Asymmetrical Information

Is there really speculation that Russia is in favor of global warming to make it more habitable/arable? Hadn't heard that. Wouldn't the effect of any noticeable warming of the atmosphere pretty much flood St Petersburg or other Russian port cities? (I don't know the elevation of St. Petersburg). Seems rather Dr. Evilish to me.

The problem is that Russia *won't* make a tidy sum off the sale of emissions permits unless the US commits to the protocol and has to buy them. Without the US, the short-term benefits of selling permits to Europe do not exceed the long-term cost of Russia's industry getting throttled by emissions restrictions should it ever grow back to pre-1990 levels. The treaty also places Russia at a comparative disadvantage to the growing economies of India and China, whose emissions are not restricted *at all* by Kyoto.

"(The threshold is a percentage of the world's emissions, not a number of countries)"

Actually, it's both. IIRC 55 countries repesenting 55% of the industrialized countries' emissions.

Jane, for newer readers, this would probably be a good place to post a link to your thorough analysis of why it would cost so much to reduce emissions.

I don't have time to research it right now, but I'm sure I heard something recently on NPR or somewhere contradicting the "global warming will flood coastal cities" theory. The idea is that ice floating in water works the same on a global scale as it does in a glass of water; melting ice doesn't overflow the glass, and it won't flood Miami either. Does anybody know more than I do about this?

Antarctica and, to a lesser extent, Greenland, are the big problems. The ice there is anchored on ground, and runs to 10000 feet. There is also speculation that if the ice melted, Antarctica itself would rise. (The plate it is on is being "weighed down" by the ice, and so would float higher on the mantle than it does currently.) That would be, of course, very slow. The parts of Antarctica that have recently been breaking up - Ross Ice shelf area - are anchored on water, so they shouldn't affect sea levels. The Arctic ice pack is mostly irrelevant.

Warmer water is also less dense than cold, so if it raised overall ocean temperatures, global warming could expand the oceans physically. This one is less uncertain - it isn't at all clear how quickly water temperatures would rise.

The really catastrophic ocean raising levels you sometimes see bandied about rely on all three scenarios above - rising Antarctica, melting continental ice, and expanding water. I'm not qualified to comment on the probabilities.

Jane,

On the question of the Russian "hot air" credits market, it appears they have several substantial objections to the idea:

1) The collapse of the primary potential market with the US out of Kyoto, and slow economic growth in Europe and Japan, who were also supposed to be buyers.
2) New Eastern European EU members would be the first in line to sell credits to other EU members, leaving Russia at a disadvantage.
3) A very short time frame in which the Russian credits export market would exist, before Russia itself begins to exceed the emissions cap and becomes a buyer of credits.
4) The choice of trying to improve the Russian economy by (carbon-intensive) economic growth versus becoming (or continuing as) a charity case, unable to grow and dependent on a credits market based on a fiction (the non-existence of Russian CO2 emissions).

The first three reasons were given by Iliaronov in his press conference on October 3 of this year. I'm no economist, but those seem to me like pretty good reasons for the Russians to be skeptical of the "hot air" market.

So I guess the reason that the Arctic cap is irrelevant is because, though a portion of the cap (or the 'tip'of an iceberg, to use something on a smaller scale) is above water, when the iceberg melts, the liquid that results is equal in volume to the previously submerged part of the iceberg?

Otherwise, the excess portion of the ice (the tip), when melted, would increase the volume of the ocean and hence ocean levels.

I have heard this as well, but I'm just looking for an explantion of the elementary physics involved.

Ice is less dense than water, which is why it floats; but in order to float, it must be displacing a volume of water equal to its own mass. I think. It's been rather a while since Phyics I.

Thus, when the floating ice melts, it is taking up the exact same space as it was before.

No need to worry about melting ice folks. Antarctica is still in a 40-year cold spell and the amount of ice at Antarctica is growing.

At the North Pole, the ice cap is shrinking on the US side and growing on the Siberia side. Net change of ice at the North Pole is practically zero.

Ironically, France is the big winner in the Kyoto treaty.
Because 75% of their electricity comes from nuclear plants, France expected to get hundreds of billions of dollars from the rest of the world by selling their carbon dioxide credits to countries that do not use nuclear power. No complaints from the left on this however.

I've heard speculation that Russia is biding their time, trying to see if they can "bid up" the price they could extract from a desperate Europe for their "Yes" vote.

As anxious as France and Germany are to not only hurt the U.S. economically, but to isolate us politically, the Russians might do well to sit tight and see how badly "Old Europe" wants it.

I think Dan has it. Russia is shopping its vote. As pointed out in the main post, Kyoto isn't about climate change, it's an economic hustle by European grifters. Climate change is a technological issue not a political ssue.

The artic ice pack thing is because it floats. Thus, due to the laws of buoyancy it displaces an amount of water equal to its weight (if it displaced more there'd be a force pushing up, less and there'd be a force pushing down). When floating ice melts it becomes water which weighs as much as the displacement of the ice and thus has the same volume as the displacement of the ice, so it ends up just taking up as much space in the water either way (in the one case by displacing water equal to its weight, in the other by being water equal to its weight).

Also, even though the melting of the artic polar cap would not affect sea levels it could have dramatic climatic consequences due to changes in ocean salinity, which affects things like current flow and especially up-welling and down-welling. One of the more likely consequences of a melted arctic ice cap would be the shut-down of the atlantic oceanic conveyor, which would be a very bad thing.

Anywho, back to the topic at hand. Kyoto is and always has been a rediculous piece of garbage. It's bad government, bad science, bad economics, and very, very bad environmentalism. It's insanely stupid in the worst way.

"And what is the benefit from this profligate spending? Well, it seems that the Kyoto protocol would push global warming back by about 6 years. So we all go to hell in 2106 instead of 2100, or whatever the current date set for damnation is."

I'm no ass-kisser, Ms. Galt, but you sure have a way of being pithy, brilliant, and, sometimes, outright hilarious.

Jane also has a not so enjoyable trait of ignoring the more subtle parts of her argument. The entire case against Kyoto appears to rest on the unspoken assertion that the science behind global warming from CO2 and Methane is wrong. If it is wrong then there's no need to impose an extra cost on 'green house' gas emmissions so we can snicker over Kyoto falling apart.

What if this argument by wishful thinking is wrong? If the science is correct (and Jane seems to toy with this when she speculates that Russia may want global warming to give them a port that is never ice locked) then emmissions of greenhouse gas have a huge external cost associated with them. What policies would Jane support to address this? It seems to be nothing more than wishful thinking and burying her head in the sand.

If the science is good (and unfortunately it is starting to look like it is) then what is wrong with Kyoto? It uses a market mechanism (emmissions credits) to create an incentive to reduce emmissions. The right seems to fall back on linear thinking rather than dynamic thinking when they estimate the 'costs' (I put that in quotation marks because one really needs to reduce any cost estimates by the benefit of cutting emmissions).

I find it odd that a writer for TechCentral would be a bit more creative than to imply that the only way to reduce emmissions to the 1996 level is to go back to 1996's GDP. Especially when a powerful property/market interest is established for finding ways to reduce emmissions.

"And what is the benefit from this profligate spending? Well, it seems that the Kyoto protocol would push global warming back by about 6 years. So we all go to hell in 2106 instead of 2100, or whatever the current date set for damnation is."

That's just silly. Obviously, the Kyoto protocol is not the final solution to every problem we have with polluting emissions. It's just part of a solution. Enormous effort needs to be made to avoid depleting, for example, our oil before we find a decent alternative, or before we FUBAR our atmosphere. Either by governments forcing industries to come up with better solutions or the industries themselves finding profitable solutions. Although for companies to find a solution they might need a little more incentive than their own conscience, as most of human history would show is quite likely.

Boonton: The "science", as you put it, is unlikely to be entirerly good or bad. Some of it, it is already clear, is very bad, but other bits are good. But what does it *mean*?

Are temperatures even rising globally? Much of the strongest data for that idea comes from urban heat islands, and is therefore absolutely useless. By contrast, there is a significant body of data that indicates temperatures are not rising. But let's assume they are.

Is the rise significant? Again, there's lot of data that says temperatures have been higher within the last thousand years. If what we're seeing is just natural background fluctuations, should we even be concerned? But let's assume the temperature rise is significant.

Will it be good or bad? You make an unsuported statement about "huge external costs". That's nice, but it's clear that a warmer climate with higher C02 levels will be excellent for agriculture, which would be a significant benefit. In addition, a warmer climate would reduce mortality rates during the winter, and there's reason to think this would more than offset an increase in mortality rates during the summer. But let's assume that warming will be, on net, negative.

So, we've made some pretty big assumptions, but we've now reached the idea that the world is seriously warming, and it's a bad thing. So what do you do about it? Your answer would seem to be Kyto. Fine. Now explain, if you can, why you think:

A.) Kyoto will solve the problem.
B.) How a delay of 6 years can possibly be called "solving the problem"
C.) What makes you think the costs of Kyto don't actually exceed the costs of global warming.
D.) What makes you think the cost of Kyto couldn't do 100 times more good spent on AIDS research, nation building efforts in the CAR, food aid to North Korea, or any of another thousand deserving causes.

And no, you can't blame the Clinton administrations estimates as "right wing linear thinking". Well, you CAN, but then I'll just laugh at you.

Nor can you argue that Kyoto is just a "first step". Either it makes sense from a cost/benefits analysis or it doesn't - and it's quite clear, it doesn't.

"...what is wrong with Kyoto? It uses a market mechanism (emmissions credits) to create an incentive to reduce emmissions."

It's rigged to avoid reduction of emissions. The dates of record were carefully chosen to cater to some heavy polluters so that they won't have to make real reductions. It exempts countries that will have large emissions growth. Kyoto isn't about emissions reduction. It's not a climate related agreement, it's a money redistribution scheme. Climate isn't a concern for Kyoto signatories, money is their issue.

"...for companies to find a solution they might need a little more incentive than their own conscience, as most of human history would show is quite likely."

Government can't force technological progress. Governments don't do conscience, they do power.

Another reason Russia will not sign now is that they would only benefit from doing so if France/Germany/Britain et. al. actually kept their promises to pay for all those emission credits.
Britain might.
France and Germany? Keep their word when it would cost them big time?

What do you think?

"Will it be good or bad? You make an unsuported statement about "huge external costs". That's nice, but it's clear that a warmer climate with higher C02 levels will be excellent for agriculture, which would be a significant benefit...."

Now you're just getting silly. We currently spend billions on keeping agriculture prices artifically high. It would seem the marginal benefit of increased production is rather slim..

But if your right then do the numbers and present the case. If global warming has external benefits then it may make sense to subsidize the emmission of additional greenhouse gasses.

>A.) Kyoto will solve the problem.

It doesn't have to, if it reduces the problem then it is a good thing. One then just has to measure its cost against the benefit.

>B.) How a delay of 6 years can possibly be
>called "solving the problem"

This is totally linear thinking. Creating a market mechanism to hold emmissions at where they were 6 years ago is hardly 'delaying the problem 6 years' considering that the releases are increasing every year. Also when you consider the large financial benefits from finding ways to reduce emmissions it seem spretty unbelievable that new technologies wouldn't be brought to bear on the problem faster than they ever would have.

>C.) What makes you think the costs of Kyto don't
>actually exceed the costs of global warming.
>D.) What makes you think the cost of Kyto
>couldn't do 100 times more good spent on AIDS
>research, nation building efforts in the CAR,...

These are really the same questions. If the argument is that the cost doesn't exist or is very minor then there is no need for something like Kyoto. If the cost is major then there is a need for it.

What argument do you and Jane want to make? If you are just sticking to the 'the science is bad' line then fine but why snicker over Kyoto falling apart as if it was a horrible idea? What ideas do you have if the science turns out to be right and global warming will end up being really bad?

"..This is totally linear thinking. Creating a market mechanism to hold emmissions at where they were 6 years ago is hardly 'delaying the problem 6 years' considering that the releases are increasing every year."

It delays the warming expected by IPCC models by six years over the next 100 years. As Megan said, the warming expected by 2100 without Kyoto will only be delayed to 2106 with Kyoto because the reductions are trivial and CO2 takes so long (100 years) to break down. It is too little, far too late, to affect climate. It's just a money hustle. It's what politicians do. Rather than implement policies that deal with problems, they seek to enhance their power and gather loot.

Either by governments forcing industries to come up with better solutions or the industries themselves finding profitable solutions. Although for companies to find a solution they might need a little more incentive than their own conscience, as most of human history would show is quite likely.

We have that already, it's our sulfur dioxide emissions trading program and it works very well. I would like to see such a thing established in the US for CO2, but at the international level it becoms a boondoggle.

Kyoto specified that a trading regime would exist and named the entities that would carry it out, but did not actually resolve how it would be structured. Attempts to define a trading regime would amount to years of bitter politicking.

A good summary of the problems faced in defining an international emissions trading system can be found in

Victor, David G. The Collapse of the Kyoto Protocol and the Struggle to Slow Global Warming. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2001.

