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michael sweet at 01:45 AM on 28 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
See this New York Times article that describes problems utilities are having in Europe. Apparently, cheap renewable electricity is undercutting gas generators so the gas generators are being shut down. CO2 costs are low so coal is cheaper than gas. Not many coal plants have been shut down yet. Utilities do not want to develop new fossil fuel plants because of competition from renewables. This Daily Kos article describes some retailers like IKEA and Walmart setting up electricity generation. Presumably it is cheaper to set up solar on their unused rooftops than to buy electricity at retail prices. (hat tip fxible at realclimate)
There will be major changes in electricity generation in the next decade now that wind and solar are cost competitive with fossil fuels. The question is how will these resources get developed. This peer reviewed article shows renewables (primarily wind) are cheaper than fossil fuels now to generate 30% of power (in the US Northeast) and will soon be cheaper for 100% of power generation. In their model they do not use any hydropower because "Hydropower makes the problem of high penetration renewables too easily solved, and little is available in many regions, including PJM". Long range transmission lines (not used in their model) make backup more widely available.
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Alexandre at 23:34 PM on 27 June 2013BC’s revenue-neutral carbon tax experiment, four years on: It’s working
These results are just great. It's news that should be spread.
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mike roddy at 23:26 PM on 27 June 2013BC’s revenue-neutral carbon tax experiment, four years on: It’s working
BC deserves credit, but their system has a flaw. Environment Canada came up with a new methodology to calculate emissions from logging, which resulted in about a 25% reduction in forestry emissions reported to IPCC. This allows BC to continue to clearcut, which has major consequences besides the annual 200 Mt of CO2 emissions.
Most BC residents live in the south, near the border, and look the other way about the horrible devastation of their vast forests. Clearcuts are sometimes over a mile across. The result has been increased vulnerability to fires and pests, microclimate temperature increases, and less resilience due to loss of biodiversity.
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michael sweet at 22:41 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthavene,
You have assumed in your posts that coal generated electricity is the cheapest electricity. This is only true at present because coal is allowed to transfer much of their costs onto taxpayers for free! In the USA, thousands of people die every year from coal pollution. In Florida, where I live, I can only eat fish from lakes twice a month because of coal pollution. When less coal is burned these taxes will be decreased and all other manufactures will have lower costs since they will no longer subsidize coal.
In any case, even without a carbon tax wind is the cheapest method of generating new electricity in the USA today. Solar will soon be the second cheapest. You need to catch up on your facts. If costs of carbon go up it will spead up the change to wind and solar. That will lower electricity costs and make the USA more competitive! Please provide a peer reviewed study for your outrageous claim that a carbon tax will increase electricity costs, you have the facts backwards.
Other posters should not let deniers claim that a carbon tax will increase electircity costs. Wind is currently the cheapest source of electricity in the USA, even without counting the cost of the pollution coal releases. Decreasing carbon emmisions will lower electricity costs.
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Dikran Marsupial at 21:52 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
"By the way if the EPA deem GHG's as a pollutant then do they have the power to regulate H2O as well as CO2 and i assume methane?"
There would be no point in regulating H2O on the grounds that it is a GHG, because while it is a GHG it is not a long-lived greenhouse gas. The residence time of water vapour is of the order of a week, so if we pump H20 into the atmosphere, it will just precipitate out again quite rapidly. CO2 on the other had is only removed permanently from the atmosphere ver slowly, which means that unlike H20, our CO2 emissions accumulate.
The main reason that water vapour as a GHG is increasing is because the atmosphere is warming (largely due to CO2) and a warmer atmosphere supports more moisture, which adds a positive feedback. However, even if fossil fuel emissions didn't include H20, the additional mositure supported by a warmer atmosphere would come from evaporation or transpiration instead, so it would happen anyway.
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Dave123 at 21:28 PM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
DB@reply at 23. You list 3 references for Mazlowski saying 2016± 3. I don't think the first one May of 2006. says that. Page 6 of the slides shows a much less specific statement and I cannot find any further discussion. The other two references do list the figure.
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CBDunkerson at 21:09 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone, as others have noted (several times now), regulating H2O emissions would not make any sense because H2O emissions have nothing to do with atmospheric levels. Humans could increase our H2O emissions one hundred fold and the total atmospheric H2O level would not change. There are these things called 'rain' and 'dew' which prevent the atmosphere from retaining more water than it can hold for a given temperature.
On natural gas, as I said in my original post (and JasonB subsequently reiterated) not all natural gas plant designs exceed the regulated CO2 emissions limit. Thus, natural gas plants can continue being built, they just have to be cleaner than the current average plant in the US. This is where I think the new regulation will actually have the most impact. Unless there are major government investments in renewable power, natural gas is going to be the largest power source in the US for the next fifteen years or so. If these regulations are applied to existing plants within a few years and then maintained through the period where natural gas is a major power source they will reduce total CO2 emissions from natural gas by about one third.
