Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

[blockski]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Better stop breathing then. Since that's what we put out.

What's worse- CO2 or CO/HC/NOx? Why does it seem to be ok to sacrifice one that we know is bad for your personal heath and to the health of the environment for one that may sacrifice the evironment?

Give me a break. Scale matters, you know. CO2 from fossil fuel use is released on a massively different scale than from human breathing. We're talking orders of magnitude.

Likewise, if you adjust CO concentrations by orders of magnitude, you go from something that's benign to something that's dangerous.

Also- for population density- I'm not talking large cities. But do you not recognize that there is a point of negative return? You are not going to take everyone out of the rual setting, not matter what you dream. Or try to force.

What's with the idea that I'm forcing anything? I'm talking about two things:

1. Putting a price on carbon
2. Allowing areas to develop densely as market conditions warrant.

On carbon pricing - this is where those carbon-efficient technologies come in. If carbon is priced, we'll have an incentive to get technologies that enable us to do the same task by using less carbon.

On density, nobody is forcing anything. New York is dense because the market allows it. You can say the same for just about every city. Economic activity increases land values which in turn justifies a higher and better use for the land. These are basic agglomeration economies. If you don't want to move there, that's great. But many people do, and we artificially restrict the market from developing those kinds of places. What's your opposition to letting the market develop land as value warrants?

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

I think you're missing my point.

If you want that three bedroom house, that's great. Not everybody does.

The same thing applies to city living - you might not want that lifestyle, but it's quite obvious that many do and are willing to pay a lot of money for it.

Where you lose me is the assertion that the urban dwellers are paying more for a green lifestyle. That's not the case - the suburban dwellers are paying less to pollute more. It's a classic negative externality. You make a decision, that decision has consequences (GHG emissions) for which the decider does not pay the full cost - those costs are instead borne by society.

What a well-designed cap-and-trade or carbon tax system would do would be to 'internalize' those external costs - make the user pay for those costs that had been borne by society. The end result would probably be a large increase in the cost of suburban living - and when you add that to the equation, I suspect many people would re-evaluate their individual cost-benefit decisions for the 'quality of life' they chose.

It's not about your willingness to pay more to live in an urban environment. You should be paying more to live in a suburban one, since you're emitting far more greenhouse gases than the urban dwellers.

What costs borne by society?

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Give me a break. Scale matters, you know. CO2 from fossil fuel use is released on a massively different scale than from human breathing. We're talking orders of magnitude.

Likewise, if you adjust CO concentrations by orders of magnitude, you go from something that's benign to something that's dangerous.



What's with the idea that I'm forcing anything? I'm talking about two things:

1. Putting a price on carbon
2. Allowing areas to develop densely as market conditions warrant.

On carbon pricing - this is where those carbon-efficient technologies come in. If carbon is priced, we'll have an incentive to get technologies that enable us to do the same task by using less carbon.

On density, nobody is forcing anything. New York is dense because the market allows it. You can say the same for just about every city. Economic activity increases land values which in turn justifies a higher and better use for the land. These are basic agglomeration economies. If you don't want to move there, that's great. But many people do, and we artificially restrict the market from developing those kinds of places. What's your opposition to letting the market develop land as value warrants?

This isn't letting the market do anything. It's artificially shifting the supply/demand curve to tailor it to your political beliefs.

 

[blockski]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

What costs borne by society?

Read up on the negative externality

Let's say you have a factory, and one output is some pollution. You have two options - you can either contain and properly dispose of that pollution for a certain cost, or you can just dump that pollution in the river at no direct cost to you.

If you dump into the river, you're imposing that cost on all other users of the river. That is the societal (or social) cost, rather than the private cost of you paying to clean up your pollution in the first place.

This isn't letting the market do anything. It's artificially shifting the supply/demand curve to tailor it to your political beliefs.

Yes, it's a shift in the supply/demand curve.

No, it's not 'artificial.' It's specifically designed to correct for market failure.

 

[Red Cloud]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

What costs borne by society?

I believe that would be the extreme mental anguish of enviro-nazis.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

No, it's not 'artificial.' It's specifically designed to correct for market failure.

And deciding what is or isn't a market failure is a very subjective thing, not that I'd expect you to admit that in your black-and-white world. To say carbon is pollution is settled science, when it's just with the advent of Obama's EPA on steroid approach that is moving that direction is showing how very biased you are.k

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

And deciding what is or isn't a market failure is a very subjective thing, not that I'd expect you to admit that in your black-and-white world. To say carbon is pollution is settled science, when it's just with the advent of Obama's EPA on steroid approach that is moving that direction is showing how very biased you are.k

Tell that to the folks in China who can't breathe. Or did you forget that they shut down all their coal plants around Beijing for the Olympics?