Boonton: Agricultural subsidies are a bad idea in many ways - they exact a price both on the rich world and on the poor. Doesn't have the slightest thing to do with the point though. If a warmer climate with higher CO2 levels is good for agriculture, then it's *good*. If it doesn't, then it isn't. The presence or absence of other factors is quite irrelevent.

As for "doing the numbers", I'll do the numbers for benefits right after you do the numbers for the negative effects. :-) And I note you say "if global warming has benefits" - which is, of course, rediculous. Of course it has benefits. Proof by reduction: It's snowing here, and I wish it was warmer. That's a benefit, even if infitesimal, ipso facto, there are benefits to global warming. The idea that there aren't benefits is just as silly as the idea that there aren't negatives. They might be small, of course, but so might the negatives. What factors influence your relative ranking of the two?

Next, you dismiss the 6 years estimate as "linear thinking". Since this comes from the IPCC models, I guess you think they're linear, and therefore flawed. Fine (possibly even true), except now you've removed the entire scientific backing for your position...such as it is. You can't pick and choose - "The models say that it'll get warmer without Kyoto, and that's good and correct, but they say it'll get warmer with Kyoto too, and that's wrong and linear."

As for the argument, it's quite simple, although you seem to have failed to grasp it so far, so please pay attention.

A.) Kyoto has high costs, possibly running into the 13 figure range. As mentioned by Jane, the Clinton Administration (no foes of the agreement) estimated $400 billion for the US alone.

B.) Kyoto does very little, delaying the presumed apocalypse by 6 years, according to the very models that make warming seem like an issue at all.

C.) There are better uses for the money. This one is slightly weaker, but $400 billion could do an awful lot of good in the world. (The fusion physicists reckon they could get fusion working for less than that, for example - and what effect do you think THAT would have on CO2 levels?) I can't really see how a 6 year delay could be preferable, but feel free to argue that position.

D.) Kyoto is deeply flawed. Weakest argument of the lot, since if Kyoto actually did some good at a reasonable cost, I'd be prepared to ignore it, but the entire idea of an emissions treaty that ignores China is quite silly. The initial reaction on hearing this is "Come on, pull the other one." As for Europe, there politicing to minimize the harm (and emission cuts) to their economies, while maximising the harm (and cuts) to the US was quite adroit - but certainly did no good to the planet they claimed to be wanting to help. (Indeed, since that tweaking seems to have killed the treaty, fans of Kyoto should presumably consider it to have done harm.)

In summary: The *FANS* of Kyoto claim it will do virtually nothing at a staggering cost. Skeptics agree, but wonder additionally if anything needs to be done. I'll point out again - the best temperature data in quite inconclusive. The last study to show Australia had rising temperatures relied on data from a weather station that had an aluminum smelter built next to it a couple decades ago(!). The weather station on the other side of the nearest ridge of hills showed flat temperatures, and was, of course, ignored. (And this study appeared in Science! The mind boggles.)

A short preface: I have a "no-regrets" view on global warming but do not find it to be a demonstrably imminent catastrophe. Also, this is a long post, but I have no blog and do not wish to start one just now.

Jane also has a not so enjoyable trait of ignoring the more subtle parts of her argument.

You mean like these subtle parts?
http://www.janegalt.net/2002_06_02_janegalt_archive.html

The entire case against Kyoto appears to rest on the unspoken assertion that the science behind global warming from CO2 and Methane is wrong.

Incorrect. First, there are other problems in Kyoto, but ignoring that, the statement is still unfair. The science is not the issue; rather, the interpretation is subject to factors whose impacts are internally inconsistent or unknown. It is false to broadly paint the issue as ‘global warming science’ against ‘those who contest it,’ even though some of the contesting parties may be operating that way.

If it is wrong then there's no need to impose an extra cost on 'green house' gas emmissions so we can snicker over Kyoto falling apart.

Here are two of the major uncertainties:

A.) Data on rising CO2 concentrations are fairly secure and widely accepted (temperature, a little less so for reasons like the ones Cody cited); but the real devil is in the interpretive details. First, current CO2 levels are around 370ppm, up 17% since monitoring began at Mauna Loa in 1959, but the geologic record also shows past concentrations as high as 1000ppm and average temperatures higher than current ones. The geologic record also suggests that earth undergoes repeated warming and cooling cycles, a sawtooth pattern that is a function of the Malenkovitch cycle (which involves factors such as the tilt and precession of earth’s axis). Currently, the best evidence suggests we are on an atypically steep upswing. What we DON’T know is whether this is entirely natural, entirely artificial, or some combination of the two. Earth’s average temperature can also vary via factors unrelated to atmospheric carbon, such as increases in subsurface activity.

B.) The ocean absorbs about half of all atmospheric carbon and warmer temperatures incite growth of structures that store carbon, both in the ocean and on land. A carbon rise could correspondingly be self checked; both the coral forests at the end of the Cretaceous, and the fauna explosion of the Carboniferous Era, may have been natural responses to elevated temperatures and/or atmospheric carbon levels.

What if this argument by wishful thinking is wrong? If the science is correct (and Jane seems to toy with this when she speculates that Russia may want global warming to give them a port that is never ice locked) then emmissions of greenhouse gas have a huge external cost associated with them. What policies would Jane support to address this? It seems to be nothing more than wishful thinking and burying her head in the sand.

I can’t speak for Jane, but policies I support are no-regrets oriented, and as I mentioned in my earlier post, I would like to see the US attempt a national CO2 emissions trading scheme given that experience with sulfur dioxide suggests it can work well. I do NOT support Kyoto, which assumed that it is feasible to issue arbitrary reduction targets for a small projected change over a long period of time in exchange for a mandatory recessionary effect, AND expect a majority of thinking people to buy that logic. Kyoto’s structure was politically unrealizable in a country that is simultaneously the world’s largest economy AND 85% dependent on fossil fuels to power that economic activity. IMO those who promote such politics might just as well toss themselves against a brick wall repeatedly, because about all either activity will accomplish is a lot of frustration.

If the science is good (and unfortunately it is starting to look like it is) then what is wrong with Kyoto? It uses a market mechanism (emissions credits) to create an incentive to reduce emissions. The right seems to fall back on linear thinking rather than dynamic thinking when they estimate the 'costs' (I put that in quotation marks because one really needs to reduce any cost estimates by the benefit of cutting emissions).

“What’s wrong with Kyoto” is that it incorporated an international emissions trading scheme (Articles 4, 6, and 17) to be defined at some future date; but in practice, that trading regime is very difficult to realize for at least three reasons:

1.) Emissions credits effectively become a multi-billion-dollar currency pool without a strong supranational enforcement authority, while at the same time Kyoto makes a reasonable allowance for carbon sinks (forests and the like) which are ill-defined in the protocol and difficult to monitor regardless. Together these make for a large incentive to cheat and a nice dark room in which to do it.

2.) Under the 1990-pegged reduction targets as defined by the protocol, post-collapse Russia and the Ukraine together become a huge reservoir of cheap credits that would crowd out legitimate attempts to reduce pollution, especially since the Kyoto participants haven’t been able to agree on how the Clean Development Mechanism reward system could/should be structured. “Emissions trading” reduces to “money transfer” and the environment benefits little.

3.) Besides CO2, Kyoto specified that methane, nitrous oxides, hydrofluorocarbons, perflurocarbons, and sulfur hexafluoride will also be regulated (Annex A). This needlessly aggravates point (1) above, because carbon dioxide accounts for 80% of warming effects and is easy to monitor - virtually all that is needed is to tally the country’s consumption of fossil fuels (something capable of being externally audited) and voila, a corresponding level of carbon emissions can be calculated. Emissions of the other five are difficult to even quantify, let alone monitor.

I find it odd that a writer for TechCentral would be a bit more creative than to imply that the only way to reduce emmissions to the 1996 level is to go back to 1996's GDP. Especially when a powerful property/market interest is established for finding ways to reduce emmissions.

I find it odd that many Kyoto proponents don’t seem to have a grasp on the available perspectives regarding what the protocol could and could not reasonably accomplish. IMO the UNFCCC participants saw the incredible success of Montreal in cutting CFC use, forgot to observe that it succeeded under conditions that were not especially replicable for carbon dioxide, and attempted to keep the momentum going.

(I’m too lazy to footnote the above information or cite the associate bibliography, but summarily, it includes the Victor book mentioned in my earlier post, as well as works by Elizabeth L. Chalecki, Judith A. Layzer, Frank E. Loy, Patrick J. Michaels, Lawrence S. Rothenburg, Richard B. Stewart, Gerald Stuber, and Michael Toban as well as personal interviews with an academic geologist and a political scientist working in atmospheric research.)

"Boonton: Agricultural subsidies are a bad idea in many ways - they exact a price both on the rich world and on the poor. Doesn't have the slightest thing to do with the point though. If a warmer climate with higher CO2 levels is good for agriculture, then it's *good*. If it doesn't, then it isn't. The presence or absence of other factors is quite irrelevent."

The fact that we already have a surplus of agricultural products means that it is a very limited good. Even worse, if it increases the growing season in places like Africa while shortening it in places like the US then we have a massive problem since few countries are anywhere near the US in terms of agricultural productivity.

"Next, you dismiss the 6 years estimate as "linear thinking". Since this comes from the IPCC models, I guess you think they're linear, and therefore flawed."

The system of capping emmissions and using tradable credits to create a market incentive to achieve reductions can be applied to any desired level of emmissions...even eventually capping emmissions at a rate lower than the amount that the Earth can recycle thereby reversing the trend.

My linear thinking accusation was directed towards Jane's implied assertion that capping emmissions at the 1996 level means simply reverting to 1996's GDP. This assumes no technological advances, no novel applications of existing technology, no progress despite the powerful financial incentives embedded in finding ways to cut CO2.

"C.) There are better uses for the money. This one is slightly weaker, but $400 billion could do an awful lot of good in the world. (The fusion physicists reckon they could get fusion working for less than that, for example - and what effect do you think THAT would have on CO2 levels?) I can't really see how a 6 year delay could be preferable, but feel free to argue that position."

I'm sure they do reckon that they could get their project going with a check for $400B. Are you or Jane advocating increasing gov't spending on fusion or other alternatives by $400B? The cost must be netted against the benefits which comes down on how bad global warming will be. If it is bad then the time to establish the framework for addressing it is now.

By the way, if $400B will mean a US running on fusion then nothing in Kyoto will prevent that. In fact, it would be a sensible investment since it would mean the US wouldn't have to purchase $400B in emmissions credits.

I accept the criticisms of Kyoto's flaws regarding the international trading system & setting easy targets. You can't have it both ways, though. If the targets were more 'real' then the estimated costs would be much more than $400B. (BTW, what is the methodology that derives these costs? I suspect that it is in fact a very linear model that does something like estimate carbon emmitted per $ in GDP and therefore assumes cutting emmissions by 400B tons would cost $400B). More importantly Kyoto wasn't replaced with a US alternative. It was replaced with nothing, not even listing CO2 as a source of pollution. The de facto US policy is simply wishful thinking. Assuming global warming either doesn't exist or will not cost much while making the worse case estimates of any system that attempts to address it.

Agriculture: There are people starving in the world, ergo, no improvement in agricultural productivity can truly be a bad thing - moreover, it would benefit the poorest most. Your argument about it being *bad* that the poor world gets a longer growing season is particularly baffling. You didn't really just advocate the continued abject poverty of a large chunk of the worlds population...did you?

1996 emissions equals 1996 GDP: This isn't *quite* true, and it's not *quite* what Jane said. But it is mostly true. There's no magic - GDP and emissions are highly correlated, and there's simply no physical way you can produce $X dollars of GDP without producing almost as many tons of C02 as we do right now. In many areas, we've already bumping up against theoretical maximum efficiencies, and you can wave your hands about linear models and markets all you want, and you could (at a high cost) shave off a couple more percent (maybe even as high as 10%) without (much) impact on GDP, but that's not even close to even beginning to be enough. You can't ignore the laws of thermodynamics because they've inconvenient - and while markets could theoretically deliver "any desired level of emmissions", they can't by any stretch of the imagination do so for "free".

As for how to spend $400 billion, I'm not advocating it should be spent at all - but I am saying that *if* it's going to be spent by the government, it'd be a good idea if it was spent well.

As for fusion, you're lack of a grasp of economics is showing. Of course there's something in Kyoto that prevents fusion research - the high cost of Kyoto. Resources are limited, and you can't pay for everything. (Pick one: Prescription drug benefit, fusion research, or Kyoto...) Further, fusion research is a long term investment, with an uncertain payoff, and certainly couldn't get the US out of the cuts required by Kyoto in time.

