
Small error, makes no difference, the service sector for France should have been 77%, not 72%. My bad.
Earle Williams,
Oh, yes, I see my mistake. Thanks.
Add a line for natural emissions and plot proposed anthropogenic cuts and see how little of the total percentage wise is possibly achieved.
Fred H. Haynie (16:36:55), you and several others have proposed adding natural emissions to the graph, viz:
Let me see if I can explain why I didn’t add natural emissions to the graph.
The atmosphere is only a temporarily residence place for CO2. It can be compared with a bathtub with an open drain being being constantly filled by a hose. Suppose we start with an empty bathtub, and toss a hose into it labelled “natural water” and start filling.
At first, the water in the tub starts rising. But after a while, the rise starts slowing. The additional water in the tub adds to the pressure, and the water starts going through the drain faster and faster.
At some point, the tub will reach an equilibrium, where the water flowing out exactly matches the water being added to the tub. This is an analogue of the so-called “pre-industrial” situation of the atmosphere. The CO2 level is at an equilibrium.
Now, let’s throw another hose labelled “anthropogenic water” into the tub. The level will rise until a new equilibrium is reached. Now, there are some important things to learn from this analogue of the atmosphere.
1) If we shut off the anthropogenic emissions hose, eventually the tub will return to the “pre-industrial” line.
2) If the amount of “anthropogenic water” can be held constant, the water level will not continue to rise, but will reach a new equilibrium level and stop rising. This is often misunderstood.
3) The rises and falls in the tub level from changing the amount of “anthropological water” being added can be modelled mathematically as an “exponential rise” or an “exponential decay”. What this means is that initially the water level will change a lot, and as time passes, the change in the water level will slow and eventually stop at a new equilibrium.
4) Most importantly for this issue, the timing and the amount of the rise from, and the return to, the pre-industrial water level do not depend on the amount of “natural water” being added. They are solely an exponential function of the amount of “anthropogenic water” being added.
The same is true for the atmosphere. As long as the natural sources of CO2 do not vary significantly (and as far as we know they are not doing that), how far atmospheric CO2 will rise, and what the eventual equilibrium level will be, have nothing to do with the natural emissions of CO2.
Which is why I did not include the natural emissions of CO2 in my graph above. Yes, natural emissions are quite large (about 220 gigatonnes of C vs 9 GT C for anthropogenic emissions), but they are essentially a constant in the equation and do not affect the final result.
4 billion (20:12:10) :
How can the US circa 1970 (pop. 200 m) be producing similar levels of C to todays US (pop. 300m)?
Improved economic efficiency (capitalism is stellar at cost cutting, and energy costs…) along with the movement from the 1970 Chevy Impala Big Block V8 I used to drive at dismal mpg to the Honda my daughter now drives at a similar age. Oh, and I’m in a Mercedes Diesel that gets about twice the MPG of the old barge…
It’s called “free market forces” and they are a marvelous thing.
According to the graph the US, Euro and China (same as US) combined account for 4 Gtonne, where is the other 4 Gtonne coming from?
Oh, little places, like: Russia, Non-EU Europe, North Africa, some of the heaviest oil consumers per capita in the world – The Middle East (counted as part of Asia in many statistics), India (growing almost as fast as China), Australia / New Zealand / Oceana – those ocean cruses jet vacations and hotels all take juice…, Brazil is growing like a weed and both finding and selling or consuming billions of barrels of oil just off shore in really deep water, then there is the rest of South America … Oh, and don’t forget Canada – it takes a lot to stay warm up there and much natural gas is burned to cook oil out of tar sands. And did I mention Mexico? WIth Pemex subsidy for gasoline prices they have had little incentive to be efficient; kind of like Iran where 25 cent gasoline is reputed to be available…
You see, there is much more to the world than the U.S.A. and because, at least until recently, we were a capitalist system, we had rather stellar leaps forward in energy efficiency of use. Now that we’re a Lange Type Socialist system, you can expect us to become more like China and Russia with increasing energy waste…
Frederick (01:54:55) : The scandal here is the fact that a US with a population of 300 million is using about twice as much Co2 as Europe with a population of 500 million (and that’s just the European Union countries).
And is that the Europe that includes France with an extraordinarily high usage of Nuclear power? Kind of comparing CO2 apples to radioactive oranges, isn’t it? It is important when making comparisons to assure the ruler is a consistent one…
There is no scandal here at all. We produced more goods.
