Cap And Trade’s Creators: Cap And Trade Can’t Solve Global Warming
Posted August 13th, 2009 at 1.00pm in Energy and Environment.
The Wall Street Journal tracks down three of the economists who originally helped come up with the idea of cap and trade and finds that all three do not believe the system can be used to stop global warming. Then University of Wisconsin graduate student and now University of Wyoming professor outlines two problems with carbon cap and trade:
The first is that carbon emissions are a global problem with myriad sources. Cap-and-trade, he says, is better suited for discrete, local pollution problems. “It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally,” he says. “There are no institutions right now that have that power.”
Europe has embraced cap-and-trade rules. Emissions initially rose there because industries were given more permits than they needed, and regulators have since tightened the caps. Meanwhile China, India and other developing markets are reluctant to go along, fearing limits would curb their growth. If they don’t participate, there is little assurance that global carbon emissions will slow much even if the U.S. goes forward with its own plan. And even if everyone signs up, Mr. Crocker says, it isn’t clear the limits will be properly enforced across nations and industries.
The other problem, Mr. Crocker says, is that quantifying the economic damage of climate change — from floods to failing crops — is fraught with uncertainty. One estimate puts it at anywhere between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product. Without knowing how costly climate change is, nobody knows how tight a grip to put on emissions.
The WSJ continues:
Another economist, David Montgomery, advanced their ideas in the 1970s, converting their theories into the complex mathematical formulas to demonstrate that they weren’t merely an idea but were also economically feasible. Mr. Montgomery, too, is a skeptic of cap-and-trade for greenhouse gases. … “You get huge swings in carbon prices with a cap, which creates more volatility and uncertainty for business,” he says.
Volatility and uncertainty for business are just the beginning of the costs of cap and trade. The Center for Data Analysis studied the affect the current Waxman-Markey energy tax bill would have on our nations economy and found:
- A family of four can expect its per-year energy costs to rise by $1,241;
- Including taxes, a family of four will pay an additional $4,609 per year;
- Aggregate GDP losses will be $9.4 trillion;
- Aggregate cap-and-trade energy taxes will be $5.7 trillion; and
- Job losses will be nearly 2.5 million;
- Author: Conn Carroll
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August 13, 2009 John F. Holland, Lansing, Michigan writes:
The Link between Carbon Dioxide and the Earth’s Climate
The level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is an indicator of the earth’s temperature not the cause. It is much the same as a thermometer indicates the temperature of a person’s body but does not cause it. The earth does, indeed, pass through heating and cooling stages, the dominant factor being cyclic variations in the sun’s output with some assistance by geological and meteorological natural processes. To date, there is no scientific evidence of any effect by mankind on these stages. If there is any effect it must be negligible. The following will document the present status and understandings.
To call carbon dioxide (CO2) a contaminant gas is totally misleading. It is essential to all life. Animal life must exhale it as a result of metabolism and plants use it to produce the foodstuffs that animal life depends upon. In reality, increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere could increase the efficiency of plants and subsequently their output. This is not a contaminant gas but an essential player in the living cycles of both plants and animals.
The recent observation of increased levels of CO2 in the atmosphere have actually followed the observation of slightly increasing atmospheric temperatures, as a careful examination of the data in Gore’s book and elsewhere will attest. This is a very important correlation. The earth’s surface is ¾ water and the oceans are on average quite deep, making their volume significant when compared to the volume of the atmosphere. CO2 is a gas that like other gases will partition itself between a liquid phase {water} and an adjacent gas phase {atmosphere}. The long established Henry’s law indicates that the higher the temperature of this system the more a gas will prefer to be in the gaseous phase than the liquid phase. Hence, any increases in the earth’s temperature will automatically increase the level of the gas, in this case CO2, in the atmosphere. This relationship is to be expected as an effect, not run backward as a cause as the alarmists are prone to do. There are various associations in which CO2 can exist in the seas; however, all these mechanisms are temperature dependent in the same general direction. The higher the temperature, the greater the amount in the atmosphere.
As the earth warms from the sun not only the CO2 but also water vapor {H2O} and other gases from the oceans will increase their presence in the atmosphere. Interestingly, water vapor is a much better absorber of the sun’s rays than CO2 and when added to the increased levels of methane and other absorbing pollutants arising from frozen deposits, namely in the Polar Regions, together could contribute somewhat to any rise in temperature. Notice that all of these concentrations in the atmosphere are an effect not an original cause of the temperature rise. The sun is still the major cause. To indict CO2 levels as a cause of climate temperature variations is a disservice to both science and humanity. Several of the original advocates of CO2 being a cause of global warming have taken a serious review of the data now available and came to the conclusion that there is no scientific evidence that mankind has any significant effect on the climate of the earth. Over 31,000 scientists in related fields have recently signed a document attesting to this fact and it is being used in litigation against Al Gore by the creator of the Weather Channel, accusing Al of perpetrating a fraud. The sun creates the warming and the cooling and all in between. And it has been going on for eons. How did Greenland get its name? At one time, not long ago, it was green with vegetation and someday will probably be so again. The sun is the 1800-pound gorilla in the living room and nobody wants to notice it.
For anyone to propose CO2 controls, such as cap and trade now being considered which would punish economies worldwide and be of no scientific merit, is totally unjustified. Some would like to consider it as a source of income for the government; others recognize it as an onerous new tax. In either view, the present economic situation should preclude any action to be taken at this time. The naysayer’s proclaiming the impending doom are actually quite disingenuous; if they really believed the scenario they so vigorously proclaim, there is absolutely no reason to exclude anyone, let alone some of the biggest polluters in the world. If the situation is that dire, all must cooperate. Since this is not the case, we must seriously question their motives.