Finally, on nuclear plants... they are well below the CO2 emissions limits and there are no other regulations in place which significantly impact them. That said, there is no chance of major nuclear power development going forward. Nuclear has always been more expensive than coal and has only become more so. Thus, the only reason to go nuclear has been to decrease pollution (or rather, replace carbon and other fossil fuel pollution with radioactive waste and potential nuclear disasters), and that no longer makes any sense as wind and solar both produce even less pollution and are now cheaper than nuclear for most of the planet. Nuclear had a window where it could have become a significant power source, but that time has now clearly passed. Existing nuclear plants will continue operating until they reach end of life and a few new ones may be built to play a niche role in providing 'baseload' power in some areas, but that's about it. There is no logical reason to pay more for a higher polluting technology... which also has a limited fuel supply. Future technological developments might give nuclear another shot in the form of thorium reactors, fusion, or some other development, but those are currently theoretical or even more expensive than 'standard' nuclear.
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Kevin C at 20:02 PM on 27 June 2013BC’s revenue-neutral carbon tax experiment, four years on: It’s working
I think the link is probably to this talk.
For another carbon pricing experiment see the regional greenhouse gas initiative. (cap-and-trade rather than tax).
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bouke at 19:41 PM on 27 June 2013BC’s revenue-neutral carbon tax experiment, four years on: It’s working
"the meme later propagated by Richard Dawkins." links to a private youtube video that I can't view. Now I am a sad panda. ;-)
Moderator Response:[AS] Fixed, thanks!
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grindupBaker at 17:55 PM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Sidd @ #30 But the OHC graphs at your link show a slope of 13.2e21J per year from 1990 to 2008 plus you have an extra bit at greater depth (I suppose ~14e21J total). Am I misunderstanding something about these numbers or is your 6e21J per year more historical (like me) ?
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JasonB at 17:42 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone,
@23 and 24, my question was do they have the power to regulate H2O as a pollutant
No, because it doesn't meet the legal definition of pollutant that CO2 does because of the explanation already given above.
if you raise the cost of coal fired electricity via a CO2 tax ofr the purpose of encouraging an alternative then surely nuclear would be the best option.
Nuclear gets to compete in the market place just like all the alternatives. A carbon tax neither favours renewables relative to nuclear nor hurts them relative to nuclear because nuclear is also low-carbon — raising the cost of carbon helps nuclear exactly as much as it helps the renewables, and if you like nuclear then this is a good example of the benefits of using a market-based scheme (like a carbon tax or ETS) rather than a "direct action" scheme like Tony Abbott wants.
a way to raise the cost of nuclear would be to claim H2O in its gaseous state is a pollutant as well thusly driving the electricity sector towards an alternative of their liking.
CO2 is being claimed to be a pollutant because of the impact it is having on the environment. The 2007 Supreme Court case linked to in the main article showed that CO2 legally met the definition of pollutant given in the Clean Air Act and therefore the EPA were required by law to regulate CO2 emissions. Remember, at the time, the Bush administration was in charge and the EPA had to be dragged kicking and screaming to get it to do its job.
The only way for the EPA not to regulate CO2 emissions now would be for Congress to pass a special law claiming that CO2 was not a pollutant despite legally meeting the criteria or by removing the need for the EPA to act by imposing their own regulations (like an ETS or carbon tax).
Your suggestion doesn't make any sense anyway — even if H2O was classified as a pollutant, why would that hurt nuclear relative to e.g. solar thermal? Both can be made low water users at additional cost.
However how could you reduce the gas plants? CCS is not feasible both in cost and technology so i suggest you will lose them aswell
A combined-cycle gas plant has an emissions intensity of 800 lbs CO2/MWh so it would have no problem meeting the standard.
To JasonB @23 and Rob Honeycutt @27 regarding CO2 tax has no effect on manufacture sorry but i must disagree. The tax adds to the cost of manufacture so if you are competing with an overseas manufacturer then you become less competitive and in the current environment this is the last thing you need obviously.
I didn't say "no effect", I said "negligible effect" compared to the massive effect that the exchange rate has had on profitability. Something can indeed be non-zero but still be lost in the noise and make no difference to the outcome. If you think the carbon tax has had a material effect on competitiveness since it was introduced then please by all means produce that information and show that it is a direct result from the carbon tax.
The tax that is applied to the coal miners
Note that coal miners don't have to pay tax on the coal that they mine — the consumers of that coal, the ones that actually burn it, have to pay the tax. The coal miners only have to pay tax for fugitive emissions that they release during the mining process, which gives coal mines with less emissions a competitive advantage, as it should.
for the most part this cost is passed onto the consumer
Exactly. That's what the bonus payments and tax cuts were to compensate consumers for, and now that the figures are in it's clear that most consumers have been over compensated, which is why it's put a hole in the budget!
the amount of co2 produced will remain the same as there is no viable alternative
That's clearly false, as evidenced by the reduction in Australia's CO2 emissions and the increase in renewables.