(At least during the interval of past statistics; with China burning up the place, future statistics will reflect that new reality … and the 10%++ unemployment here).
So we refine thousands of tonnes of Diesel that are shipped to the EU. We get ‘credited’ with the refinery emissions (10% of the tonnes, I’d guess) while you get the fuel. We take thousands of tonnes of natural gas and turn it into resins, plastics, fertilizers. The emissions count to us, the products ship to to Europe. Millions of tons of those fertilizers go on our crop land. The food goes to Europe…
Now I’d be just as happy as the next guy to stop shipping our food, our fuels, and our products to Europe. Would you be as happy not to have them? You would be doing it “for the planet:” and it would let the mean old nasty USA cut it’s “emissions per capita”. (We already have one of the lowest emissions per unit of productivity on the planet, we just don’t use many ‘per capitas’ in our production either…)
However I do hate waste and I am appalled at the MASSIVE energy inefficiencies of the US.
A common, but misplaced, belief. Look at emissions per unit of productivity or GDP. We just make (or, now, made) a lot of stuff for the rest of the world. Steel, for example, uses coke that is straight carbon. We get the millions of tons of “co2 credit” you get the steel… And no, nobody can use less tons of coke per ton of steel than we do. We just have a lot of coal, ore, and efficient furnaces; so we make (er, made… have to get use to this ‘new socialist economy’…) lots of steel for the world.
I live in France and the quality of life is higher than in the US due to the excellent health service and the lower disparity in incomes and I know this first hand because I lived and worked in Colorado for a time.
Regional variations are more important that country by country variations. Palo Alto has a stellar quality of life. East Palo Alto across the freeway is just above slum quality… No CO2 disparity. And I’m sure there are some places in “North Africa of Europe” that are none too perfect. I seem to remember seeing the “nightly torching of the cars” for several weeks not too long ago…
It would be good if you yanks did something about cutting your energy use. It’s a national disgrace.
No disgrace at all. But if you insist, I’m sure we can keep our corn, wheat, soybeans, beef, Diesel fuel, plastics, California wine and nuts, and steel here, or make a lot less of them. I’m sure you don’t need any of them at all. Or any Maine Lobster either.
(And before you agree to such a deal, check out the tonnage of Diesel sent to France from the USA… And check out the net imports of food to Europe… Europe dies without net imports of food and fuel…)
BTW, We’ll be “fixing” that medical system Real Soon Now; then all the Canadians, Mexican, and European refugees from Socialized Medicine trying to get needed medical care, that the Commissar has denied at home, can all stop coming over here for treatment in our “broken” system. It will be all fixed up nice, just like the one’s they are avoiding… (And “I know this first hand because I ” worked in London for a while and got to experience “socialized medicine” that was incredibly clueless… Oh, and they killed my Uncle on the operating table via “modest competence” when he would have easily survived in the USA…)
Might I suggest that when speaking of “waste” and “quality of life” you need a slightly wider view of things… and a non-rubber ruler.
Would somebody please expalin if possible in simple non scientific way what the following means?
Thank you in advance.
http://climaterealists.com/index.php?id=4317
“the saturation of the 14.77 micron band of the Earth’s thermal radiation by CO2, makes further ‘CO2 emissions caused global warming’ a physical impossibility.”
“No one with a grasp of high school physics should take any of these schemes seriously. ”
That’s a big part of the problem. Given the school systems prevalent in too much of the US, how many of our kids have an adequate grasp of high school physics? Far too few!
Raw data for CO2 emissions for the world
ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/ndp030/global.1751_2006.ems
shows a doubling from 1970 to 2006 from 4.1Gt to 8.2Gt
The U.S. went from 1.2Gt to 1.56Gt over the same period.
Here’s the raw data for every country
ftp://cdiac.ornl.gov/pub/ndp030/nation1751_2006.ems
James Allison (17:22:48), you ask:
Here’s an example, no real facts involved. Let’s say that carbon when added to glass makes it blacker, less transparent. And let’s say that when the glass gets to 37% carbon, no light at all gets through it.
At that point, the glass could be said to be “saturated” with carbon. And since no light is getting through, increasing the amount of carbon to 50% will make no difference. You can’t go below 0% transmission.
Whether this is true or not is an open question. The problem is that although the lower levels of the atmosphere may be saturated (in that no radiation in the 14.77 micron band can get through the lower levels), this is not true of the upper levels. At the upper levels there is less gas of any kind, so the upper levels are not saturated. So the atmosphere is not like glass, saturated through and through.
