UK to Fall Short of Pledge

by William Yeatman on February 7, 2001

in Blog

To meet the European Unions overall Kyoto target of 8 percent below 1990 levels, Great Britain committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. It was thought that this level would be easy to reach because of the large-scale conversion of electricity production from coal to natural gas. So in a fit of enthusiasm, Prime Minister Tony Blair announced that Britain would do even better and voluntarily reduce its emissions by 20 percent below 1990 levels by 2010.

Now, both are beginning to look politically difficult. According to Cambridge Econometrics, a private economic forecasting firm, Britain is on a course that will reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by only 6.6 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. Decreases in emissions by electricity generators and manufacturers will largely be offset by increases from transportation and household energy use (Financial Times, February 5, 2001).

UK Conservatives Would Repeal Levy

by William Yeatman on February 7, 2001

in Politics

The British Parliament has passed a climate levy on energy use by businesses that will come into effect in April. The highly controversial tax, which amounts to only 1 billion per year, has come under heavy fire from business interests on the grounds that it would hurt their international competitiveness.

In an attempt to reduce industry opposition, the Labor government will offset the tax by reducing business employers National Insurance contributions by 0.3 percent and cut taxes for energy-saving investment. The whole scheme, however, would fall more heavily on companies with high energy-to-employment ratios. The Conservatives in their party manifesto have promised to abolish the climate change levy if returned to office at the next election. This would be in addition to 8 billion in tax cuts targeted for businesses, savers, and working families (Financial Times, January 5, 2001).

The climate levy is not the only new tax that the British government has in mind to deal with global warming. Jonathan Porritt, chairman of the governments Sustainable Development Commission, said at the launch of the governments first annual report on quality of life that there would have to be a tax on air travel to pay for damage to the environment and human health (Daily Telegraph, January 26, 2001).

Little Ice Age was Worldwide; The Little Ice Age in History

by William Yeatman on February 7, 2001

in Science

Little Ice Age was Worldwide

Much has been made of the “hockey stick”, a graph that shows a relatively stable global temperature from 1000 to 1900 AD and then a sudden acceleration of global temperatures in the 20th century. The temperature records that make up the hockey stick consist of tree ring data taken almost entirely from the northern latitudes used to reconstruct temperature from 1000 to 1900 AD, and thermometer-based temperature records for the 20th century.

One of the puzzling things about the tree ring data, which first appeared in a paper by Michael Mann in Nature, is that it no longer showed the Medieval Warm Period nor the Little Ice Age (LIA), both of which are widely recognized global phenomena. Mann has argued that the Little Ice Age was not a global event, but a localized Northern European event.

This is simply not true according to Diane Douglas Dalziel, with the Office of Climatology at Arizona State University. In a paper written for the Greening Earth Society, Dalziel reviews the paleoclimatic data from 29 different studies that show that the LIA was a global event. Dalziel says that, “In addition to investigating glacial geology, scientists study marine cores, sea-level curves, tree-ring chronologies, peat bogs, salt marshes, stalagmites, historic records, and even human tooth enamel to determine the magnitude, timing, and geographic extent of the LIA” (www.greeningearthsociety.org).

These different types of evidence show that there was a synchronous response to the LIA in Asia, New Zealand, North and South America as well as in Northern Europe. “Although there is some regional variation in the timing of cooling during the LIA, cold periods typically were synchronous over broad regional areas and often synchronous around the world,” Dalziel concludes. “The hockey stick curve used to highlight 20th Century temperature must therefore be considered within the context of the lower global temperatures associated with the LIA phenomenon.”

The Little Ice Age in History

For those who still doubt the calamitous effects that sudden climate change can have on mankind, a new book by archaeologist Brian Fagan should change their minds. “For five centuries, Europe basked in warm, settled weather…. Summer after summer passed with long, dreamy days, golden sunlight, and bountiful harvests. Compared with what was to follow, these centuries were a climatic golden age…. Nothing prepared them for the catastrophe ahead. As they labored through the warm summers of the thirteenth century, temperatures were already cooling rapidly on the outer frontiers of the medieval world” (page 21).