You may be surprised to find that studies have shown (both here and in Germany) that the increase in renewables has actually led to cost reductions because the renewables have zero production cost, and so they're dumped onto the grid at whatever price is going, undercutting the peaking power generators that have the highest production costs (which is why they're only used for peaking power) leading to lower wholesale prices on average.
If you think the co2 emissions have reduced since the tax has been introduced then please by all means produce that information and show that it is a direct result from the CO2 tax. From my understanding all the major coal fired power stations are still running flat chat, still producing the same amount of electricity ergo CO2.
How was that understanding informed?
April: Emissions from power sector drop to a 10-year low while the share of renewable energy in the National Electricity Market (NEM) has soared beyond 12 per cent and looks set to continue rising (SMH)
June: In the eleven months since Australia's carbon price began, emissions from Australia's National Electricity Market were down 7.4%, emmissions intensity was down 5.1%, brown coal electricity was down 13.3%, and black coal electricity was down 4.2%. The 11 TWh reduction in coal-fired electricity generation was made up for by a 5 TWh increase in renewables, a 1 TWh increase in gas and liquids, and a 5 TWh reduction in consumption. (Link)
Now this is a tax it is no different to any other tax so my question is how can applying a tax create a better environment for manufacturers?
It is actually different because it is an ETS that just happens to have a preset price on carbon permits at introduction to allow businesses to plan better.
But its purpose is not to "create a better environment for manufacturers", it's to "create a better environment", fullstop. To the extent that benefits manufacturers, then they benefit. You know, because the economic impacts of the climate effects of BAU have been avoided, for example. Manufacturers who rely on externalising the true costs of their manufacturing will obviously suffer when those costs are internalised if they do not react accordingly.
At the moment we here in Oz are paying the largest co2 tax in the world and our major trading partners do not
And yet you haven't produced any evidence that it's having a meaningful impact on the bottom line, and in a few years the point will be moot as we'll be in the largest ETS market in the world, paying the same price.
Even if the world does act as one at some point in time how is raising the cost of cheap reliable electricity going to have any affect apart from raising the cost of that cheap reliable electricity.
Basic economics. If you make something bad more expensive relative to alternatives, less of the bad thing will be consumed.
I think you also need to recognise that not incorporating the true cost of emitting carbon into the price of fossil fuels is actually distorting the free market and preventing it from allocating resources efficiently. If the consumers of coal, for example, are not required to pay the true cost of burning that coal, and instead that cost is bourne by everybody and not just those consumers, then they are going to consume a lot more than they otherwise would have, and other technologies that do not have those costs aren't able to compete fairly in the market.
As for the world acting "at some point", the EU was way ahead of us, and by the end of this year a billion people will be living with some kind of carbon pricing mechanism. We're not exactly trailblazers.
This is just another tax applied by governments to increase revenue nothing more nothing less.
And yet it is revenue negative thus far, and you yourself claim that it's going to blow a gaping hole in the forward estimates!
Maybe, just maybe, the purpose is to actually reduce carbon emissions instead?
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sidd at 15:09 PM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
It is useful to keep in mind that the net radiative imbalance due to GHG for the entire earth integrated for a year is about the same (6e21J) as the amount of heat absorbed to seasonally melt 20,000 cubic Km of ice that melts annually in the Arctic sea. The same amount of heat is released during refreeze. The amount of heat required to melt enuf ice corresponding to a 1mm rise in sea level is 1e20J.
The amount of heat increase below 2000m is not negligible. I have added to my comments on Balmaseda(2013) with inclusion of estimates from Kouketsu(doi:10.1029/2010JC006464, 2011, 5% OHC increase below 3000m) and Purkey(doi: 10.1175/JCLI-D-12-00834.1, 2013, 14% OHC increase below 2000m south of 30S ) for depths below 2000m.
http://membrane.com/sidd/balmaseda-2013.html
sidd
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citizenschallenge at 14:42 PM on 27 June 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Oh and why should we trust that above image is from a beach in the Maldives anyways?
Speaking of sea levels are you familiar with Prof. Mitrovica?
He gives some great lectures that discuss new finding regarding global and regional see levels you'd find fascinating: "Enigma of Global Sea Level Rise"
~ ~ ~
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdfTUdU9x-k
In Search of Lost Time:
Ancient Eclipses, Roman Fish Tanks and
the Enigma of Global Sea Level Rise
Professor Jerry X. Mitrovica, Ph.D. -
citizenschallenge at 14:37 PM on 27 June 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
Klaus Flemløse what's up with that?
What about the doctored photograph, why aren't you up in arms about that?
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Donthaveone at 13:26 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Rob @ 30
It is not a matter of disagreeing we are just debating an issue and we have differing opinions.
Here is a link that will help you understand Australias carbon tax plus it gives you a list of what other countries have done, mind you China is on the brink of financial collapse so i have doubts about them implementing a scheme any time soon
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/1492651/Factbox-Carbon-taxes-around-the-world
Now this is a tax it is no different to any other tax so my question is how can applying a tax create a better environment for manufacturers?