This makes a difference because one of the things affecting the strength of the greenhouse effect is how many times radiation headed upwards is absorbed and re-radiated on its way to space. So despite the fact that the lower level may be totally saturated, increased concentration increases the number of times the radiation is absorbed and re-radiated. As a result, increasing CO2 can still change the strength of the greenhouse effect, even though (as the article says) the 14.77.
Hope this helps,
w.
Willis Eschenbach (03:21:35) : The measure of “efficiency” in this case is usually called “energy intensity”. It is the amount of energy necessary to produce one unit of GDP. Before you start castigating the US, it is worthwhile to look at the actual figures. There is an Excel table of these here from the EIA.
A very useful set of numbers, but this is per dollar. When you look at per “unit of production” the USA does even better (though I have no chart to hand, being in ‘computer guy’ mode at the moment, not ‘economist mode’…).
Basically, the USA makes a lot of stuff that makes a lot of CO2 but does not sell for many dollars. Take steel, for example. Things that take lots of space and land, lots of coking coal, and not a lot else. And sells for only a little more than dirt per ton when done… (more if ‘specialty steels’ which is where we are headed to to Brazil and China…). Or Aluminum. Hideous levels of energy per unit (and a ton is a lot of aluminum) and yet not much money made (which is why it’s used for things like beer cans and aluminum foil that are often disposable). Or look at the tons of CO2 per unit of fertilizer (much made from natural gas) and the price per ton of wheat produced.
Now compare that with the dollars for a Mercedes Benz, BMW, French Wines, British drugs…
So while your figures are important, they also have a ‘currency value per unit’ aspect that masks the variation in TYPE of industry that thrive in each place.
We, the USA, score even higher when you look at energy consumption per unit of product, not just unit of currency, and break it out by type of product…
Basically, comparing a Chinese Steel Mill to a Swiss Bank on “CO2 per $” is not the best comparison of energy efficiency. Comparison of a French Bank to a US Bank, or comparison of a French Farm to a US Farm is the better comparison. And even comparison of a Chinese Steel Mill to a US Steel Mill shows us more efficient. But due to extraordinarily low costs for land, labor, facilities, and taxes in China, steel production will move there. And world CO2 per ton of steel will get worse, not better.
FWIW, this is one of the “trickier bits” of Economics to measure. There are a large number of moving parts, statistics are poor, and many of the rulers are rubber rulers. It’s very easy to get it wrong; thus all the folks who get excited and claim the USA is inefficient when we are among the most efficient on the planet and invented most of the process improvements that boost efficiency world wide. (While a German ship Diesel is the most efficient engine in the world at about 54%, the GE turbine that powers many of the worlds planes, electric generation plants, and even some ships of the world comes in at near 52% – hard to beat and a lot cheaper than that giant ship Diesel… when used in ‘combined cycle’ and ‘combined heat and power’ it can rise to even higher total efficiencies… )
So what does all this have to do with Copenhagen?
IMHO, it is simply that the “powers that be” don’t like the USA being an efficient competitor that keeps upsetting their plans and designs and would like to find a way to “level the playing field”; by hobbling the USA. But since we’ve now done a spectacular job of that already with the things that were done to our financial system over the last 2 decades, they risk killing the goose that gives those golden eggs… With any luck, they will realize this in time to prevent the underlings (who they’ve not got worked up to fever pitch) succeeding “too well”…
Of course, if they do, they can always buy their steel, food, and petrochemicals from China. (Which, BTW, will be made with US coal… China has been signing deals with US coal miners, like BTU Peabody, to lock in coal sales for years to come. Peabody is predicting increased profits for decades based on growth of total shipments of coal largely from Chinese purchases that they are booking now… Think about it…)
So I expect the USA to succeed greatly at reducing our CO2 (per $, or per capita, or per unit of production, or..) AND we will reduce our coal burning. You don’t use much coal when you are unemployed and the factory is shut.
But we will be mining more coal than ever and more total CO2 will be produced in the world (it will just come from Chinese soil and with a carbon indulgence from Copenhagen et. al.). And it is not more efficient to ship coal to China for use rather than using it here in plants with EPA certified scrubbing…
The only parts I “don’t get” are the “whose driving this bus?” and the “how are they pocketing enough money off this to make it worth while?” We can see the kings and princes; but we can’t see the King Makers. Nor their shell company shell games…
So when watching the show in Copenhagen, ask if you can see where the the strings go and where the puppet master is standing…
Kate (12:24:23) :
” Ron de Haan (08:54:27) :
Kate, do you have a copy or a download for the report you refer to?