As for the models behind Kyoto, they're actually insanely complex, not the simplistic linear assumptions you assume - but that doesn't neccesarily make them any better. :-) Further, as touched on above...you keep talking about linear models, but I don't think that means what you think it means. Even if you assume that the US could gain 10% efficiency gains (doubtful) for free (physically impossible), Kyoto would be extremely expensive and do almost nothing. If you assumed 30% (impossible) for free (doubly impossible) Kyto would still be expensive and still do almost nothing. And when you mention targets lower than Kyoto, it just gets infinetely worse. As mentioned by Jane in an earlier post, to get back to 1950 levels of emmissions at current GDP levels, we'd need efficiency gains of over 100%, which is the sort of idea that makes engineers hurt themselves laughing. By way of contrast, to get to 1950 levels with only 10% efficiency (and as an engineer by training, I find even that doubtful) we'd need a cut in GDP of 50%, implying a cost of $5 trillion.

Let me state this one more time, because it's important: Cutting emmisions is REALLY EXPENSIVE, and that has nothing to do with "linear models".

"Agriculture: There are people starving in the world, ergo, no improvement in agricultural productivity can truly be a bad thing - moreover, it would benefit the poorest most. Your argument about it being *bad* that the poor world gets a longer growing season is particularly baffling. You didn't really just advocate the continued abject poverty of a large chunk of the worlds population...did you?"

1. In many developed nations agriculture production is already in a surplus & protectionism keeps poor countries production out of the market. Increased productivity in the developed world would only increase the government costs of subsidies and price supports. As the surplus is dumped on the world market, the falling prices will continue to hurt farmers in poorer nations.

2. I was quite clear that if the growing season improved in poorer regions BUT this was accompanied by a less hospitable climate in the US the result would be a diaster. This isn't very baffling. Agricultural productivity in Africa and other developing areas is horrible. If the US growing regions became 30% less productive due to climate changes but Africa became 75% more productive the result would be a food diaster. A square mile of farmland in the US puts out much more than a square mile in most other parts of the world.

"1996 emissions equals 1996 GDP: This isn't *quite* true, and it's not *quite* what Jane said. But it is mostly true. There's no magic - GDP and emissions are highly correlated, and there's simply no physical way you can produce $X dollars of GDP without producing almost as many tons of C02 as we do right now. In many areas, we've already bumping up against theoretical maximum efficiencies, ... You can't ignore the laws of thermodynamics because they've inconvenient - and while markets could theoretically deliver "any desired level of emmissions", they can't by any stretch of the imagination do so for "free"."

Bumping up against theoretical maximum efficiencies?! Let's take cars, we know it is quite possible to get 50 miles per gallon yet many cars get 25. In theory we have room for a 100% improvement. Looking at it another way we have the potential to cut CO2 emmissions 50%. Sorry Cody, humanity has not yet advanced to the point where it has maxed out on the laws of thermodynamics. Besides, the laws of thermodynamics relate only to energy utilization, not CO2 emmissions. For example, you could reduce CO2 emmissions from a coal power plant 100% by replacing it with a nuclear plant. It's not at all obvious that this would cause a decline in GDP.

"As for how to spend $400 billion, I'm not advocating it should be spent at all - but I am saying that *if* it's going to be spent by the government, it'd be a good idea if it was spent well."

Actually it wouldn't be spent by the gov't under an emmissions trading system. The $400B is a rough estimate of what the entire economy would spend reducing emmissions.

"As for fusion, you're lack of a grasp of economics is showing. Of course there's something in Kyoto that prevents fusion research - the high cost of Kyoto. Resources are limited, and you can't pay for everything. (Pick one: Prescription drug benefit, fusion research, or Kyoto...) Further, fusion research is a long term investment, with an uncertain payoff, and certainly couldn't get the US out of the cuts required by Kyoto in time"

An emmissions trading system would make this work (if it can work). Being able to cut your emmissions under the caps allows you to earn credits that you can sell to those who are unable to meet their caps. If you developed a way to generate energy with no emmissions (like fusion) or if you found ways to reduce emmissions from old fashioned technology like coal then that innovation becomes a product that you can sell to others. The 'high cost' is what people who don't use fusion would have to pay you, the developer of fusion, to meet their obligations.

"As mentioned by Jane in an earlier post, to get back to 1950 levels of emmissions at current GDP levels, we'd need efficiency gains of over 100%, which is the sort of idea that makes engineers hurt themselves laughing. By way of contrast, to get to 1950 levels with only 10% efficiency (and as an engineer by training, I find even that doubtful) we'd need a cut in GDP of 50%, implying a cost of $5 trillion."

Are you really serious when you write things like this? Simply taking a car that gets 25mpg and making it get 50mpg results in a 50% decrease in emmissions. That's possible with todays technology, I'm not talking about fuel cells, solar power, Star Trek Warp drives or anything like that! As an engineer I think you need to re-examine what you mean by efficiency. Are you talking about how much energy is converted into work versus how much energy is lost as waste? That is only indirectly related to CO2 emmissions. A nuclear or fusion plant may lose lots of waste energy but as far as CO2 emmissions is concerned it is a 100% improvement over any type of coal or gas plant.

But Boonton, you can't just take a normal car and make it get that much mileage. Even the Honda Insight's famed 70 mpg is a maximum, not average use -- and that's for a car that seats two, with no luggage capacity, and is sold at a hefty loss to boot. People touting such vehicles often forget that the price of the car is not the same, economically speaking, as its cost . . . to convert ourselves to such efficiency would mean a lot of foregone resources. Whether we spend money on making things more efficient, or reduce our carbon efficiency by producing less, the price will be giving up a lot of consumption we could otherwise have done.

Moreover, much of the fuel we expend is not used to move people, but goods . . . and as I point out in the referenced post, you don't want to skimp on weight or power for your chemical tanker. Furthermore, auto usage is only a small fraction of our carbon emissions -- and other uses are much closer to their theoretically efficient maximums. I am told that steam turbines simply can't eke out much more carbon efficiency, although of course I'm no engineer.

That's a valid point Jane, but my argument is not that it is costless to reduce emmissions to 1996 levels or even 1950 levels but its absurd to say reducing emmissions requires us to revert to those years' GNP.

Imagine aliens came down and told us they would blow up the earth if we did not reduce our CO2 emmissions to what they were in the 1950's. While one way to accomplish that would be to do a 'Back to the Future' routine and replace everything we have with the US as it was in the 1950's, I hardly expect that you would say that is the best method of meeting the demand.

The examples I used with the cars only illustrate that there is still dramatic reductions of CO2 that can be accomplished even if all human discoveries and innovation stopped as of Dec 8, 2003.

> "Kyoto gasps for air"

Nothing a few well-placed buckets of water wouldn't take care of...

The examples I used with the cars only illustrate that there is still dramatic reductions of CO2 that can be accomplished even if all human discoveries and innovation stopped as of Dec 8, 2003.

But if passenger automobiles are only a very small part of total carbon emissions (as desirable as it might be to reduce those emissions for other reasons), then the cited example is not at all illustrative of dramatic reductions, unless the technology is transferable to the dominant emitting sectors.

Nuclear energy could be a nice answer to the power generation issue but without a viable fusion process we're looking at more fission reactors hence more nuclear waste, and as regards waste it's been a hard enough fight just trying to get Yucca Mountain operational.

But Boonton, your example doesn't work because a) we can't, under current technology, make cars that efficient cost effectively and b) cars aren't a large part of the total. It's a pretty fair consensus among economists that a 10% reduction in carbon emissions would correlate pretty closely to a 10% reduction in GDP, especially since the process is non-linear -- you might do the first 1% more cheaply, but as the low hanging fruit gets picked, subsequent reductions in emissions are more than 1-for-1 expensive. It would not be cheap, for example, to try to convert the nation's distribution infrastructure to electric rail, nor its power system to nuclear. You're just asserting that it's not because you can imagine things getting more efficient. That's wishful thinking.

Getting back to 1950 levels of emissions would require cutting our carbon output in half -- and that's with the amazing gains in carbon efficiency we've achieved. No reputable engineer, economist, or scientist that I am aware of believes that a reduction of even 10% is possible through efficiency gains. Where is the other 40% going to come from, if not reduced production?

According to the Energy Information Administration, carbon emissions in the US were distributed in the following way in 2002, in millions of metric tons (MT) of CO2:

Residential: 1,193 (20.8%)
Commercial: 1,013 (17.7%)
Industrial: 1,674 (29.2%)
Transportation: 1,850 (32.3%)

Electric power generation was responsible for the emission of 2,249 MT CO2--about 39.2% of the total--with most of that distributed across the residential, commercial and industrial sectors' emissions.

Just thought the latest numbers should be out there.

So using some really rough numbers, electrical power is responsible for 40% of CO2 emissions and transportation is about 30%.

If you cut transportation emissions in half (doubling average mpg) then you instantly have a 15% cut in overall emissions. Replacing half of fossil fuel based electrical generation with nuclear would be a cut of 20% of overall emissions.

Now Jane, I know it will cost money to build a deeper hole in Yucca Mountain. I also know it will cost money to tear down perfectly useful coal power plants and build new nuclear ones. But are you seriously going to say that if we did that it would cut GDP by 20%?! If not then you've escaped from linear thinking!

Now doubling mpg isn't easy. Many people won't want to drive those tiny hybrid cars and that doesn't address trucks and trains that need to be big. So let's just say instead of doubling miles per gallon we increase it by 30%. This would cut CO2 by 9.6% (70% of 32%). Would this cost 10% of GDP (which is nearly $980Billion)?

I don't know but I kind of doubt it. If a fraction of drivers were induced to choose those high efficiency cars then their doubling of mileage will go a long way towards that goal even though most people will keep their cars. Economies of scale would make the hybrid cars cheaper as they become more common. We haven't even touched on planning with an eye to cut down on traffic jams and reduce the miles people have to drive to get places. I bet you could achieve your 10% cut for a lot less than $980 Billion (but I will agree it wouldn't be cheap).

I know you will dismiss this as silly but please take a look at my hypothetical. Suppose aliens came down and told us that they would destroy the world if we didn’t cut emissions back to 1950’s levels (or 1996’s level if you prefer). How would you suggest such a demand be meet?

The brain dead solution is to simply throw away everything and replace it with what we had in the 1950’s (or 1996). How many 56 T’Birds were on the road, build that many and throw out all the Honda accords and so on… I think we can all agree this would revert GDP back to the 1950’s (or 1996) since you are basically turning the clock backwards.

Now Jane, here is the $10 Trillion question; If your position is correct then applying everything modern economics has to say about using markets, tradable emissions credits over command and control etc. would make no significant difference than applying the ‘brain dead’ solution. Is this really what you are telling us?

Boonton:

I couldn't really say if your grasp of engineering or economics is weaker, but I laughed out loud over both.

Example: You say replacing a coal plant by a nuclear one with cut emissions by 100%, and imply that there will be no economic cost. Neither is true - the construction of the nuclear plant and decomissioning of the coal will entail significant emissions, while the more expensive power will be either a hefty economic cost (if you have a good feeling about the safety record of your hypothetical plant) or a VERY hefty economic and environmental cost (if you do not). Either way, as always, there's no magic, and no way to reduce emissions for free. Certainly not by, *snicker* "100%". The same error is repeated throughout your argument (although I note you back off in later postings).

Another example: The efficiency thing. I'm an engineer by training (indeed, an engineer *IN* training, and my response would be more detailed if finals were not next week), and your assertion that 50% efficiency gains was possible was easily the funniest thing I'd read all day. Of course, most of what I'd read today was flux calculations for three-phase induction motors, so this might not mean that much. :-) In any case, you're wrong.

Most people first encounter the idea of efficiency in the context of environmentalism, and most people probably never think of it as anything else, but the primary, indeed the vastly overwhelming driving force, behind efficiency gains is, of course, greed. The managers of a transportation company would sell their own grandmothers for a cheap 15% increase in fuel efficiency across their entire fleet. For a 50% increase... Well, this is a family forum, so let's just say that there is little they wouldn't do. :-)

The same holds true for any low-margin industry (and most of the rest) - and that in turn means any "mature" industry, which in turn means most of the economy. If you actually knew how to shave 2% (much less 20%) off the cost of making paper (or any of a hundred thousand other goods - tires, batteries, consumer electronics, sodas, electric motors) you'd be a rich, rich man. (Indeed, there are many rich men today who did just that.)

The problem is, all these industries could be made more efficent. Not by 50%, of course (that really is impossible) but maybe by 10% - except the upgrade costs more than benefits. Saving $100 a day is great, but not if it takes $1 billion to do it. (If you think otherwise, please contact me about investing, 'cause have I got some deals for you!)

The cars you mention are a good case in point. You *CAN'T* make any given car twice as efficient. You can make a different vehicle, which is in many ways similar, and for some purposes nearly as good, and make it more efficient - but obviously if people wanted cars like that, they'd already be buying them (and indeed, a tiny handful are - not many). But here's the rub - first, you've got to take away the vast fleet of cars people own today, that do what they want, which they like quite well, thank you. Then you have to junk them, and build an entire new fleet of econoboxes (massive emissions, massive cost), and give them back out. Then you get to find out why it is people who live where it snows a lot drive big heavy 4WDs. (It's been snowing heavily here recently, and I'd have had the fun experience of sleeping at glorious Newark International airport, if I wasn't able to kick into 4WD just to navigate the *freeway* without sliding into a ditch. Yeesh.) End result is a large cost, with attending emmissions, and people have less useful but slightly more efficient vehicles. GDP is lowered, emissions are lowered, as per theory.