At the moment we here in Oz are paying the largest co2 tax in the world and our major trading partners do not so we meet your conditions outlined above that would mean "i have a position".
In fact one of the reasons why Labor have a gaping hole in their forward estimates is because the expected revenue raised from the tax is not going to materialise as the EU market which ours will be link to is verging on collapse.
Even if the world does act as one at some point in time how is raising the cost of cheap reliable electricity going to have any affect apart from raising the cost of that cheap reliable electricity. This is just another tax applied by governments to increase revenue nothing more nothing less.
Andy Skuce @ 31,
Thanks for the heads up Andy i look forward to reading your post, i am sure that what you say can be done.
Cheers
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Andy Skuce at 12:41 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone: if you can wait a day or two, I have a post in the pipeline here that will present hard data that demonstrates that a carbon tax can be structured to minimize any effect on business competitiveness and, at the same time, reduce emissions substantially.
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Rob Honeycutt at 12:37 PM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone... You can disagree if you like, but I work in manufacturing and I can tell you that carbon taxes are unlikely to affect the competitiveness of US manufacturing. If carbon taxes were immediately extremely high and other major manufacturing bases had no carbon taxes, then you might have a position.
As I stated before, China, currently the world's largest manufacturing region, is actively putting in carbon pricing faster than we are in the US. Any disadvantage on the level you're suggesting is actually reversed.
You also ignore the fact that carbon pricing is likely to come with broad cost benefits for nations who implement it. Where you lose economic benefits in some areas (carbon intensive production) you gain back in other areas where you have less carbon intesive production. And the really carbon intestive manufacturing isn't mobile enough to send off shore. Concrete production is never going to China.
Consider also, carbon pricing would tend to drive more domestic manufacturing of low carbon and carbon-free solutions. More wind energy, more PV production and installation. What happens with such installed costs is, you force companies to innovate. The companies that innovate their way toward lower carbon solutions are going to be the market winners. Those that can't innovate will die.
Over the longer term, I very much hope that much larger carbon pricing goes into effect. This is because, putting some real bite behind carbon pricing will force manufacturers to implement systems that avoid production of carbon.
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Donthaveone at 11:54 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
To JasonB @23 and Rob Honeycutt @27 regarding CO2 tax has no effect on manufacture sorry but i must disagree. The tax adds to the cost of manufacture so if you are competing with an overseas manufacturer then you become less competitive and in the current environment this is the last thing you need obviously.
The tax that is applied to the coal miners/electricty produces from coal or gas adds to their costs of manufacture this cost is passed onto the users and for the most part this cost is passed onto the consumer. In the cases where the cost cannot be passed on then this is now an additional financial cost born by the company.
As the amount of permits allowed to the top 500 (or was it 300?) companies that produce CO2 is reduced the costs that flow down to the consumer will increase the amount of co2 produced will remain the same as there is no viable alternative.
If you think the co2 emissions have reduced since the tax has been introduced then please by all means produce that information and show that it is a direct result from the CO2 tax. From my understanding all the major coal fired power stations are still running flat chat, still producing the same amount of electricity ergo CO2.
Cheers
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Donthaveone at 11:35 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Firstly to RH, yes i spelt his name wrong by adding a space and a capital B however i think your claim of showing disrespect to the office of the president of the united states is drawing a very long bow. I will endeavour to get his name right in the future.
@23 and 24, my question was do they have the power to regulate H2O as a pollutant the reason being is that if you raise the cost of coal fired electricity via a CO2 tax ofr the purpose of encouraging an alternative then surely nuclear would be the best option. The green movement in Australia discourage nuclear (actually it is more than just them) so i would assume it would be similar in the US therefore a way to raise the cost of nuclear would be to claim H2O in its gaseous state is a pollutant as well thusly driving the electricity sector towards an alternative of their liking.
I wish people would not try and read things that are not there.
@25
Thanks for the info CBDunkerson, if you limit the amount of CO2 produced as you say then yes no new coal plants will be built and a phasing out of the old could happen. However how could you reduce the gas plants? CCS is not feasible both in cost and technology so i suggest you will lose them aswell (at least new plants same as coal). You did not mention nuclear, is nuclear still a viable alternative in the US or is there major hurdles put in place for this sector as well?
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grindupBaker at 11:15 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
WebHubTelescope @#25 Also there's Prof. Richard Muller's land surface only AST since 1753 from 36,000 temperature stations at Berkeley Earth.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:25 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
"...it just makes our manfacturing un competitive..."
My background is in manufacturing, and I can tell you without a doubt that a carbon tax is not an impediment to domestic manufacturing. And even if it was, China is advancing carbon pricing much more rapidly than we are, so any potential (minimal) effect is actually reversed.
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tcflood at 10:25 AM on 27 June 2013Lu Blames Global Warming on CFCs (Curve Fitting Correlations)
Phil @ 74
I certainly did confuse the two, and I apologize. Must have been a senior moment - they're becoming more frequent these days.