Thanks in advance.”
“…No web link, sorry. Only a Word document which is full of mathematical data and references which even I struggle to understand. Their conclusion, however, is very understandable, and it’s one reason to be incensed at the hijacking of the West’s democratic process by pressure groups like Greenpeace. Their alibi -to be “saving the planet”- is the Biggest Lie in the World.”
Kate, can you send it by e-mail?
Patrick Davis (04:07:41) :
Stats = BS my friend. Homes in the UK are better insulated, therefore more “efficient” consumers of energy. Trouble is, energy costs in the US and the UK are not compareable (Meaning it’s cheaper in the US, and if you paid UK prices..well, there’d be French style riots in the US. Basically, you have no idea yet about energy costs).
Um, pardon my saying this, but you are making a broken gross generalization here that just doesn’t stand up.
Is your UK cost below zero? Is your heating efficiency above 100%?
My present cost is zero and my present efficiency is 100%. (Though next month may change, we’ll see.)
The UK is largely one climate zone (cold and dank most of the time). The USA spans a continent from Death Valley to colder than Sweden. Where in the USA matters a great deal!
As I type this I’m in a home with a window wide open (and often the door). It will be that way much of the winter. And the summer.
Yes, your English home is “better insulated”. But I have no need for insulation. The “heat” is set at 72 F and has not come on all day (door open and all) and will likely stay silent all night. Welcome to California…
(A friend in L.A. had an apartment that had NO heater. Didn’t need one. They just didn’t bother installing a device that would never be used. And San Diego is “room temperature +/- 5 F” more or less year round.)
Now go to “Little Sweden” Minnesota in the frozen north central USA and you find homes that are super-insulated to a such a degree that they have to provide explicit air feed into the space to prevent illnesses. R values that make your English home look like a leaky shack. ( I remember 2 examples of R 45 and R60, and talk of an R120; where my home is more like R 12 and common is R19 – R24)
So which USA you look at matters. And, BTW, my “heating bill” per year is so low I don’t even know what it is. I spend more on hot water for showers. The guy in the super-insulated house runs a few hundred a month. Frozen North does that… And my summer A/C bill is nothing. We don’t use it.
So exactly how much does it matter that my windows are single pane? They are standing open anyway(!). (The one in the bath is left permanently open, the one in the living room we close on “cold” nights… sometimes…)
BTW, Niggling Point: You used “costs” and ought to have used “prices”. The costs to produce and deliver are not much different in both places. The after tax prices are much higher in the UK. But Saudi Oil has about the same cost to deliver to both shores… as does USA Coal. (Virginia to ship to Newcastle is about the same cost per ton as Virginia to train to Nevada…)
So the fact that you are taxed to death matters to my costs how?
So the fact that you are taxed to death matters to my climate how?
So the fact that you are taxed to death means what about efficiency?
So I ought to be taxed to death, why again? Envy?
FWIW, one of my dozen or so English Aunts, on visiting, was a bit agast at the ‘thin walls’, lousy insulation, and truly astounded at the windows left wide open. Then I pointed out that the heater had the pilot light turned off several months prior and I might need to figure out how to light it again in a few more…
I made her a cup of tea and we discussed “English Liquid Sunshine” for a while. (Last time I saw my umbrella was about, oh, last February? I donno… it’s around here somewhere. We had a couple of days rain a week ago and I almost found it then. Then the sun came back. Maybe I’ll look for it next month… 😎 And my shoes. I saw them a few days ago…
Beware of rubber rulers and beware of applying your standards to foreign lands…
” Ron de Haan (08:54:27) :
Kate, can you send it by e-mail?
Yes. You’ll need a disposable address to publish.
“E.M.Smith (19:58:25) :”
I do not believe my response was laden with energy price (Yes, the price to the end consumer not the cost to generate it) envy. House contrustion and insulation is vastly different (One reason why “English” style construction didn’t work too well for early northern Australian settlers) in both contries (Well, we’ve been doing it a few hundred years longer than the USA ;-)). And yes, we’re (They’re, I don’t live there any more) massively taxed for energy making the price higher. You have only to look at the price of gasoline, it’s mostly tax in the UK/Europe. So if you in the USA had to pay a similar price as they do in Europe, you would be rioting. I am not sure how long any politician would last in power if fuel/energy price was similar to that in Europe. Some form of carbon tax may change all that however.