Upshot: You keep talking about cutting emissiosn, and imply that it'll be free or cheap. When pressed, you've focused on transportation. As should be clear on reflection, your grossly overestimating the extent of the available gains - a big chunk (by total emissions) of the transportation sector is air, and another big chunk is shipping and freight. Of the small bit of the overall transportation slice that is actually cars, a small chunk will be willing to upgrade and may well see 20-30% increases in efficency. Now subtract off the emissions cost of the upgrade, and total emissions will twitch by maybe a percent or two, at most, but with a hefty cost. Almost certainly, it'll be less as a % of GDP than it was as a % of emissions - but again, that's as one would expect.

You see, you've now plucked the lowest of the oft-mentioned "low hanging fruit". The next one will be higher, and the next one higher still. Soon you'll be slicing of 5% of GDP for 2-3% cuts in emissions, rather than the reverse. The end result is that to make any significant cuts in emissions, you have to make significant cuts in GDP. There are an army of very smart people searching day and night for the efficiency gains the blithely assume will be easy (they're doing it to increase profits, of course, but that matters little), and they already found the easy and cheap ones (and most of the hard and expensive ones). Unless you know of some magic way to cut emissions 30% across the board for little or no cost, I really can do little but conclude you have no idea at all what your talking about. :-/

“Example: You say replacing a coal plant by a nuclear one with cut emissions by 100%, and imply that there will be no economic cost.”

Cody, we were discussing CO2 emissions. Please explain how a nuclear plant emits CO2. I never implied that there was no cost in replacing a coal plant with a nuclear one. In fact, I fully accept that doing such a thing would have costs. Plants don’t tear themselves down or build their replacements by themselves.

“Another example: The efficiency thing. I'm an engineer by training (indeed, an engineer *IN* training, and my response would be more detailed if finals were not next week), and your assertion that 50% efficiency gains was possible was easily the funniest thing I'd read all day. Of course, most of what I'd read today was flux calculations for three-phase induction motors, so this might not mean that much. :-) In any case, you're wrong.”

You are not defining what you mean by efficiency. Replacing a car that gets 25 mpg with one that gets 50 mpg does in fact reduce emissions by 50% (or roughly that much). This isn’t really about the laws of thermodynamics as much as it is increasing mileage by a host of methods.

“You see, you've now plucked the lowest of the oft-mentioned "low hanging fruit". The next one will be higher, and the next one higher still. Soon you'll be slicing of 5% of GDP for 2-3% cuts in emissions, rather than the reverse.”

Well we already have a rule of thumb here, both emissions and GDP in the 50’s were 50% what they are today. So I suggest examining my hypothetical about aliens who gave us no choice but to cut back that much. You are basically saying with all the technology we have today we would be better off building a time machine than applying it….if we had to do such a drastic reduction. If the ‘brain dead’ method costs 50% of GDP for a 50% cut, it seems logical that a market incentive oriented method of reducing emissions would have to cost less. If not then the biggest waste of resources is economics and Jane’s blog!

You need to more fully think through the economic impact of the actions your talking about.

Building a nuclear power plant will produce quite a lot of CO2 - so will making a solar cell, come to that, which is why solar energy isn't "clean", from that point of view. The mechanism should be obvious, but here's a small example - materials have to be mined, transported, smelted, transported, processed, transported, assembled. There's probably some more steps in there, and there's a LOT of "stuff" that has to be processed. You'll probably need to account for some workers too. In the age we live in, almost everything we do generates CO2 to some extent - even sitting here typing is using electricity. Depending on the scale your working on, it's not neccesarilly significant, but you certainly can't just ignore it. It takes, IIRC, years for a solar cell used for generating power to "pay back" the CO2 emitted in construction by CO2 *not* emitted becuase of its use. Most cells aren't used long enough, and never do so.

As for efficency, the term is relatively simple. At the moment, we generate X tons of CO2, and Y dollars of GDP. Both generally increase over time, but the Y term increases faster. Y/X is the efficiency (call it Z), expressed in dollars of GDP per ton of CO2. Z also generally increases over time.

As for the car, replacing one car with a model twice as efficient will reduce its emissions by 50%. Problem is, this has, roughly speaking, absolutely zero to do with the economy as a whole, because it doesn't scale. UPS will not and cannot replace its fleet of trucks with ones that get 50 mpg, and here you *ARE* hitting against the laws of physics, because no such vehicle can exist. If you accept limitations on size, carrying capacity, versatility, shape, power, etc., you can make a car that gets 50 mpg. If you cannot accept the limitations, then you can't get 50 mpg - not without really MAJOR changes which aren't even on the drawing board yet. Frictionless materials, antigravity, practical maglev, superconductors - beyond that...no. Oh, maybe we can get a couple percent from more extensive use of carbon fibre, or another couple percent from squeezing high energy densities into fuel cells, but that's long term and EXPENSIVE. No dice.

As for your aliens - if you were paying attention, you'd have noted that efficiency has risen, and so dropping back to 1950 GDP levels would only imply a living standard from 1963. See? All the technology we have today IS worth something. And if you assume further efficiency gains of a probably impossible 15%, we could even climb into the 70s!

Really, I'm beginning to suspect your a troll. You keep talking about "market incentives", but you seem to have no grasp of what they *do*, or even what the point of a market would be in this case. Markets are methods of allocating resources efficently - in this case, they allocate the right to emmit C02 to those who value it most. They would not, in and of themselves, have the slightest effect on emissions - that's a function of caps, which are entirerly seperate from the market. If you have the caps, a market structure is a good way to minimize the pain - but we already have an efficient market that rewards the types of efficiency you're looking for, which is why the amount of CO2 per dollar of GDP that we produce is around half of what it was in 1950. By 2050, it'll be even lower (maybe even half again, but I doubt it - diminishing returns set in). Even if it is, it's not going to solve your alien problem, unless they don't mind waiting or hold for a few decades. Nor is it going to solve the climate problem, if you believe the more hysterical stuff coming out of the IPCC (frankly, I wouldn't, but some people seem to).

Boonton,

Maybe if someone else tries it will get through. Regarding:

Replacing a car that gets 25 mpg with one that gets 50 mpg does in fact reduce emissions by 50% (or roughly that much).

You're talking here about a 25mpg car we already have vs a more efficient one we don't. The point people are trying to make is, up to 100% of the cost of making this new car needs to be charged against the efficiency gain before the car represents a net benefit (the exact amount depends on where exactly in its life cycle the 25mpg one is.) What is so hard about this concept that you insist on ignoring it? Is it just that it messes up your rosy figures, or what???

Now doubling mpg isn't easy.

Correct.

Many people won't want to drive those tiny hybrid cars

Correct again. If you need an car that gets IMPOVED gas mileage and want more functionality than just a seat on wheels, the Honda Civic Hybrid. Might be for you. That is, IF you need something comparable to a Honda Civic. If you want/need more, and some people do, we get back to the low-hanging-fruit analogy and the savings diminish because it just isn't easy (or fuel efficient, in fact) to move a lot of weight with anything less than a powerful engine.

and that doesn't address trucks and trains that need to be big.

Bingo...

So let's just say instead of doubling miles per gallon we increase it by 30%.

Why? Because you know approximately what fraction of "transportation" emissions come from passenger vehicles and can assert that 30% is feasible now? Or is this number just pulled from thin air with no relevance to the reality of the situation? If the former, justify, and put your résumé in at Ford.

This would cut CO2 by 9.6% (70% of 32%). Would this cost 10% of GDP (which is nearly $980Billion)?

What's the point of playing with fictitious numbers this way? Or did I miss the part where you justified the 30% with evidence?

I don't know but I kind of doubt it. If a fraction of drivers were induced to choose those high efficiency cars then their doubling of mileage will go a long way towards that goal even though most people will keep their cars.

30%...30%...30%...based on what? Even as a number to plug into the equations it's meaningless unless there is a reasonable premise for choosing it.

Economies of scale would make the hybrid cars cheaper as they become more common.

That's true now. Why isn't it happening, then?

We haven't even touched on planning with an eye to cut down on traffic jams and reduce the miles people have to drive to get places. I bet you could achieve your 10% cut for a lot less than $980 Billion (but I will agree it wouldn't be cheap).

Agreed, but unfortunately the fringe green movements got to this one first. Hence the reduction in the pace of road building, which didn't discourage people from taking to the roads in cars but did increase congestion, ensuring that those cars spend more time on roads and thus pollute more. Better planning efforts in this realm would be a boon.

Anony-mouse,

You spent your entire post attacking me for playing with fictional numbers, all of which you made entirely moot when you wrote:

"Agreed"

What you agreed with was my statement, "I bet you could achieve your 10% cut for a lot less than $980 Billion (but I will agree it wouldn't be cheap)." So basically you agree with me that Jane's linear cost estimates are off base.

Cody,

As an engineering major you should know that there are many measures of efficiency. For example, measuring the cost of resources used versus output generated is an important one. That measure has as much to do with the market price of the inputs (fuel) and outputs (work) as it does with the actual machine itself. Another measure is how much energy is wasted, for example nuclear power plants discharge hot water into nearby streams or ponds. This energy was wasted because it didn't go to generate power but simply to heat water that was thrown away.

When people talk about hitting the maximum possible efficiency they are almost certainly talking about the latter. A machine can never achieve 100% efficiency in that sense because of the laws of thermodynamics.

"If you have the caps, a market structure is a good way to minimize the pain - but we already have an efficient market that rewards the types of efficiency you're looking for, which is why the amount of CO2 per dollar of GDP that we produce is around half of what it was in 1950. "

Ahhh, but you replaced your measure of efficiency (CO2 emitted per unit of work) for the others that I was discussing. Right now there is little or no market reward for cutting CO2 emission. The drop you've observed has come almost entirely from either focusing on the first measure of efficiency (making machines more economically efficient by making them cheaper to run) or mechanical efficiency (reducing waste energy).

I agree that building a nuclear plant will produce some indirect CO2 emissions. If the plant has a company picnic, for example, the grill will generate CO2. Mining the uranium or mixing the concrete will likely entail using some vehicles that burn diesal fuel. I was referring only to the plants ongoing operations, in other words comparing burning uranium versus burning coal or gas.

Not to pile on here, but how do we ensure that the savings from our 50 mpg passenger car don't just go into increased miles driven? If you double the mileage of a car, you've effectively halved its fuel costs (assuming they remain the same) and left the savings in the hands of the consumer. Why won't they use the money to drive more, since driving is now a heck of a lot cheaper?

As long ago as the 1860s, Jevons observed that increasing fuel efficiencies in steam engines had caused coal consumption to increase, against most peoples' intuitive expectations. As long as the Newcomen engine dominated, steam engines used so much coal that they were only suitable for mine-mouth water pumping and not much else. When James Watt introduced his far more efficient engine, people predicted that coal consumption would go down. Instead, Watt engines found uses in rail, sea and road transportation, industry, power generation, entertainment and a host of other places. Coal consumption skyrocketed, and Jevons sadly predicted the end of British pre-eminence as coal supplies dwindled.

Boonton, how do we ensure that fuel efficiency savings don't simply get spent in more fuel consumption?

Boonton: would it cost 10% of GDP to pull every passenger car off the road, dispose of it, and manufacture brand new cars for every person in America that get better mileage? Umm . . . yes, it would. For the record, it took 10 years to replace half the cars on the road with the new standards after the last CAFE increase.

But there's also a larger problem. CAFE standards are not a mandated minimum for every care: they're the Corporate Average Fuel Efficiency. Car companies achieve this now by heavily subsidizing small cars, sold to college students and so on, in order to pull the mean up. The fact that CAFE standards are currently north of 25 mpg doesn't mean that most cars on the road get that kind of mileage; it means that a few tiny cars get over 30 mpg, some medium ones get in the neighborhood of 25 mpg, and large ones get much less. (That's before we factor in the SUV exemption, of course.)

If you just raise the CAFE standards, what you will probably see is some minor increases in fuel efficiency in mid-size to larger cars -- and auto companies slashing prices on small cars to sell more of them and thus bring their average up. This is a net increase in carbon emissions, not a decrease.

It is highly unlikely that you will voluntarily transition a significant number of Americans into compact cars; they have limited carrying capacity, perform significantly worse in adverse weather conditions, and are much less safe (not because they get cruched by SUV's, either -- they're less safe even in a crash with another compact. Less steel around you to absorb the shock means you absorb more.)

CAFE also has another adverse effect: when you raise the efficiency of someone's car by 30%, you've just effectively reduced their cost per mile driven by same. The result: they drive more, eating up abot 30% of the efficiency gains in increased mileage. It's known as the "rebound effect".

There are two main ways to make a car more efficient: make it lighter, or make the engine less powerful. Both involve trading off safety for mileage. Or there's the third, hybrid option: stick another motor in the car. This makes the car significantly more expensive -- no one knows how much, but a car buff (and damn fine banker) of my acquaintance estimates that Toyota and Honda are probably losing between $5k-$7K on every hybrid vehicle they sell. They can do this when the hybrid market is trivial, as a loss-leader to generate good publicity, but car makers clearly cannot sell the majority of their vehicles at 2/3 of their cost.