The Little Ice Age: How Climate Changed History, 13001850 (Basic Books, 2000) provides a wealth of well-organized evidence that the sudden global cooling caused crop failure, famine, and much more frequent and severe storms. Interestingly, some countries, such as Holland and England, adapted rather well, while the French didn’t change their farming practices and suffered the consequences. “The Little Ice Age may have imposed more benefits than costs on the Dutch. Extensive land reclamation turned liabilities into assets so powerful that they helped forge the first modern economy in Europe” (page 107).

Fagan, professor at the University of California at Santa Barbara, tries to make his story politically correct by packaging it with introductory and concluding warnings that the Little Ice Age is a precautionary tale. Although he makes a good effort to claim that future global warming may result in dislocations similar to the Little Ice Age, all the evidence in the book suggests that, in regard to human flourishing, warmer is better than colder.

Antarctica: To Melt or Not to Melt?

A study in the February 2, 2001 issue of Science reports that a remote glacier in the West Antarctic may slide into the sea in 600 years if the current rate of thinning continues. According to the researchers the area, known as the Pine Island Glacier, is melting too fast to sustain itself. “Over the past eight years the same areas have been thinning at the same rate. The pattern has not spread anywhere else,” said Physicist Andrew Shepherd, part of the team from University College London and the British Antarctic Survey. This would raise sea levels by 6 mm in 600 years.

Shepherd also pointed out, however, that they dont know the cause of the thinning. “We dont have any evidence to suggest change of climate,” said Shepherd. MSNBC (www.msnbc.com, February 1, 2001), noted that, “The West Antarctic Ice Sheet has been steadily melting since the end of the last ice age.”

Although some may attribute melting glaciers in the Antarctic to global warming, other studies cast doubt on this conclusion. A study in the Journal of Climate (13, 2000), finds that current trends in Antarctic sea ice are running in the opposite direction than predicted by climate models.

Climate models suggest, for instance, that Antarctic sea ice is highly sensitive to manmade global warming. A rise in surface temperature reduces sea ice coverage, thereby reducing albedo (or reflectivity). Lower albedo allows more incoming solar radiation to be absorbed, which leads to further rises in temperature. As a result, “High latitudes would experience [the] greatest change from any enhanced greenhouse warming.” Thus early signs of global warming should be detected in Antarctic sea ice.

What the study finds, however, is that, based on data from the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program Special Sensor Microwave/Imager from December 1987 to December 1996, sea ice area and total sea ice extent has increased. Combined with additional data from the 1978 to 1987 period the researchers concluded that from 1978 to 1996 sea ice has increased rather than decreased. Finally, the sea ice season lengthened throughout the 1990s.

Another study appearing in the Journal of Glaciology (46, 2000) used data from the western Dronning Maud Land in East Antarctica to model changes in ice sheet volume under six different temperature forcing scenarios over a period of 20,000 modeling years.

What they found was that it required 20,000 years for the ice sheet to fully respond to the different temperature changes. Scenarios of warming and cooling of 5 degrees C lead to a mere 1 to 1.5 percent change in initial ice sheet volume. This suggests that, “The investigated part of the [East Antarctic Ice Sheet] does not appear to be very sensitive to present or future climate changes.” The authors conclude, the EAIS “may still be adjusting to the climate change that ended the Last Glacial Maximum.” See also, http://www.co2science.org.

IPCC: Kyoto would be Costly; Who Profits from Kyoto?

by William Yeatman on January 23, 2001

in Kyoto Negotiations

IPCC: Kyoto would be Costly

Working Group III of the IPCC report predicts that compliance with the Kyoto Protocol would reduce economic growth by as much as 2 percent per year in the industrialized countries, according to the January 9 issue of Japan Times. This closely matches predictions by several other economic studies. Economic growth rates in industrial countries hover around 2 percent per year. That would be consumed by the Kyoto Protocol.