Europe, especially the UK, is finished. We (They) have long since had their powers to defend themselves from the state legislated into oblivion. The US stands well ahead in that regard.
Alarmists start fighting each other
Some environmentalists are more equal than others.
This is from today’s Sunday Express
ENVIRONMENTAL LOBBY GROUP ACCUSED OF ‘ECO-SNOBBERY’
http://www.express.co.uk/posts/view/138896/Environmental-lobby-group-accused-of-eco-snobbery-
By Ted Jeory, Whitehall Editor
A LEADING environmental lobby group was accused last night of “eco-snobbery” and “rank hypocrisy” after it refused to let an airport operator join its carbon reduction campaign. The group, 10:10, which encourages homes and businesses to cut emissions by 10 per cent by 2010, blocked a membership application by Manchester Airport bosses who had pledged to meet the group’s targets.
The operator, which also runs East Midlands, Humberside and Bournemouth Airports, said it wanted to sign up to the campaign to demonstrate its greener credentials. However, within days of the request, it was told politely thanks, but no thanks.
In an email, activist Duncan Clark, a journalist at a left-wing newspaper that backs the campaign, said: “We’ve taken the view that airports won’t be able to participate in 10:10. We don’t think it’s in the spirit of a campaign that directly encourages everyone to take fewer flights to have airports involved. We also need to be careful not to open ourselves up to criticism of greenwash from the wider environment movement. In particular, we’re concerned that allowing airports to sign up would give the impression that the aviation sector as a whole was making great strides on short-term emissions reductions, when in fact the airports represent only a tiny proportion of the emissions of that sector.”
Although 10:10 works with power generator EDF on the campaign, he added: “We feel that allowing airports to participate would be the equivalent of letting power station operators sign up for their office emissions without a parallel commitment on their far more substantial generation emissions.”
Manchester Airport said it was “disappointed”, allowing aviation lobby group FlyingMatters to go more on the attack. It branded the campaigners “eco-snobs” and their response as “the eco equivalent of political correctness gone mad”. Its chairman Brian Wilson said: “If the 10:10 campaign were serious about making a difference it wouldn’t matter where the emission cuts came from, so long as they were made.”
He also pointed out that that 10:10’s leader, Franny Armstrong, the filmmaker whom London Mayor Boris Johnson saved from a mugging last week, flew to New York in September for the premiere of her film the Age of Stupid.
Mr Wilson added: “The response smacks of snobbery and rank hypocrisy.”
The campaign was launched at the Tate Modern gallery in London in September and has attracted the support of celebrities including Delia Smith, author Ian McEwan, actor Colin Firth and DJ Sara Cox, and a host of companies such as Tottenham Hotspur football club and EDF.
FlyingMatters’ new director Eugenie Harvey said: “Manchester Airport has ambitious expansion plans that will encourage people to fly more—it would have been incongruous of us to allow them to join. As for EDF, they have not signed up, we just work with them as a delivery partner. We wouldn’t let them sign up.”
Asked whether any of her group would be travelling to next month’s climate summit in Copenhagen, she said: “Yes, absolutely—but we’re going by sea and land, not flying.”
LarryOldtimer (10:04:55) :
As it happens, as I will be 74 by the end of this year, I actually lived under the circumstances the eco-whackos and warmmongers want all of us to live with. I lived on a farm in Iowa before the Rural Electrification Administration brought power lines into our area.
Dad was born in Iowa on a farm near the turn of the century. Somewhere near Boone or Davenport. He had similar stories.
That one of his parents was Amish added it’s own element… If you wanted to eat something, you started with growing it… Bacon was about a 1 year process. If you wanted a shirt, you made it (though they did buy cloth, being more modern than some…). Fish? Start walking to the river…
His Dad had a small Smithy in the barn (that being the family tradition, and thus my name). If you wanted a screwdriver or hammer, you made it. An axe handle? Start whittling… Butter was started after you milked the cow at 5 am or so… you might have some by dinner time. (And yes, I’ve hand milked a cow. Didn’t grow up on a farm, but Dad had 5 acres of toy farm out of town – about 2 miles away… small town – and my Uncle had a farm we’d visit a lot).