This, incidentally, is why CAFE is an average and not a fixed quantity; legislators knew they'd be gutted at the polls if they forced Americans to buy tiny, underpowered cars, or added thousands of dollars to the sticker price of their cars. Doing so would have another adverse effect on emissoins -- people would keep their old cars longer, thus stretching out the time to effectiveness.

In short, even something that sounds simple -- mandate a 30% increase in fuel efficiency! -- isn't. As other people have pointed out, if it were going to be painless, we'd already have done it.

“As for your aliens - if you were paying attention, you'd have noted that efficiency has risen, and so dropping back to 1950 GDP levels would only imply a living standard from 1963. See? All the technology we have today IS worth something. And if you assume further efficiency gains of a probably impossible 15%, we could even climb into the 70s!”

Well this p roves the core of my case. To sum up, imagine a thought experiment where aliens give us no choice but to revert back to 1950 CO2 emissions. We have:

1. The brain dead solution of simply turning back the clock to 1950, throwing out everything and replacing it with 1950’s models but only as many as existed in 1950. This would give us 1950’s GDP and would represent a perfectly linear model in figuring out how much cutting CO2 costs.

2. All other solutions that deploy any other method than the brain dead solution. If Jane’s presumption is correct, all of these solutions would cost more than the brain dead one. If that is the case then we are indeed trapped in a linear model where cutting emissions by 10% means cutting GDP by 10%.

Well if Cody’s assertion is correct, then the linear model has already been disproved even for the super dramatic reduction of emissions to what they were in 1950. According to http://mirrors.korpios.org/resurgent/GDPreal.htm GDP in 1950 was $1.417.7T while 1963 was $2.215.6T. That’s an increase of 156%. In 2002 GDP was $9.214T. Using a linear model cutting emissions to 1950 would reduce GDP by 85%, per Cody it would reduce it by 75%. So Cody’s #2 method would be less costly than the brain dead solution. I’m not sure how he derives his estimates but if he is just using efficiency gains he is totally missing out on the fact that on top of getting more $ per ton of CO2 there are also substitutes that can be deployed in place of CO2. Yes burning a ton of coal at a 2000 power plant will produce more power than a ton burned in a 1950 plant. But a 2000 nuclear plant represents a totally different world of emissions. I suspect Cody’s solution wouldn’t even be the optimal way to turn back the clock…should aliens ever force us to….

The linear model is only roughly accurate for the huge cutback of emissions to 1950’s level. It clearly is overestimating the cost of a huge rollback in emissions. The overestimating is no insignificant either. Why then is this a reasonable model to use if we are talking about going back to 1996’s level of emissions?

Jane,

I have only a few main points here:

1. Using a linear model overestimates costs for cutting CO2. The thought experiment of the aliens taking us back to 1950, trying to roughly estimate how much it would cost to cut transportation emissions by 30% (or 10% of overall emissions), and imagining replacing half of our CO2 based electricity generation with nuclear (and other non-CO2 emitting sources) for a 20% overall cut all go to show that the cost would not be linear but less.

2. The underlying assumption in your original piece is that there is zero or no cost to global warming. This would be happy if we could know that it is true but we don't and you seem to have given no consideration to how things should be handled if the fears turn out to be correct. This was another motivation for my alien thought experiment, to get past endlessly fighting the hypothesis that global warming will cost us a lot.

3. Ironically you fail to appreciate the power of the market. CO2 emission efficiency HAS NOT (despite Cody's assertions) been a focus of the market. CO2 emission efficiency has only improved over the years because the market has focused on other forms of efficiency such as improving mechanical efficiency to reduce waste heat or economic efficiency to reduce fuel costs and/or boost output. These forms of efficiency indirectly improve CO2 emissions but they haven't been a market focus. If CO2 was made a market focus, either with emissions credits or old fashioned taxes/subsidies then you have to account for the fact that dramatic improvements can be made.

I think we are getting side tracked with some of this discussion. I never argued that improving car mileage or cutting emissions by 10% (or back to 1950 for that matter) would be cheap or costless. My point about the 50mpg cars is only to demonstrate that a lot of people here claiming we have hit our technological limit (or close to it) have no real idea what they are talking about. Even assuming no advancement in knowledge or innovation there is a lot of places today where emissions can be reduced rather easily. If there was a financial incentive for reducing emissions then innovations that cannot be predicted will happen in that area. This means the cost of cutting emissions is hardly linear.

Yes, Boonton, but nuclear power plants are much, much more expensive than coal or oil plants, mostly because of the onerous safety regulations. While their fuel costs are substantially lower, their increased capital costs mean that electricity generated from nuclear is not remotely competitive with the combined-cycle natural gas plants now favored.

Furthermore, you are totally ignoring political reality. There are not going to be more nuclear plants built to reduce carbon emissions, because the constituency in favor of reducing emissions is radically opposed to nuclear power. Morover, coal plants in the coal belt aren't going to be shut down as long as Senator Robert C. Byrd has anything to say about it. But even if they were, switching to nuclear would represent a substantial decrease in GDP. Because the capital costs are up front, and very, very large, it would require a reduction of far more than 10% of GDP to switch 10% of our generation to nuclear.

"Because the capital costs are up front, and very, very large, it would require a reduction of far more than 10% of GDP to switch 10% of our generation to nuclear"

Ironically this would show up as an increase in GDP. GDP accounting would see the cost of building hundreds of nuclear plants as either Investment or Government spending depending on who was undertaking it. In either case;

GDP= G + I + C + Ex - Im

Would show an increase in GDP. The cost would probably show up in the future as the increased capital cost cause depreciation charges to reduce I going forward, but as you said nuclear plants are cheaper to run once they are built...so that would end up either boosting C and or I.

We haven't even factored in any benefits to such a move. We absolutly know coal based plants contribute to air pollution so even if global warming is total nonsense there would be a benefit to such a move to apply against the cost side of the equation.

This discussion is suffering from a serious case of static analysis. US population is growing at ~1.3% per year. If this trend continues, we will be ~500 million souls by 2050 and ~1 billion souls by 2100. Energy consumption currently grows ~1.5% per year. So, by 2100, annual energy consumption would roughly quadruple. That's the challenge, not 280 million souls at 1990 energy consumption.

Second issue: water. Water for human consumption and agricultural use is scarce in several parts of the country, based on the consumption of ~280 million souls and the agriculture to feed them. By 2050, it will be necessary to desalinate sea water to assure adequate supplies in many parts of the country. Desalination requires energy, but much of it could be recovered from the thermal waste stream from nuclear power plants.

Heat recovery from power generating facilities offers significant potential for efficiency improvements. The US electric grid delivers only ~27% of the primary energy consumed to produce the electricity to customer meters. Two thirds of the energy input to non-hydro generators leaves up the stack or out the cooling system. As population grows, cooling water for power plants will be scarce, unless it is brackish or sea water, which will dictate where the power plants will be located.

The problem is far more complex than some would have us believe.

"The US electric grid delivers only ~27% of the primary energy consumed to produce the electricity to customer meters. Two thirds of the energy input to non-hydro generators leaves up the stack or out the cooling system. "

Thank you Ed for more information. Now if only 27% of the energy generated to make electricity actually arrives at the customer's fuse box that would seem to imply we are nowhere near the theoretical maximum efficiency possible. Raising this portion to 35% would represent an increase in electrical generation efficiency of 30%.

I'm not saying this would be easy or cheap but I'm pointing out that we have a long way to go before we can say current systems have reached their maximum efficiencies.

Why, yes, Boonton it would, except that when we spend money to invest in the power plants, we won't be spending it on other things which will then disappear from the GDP numbers. You're engaging in what's known as "the broken windows fallacy" -- the belief that breaking windows increases production by making work for the glazier.

Diverting resources to building nuclear power plants will substantially reduce our ability to consume other things. At the same time, the asset loss represented by shuttering perfectly functional power plants will be substantial. Nor is the turnover likely to be totally smooth. These are a net loss in personal income.

>I agree that building a nuclear plant will produce some indirect CO2 emissions. If the plant has a company picnic, for example, the grill will generate CO2. Mining the uranium or mixing the concrete will likely entail using some vehicles that burn diesal fuel. I was referring only to the plants ongoing operations, in other words comparing burning uranium versus burning coal or gas.

i.e. if you can create a nuclear plants that use no nuclear fuel and produce no nuclear waste without using an building materials you can get a 100% emissions reduction. Well, sign me up :-)

The above reasoning is why environmentalists seem to think that using solar or wind power will result in a net savings of "bad stuff". The analysis required is much more involved than anything that's been done in the past decade and it is not at all obvious that the result will be a net savings of "bad stuff".

Boonton: The only one using "linear models" is you. You seem to have a fixation with them, but the only place they are occuring in the discussion that I've noticed is in your ideas.

As for effinciency, you're deluding yourself if you think there are no market incentives for decreasing CO2 usage. How on earth do you think you produce CO2? You burn expensive fossil fuels! Good gods man, what more perfect a market incentive could you want that having it be represented by an expensive input? And the way you decrease CO2 emissions is by increasing mechanical efficiency so you burn less fuel. You are trying to argue that these increases are different and don't count - in fact, you seem to think there's some magic wand engineers can wave to make cars that move without emitting CO2. No. The market is set up to reward efficiency gains because such gains reduce costs, and increase profits. For a given machine, this is represented by, say, less waste heat, but for the economy as a whole, it's represented by fewer tons of CO2 per dollar of GDP. These are simply flip sides of the same coin.

Next up, although the competition is fierce, I think no single one of your comments has done as much to discredit your argument as "referring only to the plants ongoing operations". Others have already gently corrected you on this, but I might as well do so as well. This is very very wrong.

As for the aliens, no one but you has proposed, or as EVER proposed, rolling back to 1950 amounts of 1950 level technology (indeed, this would actually make us much poorer than we were in 1950, since the population is higher). For these and other reasosn, the idea is absurd, and I'm at a loss to understand where you got it. In any case, your elaborate attack on this solution is therefore somewhat entertaining, but much like watching a bird attack its own reflection - ultimately pointless. (It certainly has nothing to do with any solution or model I've brought up.)

The concepts aren't that hard - everything we do generates CO2. They generate less CO2 now than they did in the past, and more CO2 than they will in the future. If we want to generate a lot less CO2, we will have to do a lot less stuff.

Or to put it in more specific terms, nothing you've said so far has even attempted to address the idea of why it would cost less to drop to 1950 emission levels than the models discussed would indicate. So far EVERY reason you've brought up is either wrong (ignoring construction costs), already in the model (the higher technology level we have today), or not relevent (the existence of 50mpg cars to the CO2 generated by transportation).

Dan Luu

“i.e. if you can create a nuclear plants that use no nuclear fuel and produce no nuclear waste without using an building materials you can get a 100% emissions reduction. Well, sign me up :-)”

Sign me up too, but I think I made it very clear we were talking about CO2 emissions. Besides, nuclear waste isn’t really emitted, its left over and presumably will not end up emitted unless a really, really, really bad accident happens.

Cody,

“Boonton: The only one using "linear models" is you. You seem to have a fixation with them, but the only place they are occuring in the discussion that I've noticed is in your ideas.”

What threat are you reading Cody. Jane states several times that she thinks cutting CO2 emissions by 10% through higher mpg cars would cost about 10% of GDP. You yourself basically said the linear model was accurate when you wrote:

“1996 emissions equals 1996 GDP: This isn't *quite* true, and it's not *quite* what Jane said. But it is mostly true. There's no magic - GDP and emissions are highly correlated, and there's simply no physical way you can produce $X dollars of GDP without producing almost as many tons of C02 as we do right now”

The linear model is maybe ‘mostly true’ if you were talking about going to 1950’s levels of emissions. There’s no real case to support the assertion that it’s a useful model for going back 6 years.

“As for effinciency, you're deluding yourself if you think there are no market incentives for decreasing CO2 usage. How on earth do you think you produce CO2? You burn expensive fossil fuels!”

Cody, say you have to buy a generator. Both have the same heat efficiency and the same cost and output. One, however, is able to emit less CO2 (say it has some mechanism to either render the CO2 harmless or contain it). There is no economic incentive for you to buy the machine that emits less CO2. You also wouldn’t have any incentive to invent such a machine or apply any existing knowledge towards creating it. Like I wrote, and you ignored, increasing fuel efficiency INDIRECTLY improves CO2 efficiency but they are two different things.

“Next up, although the competition is fierce, I think no single one of your comments has done as much to discredit your argument as "referring only to the plants ongoing operations". Others have already gently corrected you on this, but I might as well do so as well. This is very very wrong.”