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Rob Honeycutt at 10:16 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
CBD@21... Doh! I actually knew that about the EPA endangerment finding. I've argued it many times in various comments sections.
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CBDunkerson at 10:16 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Found a bit more info on what exactly they are doing. By September the EPA is supposed to put into effect regulations which require all new power plants to produce less than 1000 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour of electricity produced. This is the same standard the EPA delayed releasing a few months ago. Given that the average coal plant produces ~2250 pounds of CO2 per megawatt hour, that basically outlaws them or would require vast improvements in 'carbon capture' technology... not to mention huge decreases in its cost. It would also stop many natural gas plants as they currently average ~1135 lbs/MWh. However, there are natural gas plant designs which can meet the new standard while remaining profitable. Petroleum based power plants (very common in Hawaii) are also pretty much impossible under the new regulation.
They aren't doing anything with existing power plants right away. Instead, Obama has directed the EPA to come up with regulations for those within a year. That would likely be before any litigation on allowing existing power plants to emit above the new EPA designated harmful level could work through the courts. Again, this seems designed to let them phase out and avoid a disruption in the power supply.
The ironic thing is that this really doesn't amount to much at all. It will prevent a few coal power plants from being built, hopefully shut down some of the existing ones a little earlier, and force natural gas plants to be a little less polluting. The reason it isn't a big deal is that most of that was already happening. Coal power has gone from 53% of all US electricity in 1997, to 44% in 2011, to just 36% in 2012. Basically, it was already falling off a cliff. There were very few new coal power plants in the works, just a handful in heavy coal mining states, and most of the existing coal plants are old and likely to shut down within a decade anyway.
Meanwhile, in the US, natural gas is booming and wind and solar are taking off in some areas where they are now cheaper than coal. Half of the new US power installed so far in 2013 has been solar. Probably the biggest impact this regulation is going to have is by slightly reducing the emissions from each natural gas plant. Obama will probably get credit for 'ending coal', but really it was already inevitable without this new regulation.
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heb0 at 09:42 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
@22 -Donthaveone
To add to JasonB's explanation, the following article addresses why it isn't accurate to think of water vapor in the same way we think about CO2 and other GHGs.
http://skepticalscience.com/water-vapor-greenhouse-gas.htm
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JasonB at 09:39 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone,
We have a carbon tax which actually does nothing in regards to reducing emissions it just makes our manfacturing un competitive so i hope O Bama does not go down this path for your sake.
Strictly speaking, we have an emissions trading scheme with a fixed permit price for the first few years, but the effect is similar, which is this: it makes carbon-intensive technologies less competitive than the alternatives, and because it's an ETS, it also puts a cap on the total emissions.
And, in fact, emissions have been reduced in the 11 months since it was introduced. Not only that, but since the whole point of an ETS is that emissions are capped, over time the emissions are reduced simply by virtue of lowering the number of permits on offer. It's not a difficult concept and it has been used widely in the past for other pollutants.
Funnily enough, it's the kind of approach normally favoured by free-market types because rather than the government picking winners and deciding what technologies to support through subsidies (i.e. Tony Abbot's scheme), the government simply tells the market what their emissions quota is and the market decides how that is to be met, with the various competing technologies duking it out.
Regarding manufacturing, as an exporter I can tell you that putting a price on carbon has had a negligible effect compared to the strong A$. It's lost in the noise. And those that are more carbon-intensive actually get free permits.
By the way if the EPA deem GHG's as a pollutant then do they have the power to regulate H2O as well as CO2 and i assume methane?
Methane, yes — if you look carefully they're talking about "CO2e", where "e" stands for "equivalent". H2O no, for the obvious reason that H2O is a condensing greenhouse gas — it goes up and down automatically with temperature. If you tried to emit a large quantity of water vapour into the atmosphere, it would quickly precipitate out again before it had a chance to have a long-term effect. It is one of the most important positive feedbacks, because as CO2 warms the earth, the atmosphere can hold more H2O, amplifying the effect of the CO2, but the H2O itself is not directly controllable. Think of it like a turbocharger in a high-powered car — the accelerator pedal is the CO2, and the turbocharger is the H2O. You can't control the speed (and therefore boost) of the turbo directly, it responds automatically to changes in the accelerator, multiplying its effect.
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Donthaveone at 08:54 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Thanks to all those who replied i must say your politics is a lot different than mine where i live (how many times can you sack a prime minister in their first term of office LOL).
We have a carbon tax which actually does nothing in regards to reducing emissions it just makes our manfacturing un competitive so i hope O Bama does not go down this path for your sake.
To actually reduce emissions via something like carbon capture and storage (CCS) is nothing more than a pipe dream, our old PM who was elected, then sacked and is now our PM again likes this dream so wish us luck.