Who Profits from Kyoto?

Bruce Yandle, an economist at Clemson University, recently identified several “Baptist and Bootlegger” coalitions that are driving global warming policy in the January issue of Hoover Digest (www-hoover.stanford.edu).

The first group he identifies is the “alternative energy bootleggers.” Enron Corporation is a major provider of low-carbon natural gas. In 1997 it announced the creation of the Enron Renewable Energy Corporation “to take advantage of the growing interest in environmentally sound alternatives of power in the $250 billion U.S. energy market.” Enron endorsed President Clintons $6.3 billion plan to fight global warming, $3.6 billion of which would go to subsidize renewable energy technologies.

The National Corn Growers Association and Archer-Daniels-Midland, a producer of corn based ethanol fuel, have touted ethanol as a global-warming-friendly fuel. They succeeded in getting a 5.4 cents-per-gallon federal tax incentive for ethanol producers.

Several economic studies have shown that the Kyoto Protocol would be devastating to the coal industry, but would greatly benefit the natural gas industry and to a lesser degree the oil industry, both of which would step in to fill the vacuum left by coal. This explains why so many oil companies left the Global Climate Coalition and became crusaders for global warming policy, according to Yandle.

IPCC Releases Political Summary; A Rift in the IPCC “Consensus”?; Teamsters Oppose the Kyoto Protocol

by William Yeatman on January 23, 2001

in Politics

IPCC Releases Political Summary

The United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, on January 20, approved and released the Summary for Policymakers of its Third Assessment Report. As with the Second Assessment Report in 1995, the Summary bears little resemblance to the actual report, which has not yet been approved for final release. The report itself is replete with caveats that give little support for the catastrophic warming scenario touted by anti-energy activists (commonly known as environmentalists).

The summary, on the other hand, is a political document that exists primarily to bolster the claims of the anti-energy zealots, not to summarize the report. As Robert Watson, chairman of the IPCC, said in a press conference releasing the summary, “This adds impetus for governments of the world to find ways to live up to their commitments to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases.”

The summary claims that the earths temperature could rise much faster than previously thought and that last century was the warmest in the past thousand years. The Second Assessment Report, which was released in 1995, gave a prediction that the earth could warm by 1 to 3.5 degrees C by the year 2100. The “best estimate” was a 2 degree C warming by 2100, about a third lower than the IPCCs best estimate in 1990. The new report has dramatically increased that estimate to 1.4 to 5.8 degrees C, even though no new evidence has come to light to warrant such a dramatic change.

The summary claims that the 20th century has been the warmest in the last 1000 years. This conclusion is based on a suspect set of data derived from tree rings, which purports to show a stable climate from the years 1000 to 1900. It then crudely attaches the 20th century surface temperature data to produce a dramatic warming thereafter. When these two different (and incompatible) data sets are combined, the resulting graph resembles a hockey stick lying on its back, blade up.

It is very difficult to extract any information about past temperature variations using tree ring data. What it does tell us is whether the “combined micro-environmental conditions during the growing season [of a particular year] were favorable to [tree] growth or not (The Hockey Stick: A new low in climate science, www.microtech.com.au/daly).”

These conditions include rainfall, temperature, atmospheric carbon concentrations, and so on. Singling out the temperature effect is a highly speculative business. Moreover, the samples used in the tree ring data were limited to the Northern Hemisphere, leaving much of the planet unsampled. The IPCC report, nonetheless, presents the hockey stick graph as representing a global temperature trend.

The hockey stick represents a radical departure from the well-established historical temperature record, which has been derived from several proxies, including the written historical record, ice core samples, and tree ring data, among others. Those records show that the earth was much warmer during the Medieval Warm Period that spanned much of the first half of the millennium. The 20th century was cooler than the Medieval Warm Period and the warming that occurred could easily be explained by a natural emergence from the Little Ice Age, an episode that also mysteriously disappears in the IPCCs new tree ring data.

