Matt Yglesias writes
Back in 2008 both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John McCain and Mitt Romney all seemed to agree, in principle, that it ought to be a high priority to enact some kind of binding limit on American greenhouse gas emissions. Even given that, the path to a binding workable global agreement was clearly frought with peril since there’s a divergence of perspectives between newcomers to the high emissions party (China) and those who’ve been there a long time (United States). But in the intervening three years, the politics of this have been totally transformed in a way that’s not even slightly backed up by the scientific information that’s come in over this time. Instead of debating whether or not emissions will be limited or reduced, we’re debating the Keystone XL pipeline as a kind of proxy war over fossil fuels.
What’s changed is whether or not the debate matters. To back up a bit more, in 2006 it would have been easy to suggest that: look its probably impossible to alter the general trend line on global emissions but there is some damage associated with carbon and so it makes sense to tax carbon rather than to tax things we like such as work and savings.
As a bonus, this might speed up the arrival of wind or solar as a major player and that indeed might have some real upside effect.
Since that time the workability of this type of mild, tax-carbon-instead-of-work scheme has seemed to fall apart. We got a complicated mess in Waxman-Markey and even that couldn’t pass the Senate, with what looked like a favorable ideological make-up.
Thus failing compromise, the politics has mutated into pro and anti fossil fuel camps. Even this, however, could have been considered a sideshow, until recently.
Its is now becoming rapidly apparent that economic future for fossil fuels is much brighter than we would have suspected a few years ago. In particular, North America looks to be in a position to earn enormous rents from fossil fuel production.
Moreover, this comes at precisely a time in which interest rates and aggregate demand are very low. Large scale structural projects with multi-decade high rent payoffs are exactly the type of thing you need in this situation. And they are coming to us on a platter.
Thus, the nature of the signal changed.
In 2006 supporting, in theory, a carbon tax was a signal that you believed the science on climate change. In 2011, pushing for the Keystone Pipeline is a signal that you value US industrial production over symbolic statements about the importance of climate change.
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Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:28 pm
Ryan Cooper (@RyanLouisCooper)
“Its is now becoming rapidly apparent that economic future for fossil fuels is much brighter than we would have suspected a few years ago.” Yeah, in the same sense that finding $1 million worth of platinum underneath heavy metal-bearing rock requiring $200 million worth of cleanup counts as a bright economic future.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 3:18 pm
Wonks Anonymous
That sounds like an implausible analogous cost estimate to me. My understanding is that the cost of carbon assigned by the Stern report results in a tax that still leaves plenty of value in fuels.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:39 pm
Orthodox
It’s a double whammy. The scientific arguments for man-made global warming are falling apart and unemployment is around 15-20%. Policies that increase energy costs and unemployment, as the science in favor of them becomes weaker, are DOA. Moving away from carbon will become popular again when the economy picks up three or four years from now, as oil again charges at $200 a barrel.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 11:02 pm
Benny Lava
Trolling is a art!
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 1:52 pm
bobmark
Also the fact that real world evidence shows temperature increases far below early model peojections.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 2:49 pm
Josh
The state of climate science was and has been the same, and I’ll just leave it at that. No reason to get into a flame war about it.
North America is already earning the largest portion of its fossil fuels rent from the Athabasca tar sands. Most of the hype over “American Energy Independence” is wishful thinking. The ilk of IHS Cera have won over the editorial board of the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and Financial Times, but they haven’t won over reality. Granted, there are rents to be had, but serious energy analysts don’t hold much hope for a long-term change. We’ll see conventional-type reserves exploited now peter out in under thirty years, much the same as from Prudhoe Bay. Tight oil will give out even sooner, based on what I’ve seen from the well decline profiles.
There are compelling reasons to support the Keystone pipeline outside of American industrial production, many of them having to do with maintaining the refineries on the East Coast’s production in the face of cheap refined product imports from the midwest. In fact, I’m not even certain that constructing the pipeline will maintain American industrial production at all: in the entirety of the midwest, fuel prices will rise as a result of the oversupply at Cushing being relieved, and a large portion of the syncrude, or the crude it displaces, will go to export rather than contribute to lower prices in the United States. Most of the east coast gets its crude from Africa, the North Sea or Norway rather than from American sources.
And Keystone XL is not and has never really been about jobs. Say what you want about the construction of the pipeline, energy is a highly capital intensive industry, and capital is substituted for labor at almost every opportunity. This has as much to do with the relative productivity of labor with respect to capital as it does with the scarcity of labor with the correct skills. At most, what I’d expect is that the petrochemical industry on the US Gulf Coast might continue in operation for a while as the Gulf’s production winds down. That’s far more a story of keeping capital assets productive than keeping jobs, however, when you consider the relative investments involved.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 2:55 pm
sam
“Also the fact that real world evidence shows temperature increases far below early model peojections.”