So i suspect O Bama is talking about a tax and some type of credit system, each your the coal company gets less credits and is fined if they exceed this limit which is great for them because they just jack up the cost of your power.
By the way if the EPA deem GHG's as a pollutant then do they have the power to regulate H2O as well as CO2 and i assume methane?
Moderator Response:[RH] Our president's name is Obama. Please show some repect toward the office by correctly spelling his name.
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grindupBaker at 07:27 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Ned @ #4 (belongs really on Obama post but yours is here). It's my understanding that U.S. real action is needed to spur China & other industrializing powers by example and moral superiority as the basis for whatever cajoling. Apparently, U.S. & China now ~6 bt CO2 each but China is the rapid increaser (not sure whether that's coal only). So U.S. action is about much more than U.S. CO2 emissions due to their still somewhat pre-eminent position.
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scaddenp at 06:37 AM on 27 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth, regulars here use the "comments" tab to see new comments made anywhere on the site. This makes it possible to have all comment threads open while also keeping comment threads on topic.
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CBDunkerson at 05:11 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Rob @18: Actually, the original act didn't list CO2 specifically. The provision of the clean air act in question was very general - stating that the EPA should regulate any materials emitted into the atmosphere which are found to be harmful. The findings Dana referred to were an EPA analysis finding that CO2 was harmful and a Supreme Court decision that they were required to act on it (that was in 2007 with the EPA under George W. Bush resisting doing anything about AGW).
So yes, the original Clean Air Act was designed with the 'presence of mind' to make it flexible and allow the EPA to decide on the details... rather than needing to pass a new law for each pollutant and specifying the allowed emissions levels and so forth. Instead just a nice simple, 'the EPA is in charge of identifying and regulating air pollution'.
Of course, whatever they eventually do will be challenged by conservatives. Indeed, there have already been a host of challenges to the EPA finding that CO2 is harmful (and it has been fun watching those wither and die as standards on allowed scientific evidence bar virtually all denialist nonsense from the courtrooms). That may prevent implementation for years... with their hope being that the next president if then a Republican and can toss the new standards before they ever go into effect.
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fk9014 at 04:15 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen has not been seen here before but managed to get a first post on a new article, that was off-topic. surely a troll.
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Non-Scientist at 04:12 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
"voneschen" has not responded, nor will he.
The troll, feed it not.
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Rob Honeycutt at 04:02 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Jay Dee Are @17... It's interesting that they had the presence of mind to make sure CO2 was included in the Clean Air Act.
Kinda hard to blame that one on Al Gore. ;-)
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grindupBaker at 03:59 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
Me @ 28. Correction: "ecosystem warming" is not correct at all, stick with "global warming", just tell people the heat content of the various major segments of the "global", lakes, oceans, water everywhere.
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grindupBaker at 03:55 AM on 27 June 2013Media Overlooking 90% of Global Warming
"global warming" is the best traditional description. "ecosystem warming" would have been better but it's too late now. Would have been far better to have explained what it was from the outset and hoped that enough persons had the ability to understand it, but I suppose it was handy to show surface temperature graphs because of proxies for it going back millions of years. "climate change" is a symptom of "global warming". Surface temperature change is a symptom of "global warming" and is a fever trying to stop it. It's counter-intuitive to hypothesize that, say for example only, AST going quite flat then dropping for a while indicates "global warming" increasing simultaneous with the AST dropping (oceans take heat suddenly in my example, AST drops, TOA radiative imbalance increases). I'm not projecting that (I don't know ocean currents), I'm suggesting if this type of physical possibility had been explained to anybody with a half-decent high school education they'd have found it fascinating.
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Jay Dee Are at 03:24 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthavone @6, and others not from the US: The US Department of Energy makes US energy policy. The EPA does what its name says: protect the environment. The EPA does its job through regulation and by direct involvement in major cleanup activities, for example through its Superfund program.
As Dana points out, President Obama is limited by the US Constitution from imposing new laws unilaterally. All US regulations have to have implementing legislation behind them. The Clear Air Act allowed the EPA to regulate CO2 emissions, and President Obama is working that angle.
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meher engineer at 01:34 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen @ 1, tiny isn't insignificant. The example of ozone shows that, in spades.
Present in the stratosphere, it saves life on Earth from being destroyed by the Sun’s harmful ultraviolet radiation.
G. M. B. Dobson described how in “40 years’ research on atmospheric ozone at Oxford: a history” (see: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ozwv/dobson/papers/Applied_Opt ics_v7_1968.PDF), first by telling reader's how Fabry and Buisson, after making careful measurements of the absorption coefficients of ozone in 1912 and comparing their results with the absorption of sunlight by the atmosphere, concluded that about 0.5 centimeters worth of ozone was present in one vertical thickness of the atmosphere or, in other words, that the amount, when condensed into a liquid and spread uniformly over the Earth’s surface would cover it with a layer 0.5 centimeters thick!
To make the point even more clear, Ozone in concentrations as small as a few parts per million in the air that we breathe, is enough to destroy our lungs.