The summary states that, “There is new and stronger evidence that most of the warming observed over the last 50 years is attributable to human activities.” It turns out, however, that the evidence comes from computer-generated climate models, which, of course, isnt evidence at all.

“There is a longer and more closely scrutinized temperature record and new model estimates of variability,” says the summary. “The warming over the past 100 years is very unlikely to be due to internal variability alone, as estimated by current models.” Why the internal variability estimated by computers is valid is not explained. A look at real climate variability over the long term clearly shows that the current warming is well within natural variability.

Finally, computer models are still incapable of replicating the present climate using known climate conditions. Moreover, the several models in existence give such widely divergent predictions it is difficult to know what to make of them. A model that cannot predict the present certainly shouldnt be used to predict a hundred years into the future.

A Rift in the IPCC “Consensus”?

IPCC Chairman Robert Watson has a science degree, but he is not a practicing scientist. Indeed, he has been a political operative his whole life, and his pronouncements on the subject of global warming carry about as much weight as those by Greenpeace. The lead authors of the IPCCs Third Assessment Report are practicing scientists, however, and many of their comments seem to contradict Dr. Watsons.

Andrew Weaver, a climate scientist at the University of Victoria who holds the Canada Research Chair in atmospheric science is a lead author of the UN report. He stated that, “Based on the science you simply cant make the statement that it is going to warm faster.” People who argue otherwise dont understand the IPCC report, said Weaver.

The Toronto Star (January 23, 2001) points out that what was released on the 20th was an 18-page summary that was “hammered out during four days of horse-trading among officials from 99 governments.” These officials are often erroneously referred to as scientists in the press.

Gordon McBean, a former head of the Meteorological Service in Canada who was heavily involved in the Second Assessment Report said, “It is misleading to say the situation is worse.” Both scientists, however, do believe that man is the cause of the warming that weve seen so far.

Richard S. Lindzen, the Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Meteorology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is also a lead author of the report. He stated, “The public is led to think that hundreds, even thousands, of scientists formed a consensus about this report. The truth is that were not even asked.”

Bush Administration Seeks Delay

The Bush Administration has reportedly asked to postpone for two months negotiations on the Kyoto Protocol now scheduled to be held in Bonn, Germany in late May and early June. According to an Associated Press story, the State Department announced on January 24 that it needed the additional two months in order to take, in spokesman Rick Boucher’s words, “a thorough look at the U.S. policy on climate change.” This extra time would presumably be used to bring the U.S. negotiating position into conformity with the Bush campaigns explicit opposition to the Kyoto Protocol.

The continuation in Bonn of the sixth Conference of the Parties to the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change was agreed to after COP-6 collapsed in the Hague, Netherlands last November. COP-7 is scheduled for Marrakesh, Morocco in November.

Teamsters Oppose the Kyoto Protocol

The 1.5 million-member International Brotherhood of Teamsters has adopted a resolution opposing the Kyoto Protocol. It states, “The International Brotherhood of Teamsters will oppose the Kyoto Protocol and any like treaty, legislative or regulatory action that causes job loss and mandates internationally disproportionate greenhouse gas reductions.” It also called for a “short- and long-term comprehensive energy strategy that will assure that energy is adequate and affordable for American families and that prevents energy shortfalls that destabilize the economy” (Greenwire, January 23, 2001).

More Errors in Temperature Record;

by William Yeatman on January 23, 2001

in Science

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) claimed that the year 2000 was the fifth warmest since 1880. Other temperature records find less warming. The year 2000 was only the 14th warmest year since 1979 according to the satellite temperature record, and it was only the 9th warmest year since 1880, according to records that include only measurements from meteorological stations.

It looks as though the NOAA data, which is cited by government officials and the news media may be the least accurate according to a study, which recently appeared in Geophysical Research Letters (January 1, 2001). The NOAA datasets “are a mixture of near-surface air temperatures over land and sea water temperatures over oceans,” according to Dr. John Christy, professor of atmospheric science and director of the Earth System Science Center at the University of Alabama in Huntsville.

