Tag Archives: IPCC

What Is the Best Way to Cope with Climate Change?

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued it’s latest and most definitive assessment about the extent of global warming.  The earth’s average temperature has increased by .85 degrees centigrade since 1880 and is on track to increase to 2 degrees centigrade in a relatively short time span.  Such a major climate change will have severe repercussions for human life.
CaptureThere is much evidence for the IPCC’s gloomy prognosis.  Most convincing for me is that the extent of the summer artic ice cap is steadily shrinking, as demonstrated in the above chart.
The Environmental Protection Agency is attempting to decrease carbon emissions by regulation but there is a limit to what can be accomplished in this way:

  • The EPA’s goal is a 30% reduction in carbon emissions from 2005 levels by 2030. But the only way that this can possibly be achieved is by substituting the use of natural gas for coal, which reduces carbon emissions by 50%
  • The current low cost of natural gas is making nuclear power less economically viable even though nuclear power has no carbon footprint at all.
  • In addition to creating such constraints, this approach also has led the EPA to set complicated and arbitrary goals on carbon emissions for each state individually.

In other words, by employing onerous regulations the EPA will only, at best, be able to achieve a 30% reduction in carbon emissions by 2030. Of course, this is better than nothing but it is not nearly enough to significantly slow down global warming.  Even if European countries succeed in meeting similar targets as the ones set for the U.S., this leaves out the largest carbon emitter of all, namely China, as well as the rest of the developing world. Since it is impractical to eliminate the use of fossil fuels altogether, or even come close to doing so, the emphasis should be on limiting carbon emissions.  In other words, we should create incentives for carbon “sequestration,” i.e. the capture and storage of carbon when burning fossil fuels.   The way to do this is with a tax on the release of carbon into the atmosphere.  Such a carbon tax would provide a huge incentive for energy and power companies to develop the best possible sequestration techniques. With an economic incentive to do so, U.S. technological ingenuity will quickly develop effective methods for carbon sequestration.  Once discovered and perfected, their use would rapidly spread around the world. Climate change is real and we need an effective way to address it.  A carbon tax is the best way to get the job done.

What the EPA Is Doing about Climate Change

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My last post, “The Latest Scientific Report on Climate Change,” summarizes a new report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. It makes a very strong case that global warming is real and that it will badly disrupt human civilization before the end of the twenty-first century if not substantially mitigated.
What are we doing about it? The Environmental Protection Agency reports on its many actions as follows: “What EPA is doing about Climate Change”

  • Inventorying of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks has been tracking all GHG emissions since 1990.
  • Developing “Common Sense” Regulatory Initiatives. For example, EPA’s vehicle greenhouse gas rules will eliminate 6 billion metric tons of GHG pollution by 2025. EPA is developing carbon pollution standards for the power sector which will cut carbon emissions 30% below 2005 levels.
  • Partnering with the Private Sector. EPAs partners reduced over 345 million metric tons of GHG in 2010 alone.
  • Advancing the Science. EPA works with the IPCC to understand the environmental and health impacts of climate change.

 

Here is how the Washington Post describes another EPA activity, the recently announced Clean Power Plan. “The rule provides every state with a target carbon-emissions intensity for its power plants, with preliminary standards kicking in by 2020 and full goals to be achieved by 2030.  As the map (below) shows, the rule generally asks the least from the states with the worst carbon-intensity at present – those that are very dependent on coal generation, such as West Virginia, Kentucky and North Dakota.  While cross-state variations in the intensity of pollution controls are a standard feature of regulation under the Clean Air Act, they usually have a compelling justification: the negative effects of emissions are local, and so areas suffering from pollution problems must be more stringent.  But greenhouse gas concentrations are uniform globally, making it somewhat awkward to subject identical emitters to divergent standards simply because their home states’ power mix is more or less carbon-intensive.”
CaptureThe purpose of this whole discussion is to illustrate how complicated it already is and will continue to be to achieve a significant reduction in GHG carbon emissions by regulation alone, even the relatively modest 30% reduction which the EPA is trying to accomplish.
Fortunately there is a better way of achieving an even bigger reduction in carbon emissions.  Stay tuned for my next post!

The Latest Scientific Report on Climate Change

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued its Fifth Assessment Report summarizing the best scientific information about global warming that is available in 2014.
Capture1CaptureKey findings are:

  • It is extremely likely that humans are the dominant cause of warming since the mid-20th century.
  • Each of the past three decades has been successively warmer than the preceding decades since 1850.
  • Oceans absorb more than 90% of the heat.
  • Land temperatures remain at historic highs while ocean temperatures continue to climb.
  • Oceans will continue to warm during the 21st century.
  • Global mean sea level will continue to rise during the 21st century.
  • It is very likely that the Artic sea ice cover will continue to shrink and thin as global mean surface temperature rises.
  • Some of the changes in extreme weather and climate events observed since about 1950 have been linked to human influence.
  • The globally averaged temperature shows a warming of .85 degrees centigrade over the period 1880 – 2012. And 65% of the carbon budget compatible with limiting future temperature to an overall 2 degrees C increase has already been used.
  • Energy production remains the primary driver of greenhouse gas emissions.
  • Measures exist to achieve the substantial emissions reductions required to limit likely warming to 2 degrees C.
  • Delaying mitigation will substantially increase the challenges associated with limiting warming to 2 degrees C.

I consider the above information from the IPCC report to be noncontroversial and providing overwhelmingly strong evidence that global warming is taking place. Next question:  What do we do about it?  This will be the subject of my next post!

Global Warming Is For Real II. How Do We Move Forward?

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The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has just issued a new report, reported in yesterday’s New York Times, “Climate Efforts Falling Short, U.N. Panel Says”. The IPCC is saying that an intensive effort is needed in the next 15 years to prevent the global average temperature from rising more than 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above the preindustrial level. Since the U.S. and China are the biggest emitters of carbon, it is critical for the U.S. to show leadership on this issue.
CaptureOne dramatic piece of evidence that global warming is real is the rapidly shrinking size of the artic polar ice cap measured at the end of each summer. In a previous post last December 8, I took note that at least 29 U.S. companies “are incorporating a price on carbon into their long range plans.” I also noted a report from the Congressional Budget Office which estimates that a tax on energy companies of $20 to emit a ton of CO2 would raise $120 billion a year and raise the cost of gasoline by 10 to 15 cents per gallon.
The scene is clearly set. There is a serious threat to life on earth. We have a good estimate of what it will take to meet the threat and a specific time window for responding. We also know the approximate cost of a sensible plan for doing so. Can our democratic political system be moved to action?
A large energy tax like this will take a bite out of the economy. An attractive way of building support would be to make it part of broad based tax reform designed to stimulate the economy with lower individual and corporate rates offset by closing loopholes and eliminating deductions. In fact a carefully assembled package might be able to reduce carbon emissions, stimulate the economy (with lower tax rates) and raise revenue to pay down the deficit, all at the same time!
Is this too much to hope for?