Your right, I failed to incorporate building when I asserted that replacing a nuclear plant for a coal one results in a 100% reduction in CO2 emissions. Some CO2 will be emitted during the construction phase, no doubt. The change in CO2 per unit of fuel used is a 100% improvement, however, since nuclear plants do not use carbon based fuel. I’m sorry I didn’t count the workers at the plant, I think their breathing, though, would be trivial and they would be breathing regardless of whether or not the plant was built.

“As for the aliens, no one but you has proposed, or as EVER proposed, rolling back to 1950 amounts of 1950 level technology (indeed, this would actually make us much poorer than we were in 1950, since the population is higher). For these and other reasosn, the idea is absurd, and I'm at a loss to understand where you got it.”

It’s a valid thought experiment that gives the linear assertion its best run for its money. If it doesn’t work in this most radical of actions then why is it acceptable when talking about reverting to 1996 levels? I also proposed the question to get Kyoto skeptics to confront the issue they have been avoiding, what policies should be applied if the worst case scenarios are correct? Like I said at the beginning of this thread, if it turns out global warming isn’t that bad then we can all go home happy. That argument, though, hasn’t been proven and I think its premature to simply assume it is true.

“The concepts aren't that hard - everything we do generates CO2. They generate less CO2 now than they did in the past, and more CO2 than they will in the future. If we want to generate a lot less CO2, we will have to do a lot less stuff.”

Here we go again. Many things we do generate small amounts of CO2. Some things we do generate large amounts of CO2. It is not at all clear that we have hit the limits of technology and are condemned to an inescapable tradeoff between CO2 and ‘more stuff’.

“So far EVERY reason you've brought up is either wrong (ignoring construction costs), already in the model (the higher technology level we have today), or not relevent (the existence of 50mpg cars to the CO2 generated by transportation).”

I welcome you to incorporate construction cost and tell me what the relevant reduction would be for replacing a coal power plant with a nuclear one. I would be surprised if the reduction isn’t along the lines of 95% or higher…but feel free to provide the numbers.

A lot of short-term thinking going on around here. If we tried to do something stupid, like comply with the Kyoto treaty's 2012 deadline we'd spend a huge cost for an insignificant gain. However if we set out to reduce CO2 emissions over the course of the 21st century the problem becomes much more managable. For instance, if we were to replace all are vehicles with more efficient ones quickly it'd cost a heck of a lot. But if we wait till they're worn out it'll cost ... well it'll still cost a lot, but at that point we have to do it anyway, so for the purpose of this discussion the relevant figure is the premium for efficient vehicles over the cost of equivalent less-efficient vehicles, which is a small fraction of the total. And likewise for other CO2 producers, which also wear out eventually. A clapped-out coal burning power plant can be replaced with a new natural gas, nuclear, or solar plant. (Yes -- people will to have to decide that their concern about global warming outweighs their nukophobia.)

The DoE puts out some annual reports on energy, with lots of good stuff; here are some relevant excerpts. It's projected that CO2/GDP will continue to decline at about 1.5% per year. Of course it's also projected that the economy will grow at 3%, so that's an absolute increase of 1.5%. However that's with no accounting for the cost of CO2 emissions. 'As you know, Bob', an external cost is a real cost, even though you don't have to pay it. Internalizing that cost, either with a system of marketable emissions permits into which the government sells new permits at a set price, or an equivalent carbon emission tax, could bring that rate down to zero within a generation or two. Bjorn Lomborg cited a study that said a price of $100/tonne_CO2 would do it. A back-of-the-envelope calculation says that would be roughly $0.50 more per gallon of gas.

Annual Energy Outlook 2003
With Projections to 2025

New automobile fuel economy is projected to reach approximately 30.1 miles per gallon by 2025, as a result of advances in fuel-saving technologies (Figure 52). Three of the most promising, each of which would provide more than 8 percent higher fuel economy, are advanced drag reduction, variable valve timing and lift, and extension of four valve per cylinder technology to six-cylinder engines. Advanced drag reduction reduces air resistance over the vehicle; variable valve timing optimizes the timing of air intake into the cylinder with the spark ignition during combustion; and increasing the number of valves on the cylinder improves efficiency through more complete combustion of fuel in the engine.

Due to concerns about economic payback, the trucking industry is more sensitive to the marginal cost of fuel-efficient technologies; however, several technologies can increase fuel economy significantly, including components to reduce internal friction (2 percent improvement), advanced drag reduction (2 percent), and advanced fuel injection systems (5 percent). These technologies are anticipated to penetrate the heavy-duty truck market by 2025. Advanced technology penetration is projected to increase new freight truck fuel efficiency from 6.1 miles per gallon to 6.5 miles per gallon between 2001 and 2025. New aircraft fuel efficiencies are projected to increase by 19 percent from 2001 levels by 2025. Ultra-highbypass engine technology can potentially increase fuel efficiency by 10 percent, and increased use of weight-reducing materials may contribute up to a 15-percent improvement.

Advanced technology vehicles, representing automotive technologies that use alternative fuels or require advanced engine technology, are projected to reach 3.9 million vehicle sales per year by 2025 (21 percent of total projected light-duty vehicle sales). Hybrid electric vehicles, introduced into the U.S. market by two manufacturers in 2000, are anticipated to sell well, at 1.7 million units by 2025, leading advanced technology vehicle sales (Figure 53). Alcohol flexible-fueled vehicles follow with approximately 1.2 million vehicle sales by 2025. Sales of turbo direct injection diesel vehicles are projected to increase to 750,000 units by 2025. These advanced technologies will initially sell for less than $7,000 above an equivalent gasoline vehicle, but only the gasoline hybrid and the turbo direct injection diesel can achieve vehicle ranges that exceed 500 miles while delivering 20 to 35 percent better fuel economy than a comparable gasoline vehicle.

=====

The reference case assumes continuing improvement in energy-consuming and producing technologies, consistent with historic trends, as a result of ongoing research and development. In the high technology case it is assumed that increased spending on research and development will result in earlier introduction, lower costs, and higher efficiencies for enduse technologies than assumed in the reference case. The costs and efficiencies of advanced fossil-fired and new renewable generating technologies are also assumed to improve from reference case values [52]. Energy intensity is expected to decline on average by 1.8 percent per year through 2025 in the high technology case, as compared with 1.5 percent in the reference case. As a result, energy consumption is projected to be 6 percent lower than in the reference case in 2025, at 130 quadrillion Btu, and carbon dioxide emissions are projected to be 9 percent lower than in the reference case, at 2,046 million metric tons carbon equivalent (Figure 116).

The 2003 technology case assumes that future equipment choices will be made from the equipment and vehicles available in 2003; that new building shell and plant efficiencies will remain at their 2003 levels; and that advanced generating technologies will not improve over time. Energy efficiency improves in the 2003 technology case as new equipment is chosen to replace older stock and the capital stock expands, and energy intensity declines by 1.3 percent per year through 2025. Energy consumption reaches 147 quadrillion Btu in 2025 in the 2003 technology case, and carbon dioxide emissions in 2025 are projected to be 9 percent higher than in the reference case, at 2,429 million metric tons carbon equivalent.

This grows tedious. Your argument about generators is wrong - and so obviously wrong that I begin to wonder if you are a troll, or just stupid. Either way, you're out of your depth here.

A device that attaches to a generator and renders CO2 harmless or contains it?! Why not set up a factory to produce pairs of seven league boots to put the airlines (a very large source of CO2) out of business?

The first would work if it was possible (how do you make it "harmless"? Perhaps we should ask an alchemist to turn it into gold?), the second wouldn't even work if it was possible, since the CO2 would eventually make it to the atmosphere. If such devices were possible, there'd be no problem with C02.

On a more general note, a generator is a device for turning chemical energy into electrical energy. Ein = Eout + Waste. The amount of CO2 produced is a function of Ein, which in turn is the main operating expense. If you want to decrease CO2, you decrease waste while holding Eout constant, which reduces Ein. This makes the generator more efficient (Eout/Ein), and lowers running costs. You can't lower CO2 emmissions while burning the same amount of the same fuel. In turn, this means that the incentives to decrease running costs (by lowering Ein while maintaining Eout, or raising Eout while maintaining Ein) also serve to decrease C02.

As for the linear model thing, you seem to be confused by the fact that GDP and emissions have changed at different rates over time. I repeat, the model being used here does NOT assume (as you insist on doing) that to get a given years emmissions you would have to have that years GDP. That is obviously wrong, and nobody but you, as far as I know, has claimed such a thing. By way of contrast, there's every reason to believe that a percentage cut of 10% in emmissions would equate to a cut of 10% in GDP. You do understand the difference, yes? Further, if it makes you happy you can assume further efficiency gains, accelerated by the massive costs and falling standard of living. As mentioned ad nauseum already, they MIGHT total 10% across the economy, but would help very little even if twice that size.

As for the nuclear power plant, you'd be lucky to get any gains. Any plant has REALLY massive upfront costs, including massive upfront CO2 emmissions. Once you've built it, you get to "write off" those costs over the life of the plant. So let's say you take a relatively modern coal plant, built 15 years ago, with several decades of life still to go. You tear it down, and replace it with a new nuclear plant. I'd be extremely surprised if you'd EVER break even, because you have to add in the bulk of the coal plants upfront costs as well as the nuclear plants costs. If you replaced one that was already near it's end of life, then you would get large gains. 95%? Unlikely, but maybe.

But here's the problem: Nuclear energy is expensive, and there aren't very many coal plants ready to be replaced. You may well find a plant that could be replaced where you would get 95% gains over the next 20 years, and at a moderate cost (ie, only a few billion dollars). But for the industry as a whole, you couldn't do that. The cost would be staggering, and your gains small. *IF* you could even do it, which of course you can't. The political problems have already been mentioned, but if nothing else it takes over a decade the build a nuclear power plant, and we don't have the capacity to replace all our coal plants all at once.

So...apart from your idea having much higher costs than you assume, much lower benefits than you assume, and being physically impossible...you wearnt far off...

Boonton, it should have been entirely clear -- both from the content of my response and the way I divided up the quotes of your original comment -- that the "agreed" was in response to the possibility of reducing transportation carbon emissions by dealing with problems related to traffic congestion.

However, if for some reason it was not clear, observe that (a) that was the intent and (b) it in no way mitigated the need for your "30%" figure to have something more that was provided -- a justification, for example.

Cody:
A device that attaches to a generator and renders CO2 harmless or contains it?! Why not set up a factory to produce pairs of seven league boots to put the airlines (a very large source of CO2) out of business?

The first would work if it was possible (how do you make it "harmless"? Perhaps we should ask an alchemist to turn it into gold?), the second wouldn't even work if it was possible, since the CO2 would eventually make it to the atmosphere. If such devices were possible, there'd be no problem with C02.

The concept is "carbon sequestration", collecting the carbon dioxide from the exhaust and, e.g. pumping it down into oil/gas fields to maintain the pressure, or into deep coal mines where it gets absorbed. But it costs a lot and power plants don't save any cost by doing so, so not much is now done.

On a more general note, a generator is a device for turning chemical energy into electrical energy. Ein = Eout + Waste. The amount of CO2 produced is a function of Ein, which in turn is the main operating expense. If you want to decrease CO2, you decrease waste while holding Eout constant, which reduces Ein. This makes the generator more efficient (Eout/Ein), and lowers running costs. You can't lower CO2 emmissions while burning the same amount of the same fuel. In turn, this means that the incentives to decrease running costs (by lowering Ein while maintaining Eout, or raising Eout while maintaining Ein) also serve to decrease C02.

The key phrase there is "the same fuel". In terms of its energy content, coal is almost entirely carbon but natural gas is mostly(IIRC) hydrogen, while oil is in between. The same amounts of E_in imply very different amounts of CO2 production, but currently there's no consequent incentive to burn low-carbon fuels.

...but if nothing else it takes over a decade the build a nuclear power plant, ...

For small values of "over a decade". See
Plans For New Reactors Worldwide

Cody, say you have to buy a generator. Both have the same heat efficiency and the same cost and output. One, however, is able to emit less CO2 (say it has some mechanism to either render the CO2 harmless or contain it). There is no economic incentive for you to buy the machine that emits less CO2. You also wouldn’t have any incentive to invent such a machine or apply any existing knowledge towards creating it. Like I wrote, and you ignored, increasing fuel efficiency INDIRECTLY improves CO2 efficiency but they are two different things.

Cody isn't the only engineering student here, and in a nod to one of his earlier comments, this example did indeed cause near-fatal levels of laughter.

Bill: I want to see the reference you included, can you copy-paste the link? The HREF tag has been acting loopy the past few days.

Plans For New Reactors Worldwide
Nuclear Issues Briefing Paper 19

June 2003

http://www.uic.com.au/nip19.htm

Bill: Some excellent points!

Carbon sequestration would work - if we could get it to work. Pumping it underground is an expensive solution, and it's unclear as this point, AFAIK, how long term a solution that will be, nor what sort of capacity limits may exist. I've seen more work aimed towards figuring out tricks with forests and peat-bogs, but nothing promising. You can store CO2 in a tree while it grows for example, but it comes right back out as it rots, and burying it, for example, does nothing. Efforts to "fix" it in the soil via bacteria, etc., are being tried, but so far that isn't working, AFAIK.