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Tell that to the folks in China who can't breathe. Or did you forget that they shut down all their coal plants around Beijing for the Olympics?

That's such a silly line of thinking, I'm not sure how to respond. Yup, if only China didn't produce carbon dioxide, it'd be an environmental heaven!

 

[ScoobyDoo]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

That's such a silly line of thinking, I'm not sure how to respond. Yup, if only China didn't produce carbon dioxide, it'd be an environmental heaven!

Silly how? If Coal didn't pollute the US would be sitting pretty right now. We have tons of the stuff.

Silly line of thinking is Presidential candidates who spout platitudes about "Clean Coal Technology".

 

[LynahFan]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Obviously, life cycle costs and impacts are vitally important. But as I was mentioning to Bob, there are other benefits to programs such as these. Hybrids are achievable now and can reduce fuel consumption now.

My big idea is rather simple - invest in mass transportation and let the real estate market develop densely around those stations - this is a proven market solution. In fact, it's how most of our cities were built prior to Euclidean Zoning laws that all too often artificially restrict density and development.

Density is good for the environment. It means people walk to the corner store instead of driving to Wal-Mart. It's more efficient, and most importantly it's a product of the market. The downside from a climate change perspective is that land use is slow to change. We've spent half a century plus building auto-dependent sprawl with massive government subsidy, and it's going to take a long time to un-do that damage. That's where interim bridge technologies like hybrid vehicles come into play.

I'm not quite sure how hybrids would be considered a "bridge" solution. If the life-cycle environmental damage of a hybrid turns out to be worse than continuing to drive your existing car, then we'd be better off just driving our regular cars until your envisioned transition to mass transit occurs. I just don't see any way that hybrids are a step toward the transition. They don't get people used to the idea of driving less, and in fact, I could even see them doing more harm than good (who cares if I move to a new house 50 miles from work - at least I'm commuting in a hybrid!).

Your overall point about going to mass transit is absolutely correct, I just don't see how hybrids help us get there. At least half of my friends here in Geneva (nearly all professionals with graduate degrees) don't own cars. You just don't need one - in fact, so many of the roads have dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes, and taxi lanes that the private cars are squeezed down into a single lane, so around town it's almost always faster to take the public transportation anyway - and this is a dinky little backwater of a city, on the order of a Knoxville, TN or Dayton, OH. This has driven the density up, with everyone clustered near the town center. As a result, the edge of the city is less than 2 miles away - an easy 30 minute walk, and I'm in the vineyards of France. Try that from downtown Dayton or Knoxville.

 

[blockski]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

I'm not quite sure how hybrids would be considered a "bridge" solution. If the life-cycle environmental damage of a hybrid turns out to be worse than continuing to drive your existing car, then we'd be better off just driving our regular cars until your envisioned transition to mass transit occurs. I just don't see any way that hybrids are a step toward the transition. They don't get people used to the idea of driving less, and in fact, I could even see them doing more harm than good (who cares if I move to a new house 50 miles from work - at least I'm commuting in a hybrid!).

I guess my thinking is that it can be a transitional technology for consumers to get used to higher gasoline prices. Personally, I think we should be raising the gas tax substantially to both prepare us for coming price increases and to also raise revenue for new transit investments - but I nevertheless think prices will rise, either due to public policy, the market for energy, or both.

The life cycle costs are vitally important, but they don't sell well. The very notion of buying cars as often as we do isn't a strong embrace of life-cycle costing, either. But in conjunction with rising fuel prices, I think it's an important psychological shift to more efficient vehicles.

I also think this is a broader issue than just climate change. If you kept the argument solely in terms of energy independence, I think we'd see similar results - climate change is just an added and related issue.

Your overall point about going to mass transit is absolutely correct, I just don't see how hybrids help us get there. At least half of my friends here in Geneva (nearly all professionals with graduate degrees) don't own cars. You just don't need one - in fact, so many of the roads have dedicated bus lanes, bike lanes, and taxi lanes that the private cars are squeezed down into a single lane, so around town it's almost always faster to take the public transportation anyway - and this is a dinky little backwater of a city, on the order of a Knoxville, TN or Dayton, OH. This has driven the density up, with everyone clustered near the town center. As a result, the edge of the city is less than 2 miles away - an easy 30 minute walk, and I'm in the vineyards of France. Try that from downtown Dayton or Knoxville.

Absolutely.

I think part of the problem is that we don't have many examples of dense, small town living in the US anymore. We used to, but they've mostly disappeared.