Since actual air temperature data over many large ocean areas are nonexistent, the NOAA uses sea surface temperatures as a “proxy”, assuming that sea surface temperatures and air temperatures move in lock step. This is not the case, according to the data compiled by Christy and his colleagues at the Hadley Centre of the United Kingdoms Meteorological Office, who worked on the study. The researchers used buoy data in the tropical Pacific Ocean to compare “long-term (8-20 year) trends for temperatures recorded one meter below the sea surface and three meters above it.”

What they found was a significant discrepancy. “For each buoy in the Eastern Pacific, the air temperatures measured at the three meter height showed less of a warming trend than did the same buoys water temperatures at one meter depth,” Christy said. The difference is a near-surface seawater warming trend of 0.37 degrees C per decade and an air temperature trend of only 0.25 degrees C per decade during the 20-year period tested. Replacing the sea surface temperatures with the air temperature data reduces the Earths global warming trend by a third, from 0.19 to 0.13 degree C per decade.

Etc.

  • Beyond Petroleum, formerly British Petroleum, told the British Parliament on January 18 that fuel taxes are being used by the government primarily to raise revenue and not to achieve environmental results. According to a January 19 Reuters story, BPs written submission to Parliaments Environmental Audit Select Committee states that, “We have observed that governments are apparently more driven by revenue than environmental objectives when setting the level of fuel duties.”

BPs report argues that the level of gas taxes in the United Kingdom, which amounts to three-quarters of the price paid at the pump, is ineffective and therefore unjustified. Reuters quotes the report: “We have also questioned the environmental efficacy of motor fuel taxes, mainly because they have so little effect on consumer behavior. The lack of alternatives and the importance of the motor car in modern life has left consumers with little option but to pay whatever tax is levied by the government.”

Cooler Heads reported in the November 1, 2000 issue that much higher gas taxes in Britain have not succeeded in reducing demand, thereby making it much harder to reach the carbon dioxide emission limits set by the Kyoto Protocol. It is not clear how BPs implied support for lower taxes would help to meet the Kyoto limits. BP is still selling motor fuels throughout the world, and in fact is Britain’s largest fuel retailer.

Announcements

  • Freedom 21 is sponsoring a debate on “The Future of the Kyoto Protocol” at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2001. Featured speakers are the Rt. Hon. John Gummer, MP, and Dr. Alan Keyes. The event is designed to present fundamentally different views of the future of the Treaty, especially for the benefit of new Beltway residents, whether they be in Congress or the Bush Administration.

  • The February 2001 issue of Discover magazine features an article about Dr. John Christy and his scientific views about global warming and his personal views about global warming policy.

Umbrella Group to Hold Secret Meeting in Sunny New Zealand; Bush Cabinet Looks Stronger on Kyoto with Abraham at Energy

by William Yeatman on January 9, 2001

in Politics

Umbrella Group to Hold Secret Meeting in Sunny New Zealand

The Japan Times (December 29, 2000) has reported that the so-called Umbrella Group, which includes Japan, the United States, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Norway, Russia, Ukraine and Kazakhstan, will hold “secret” talks in New Zealand to forge a joint strategy for future climate negotiations.

The meeting’s purpose is to try to figure out how to revive the moribund talks that collapsed last November in the Hague at the Sixth Conference of the Parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. One of the major sticking points at COP-6 was over the extent to which carbon sinks can be counted toward meeting emissions reductions. The Umbrella Group wants much more credit for sinks than does the European Union. Another controversial issue is the use of so-called flexible mechanisms. The Umbrella Group wants full use of emissions trading, for example, while the EU wishes to limit the use of such mechanisms.

The talks have been scheduled for February, which means that the new Bush Administration will have very little time to prepare their position or to put a new negotiating team in place. President-elect Bush opposed the Kyoto Protocol in his campaign, but no official position is expected until after he takes office.