I helped him put decent electric wiring in our home when I was about 8 or 9. We had ONE bulb on a wire from the ceiling in each room and ONE outlet on the wall in SOME rooms. Bare wire “nob and tube” distribution in the attic. And a lot of the time we didn’t use it… That’s the stuff we replaced.
I still remember the amazement everyone had at the amount of light you got from the 2 bulbs in a real fixture. And a switch on the wall where you entered the room… what extravagance! No more crossing to the center in the dark to turn on the light.
We also took an “outbuilding” apart. It had started life as a carriage barn but was turned into a garage of sorts. One of my jobs was to recover all the nails and straighten them out for re-use. We then put in a cement floor and put the building back together reusing everything possible. After all, it is much easier to straighten a nail than to make new ones. (Yes, I was taught how to make a nail. You do them first. Then you learn how to make screwdrivers, then files, then pliers, then …) Our garage had been made with square nails. It is still an odd cherished connection to some other Smith who had hand made them when the “garage” was first built about 1890. Some 60 years later I got to “remake them” for reuse. And they are still in use today…
I also got to help hand dig a well in the yard (for the garden).
As a kid, my room was an unheated space that got down to 20 F in winter some times. (Different part of California from where I life now. North, Inland, and frozen in winter… guess why I moved…)
Oh, and while we didn’t have a wood stove, some farmer friends outside town did. I’ve cooked on ’em… Beastly hot in summer when it’s “110 in the shade and there ain’t no shade!” (We got a wall mount AC when I was about 12? in a place that hit 100+F regularly in summer and sometimes 115+F)
And you are absolutely right.
Those who have lived that way “have clue”; those who have not see it in the greeting cards and find it quaint.
Well, 3 comforters, a “sleeping cap” and shivering all night is not quaint… And the sheer magic of the incandescent bulb is something to marvel at. (I have semi-nostalgic memories of warming my hands over the one in my room so as to avoid going down the outside stairs in the colder outdoors to get into the main room that was the only room with a heater… )
I still have 1/2 dozen shirts my mother made, by hand, for me. I learned to sew from her and helped put on the buttons. Old worn out clothes got turned into rags for cleaning. Forget paper towels..
Then, the very concept of ‘leisure time’ was alien.
I can guarantee you one thing for certain: The folks advocating for a drastic reduction in fuel usage have no idea what it is like to live without it.
I didn’t have it nearly as “rough” as my Dad did (or my Mom, who grew up in a poor part of England and had stories of the one lump of coal they could sometimes get for the stove… and everyone crowded up to the stove during the too short time it was lit…); they made sure I understood what it was like then.
That I can now have whatever temperature I want whenever I want it and whatever lighting I want whenever I want it AND a magic box full of food kept perfectly cold or frozen all the time and made perfectly hot whenever I want it (in another magic box) is a degree of wealth and comfort they only dreamed of as youths.
And it is not something I will give up in response to some loon who has no idea what the alternative is like… My parents worked too long and too hard to make this world for me. Nobody, and I do mean nobody, will infringe on that gift.
” Ron de Haan (08:54:27) :
Kate, can you send it by e-mail?
This may be unnecessary, as the IPCC looks like it is preparing to dump all of its previous climate predictions because they were based on flawed science.
http://www.theresilientearth.com/?q=content/global-warming-predictions-invalidated
Now they’re going on about aerosols and particulates in the atmosphere.
Kate:
“Now they’re going on about aerosols and particulates in the atmosphere.”
AKA: Moving the goal posts again.
CO2 was the original scare, but people are beginning to see that CO2 is beneficial, not harmful. But since money and government growth are the real motivations behind the trumped-up AGW claim, a new crisis must be discovered that will justify the $Trillions that the UN is salivating over. Ravenous hyenas don’t willingly go on a diet.
But China will strongly resist any mitigation. One third of all atmospheric pollution on the U.S. west coast comes straight from mainland China, and China is not going to take the steps necessary to mitigate its rampant pollution, as most profitable Chinese companies are partly or wholly owned by government officials. In the U.S. and the West, pollution control comes before profits. In China, nothing comes before money.
So the blame will, as always, be directed at the essentially pollution-free West, while the BRIC countries continue to grossly pollute the planet we all share.
By the way I am a Brit and I am certainly not a socialist.