When I make the case for more density, I can tell that people think I'm arguing to turn their suburb into Manhattan. That's not what the market would support, nor is that even necessary. However, turning our current suburbs into places more like the streetcar suburbs from before WWII - relatively compact, higher density, mixed land uses, transit-oriented - would be a vast improvement. You can achieve those kinds of densities and still have single-family homes with backyards, with transit-supportive densities and enough people nearby to support walkable retail stores.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Silly how? If Coal didn't pollute the US would be sitting pretty right now. We have tons of the stuff.

Silly line of thinking is Presidential candidates who spout platitudes about "Clean Coal Technology".

Coal burned in the U.S. is nowhere near as dirty as coal burned in China. It's like two different fuel sources it's so different. One of the worst things for the environment is an industry moving to China from the U.S. and spewing multiple amounts of pollutants in China than it did in the U.S. or anywhere with decent environmental rules. The jury is out on clean coal technology, but it's certainly a possibility long term.

 

[alfablue]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

The life cycle costs are vitally important, but they don't sell well. The very notion of buying cars as often as we do isn't a strong embrace of life-cycle costing, either. But in conjunction with rising fuel prices, I think it's an important psychological shift to more efficient vehicles.

Life cycle emissions isn't vital- it's the only thing that matters. If you HONESTLY say that CO2 is the core problem, then don't tell me that it's ok to make people aware by telling them a solution that hurts more than it helps is a good thing.

Life cycle is how I measure solutions- either they are a net lowering of CO2 or they are not. If the person who is pitching said solution does not know the life cycle answer, then we don't know what the true impact is.

What IF (and again, I don't know this) we find out that an old claim that a Prius will use more energy for it's life cycle than the Hummer H2? So we have a whole fleet of new cars that are greener than a Prius, but it's ok to PRETEND that the hybrids are helping just to help exposure....

No, if you are saying that net worse solutions are ok to help exposure, then you are not actually fixing things vs. trying to push your views to the world. If you are trying to "sell" this, then I can't take you seriously. (and by you, that's the general "you" not specifically blockski)

Life cycle emissions is the ONLY thing that truly matters.

 

[blockski]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Life cycle emissions isn't vital- it's the only thing that matters. If you HONESTLY say that CO2 is the core problem, then don't tell me that it's ok to make people aware by telling them a solution that hurts more than it helps is a good thing.

Life cycle is how I measure solutions- either they are a net lowering of CO2 or they are not. If the person who is pitching said solution does not know the life cycle answer, then we don't know what the true impact is.

What IF (and again, I don't know this) we find out that an old claim that a Prius will use more energy for it's life cycle than the Hummer H2? So we have a whole fleet of new cars that are greener than a Prius, but it's ok to PRETEND that the hybrids are helping just to help exposure....

No, if you are saying that net worse solutions are ok to help exposure, then you are not actually fixing things vs. trying to push your views to the world. If you are trying to "sell" this, then I can't take you seriously. (and by you, that's the general "you" not specifically blockski)

Life cycle emissions is the ONLY thing that truly matters.

You're right - life cycle emissions is what matters. I don't think I've said anything to the contrary.

You're still missing my point. It's about human perception. If people are given an incentive (say, high gas prices), they can and will adjust their behavior accordingly (buying more fuel-efficient cars, driving less, etc).

That's why I see hybrids as a positive development, as they represent both people (the market) and the producers reacting positively to various inputs.

Now, regarding life cycle costs, I'd argue that the reason those aren't taken into account is just another negative externality, one that hasn't been properly accounted for via carbon pricing or whatever other mechanism we might have.

The larger issue is this: Addressing climate change will require changes in our behavior. There's no doubt about that. Simply appealing to our good graces won't do it, we've got to structure our economy around these particular market failures. In short, we have to make doing the right thing easy. Hell, Roy82 laid out that very framework right here in this thread:

Many energy reduction studies have shown that taking steps to energy efficiency have a negative cost - they more than pay for themselves. Measures that encourage people and businesses to take those steps need not be destructive. Heck, I am a flaming green liberal and yet I live in an old house and probably pay twice as much each month in energy than I could if I did some minor upgrading. But I am simply too lazy to do it. Incentivize me.

What I'd argue is that they pay for themselves in a long term timeframe. That's not a sufficient incentive to change now.

Make the right thing easy. We do it all the time. We incentivize home ownership with a large deduction for mortgage interest, for example. We've successfully used cap and trade schemes to vastly reduce other pollutants.

 

[Red Cloud]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

The jury is out on clean coal technology, but it's certainly a possibility long term.