Bush Cabinet Looks Stronger on Kyoto with Abraham at Energy

Since our last issue, President-elect George W. Bush’s cabinet picks look much less wobbly on global warming than the early nominations of Paul O’Neill to be Treasury Secretary and Gov. Christine Todd Whitman to head EPA. Bush nominated former Senator Spence Abraham to be Secretary of Energy on January 2.

In the Senate, Abraham was a solid opponent of the Kyoto Protocol. He sponsored legislation to repeal the federal excise tax on gasoline during last summer’s price spike and supported abolishing the Department of Energy. It’s also no surprise that, as a senator from Michigan, he was one of the leading opponents of raising Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards on automobiles.

Secretary of Energy looks like it will be a key position in the early months of the new administration. Current energy shortages may get worse, and candidate Bush laid out an ambitious long-term plan to increase production and reduce supply bottlenecks.

In addition, Kyoto opponents have a strong ally in Bush’s chief of staff, Andrew H. Card, Jr. Card served as secretary of transportation in the George Bush Administration, as president of the Alliance of American Automobile Manufacturers, and most recently as vice president in charge of General Motors’ Washington, D.C. office.

Antarctic Ice Sheet Retreating More Slowly Than Thought; Global Temperatures in 2000: Hot or Cold?; Red River Floods Not Caused

by William Yeatman on January 9, 2001

in Science

Antarctic Ice Sheet Retreating More Slowly Than Thought

“New evidence suggests that the West Antarctic Ice Sheet (WAIS) is retreating more slowly and contributing less to rising global sea levels than scientists once thought,” according to research summarized in a NASA news release (http://science.nasa.gov). The research was presented at the American Geophysical Union’s annual meeting in San Francisco on December 16.

“Our previous best estimates that the ice sheet as adding 1 millimeter per year to global sea level are almost certainly too high,” said Robert Bindschadler, a glaciologist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Scientists believed that the WAIS had reached its maximum growth 20,000 years ago, at about 3 times its current size. The new evidence, however, shows that it was still growing as little as 8,000 years ago.

According to Bindschadler’s analysis, “More rapid retreat approximately 7600 years ago and possible near-stability in the Ross Sea sector at present suggests a slow rate of initial retreat followed by a more rapid-than-average retreat during the late Holocene, returning to a near-zero rate of retreat currently” (http://earth.agu.org/meetings/fm00top.html).

“Bindschadler points to “the geologic record of dated stages in the retreat of the ice sheet’s continental base as evidence that it has shrunk in fits and starts,” according to the NASA news release. “Such episodic retreats may be controlled more by the varying depth of the underlying surface and water than by the changing climate.”

Global Temperatures in 2000: Hot or Cold?

The New York Times on December 19 proclaimed 2000 was “one of the hottest years since 1860,” even though the year wasn’t over and therefore not all the data had been collected yet. According to the World Meteorological Organization, said the Times, “2000 was the 22nd successive year that global temperatures have been above the average of the 1961-1990 base period.”

The use of 1961-1990 as the base period is suspect, however. That period encompasses a fairly long global cooling trend that began in 1940 and lasted through most of the 1970s. So it’s not surprising that temperatures since then have been above that particular average.

Preliminary data from the satellite measurements made by John Christy and Roy Spencer, on the other hand, show that global temperatures in the year 2000 were cooler than the running average since 1979. The overall trend since 1979 is plus 0.04 degrees C per decade, according to Christy, of the University of Alabama at Huntsville.

Red River Floods Not Caused by Global Warming

Flooding along the Red River in 1997 devastated parts of Canada and destroyed Grand Forks, North Dakota. Government officials from Canada and the U.S. (President Clinton and Vice President Gore) blamed the floods on global warming. Indeed, the Red River-climate change link has become ingrained in global warming folklore.