Small amounts of Ozone at the Earth’s surface kills life; small amounts of it in the stratosphere stops solar ultra violet radiation from destroying life completely.
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dana1981 at 01:20 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
The president can't impose taxes or pass laws - he's very limited in what he can do to address climate change. He was able to implement these regulations because Congress passed the Clean Air Act in 1970, followed by the Supreme Court and EPA decisions in 2007 and 2009 that GHGs qualify as air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. Thus he didn't need any new laws to implement these regulations, only to enforce existing law.
Only Congress can put a price on carbon emissions. That's really their only alternative to these government regulations, so at least President Obama has put pressure on them to do so.
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John Chapman at 01:13 AM on 27 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
One wonders where that 54.5 miles per gallon figure came from. Wouldn't 50 have been more realistic, and what assumptions about the weight of the passengers?!
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KR at 00:13 AM on 27 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth - The relevant SkS thread for ocean heating is How Increasing Carbon Dioxide Heats The Ocean.
Long story short: the surface of the oceans have a viscous skin layer where surface tension out-matches turbulence/convection, thermal energy from SW sunlight must pass through that layer via conduction to get to the atmosphere, downwelling IR reduces the thermal gradient and hence rate of energy lost to the atmosphere - all in the last fraction of a millimeter. This has been directly and experimentally confirmed. Further discussion of that particular topic should go to that thread.
As to how fractions of a degree are measured, I would strongly suggest looking at the Central Limit Theorem and the reduction of errors and deviations with large sample numbers. This is a core element of sampling theory - the size of sampling error is inversely related to the sampling size. If you don't understand that, you just don't understand sampling statistics. And direct measurements of temperature are quite straightforward, whether done with the ARGO system, XBTs. or even just thermometers on ropes.
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I've noticed that your posts are, quite frankly, skipping around quite a bit - jumping from topic to topic. In the process, it is not entirely clear whether your questions have indeed been answered - just that you've moved on to yet another question.
I would suggest you read through some of the summaries on the topic of the greenhouse effect, and the anthropogenic influences upon it - such as Spencer Weart's excellent Discovery of Global Warming site, in particular the Carbon Dioxide Greenhouse Effect. I believe a good overview will answer a great many of your questions up front, and provide more of a framework for the discussions you have been in.
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StealthAircraftSoftwareModeler at 00:10 AM on 27 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Tom Curtis @30: You’re everywhere on this site, yes? And I like your answers. They have the most detail and explanation. What is your background?
TC @30.1: I need to read your link to see what it says.
TC @30.2: Doh! My Homer Simpson moment. I triple checked my math as not to embarrass myself, but I computed cubic millimeters instead of centimeters. Still embarrassed myself, though. But it’s not like I mixed up English and metric units and crashed a probe into Mars. :-) Okay, I easily believe they can measure 0.1 C.
TC @ 30.2: I find the warming in the first 700m interesting as some light colors (mostly blue at 490nm) penetrate fairly deep (but not 700m). The average ocean surface temperature is about 22C and the average surface air temperature is 15C, so the ocean surface is much warmer than the air. If the air warms to 16C from CO2, then this would reduce the thermal gradient from the ocean to the air, reducing the cooling from the ocean. The question though, is this enough to warm the oceans this amount? Another explanation is that the oceans have been warmed by more light from reduced cloud cover – perhaps? The more sun light that hits the ocean the more energy that penetrates deep to warm the top 700m. It seems hard to figure out the components of ocean warming – is it more light from reduced clouds, or reduced cooling due to a warmer? If you assume the amount of solar energy hitting the ocean is constant (it can’t be because that would require clouds to be constant) then it all has to be reduced cooling due to reduce ocean/air thermal gradient. Perhaps your link above discusses this.
TC @ 30.3: “Energy balance”. I still want to see the numbers and discuss this. I think this is closely related to my above point about what is warming the oceans.
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Klaus Flemløse at 23:13 PM on 26 June 2013Nils-Axel Mörner is Wrong About Sea Level Rise
An example from Jyllands Posten about falling sealevel around Maldives:
This picture is used as an argument for falling sea level around Maldives.
Moderator Response:[RH] Fixed image width that was breaking page formatting.
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CBDunkerson at 22:04 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone asked, "Is the intention to apply a tax to the CO2 emissions or to actually reduce the said emissions?"
Probably fines for emissions in excess of amounts allowed. The EPA backed off issuing regulations on how much CO2 just new power plants could emit a few months ago... apparently because they were facing lawsuits holding that if these emission levels were harmful from new power plants then surely they must also be harmful from existing plants. Which, of course, is simple logic and thus likely to prevail at trial.
Thus, based on Obama's speech, they are now planning to set a limit for both new and existing plants. If it is the same limit that they were considering previously then it would basically outlaw all coal power in the US. Technically, power companies could continue operating coal plants and pay fines for violating the clean air act, but they would lose money doing so... and that kind of defeats the whole purpose.