Clean coal intrigues me greatly, I just want to know more about how the CO2 is disposed of - AFAIK the difference with clean coal is that the CO2 is liquefied instead of being released into the atmosphere, but that liquefied CO2 still has to go somewhere. I'm curious as to what the options are.

I don't want green supporters to get the impression that I don't care about the environment - I just believe the environment needs to be balanced with economic concerns. When and where possible, I'd love to get cleaner and renewable energy put into place, but we can't just wish up a solar power plant that will have anywhere near the ability to produce the energy we need as a society the way a coal-fired plant does.

 

[Bob Gray]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Clean coal intrigues me greatly, I just want to know more about how the CO2 is disposed of - AFAIK the difference with clean coal is that the CO2 is liquefied instead of being released into the atmosphere, but that liquefied CO2 still has to go somewhere. I'm curious as to what the options are.

I don't want green supporters to get the impression that I don't care about the environment - I just believe the environment needs to be balanced with economic concerns. When and where possible, I'd love to get cleaner and renewable energy put into place, but we can't just wish up a solar power plant that will have anywhere near the ability to produce the energy we need as a society the way a coal-fired plant does.

Yah, a lot of that tough, realistic analysis isn't done anymore on a lot of these hotbutton issues. Minds are already made up and its a matter of doing what is desired and then justifying it as best as can be done in hindsight.

I'm skeptical about the ability to store CO2 underground. The volume you're trying to store is staggering, as would be the infrastructure to transport it from where it is generated to where it is stored.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

I don't want green supporters to get the impression that I don't care about the environment - I just believe the environment needs to be balanced with economic concerns. When and where possible, I'd love to get cleaner and renewable energy put into place, but we can't just wish up a solar power plant that will have anywhere near the ability to produce the energy we need as a society the way a coal-fired plant does.

Ditto. I think a lot of people get the opposite impression, which is unfortunate.

I'd rather see the government stay out of tinkering with the market as much as possible. I'd also rather see a tax incentive to move into a city rather than an ADDED tax to "de-incentivize" living in the burbs. Similar to those we see on hybrids. The net cost may be the same, however, it still keeps the option to live in the suburbs affordable for those that can't stand city life.

 

[jmh]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Ditto. I think a lot of people get the opposite impression, which is unfortunate.

I'd rather see the government stay out of tinkering with the market as much as possible. I'd also rather see a tax incentive to move into a city rather than an ADDED tax to "de-incentivize" living in the burbs. Similar to those we see on hybrids. The net cost may be the same, however, it still keeps the option to live in the suburbs affordable for those that can't stand city life.

Well, I mean, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn't it? If there's tax policy to provide an incentive to move into a city, that comes at the expense of taxpayers outside cities, and vice versa, doesn't it? A new tax incentive encouraging people to live in the city operates as an incentive against living in the suburbs because people living in the suburbs can't take advantage of it, just like policies to favor, say, home ownership operate as an incentive against renting, without directly affecting renters, because renters can't take advantage of them.

 

[dxmnkd316]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

Well, I mean, it's six of one and half a dozen of the other, isn't it? If there's tax policy to provide an incentive to move into a city, that comes at the expense of taxpayers outside cities, and vice versa, doesn't it? A new tax incentive encouraging people to live in the city operates as an incentive against living in the suburbs because people living in the suburbs can't take advantage of it, just like policies to favor, say, home ownership operate as an incentive against renting, without directly affecting renters, because renters can't take advantage of them.

As a net cost possibly, but to the individual no. Just like hybrid tax rebates. (ignoring the gas guzzler tax for the moment.) Instead of taxing ALL non-hybrids, the government spreads the cost around to everyone by giving you money back if you buy a hybrid. Or at least they used to.

Edit: instead of making one LESS affordable, you make the other MORE affordable. Maybe I'm not explaining this right.

But then again, I'd rather the government stay the hell away from tinkering with the market.

 

[jmh]

Re: Global Warming -- 4th Edition: Carbonated Planet.

As a net cost possibly, but to the individual no. Just like hybrid tax rebates. (ignoring the gas guzzler tax for the moment.) Instead of taxing ALL non-hybrids, the government spreads the cost around to everyone by giving you money back if you buy a hybrid. Or at least they used to.

Edit: instead of making one LESS affordable, you make the other MORE affordable. Maybe I'm not explaining this right.

But then again, I'd rather the government stay the hell away from tinkering with the market.

OK, but if you make everything more affordable, then you're just creating a system of handouts. Nobody wants that, I don't think.

And it should be noted that the government has already tinkered with the real estate market plenty; the horse is long since out of the barn on that one.