JayStream

With few in government or media prepared or able to stand in the way, it looks like full speed ahead for President Obama’s proposed cap and trade program. In fact, the program is likely to be locked into place when the United States agrees to an international climate change treaty later this year. Cap and trade is designed to lower industrial emissions by making it expensive for American industries to release carbon dioxide into the air. Industries will be required to pay a carbon tax to the government, the cost of which would certainly be passed along to consumers.

Contained in the President’s proposed 2009 budget is a forecast that industries will pay the government $79 billion in 2012 alone for permission to emit carbon dioxide into the air. How will that affect our pocketbooks?

According to Point Carbon, a European consultancy which analyzes carbon trading schemes, the initial cost for energy industries will be about 14 dollars per metric ton of carbon emitted. That would result in an increase of 12 cents per gallon of gasoline, and a 7 percent price hike in the cost of electricity.

For consumers, the sacrifice does not end there. Businesses will have to pay those additional energy costs, which will lead to trickle down price hikes on everything that is bought and sold. Again, the consumer will pay the penalty.

Remember – this is only the initial cost. The president’s projection is that by 2019, the carbon tax on industries will reach $646 billion, and the cost to consumers will rise accordingly.

Never mind the 2009 economic stimulus package and how much federal debt is being accumulated on the backs of future generations. Even before we have figured out how to get out of the current economic crisis, the seeds are quietly being sown for a green attack on the American economy three years from now.
If the American people wish to increase their cost of living to benefit a global initiative, so be it. But shouldn’t cap and trade receive a thorough debate and up or down vote in Congress before the executive branch quietly makes it the law of the land?

UPDATE, 3/18/09 – At least eight Senate Democrats have joined with two dozen Republicans opposing the president’s plan to sneak cap and trade into the annual budget bill, according to an Associated Press report.

Jay News cap and trade, carbon dioxide, climate change

A few years ago while visiting Europe, I was privileged to attend a public forum on climate change. Several prominent scientists answered questions from informed citizens on the topic of what individuals could do about global warming. One recurring theme was whether people in that country should bother reducing carbon emissions if the United States continued to ignore international climate change efforts. To be honest, I felt a little embarrassed – although over the years I have often seen global warming used as an issue with which to bash America.

Today, London’s The Independent newspaper kicked off a series of news articles previewing the Copenhagen conference to be held in December. The conference is expected to produce a Kyoto-like treaty that will impose limits on emissions of carbon dioxide. Unlike Kyoto, this time America is very likely to sign agreement to the treaty. President Obama’s goal is to lower US carbon emissions by 2020 -  the same level of emissions we had in 1990.

But the article contained two statistics that have received little or no attention. One is that the United States is no longer the world’s top carbon polluter. China currently emits 6.018 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide, surpassing America’s 5.903 billion metric tons. It is interesting that if the 2001 Kyoto accord been adopted by the United States, this country would have been working under restrictive regulations for the past several years – while China was expanding its economy at will. The Kyoto treaty mostly exempted China because it was considered a developing nation.

I am certain many critics would respond that China has 1.3 billion people; so it might be justified in emitting more carbon dioxide than the United States, which has only 304 million people. But before we start to feel guilt for our prosperity, we should think about the second key statistic in the article.

When you compare nations based upon the amount of carbon dioxide emitted per person, the United States again comes in second. Australia emits 20.58 metric tons of CO2 per person, followed by the US at 19.78 metric tons per person, and Canada and Saudia Arabia at 18.81 and 15.7 metric tons per capita respectively.

While I truly respect and cherish other countries, I wish they would stop blaming all the world’s carbon pollution on the United States. Despite their “green” rhetoric, when other industrialized nations point fingers at us for global CO2 concentrations – we could point a finger back.

Jay News carbon dioxide, China, climate change, Copenhagen, emissions, Kyoto

Temperature data is recorded at ten thousand locations across the earth. But actual measurements of carbon dioxide – the key component in global warming theory – are only collected at about three hundred land-based locations around the globe. There are some existing satellites capable of monitoring carbon dioxide levels from space, but their coverage area and effectiveness are limited.

The lack of reliable, real-time carbon dioxide measurements is one of the bones of contention in the reliability or believability (depending on you who talk to) of our global climate models. Because CO2 is not sufficiently measured, the CO2 numbers input into the models must be parameterized, or estimated based upon other equations. How accurate those numbers are is contested within the climate change community.

That is why the recent launch of the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO) was so highly anticipated. The satellite was designed not only to measure CO2 over land and oceans, but measure how the earth’s oceans and landmasses capture and store some portion of that CO2.

Significant amounts of CO2 are absorbed by vegetation, which is why graphs of CO2 measurements look like “jagged teeth” (the red line on the Mauna Loa graph) over time. During the growing season, CO2 is absorbed by vegetation and the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere is at a minimum. In winter, when vegetation is dormant, photosynthesis is minimized and CO2 levels are at their highest.

Everyone in the scientific community was publicly disappointed that the rocket failed shortly after launch, and the $280 million satellite was destroyed. But let’s be honest – the launch failure actually benefits some of the scientists and politicians involved in the climate debate.

There are huge dollars being spent by both sides (though hardly in equal amounts) of the manmade global warming issue. Some scientists regularly quoted by the media are little more than activists in lab coats. Prolonging the debate serves their personal interests, as it keeps them in the spotlight.

The OCO could have provided answers – definitive answers – to some of the questions currently at the crux of the global warming debate. For those who make money from the climate change debate – and for a few who have become rich in the process – the loss of a satellite that could settle some of the disputed numbers has an unintended beneficial side effect: job security.

Because of the satellite’s destruction, climate modelers will continue to parameterize carbon dioxide numbers and effects, and climate debaters will continue to debate their accuracy. The climate change rhetoric will continue at shrill levels because a key question – how much carbon dioxide is in the air at any given time and what happens to it – is just another issue for debate.

UPDATE 3/2/09: One of those activists in a lab coat is NASA’s James Hansen, who urged “mass civil disobedience” during remarks to protesters who barricaded gates at a coal-fueled power plant. Hansen’s former boss wonders “why he has not been fired.”

Jay Weather carbon dioxide, global warming