I like living in France. I loved it when I lived and worked in the US and I have cousins there who I visit as often as I can. Both countries have their pros and cons and I could go on about the problems with France but that is OT. Unlike the US it does not output a lot of carbon due to its reliance on nuclear and its lower energy consumption. This puts it in a rather unique position within Europe. Anyway, I digress because my point was not about France but about the US.
I realise that energy usage is becoming more efficient. But the point is that for most people, more efficient means cheaper which means that we tend to consume more. As a result, we may have more fuel efficient cars, but now we have two instead of one. We have more efficient heating systems, but rather than use less we build bigger houses which then need more energy to heat, and rather than wear a sweater, we turn up the thermostat. Instead of living more centrally, we build bigger houses in the rural suburbs meaning that we have to drive further to work rather than take public transport.
At the end of the day it comes down to cost and the question is whether the cost of energy in the US is “fair” since after all, this is a finite GLOBAL resource which everyone should be able to enjoy and for one country to squander it just because they ignore the true cost does not seem morally right to me.
Just because the market determines a price does not mean that the price is correct. There are external “costs” associated with energy which are not factored into the price. Such costs include the wars which the US has to fight to ensure a flow of oil from the middle east (both Gulf War I and 2 had a lot to do with oil safety and protecting Kuwait and Saudi Arabia from Saddam), the costs of pollution (diesel particulates, acid rain, …), and maybe there should also be a moral cost – a long term insurance cost to soften the blow to those people who in one or two hundred years will not have the luxury of the cheap energy that the US has today. Never again will we probably have some much concentrated energy in such an easily transportable form as the coal, oil and gas we enjoy today.
I hope I am proved wrong, but unless fission becomes more widely used and fusion is made viable, it’s hard to foresee what will close the coming energy gap. And if there is going to be an energy gap, maybe we should start being more careful with our usage now so that we can delay it and lessen the impact.
In Europe we are taxed more highly than in the US. Right now I pay about 1 euro for a litre of diesel – equivalent to 3.8 euros per gallon – equivalent to about 4.75 dollars (higher than last year due to the fall in the value of the dollar). While I would like to pay less, I do not consider 1 euro a litre to be excessive. I don’t think it stops me from doing stuff I would not do. Instead it does make me think from time to time about combining what could have been two trips into one, or organising what I am doing with my wife so that we take one car instead of both out. We make these sorts of calculations all the time about other things, why should fuel be so cheap we don’t have to think about it ?
You may call it envy, but I am not envious. At 1 euro a litre for diesel I am not taxed to death. I just hate to see waste and that’s what I see when I look at the graph at the top of this page. And then I get angry because I realise that gas is a very precious and finite resource that we should husband rather than squander.
When I go to the US and see all of the large SUVs and high powered pickup trucks that are just used to ferry the kids to school and for mom to go to the store and then to the gym, I think what a waste of energy pushing that 2 ton vehicle around. Maybe mum should walk the kids to school or take them on bikes and then she wouldn’t need to join a gym. Maybe a VW Golf would get her to the supermarket. Maybe there are those who think “I love the US of A for allowing that person the choice to guzzle huge amounts of gas cheaply”. I don’t. Freedom of speech, yes, freedom of movement yes, freedom of choice to burn gas, yes, but only at the right price!
So though I am highly sceptical about global warming, I am in favour of higher taxes on fuel consumption. It could give the US more energy independence and encourage the growth of alternatives. My only gripe with Obama is that a cap and trade system is not transparent, will need to be brokered and this will add transaction costs, and is so loaded up with conflicts of interest and potential abuses that a flat tax on gas would be much better. And I don’t see why the money collected cannot be simply given back in the form of a cut in federal taxes.
I’ve been reading through here for my Sunday morning coffee. EM Smith 17:20 — Well done.
I get very tired of the rote, “…the US has 5% of the world’s population and uses 25% of the energy.” My answer is we make 25% of the worlds stuff.
Willis Eschenbach:
“So the US is about twice as energy efficient as Iceland, more efficient than Norway, Finland, or Belgium, and slightly less efficient than Sweden and the Netherlands.
France does better than the US, it is true … but then Greece and Italy and Germany are more energy efficient than France, and the UK and Switzerland do better than Greece and Italy and Germany.
So I fear your claim that the US energy efficiency is a “national disgrace” compared to the energy efficiency of European countries is simply not borne out by the facts. Heck, by Irish standards, we’re all wastrels …”
By this logic, Alaska is as energy-efficient as New Mexico if they have the same energy consumption per GDP.