A new study shows that such a claim is entirely erroneous, however. Appearing in Natural Hazards (21: 2000), the study points out that the Red River has “a high natural potential for flooding” due to the fact that “it is located on a former glacial lake bottom.” In spite of the natural flood hazard posed by the area, development has continued to increase, thereby leading to ever-higher costs related to flood damage.

The 1997 flood was the largest of the 20th century, but it is smaller than floods that occurred in the 19th century. A slightly larger flood occurred in 1852, and in 1826 a catastrophic flood occurred that discharged 40 percent more water than the 1997 flood.

It’s a Cold, Cold Winter

The U.S. has just experienced its coldest November to December period in the 106-year temperature record in the lower 48 states, according to preliminary figures from the U.S. National Climatic Data Center. The World Climate Report (January 8, 2001) argues that these figures are likely to go down even further when the final data comes in. “The early returns are largely from urban stations whose concentrated economic activity is known to produce artificial warming, while rural stations, slower to report, are free from this effect and therefore could likely lower the preliminary average,” noted WCR.

In Siberia, one of the two areas in the world that is supposed to warm up more rapidly than any other, according to climate models (the other being Northwest North America), they are experiencing life threatening cold temperatures. The city of Barnaul recorded its lowest temperature in the last 100 years on January 7, 67 degrees below zero F. Authorities evacuated patients from poorly-heated hospitals.

In Krasnoyarsk the month of December never saw temperatures rise above minus 58 degrees F. People are keeping gas ovens running nearly 24 hours a day just to keep their homes at around 50 degrees F, and the freezing temperatures are disrupting the distribution of water.

Forecasters are worried that January could be even worse. According to UPI (January 7, 2001), “Weather forecasters confirm an old Russian tradition according to which the harshest weather can be expected during the so-called ‘Baptist Frost,’ the week following January 19.”

EIA Analyzes Multi-Emissions Reduction Proposals; U.S. Energy Crisis: A Reality Check

by William Yeatman on January 9, 2001

in Politics

EIA Analyzes Multi-Emissions Reduction Proposals

Several bills have been floating around Capitol Hill which propose mandatory coordinated multi-emissions reductions of SO2, NOx and CO2. The Bush campaign also pledged in its energy policy statement to propose legislation to reduce emissions of these three gases as well as mercury through a “multi-pollutant” approach. At the request of former-Rep. David McIntosh, then-chairman of the House Subcommittee on National Economic Growth, Natural Resources, and Regulatory Affairs, the Department of Energy’s Energy Information Administration (EIA) has issued a study that analyzes “the potential costs of various multi-emission reduction strategies to reduce the air emissions from electric power plants.”

To analyze the potential costs, EIA assumes an emissions trading scheme similar to the one used in Title IV of the Clean Air Act Amendments of 1990 to reduce SO2 emissions. It also assumes a reduction in SO2 and NOx of 75 percent below 1997 levels and a reduction of CO2 emissions to 1990 levels by 2005 to 2008 and a further reduction to 7 percent below 1990 levels by 2008 to 2012. It also analyzes the difference in costs between separate programs for each of the gases and an integrated reduction approach.

The costs of reducing NOx and SO2 emissions would do little to raise electricity prices above EIA’s business-as-usual projections. The cost of electricity to consumers would rise 5.9 cents per kilowatt-hour as a result with or without the emissions reductions. However, the annual cost of a separate CO2 program would be $90 to $121 billion over the same period, raising consumer electricity prices by 8.3 cents per kilowatt-hour.

An integrated approach where emission targets for the three gases were met simultaneously would lower the cost of emissions reduction by $5 to $11 billion. The loss to GDP under the integrated approach would be $60 to $115 billion in 2005 and $60 to $84 billion in 2010.

According to EIA, “The impact on electricity prices is projected to be much larger in the CO2 cap and integrated cases than in the NOx and SO2 cap cases. Because there are currently no commercially available technologies for removing and storing (sequestering) CO2 and none is expected to be available during the projection period, the only way to make large reductions in CO2 emissions is to reduce the consumption of fuels with relatively high carbon content and improve the efficiency of energy production and use.”