I saw a REALLY cool idea, IIRC, to sequester lots of CO2 in the ocean by encouraging algae growth by sprinkling the oceans with tons of iron dust (like crop dusting). No idea if it'd work, but an impressive idea.

Got any links/info on sequestering CO2 in mines/oil fields? My initial thoughts are A.) It'd interfere with resource extraction unless you used tapped out fields - and would they have the needed pressure? B.) You'd have to have some really massive transportation infrastructure to get the CO2 to the seuqestration points. Almost a mirror of the infrastructure for getting hydrocarbons to consumers, in fact. On the face of it, I wonder if the idea really has the ability to scale.

As for the fuels, your right AFAIK, but moving to higher energy density hydrocarbons only helps as long as they last - and in the short term, there would be some serious capacity issues. There's a lot of natural gas around, but not nearly enough extraction capacity to supply the worlds needs. As with much of this, given 50 years, most of the current problems go away (and get replaced with new ones, of course).

Lastly, about the nuclear power plants - very interesting. Looks like it's closer to 7-8 years than 10. :-) My bad. (Although...a major factor in the length of time it takes to build a nuclear plant is safety regs, planning consent, the regulatory environment, etc. I suspect it'd take a politically impossible shakeup before the US could build a plant as fast as Japan.)

Nothing handy. Google around. Pumping the gas into oil fields is being done to a limited extent, because it *helps* the extraction, pushing out more oil than could be purely sucked out. But that won't pay for getting CO2 from power plants back to the fields. Also, getting CO2 out of hydrocarbon+air burner's exhaust is expensive because the gas is mostly N2.

Cody, Bill:

Klaus Lackner at Columbia University has been working for some years with some guys from Los Alamos on chemical methods of extracting CO2 from ambient air. He's written a number of papers on the concept, some of which are archived at his website. I'd recommend the paper "Carbon Dioxide Extraction From Air: Is It An Option?" as a good, readable start.

Now I'm also an engineer, not a chemist, but this looks like an interesting idea. Lackner calculates the amount of fuel you'd have to burn to emit the amount of CO2 contained in 1 m^3 of air, and comes up with about 7 kJ. Compare this to the 58 J of kinetic energy in the same cubic metre moving at 10 m/s (a pretty strong wind). (A perfect, unachievable wind turbine could only extract 34 J of that, at most.) Even if we could only extract one-tenth of the 7 kJ-worth of CO2 in the air using Lackner's method, it would still take us a long way toward a carbon-neutral, fossil-based energy system, with a lot smaller footprint than those required by wind or solar technologies.

I make no claims about the feasibility of this idea, but given my opinions about renewables (forever marginal) and nuclear (forever impossible, due to blockheaded lunatics), I suspect we'll resort to some large-scale sequestration schemes, if we decide to do anything at all.

Fascinating. I was taking it as an axiom that removal from the air wasn't feasible - but it seems that isn't so. Further, there are a vast number of cool tricks or processes that won't scale up from the labratory - but I note that an attempt at running the figures has been done, and it actually looks like it might be cost effective. That could actually work, assuming the chemistry is right. Of course, you still have to find something to do with a few thousand tons of concentrated coarbon - but that's a much easier problem than dealing with the same amount of C02 circulating free in the atmosphere. :-)

Very cool.

One other interesting approach is burning coal in oxygen, rather than air. The exhaust is then almost all CO2, very little N2, plus "nasties" such as SO2 and Mercury.

Assuming there is a market for Hydrogen as a vehicle fuel, a single process produces both the H2 and the O2. Permanent fixation of the CO2 is still an issue however.

Cody,
“A device that attaches to a generator and renders CO2 harmless or contains it?! Why not set up a factory to produce pairs of seven league boots to put the airlines (a very large source of CO2) out of business?”
Instead of calling me names why don’t you actually read the posts you are attempting to criticize. You asserted that there is a financial incentive to reduce CO2. I asserted that this is not so, there is an incentive to mechanical efficiency or improve economic efficiency but these are only indirectly improving CO2 emissions. To illustrate this I used a hypothetical where you are confronted with two different generators. Both have the same cost to build, run, maintain and output however one has lower CO2 emissions. If you really think this was a call to speculate on how the generator could have achieved lower CO2 emissions then this discussion is approaching a state of hopelessness.
“On a more general note, a generator is a device for turning chemical energy into electrical energy. Ein = Eout + Waste. The amount of CO2 produced is a function of Ein, which in turn is the main operating expense. If you want to decrease CO2, you decrease waste while holding Eout constant, which reduces Ein. This makes the generator more efficient (Eout/Ein), and lowers running costs. You can't lower CO2 emmissions while burning the same amount of the same fuel. In turn, this means that the incentives to decrease running costs (by lowering Ein while maintaining Eout, or raising Eout while maintaining Ein) also serve to decrease C02.”
Only partially true. Consider a generator that runs on gas versus one that runs on coal. Depending on the price of gas and coal, its possible the two generators may be equal in terms of output (electricity) versus input (fuel). It doesn’t follow that they are equal in CO2 emissions. In fact, if the price of coal is really cheap your incentive may be to increase CO2 output.
I’m sorry if this economics major sometimes botches those exaulted engineering concepts that Cody and anony have mastered. I’m a little surprised that the resident engineers on this list are baffled by the concept that generators that may be economically equal may have different levels of CO2 emissions. I’m also a bit baffled that the two engineers here seem hopelessly unable to comprehend that there are different measures of efficiency and sometimes they do not all move in the same direction. In the hypothetical I never stated that both generators used the same type of fuel, only that they were equal in terms of all the measures of efficiency that a purchaser would be expected to apply.
Even if the two generators used the same fuel, its possible to imagine that one may have a lower CO2 emission than the other. Suppose that one generator was close enough to an oil well that it was economically feasible to pump a portion of its CO2 output into the field. Say also that the well owners were willing to pay for this service, but only enough to cover the additional cost of adding the CO2 diversion mechanism to the generator. Then your choice would be between two generators who are economically equal but one has a lower level of CO2 emissions.

“As for the linear model thing, you seem to be confused by the fact that GDP and emissions have changed at different rates over time. I repeat, the model being used here does NOT assume (as you insist on doing) that to get a given years emmissions you would have to have that years GDP. That is obviously wrong, and nobody but you, as far as I know, has claimed such a thing. By way of contrast, there's every reason to believe that a percentage cut of 10% in emmissions would equate to a cut of 10% in GDP. You do understand the difference, yes? Further, if it makes you happy you can assume further efficiency gains, accelerated by the massive costs and falling standard of living. As mentioned ad nauseum already, they MIGHT total 10% across the economy, but would help very little even if twice that size.”

You fight the linear model and then assert it all over again. Let’s say 1996’s GDP was 10% lower than today’s and so was emissions. You’re saying that if we want to cut emissions 10% we must revert back to 1996’s GDP. The brain dead way to accomplish such a goal is to just turn back the clock to 1996. Then you will get your cuts in CO2 with falling standards of living. With all we know about markets, all the economics tools we have I suspect we can do much better. In that case we can cut emissions 10% without cutting GDP 10%.
Listen carefully Cody, I’m not saying we can cut emissions 10% and enjoy 0% cut in GDP (although I’m not saying that such a feat may be impossible). Maybe it would cost 5% or something else. I also accept that even a cut in GDP of less than 10% still represents a massive number. I’m simply saying that if you thought you had to cut emissions by 10% (the purpose of my aliens thought experiment) then you could do so without cutting GDP 10%. If not then all the economics is useless and we might as well use the brain dead solution if it turns out that CO2 is really a big problem.

“As for the nuclear power plant, you'd be lucky to get any gains. Any plant has REALLY massive upfront costs, including massive upfront CO2 emmissions. Once you've built it, you get to "write off" those costs over the life of the plant. So let's say you take a relatively modern coal plant, built 15 years ago, with several decades of life still to go. You tear it down, and replace it with a new nuclear plant. I'd be extremely surprised if you'd EVER break even, because you have to add in the bulk of the coal plants upfront costs as well as the nuclear plants costs. If you replaced one that was already near it's end of life, then you would get large gains. 95%? Unlikely, but maybe.”

Are you talking about economic costs or CO2 costs here? If you are talking about economic costs then the point is moot because both my 100% and 95% estimates (which I admit are off the cuff) referred only to CO2 emissions. If you are talking about CO2 emissions then these assertions really need some back up.

1. Why should the supposed CO2 emissions from tearing down the old coal plant be counted against the nuclear plants CO2 emissions? What if the coal plant was just turned off but left to rot? What if both plants ran side by side. Why couldn’t I validly observe that the nuclear plant has 100% less CO2 emission than the coal plant?
2. If you do penalize the nuke plant for the CO2 cost of tearing down the coal plant, then shouldn’t you give it a credit for the CO2 saved by shutting down the plant years before it became obsolete?
3. I agree that there’s a lot of CO2 that will be emitted in constructing a nuke plant, however what evidence do you have that emission will be in any way comparable to what a coal plant will emit by burning thousands of tons of coal in just a single year? MGL posted which activities emit CO2 back on Dec. 8th. Electric generation was 40%, residential and transportation together was bout 52%. Unfortunately mgl didn’t break out construction but I don’t see why it would necessarily be so massive as to overwhelm the zero CO2 that uranium puts out as it is used to generate energy versus coal.

Your an economics major? Given your failure to seem to grasp opportunity costs, the difference between marginal costs and average costs, sunk costs, and a host of other freshman level concepts, I worry for our future. :-)

As for the difference in fuels, that doesn't really help you, since for any given generator the incentives are to decrease CO2 emmissions. If there was a fuel that was worse for CO2 emmissions that was also cheaper, then you'd have a point - but if you look at the real world, you'll see an overwhelming trend from coal through oil into natural gas. So your point, while partially valid in theory, has no bearing on the real world.

As for the linear model, it seems you STILL don't understand the concept of a "percent". For the...what, fourth time? GDP and emmissions have changed at different rates since 1996, so knocking 10% of both gets you to different years. This is primary school level math! OTOH, you still haven't begun to show why you wouldn't need to cut 10% off GDP to cut 10% of emmissions - which does not in ANY way mean you have to roll back to a given years standard of living to get that years emmission levels.

As for nuclear plants, I'm talking of both costs. If you don't understand why you need to count the upfront costs of the coal plant as part of your nuclear plant, I can't help you, but suggest you take some freshman level accounting or economics classes. You can make observatins about marginal costs (they won't be right (transportation of uranium fuel, for example), but they're not far off), but it's not relevent. And yes, of course you subtract back out the CO2 from operating the coal plant - which will be overwhelmed by the CO2 from building it if you shut it down too early.

As for MGLs stats, the construction of plants should go into electricity generation, and be part of the 40%. I don't know if whomever did the stats did it that way, but they should have.

Cody,

Actually I graduated a while ago so your worst fears are realized!

“As for the difference in fuels, that doesn't really help you, since for any given generator the incentives are to decrease CO2 emmissions. If there was a fuel that was worse for CO2 emmissions that was also cheaper, then you'd have a point - but if you look at the real world, you'll see an overwhelming trend from coal through oil into natural gas. So your point, while partially valid in theory, has no bearing on the real world.”

Here’s the hypothetical, you have two generators that both cost the same to buy, maintain and run. They both generate the same output yet one of them has lower CO2 emissions. This is a hypothetical so it is not necessary to explain what fuel they are using, to draw a blueprint of them or anything more detailed than the first two sentences of this paragraph.

At the moment there is no financial incentive to choose the lower CO2 option. You are correct that we do see a trend away from coal towards natural gas. But in the real world the variables become much more complex and there are people who make these types of decisions their full time job. Coal & gas prices change. The cost of each fuel also depends on the situation. Gas may be expensive if your plant is far from a major pipeline. Coal may be cheaper but not for the plant that doesn’t have the storage space for it and can’t afford numerous small ‘just in time’ deliveries. In the real world all these complicated variables will make the choice of which generator to buy much more complicated than it is in our hypothetical. This isn’t shocking; there are thousands of different types of generators on the market because there’s a huge diversity of needs. Some will find a huge GE gas turbine the best option and others will be best off with a little windmill.

The point of the hypothetical is to cut to the heart of the matter, you assertion that there is now a financial incentive to cut CO2 emissions. Unless there are regions where CO2 is being currently regulated or taxed there is no direct financial incentive to lower the CO2 emitted per unit of output.

“As for the linear model, it seems you STILL don't understand the concept of a "percent". For the...what, fourth time? GDP and emmissions have changed at different rates since 1996, so knocking 10% of both gets you to different years. This is primary school level math! OTOH, you still haven't begun to show why you wouldn't need to cut 10% off GDP to cut 10% of emmissions - which does not in ANY way mean you have to roll back to a given years standard of living to get that years emmission levels.”