It is also possible that they will set a higher 'allowed CO2 emissions level' or a transition plan where the allowed CO2 emissions decrease over time. Obama didn't give details so it is impossible to tell, but the phased approach seems most likely to me. That will allow existing coal plants to shut down at natural end of life, as they have been doing anyway since natural gas became cheaper in the US (and now solar and wind are doing so in some areas). Meanwhile it would also prevent new coal power plants from being built because they'd just have to shut down or start paying fines right around the time they'd be paying back the initial investment. Thus, end result is the same as the previous EPA regulations... no more new coal power plants but existing ones get to wind down to avoid a sudden drop in available power... but because of the way it is structured it would now be more resistant to legal challenges.
All speculative, but that's my guess.
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Composer99 at 21:59 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Obama and the EPA are notallowed to impose a carbon tax or equivalent price, whether as a straight-up tax (e.g. as British Columbia has done), a fee-and-dividend system, or a cap-and-trade system (as the European Union has done): only Congress has that ability.
The advantages of a carbon pricing system are that it (a) internalises the externalities imposed by burning fossil fuels (that is, global warming, ocean acidification and their respective consequences), and (b) sends a clear price signal to markets.
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Paul D at 18:25 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
voneschen@1
Given that you quoted quite complex figures (for many people) and estimates regarding the amount of different gases in the atmosphere. It suggests you know what the 'big deal' is.
eg. you know infra-red radiation doesn't 'see' Nitrogen and many other gases, so the fact that the gas is a large proportion of the atmosphere is irrelevant. At the simplistic level that you present your theory, Nitrogen may as well not be there as far as trapping/delaying IR goes.
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Cornelius Breadbasket at 18:09 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Donthaveone @ 6
I'm not from the US either but from my understanding Obama made no mention at all about a carbon tax and his administration has flatly denied that one will be introduced as a result of this speech. I don't know how the regulation will be enforsed. What I do know is that many are saying that Mr Obama is doing too little too late.
This link is to an opinion piece. Obama's Fracked-up Climate Change Speech.
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Rob Painting at 17:54 PM on 26 June 2013A Looming Climate Shift: Will Ocean Heat Come Back to Haunt us?
dvunkannon - yes, the deep ocean warming is occurring pretty much where we expect, given the behaviour of the wind-driven ocean circulation and the spin-up of the subtropical ocean gyres. The image below is from Levitus et al (2012) linked to in the article.
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rockytom at 15:43 PM on 26 June 2013President Obama acts on climate change by enforcing the law
Now you know one of the reasons we re-elected this President!
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scaddenp at 14:40 PM on 26 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
I would second the SoD articles (and see the followup on the cool skin also). This is all the nitty-gritty textbook stuff that SoD does so well. For detail on the ocean measurement system and its limits, then I guess start with Von Schuckmann and La Treon.
Check you math. I get 6.12e17m3 of water give 6.12e20 kg (density at 1000kg/m3) and 6.12e23g (actually more like 7.23e23g using more accurate estimate of ocean area).
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Tom Curtis at 14:29 PM on 26 June 2013Levitus et al. Find Global Warming Continues to Heat the Oceans
Stealth @28:
1) "Heat" is an active verb. The better term is "warm". The increased IR back radiation slows the cooling of the ocean by slowing the rate at which heat from below the first few millimeters comes to the surface. So, the Sun heats the ocean, but it heats it more because of the warming effect of the back radiation makes the ocean's cooling less efficient. (This is exactly analogous to the way CO2 "warms" the Earth.) Science of Doom has an excellent series of posts covering, and demonstrating the physics, if you want a more technical explanation. The starting point is "Does back radiation heat the ocean part 1".
2) You misplaced a decimal point. There are one million (100^3) cubic centimeters in a cubic meter, not one billion. Ergo there are 6.12x10^(17+6) cubic centimeters in the first 2000 meters of the ocean. Hence the average temperature increase is 0.1 C over the period. Note that the increase near the surface is significantly larger, with most of the warming being in the first 700 meters. Consequently, while the error is quite large, the measurement is statistically significant.
3) The TOA energy imbalance equals on average total forcing from all factors since 1750 (by convention) minus the increase radiation to space due to increased surface temperature. On top of that there are year to year fluctuation due to short term changes in humidity, cloud cover, surface temperature and change in temperature distribution which can be ignored for this discussion. Current climate models estimate that TOA imbalance to be 0.47 W/m^2 for the mean value between 2000-2010 inclusive (see figure 2a of Stevens et al). The TOA energy imbalance as measured by the 0-2000 meter change in OHC over the same period is 0.57 +/-0.4 W/m^2 (90% confidence interval). The 0-2000 meter OHC underestimates total TOA imbalance because, of course, there is additional warming at greater depths, heat used to melt ice, and heat used to warm land and atmosphere. That figure is greater than your estimate solely because the TOA energy imbalance was much smaller in the mid-twentieth century, and has been increasing since then.
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