In other words, SO2 and NOx reductions can be met through installation of emission reduction equipment in existing plants, but reductions in CO2 emissions will require retiring coal-fired power plants and constructing natural gas (if gas supplies increase) power plants or perhaps more-efficient coal-fired power plants. The bottom line is that including CO2 emissions reductions in a multi-emission reduction strategy would significantly raise consumer energy prices. The report can be downloaded at http://www.eia.doe.gov.

U.S. Energy Crisis: A Reality Check

An article in the Philadelphia Inquirer (December 29, 2000) discusses the real energy problems that George W. Bush will face as President. Reducing greenhouse gas emissions is not on the list.

Among those problems are, “fear of heating-oil shortages in the Northeast, record high natural-gas prices, and soaring electric bills and threats of blackouts in California. Bush was facing reality when he told a group of reporters, ‘When we’re undersupplied as a nation and demand increases, prices will go up.'” The solution, said Bush, is to raise supply through higher production.

Most experts agree, however, that there is little the president can do in the short term. “He’s going to have to look down the road on how he can improve the situation and keep it from happening again,” said Robert Ebel, director of energy programs at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. Energy shortages and much higher prices may be one of the main causes of the current economic slowdown. However, the current energy crunch is minor compared to what would be required to meet the Kyoto emissions limits.

Text References on Climate Change and Weather Extremes

by William Yeatman on December 31, 2000

in Science

Text References

Bernard, H.W. Jr.; “Global Warming Unchecked,” Indiana University Press, Bloomington, Indiana, 1993.

Emmanuel, K.E.; “The Dependency of Hurricane Intensity on Climate,” Nature 326, 1987.

Emmanuel, K.E.; “The Maximum Intensity of Hurricans,” J. Atm. Sci., 45, 1988.

Flavin, C.; “Storm Warning, Climatic Change Hits the Insurance Industry,” World Watch, 7, #6, 1994.

Friedman, D.G.; “Implications of Climatic Change for the Insurance Industry,” National Hazards Research Program, Travelers Insurance Company, Hartford, Connecticut, 1989.

Gardner, B.; (Personal Communication), January 1995.

Imbrie & Imbrie; “Ice Ages,” Enslow, Short Hills, N.J., 1979.

IPCC; (International Panel on Climatic Change) “Climate Change, the Scientific Assessment,” University of Cambridge, 1990.

IPCC; (International Panel on Climate Change) “Radiative Forcing of Climate, the 1994 Report of the Scientific Assessment Working Group of IPCC, Summary for Policymakers, Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change,” 1994.

Jones, P.D. & P. YA Groisman, et al.; “Assessment of Urbanization Effects in Time Series of Surface Air Temperature over Land,” Nature, 347, 1990a.

Jones, P.D. & P.M. Kelley et al; ” The Effect of Urban Warming on the Northern Hemispheres Average Temperature,” J. Climate, 2, 1990b.

Karl, T.R. & Baker, C.B.; “Global Warming Update,” Invited Presentation at the 74th Annual Meeting of the American Meteorological Society, 1995.

Karl, T.R., et al.; United States Historical Climatology Network National and Regional Estimates of Monthly and Annual Precipitation. pp 830-905. In T.A. Boden et al. Trends 93: A Compendium of Global Change. ORNL/CDIAC-65. Carbon Dioxide Information Analysis Center, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tenn., U.S.A., 1994.

Lighthill, J. & G. Holland, et al.; “Global Climate Change and Tropical Cyclones”, Bulletin American Meteorological Society, 75, 1994.

Lindzen, R.S.; “Climatic Dynamics & Global Change,” Ann. Rev. Fluid Mech., 1994a.

Lindzen, R.S.; “On the Scientific Basis for Global Warming,” Env. Pollution, 83, 1994b.

Lindzen, R.S.; “Some Coolness Concerning the Global Warming.” Bulletin American Meteorological Society, 71, 1990.

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