Meanwhile, As Permafrost Thaws, Scientists Study the Risks
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 3:26 pm
rjs
Giant plumes of methane bubbling to surface of Arctic Ocean – Russian scientists have discovered hundreds of plumes of methane gas, some 1,000 meters in diameter, bubbling to the surface of the Arctic Ocean. Scientists are concerned that as the Arctic Shelf recedes, the unprecedented levels of gas released could greatly accelerate global climate change. Igor Semiletov of the Russian Academy of Sciences tells the UK’s Independent that the plumes of methane, a gas 20 times as harmful as carbon dioxide, have shocked scientists who have been studying the region for decades. “Earlier we found torch-like structures like this but they were only tens of meters in diameter,” he said. “This is the first time that we’ve found continuous, powerful and impressive seeping structures, more than 1,000 metres in diameter. It’s amazing.” Semiletov said that while his research team has discovered more than 100 plumes, they estimate there to be “thousands” over the wider area, extending from the Russian mainland to the East Siberian Arctic Shelf. “In a very small area, less than 10,000 square miles, we have counted more than 100 fountains, or torch-like structures, bubbling through the water column and injected directly into the atmosphere from the seabed,” Semiletov said. “We carried out checks at about 115 stationary points and discovered methane fields of a fantastic scale — I think on a scale not seen before. Some plumes were a kilometer or more wide and the emissions went directly into the atmosphere — the concentration was a hundred times higher than normal.”
http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/sideshow/giant-plumes-methane-bubbling-surface-arctic-ocean-163804179.html
http://www.arctic-methane-emergency-group.org/#
in the short term, methane is 75 times as potent a greenhouse gas as CO2…so you see, the feedback mechanisms have already guaranteed runaway warming…climate change is now out of our hands…gaia will do as she pleases, whatever we do…
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 10:45 pm
John Skookum
It’s beyond absurd to assume that these methane plumes were entirely absent at the global average temperature of 287.1 K in 1900, and only started burping up methane at the current average of 287.6 K.
Even if you allow for a wider range of temperature fluctuation in the polar regions, all this study tells me is that we have stumbled upon a long-standing natural phenomenon that we never properly looked for before.
If anything, the discovery of vast sources of immensely strong natural greenhouse gases without any prior evidence for Venusian runaway greenhouse warming tells me that the alarmist believers in catastrophic positive climate feedback loops are complete idiots.
Positive feedback in nature is vanishingly rare, transitory, and weak, and this is merely further proof. The Stefan-Boltzmann Law will not be mocked.
Monday ~ December 19th, 2011 at 5:27 pm
Becky Hargrove
What’s missing here are the aggregate decisions of the individual to work together, in ways that mean using far less fossil fuels than we presently do. Two aspects to this: First, creating walkable cities with rail connections that minimize the need of fossil fuels on a massive scale. Plus, NEVER forget that we are still using the wealth creation benefits of extraction – along with that of manufacturing – to supply extreme knowledge based rents in the service economies. As long as we do that, all discussion about respecting the earth really misses the point, because we use extraction, manufacturing and production like a hamster wheel to perpetuate knowledge based economies, instead of allowing them to trickle down naturally.
Tuesday ~ December 20th, 2011 at 12:53 am
Peter Gerdes
> The Stefan-Boltzmann Law will not be mocked.
Unfortunately the Stefan-Boltzmann law is about absolute temperature so a 10 degree rise in earth temperature corresponds to only a 14% increase in emissivity and a 20 degree rise corresponds to a 30% increase.
Now a change in albedo from .7 to .8 would by itself account for a 14 degree change in global temperature on a black body approximation and greenhouse style effects already account for something around a 30 degree departure from that black body approximation.
So yes, ultimately that T^4 term will outrun any factors relating to albedo (melting ice) and greenhouse effects. However, back of the envelope calculations don’t give us any reason to rule out a 20 degree increase in temperature or more before this occurs. So we must turn to sophisticated climate models to estimate the extent of the warming.
So it’s unlikely we will become Venus and probably there is nothing we humans could do (except perhaps a large enough nuclear winter to lock the entire planet in ice which is a true strong positive feedback and even then evidence suggests it won’t kill off all microbes) to render earth totally uninhabitable. However, that leaves a great deal of room to make the planet very very uncomfortable for us and create a huge amount of conflict over scarce resources.
Tuesday ~ December 20th, 2011 at 5:57 am
Tel
Or more comfortable for the people who would have otherwise frozen to death because they cannot pay their heating bills (yes it happens to a lot).
As the Canadians like to say, “we don’t have hobos here, we have winter.”
Tuesday ~ December 20th, 2011 at 1:08 am
Peter Gerdes
What I’m trying to say is that it all depends on your idea of runaway climate change.
Given the high end predicted by climate models is something like a 6 degree temperature increase in the next 100 years I’d call a 10 degree increase ‘runaway global warming’. That’s unlikely but hardly ruled out by basic considerations.
If you have a silly naive idea of runaway global warming where you imagine the world becoming totally uninhabitable then of course you are dumb but that’s hardly news.
Tuesday ~ December 20th, 2011 at 12:34 pm
Matt
Your environmental stance is essentially the future is too uncertain and complex so screw it, it doesn’t matter. The more responsible (and yes more challenging) approach would be to devise strategies to develop for resilience and potential. That is developing towards the idea of flexibility for an endless number of future alternatives. Climate change aside, your strategy of depleting our non-renewable resources as fast as possible and ruining vast areas of ecosystem services in the process (this isn’t just symbolism, actions such as the pipeline have real world consequences on local, region, and even global scales) limits future options and scenarios.