As with most arguments where percentages are deployed, I suspect we may be hopelessly talking past each other. I’ll take one final stab:

1. For the sake of simplicity let’s assume 1996 had 10% less GDP than now and 10% less CO2 emissions. I don’t know if that is true or not but just to keep it simple let’s make that assumption.
2. I accept your assertion that GDP and emissions may have grown at different rates since then.
3. Do you have any argument with my assertion that if you rolled back to 1996’s standard of living you would also roll back to 1996’s emissions? I’m not asking if that would be a sensible way of achieving a 1996 emission level, just whether that statement is true in your opinion.

Now let’s build the argument simply. If, for whatever reason, you wanted to cut emissions to 1996’s level, there are a host of ways you could do it. The dumbest way would be to just roll the clock back. There are also lots of other ways. I imagine you could come up with an infinite number of policies to accomplish that goal.

Lay out all possible policies and map them with their cost in terms of GDP.

Policy Cost % of GDP

Roll back 10%
Policy A ?
Policy B ?
Policy C ?
….and so on

All these policies would be ways to roll back emissions to the 1996 level other than going back to 1996. They would be our ideas about nuclear plants, high mileage cars, emissions credits and so on. To figure out the cost of each one would be a major exercise.

Now suppose all of these numerous policies have a cost greater than or equal to 10%? This would mean the dumb roll back policy would be the cheapest way if we ever felt we really had to roll back and all of the thousands of pages written about emissions credits, pollution taxes, creating incentives etc. was wasted.

It seems highly implausible to me that all the work done on emissions credits, creating incentives for reducing emissions etc. yields solutions that are not capable of equaling the dumb roll back policy. In that case it does not make sense to assert that there is a 1 for 1 relationship between CO2 & GDP. It does not follow that cutting CO2 by 10%, 5%, or 1% means that GDP must be cut by 10%, 5% or 1%.

Now one valid counter argument may be that the linear model isn’t exact but its close enough. In other words, the best policy to cut CO2 by 10% may not cost 10% of GDP but something like 8.5%, which is very close. I can’t prove that this argument is wrong but it seems that since there is currently no direct market incentive to cut CO2 there is plenty of ‘low hanging fruit’. Also the market is very powerful so if it were directed at cutting CO2 it would find a lot of ways to do it.

So does the best policy that isn’t the roll-back one result in a cost that is enough smaller than 10% to declare that using a linear model is overestimating the cost? I suspect it is. All the ideas we have been shooting around about using more high mileage cars and nuclear plants revolve around the observation that there seem to be many areas where a decision can be slightly shifted to yield good cuts in CO2. Unfortunately this thread has gotten bogged down in debates about the extremes such as forcing everyone to drive the 50 mpg cars etc.

“As for nuclear plants, I'm talking of both costs. If you don't understand why you need to count the upfront costs of the coal plant as part of your nuclear plant, I can't help you, but suggest you take some freshman level accounting or economics classes. You can make observatins about marginal costs (they won't be right (transportation of uranium fuel, for example), but they're not far off), but it's not relevent. And yes, of course you subtract back out the CO2 from operating the coal plant - which will be overwhelmed by the CO2 from building it if you shut it down too early.”

I don’t get where you are getting this from. How do you know how much CO2 is produced by constructing a nuclear plant and, more importantly, how do you know that number is large enough to overwhelm the savings of shutting down a coal plant? A coal plant burns thousands of tons of coal every year. Does the diesal burned by construction equipment & the CO2 emitted from making a nuclear plants steel, concrete and other materials amount to the amount produced by those thousands of tons of carbon being burned in a coal plant?

Actually, I'd like to apologize for some of my comments in the last post. What can I say, I'd just got up. :-)

In any case, your hypothetical is meaningful only to the extent that such generators exist. A glance at industry trends says they don't. The trend is overwhelmingly towards gas, which helps explain why they generate such vastly lower amounts of CO2 per kWh than in the past. What you have done is come up with an explanation for why efficiency (in terms of C02/GDP) might be rising, but in the real world, it isn't.

Really, I fail to understand why you are trying to argue there isn't an incentive. Not only should it be clear there is one (regardless of type of fuel, if you burn less of whatever fuel you do use, you get less CO2), but the statistics show that the efficiency has climbed massively. Since both theory and empirical data agree...

In any case, let me try and state my point more clearly. I am not disputing that significant gains can be made by replacing some of the oldst coal plants with new nuclear plants.

I do dispute your estimation of the gains, but lets not get sidetracked - even *if* the gains for the first plant (or the first dozen) are everything you hope, it doesn't help on the scale we're dealing with. Every additional plant you replace will have lower benefits, and higher costs.

To put it in simple terms, think back to your original example of cars. Replacing every car that gets 5mpg or less with one that gets 50mpg will get you singificant gains per car, and for fairly cheap - econboxes aren't that expensive, and the factories probably already exist to build the needed cars. (Random question - anyone know of a breakdown by mpg of the cars in the US? ie, 5 million get Xmpg, 10 million get Ympg, etc?) But as you start replacing more fuel efficient cars, your gains quickly head towards zero (and indeed will become negative quite a ways before you start replacing 49mpg cars with 50mpg cars), and the cost increases non-linearly. Total production capacity for the most fuel efficient models is probably...oh, a few thousand per year. Increasing that by a factor of 100 over the next 5 years would be a major and expensive project. Increasing it by a factor of 10,000 over the next year is probably impossible. If you want very large gains very quickly, the cost aproaches infinity. If you want small gains in the long run, the cost is essentially zero (indeed, since we're already getting small gains for "free" already, you could argue it *is* zero).

As for the CO2 stuff. Er... I was kind of joking about you not grasping percentages, but it seems perhaps I shouldn't have been.

1. For the sake of simplicity let’s assume 1996 had 10% less GDP than now and 10% less CO2 emissions. I don’t know if that is true or not but just to keep it simple let’s make that assumption. 2. I accept your assertion that GDP and emissions may have grown at different rates since then.

If you assume we have $100b in GDP, and 100m tons of C02, today, and you knock 10% off both, you get $90b in GDP and 90m tons of C02. If they then grow at different rates (say, 15% and 5%, respectively) you get $103.5b and 94.5m tons.

In other words, your starting assumptions contradict each other because of a high shool level math error. And your an economics graduate?

(As for your actual point, the 10% cut of each is not in any way equivalent to a roll back, and is in fact a good aproximation of your policies A-C. Of course it's cheaper than a rollback, efficiency has increased. This is REALLY SIMPLE! Yeesh.)

As for the nuclear part, of couse it won't pay back the CO2 if the nuclear plant doesn't run for very long, and of course it will if it runs for a long time. Without more values filling in the blanks, the question is meaningless. No, I don't know where the breakeven point is. Somewhere between a day and a millenia, and that's as close as I'm going to calculate it considering how tangential it is to the discussion. Of course it'll pay back the CO2 normally, but the fact that there is CO2 to pay back seriously impacts your total planned emmissions drop. Your hypothetical aliens (or the Kyoto protocol) aren't going to apreciate you busting their limits due to investment which will later HOPEFULLY bring you into compliance.

“Really, I fail to understand why you are trying to argue there isn't an incentive. Not only should it be clear there is one (regardless of type of fuel, if you burn less of whatever fuel you do use, you get less CO2),”

What you aren’t understanding is that there are different measures of efficiencies. One measure is the example you used:

Energy = Energy utilized + Energy wasted

Energy utilized / energy = efficiency

Another is economic efficiency:

Cost of inputs / Revenue from outputs

You are confusing these with CO2 efficiency which we can define as

CO2 emitted / Output

These are measures of efficiency that have direct financial incentives. Yes improving the first type of efficiency will indirectly improve CO2 efficiency. Improving the 2nd type of efficiency may or may not improve CO2 efficiency. It is often cheaper to run a coal plant, that’s an economically efficient decision that results in poorer CO2 efficiency.

“In any case, your hypothetical is meaningful only to the extent that such generators exist. A glance at industry trends says they don't.”

No the hypothetical is meaningful because it illustrates the difference between the two incentives. The fact that out of the billions of choices faced by all millions of different consumers you don’t happen to see one situation that exactly matches the hypothetical is what is meaningful.

“If you assume we have $100b in GDP, and 100m tons of C02, today, and you knock 10% off both, you get $90b in GDP and 90m tons of C02. If they then grow at different rates (say, 15% and 5%, respectively) you get $103.5b and 94.5m tons.”

Which violates that assumption that in 1996 emissions and GDP were 10% lower than they were in 2003. They could have grown at different rates but those rates would have to be changing (i.e. 5% for GDP one year, 10% the next) so they would even themselves out in 2003. In your above example, 10% off of 103.5b is 93.15. That violates our assumption that emissions were 90.0b in 1996….

“As for the nuclear part, of couse it won't pay back the CO2 if the nuclear plant doesn't run for very long, and of course it will if it runs for a long time.”

We didn’t explore what the deadlines were. The aliens could tell us this roll back must be accomplished in 10 years or 20 years or whatever. So we may or may not have time to make ‘investments’ in CO2 emissions that will pay off in the long run. I simply don’t get what you are basing your nuclear assertions on. Considering the vast amounts of carbon burned every day by a coal plant (even an efficient one) I find it hard to see what CO2 would be released in the construction of a nuclear plant that couldn’t be paid off with even a week or two of the coal plant’s flame being doused. Your just asserting that construction emissions are so vast that it would take years before the nuke plant could pay it back in reduced coal burning. What leads you to believe this?

What you still fail to grasp is that the two ideas of efficiency are different views of the same thing. This is a small point, of course, and irrelevent to the overall point I'm making, but I still find it striking how much trouble its causing you. For a given level of output, decreasing waste decreases inputs, and results in an increase in both of your definitions of effiency. Nor is this some lucky coincidence - you can't increase mechanical efficiency without increasing economic effiency.

As for the GDP/emmissions bit, my "different rates" comment referred to the given period as a whole, since anything else would make the entire concept meaningless - when comparing two periods, it only matters what the data is for those periods.

What you have done, it seems, is assume that we have made no efficiency gains since 1996. You then point out that we have made efficiency gains, and ridicule the model you have constructed as linear and wrong. Please see my earlier comment about birds and mirrors.

As for nuclear power plants, since you seem so fascinated on the subject, here's some rough calculations:

GDP in 1998 was about $8.5 trillion.
CO2 emmissions in 1998 was about 1.5 billion tons.
So for every dollar of "stuff", you get around 174 grams of CO2 (as per Jane's calculations in another post).

Let's assume nuclear plants are built of average stuff - for all I know, the stuff they're made of may be resposible for an above average amounts of CO2, but let's assume it's average. Data on exactly how much a nuclear plant costs is hard to come by, especially since the industy is highly distorted and massively subsidized in opaque ways, but the last plant built in the US cost $8 billion. It's unclear what year dollars that uses, and it certainly excludes many subisides, so that's probably low. Then again, people trying to sell you nuclear plants say they can do it for $1-2 billion. On the other hand, they estimated a whole LOT lower than $8 billion for thelast plant, until the cost overuns hit... Let's assume $8 billion is a good ball park number. That implies 1,392,000 tons of CO2 will be emmitted by construction.

A coal plant produces something on the order of 15k tons of CO2 per day, which in turn implies that the nuclear plant would pay off the CO2 investment within about 100 days. Not bad, although it's longer if it has to pay off the CO2 investment of the brand new coal plant you're replacing with the nuclear plant. :-)

If we did this, you would have spent around 1/10 of 1% of our GDP to get gains of about 1/3 of 1% of our emmissions. Not bad, and roughly what I'd expect - but it's also a good example of the "low-hanging fruit". Few gains will be as easy and those from replacing a coal plant

(Incidentally, some may find it interesting that the last plant built in the US took 28 years to build. Also, there's 500 coal plants - trying to replace all 500 at once would cost upwards of 50% of GDP.)

Incidentally, the first site google turned up on daily coal power plant CO2 emmissions said they produced 20 tons per day, which made my calculations much cooler. Sadly, something seemed wrong when I did a sanity check of my calculations, and I dug around and found they'd made a typographical error. Sigh.

Can you increase mechanical efficiency but not economic efficiency? If the investment required to achieve the improvement in mechanical efficiency cannot meet or exceed the required rate of return then the mechanical improvement would be a negative economically.

I agree that mechanical improvements will probably almost always improve the CO2 efficiency of any particular machine. Here is where it is useful to see the that the different types of efficiency we are talking about are not really the same thing. A firm may not bother making a mechanical improvement whose economic improvement nets out to $0. However if there is a financial incentive to cut CO2 then what was a breakeven improvement may now be positive which results in it happening.

As we saw with coal vs. other fuels, its totally possible for an economic improvement (using cheap coal) may be totally negative as far as CO2 emissions goes.

Your analysis of the CO2 emissions caused by building a nuclear power plant is interesting but it is rather rough because it assumes the 'stuff' involved building a nuclear plant is just like the average stuff in GNP. Considering that GDP has included the construction of a new nuke plant for 30 years it's not reasonable to assume the $2-4B used to build one will look like your average $2-4B of GDP. I'm just guessing here but GDP has a large portion of consumer goods which may be CO2 heavy because they require a lot of transportation, manufacturing, marketing etc.

The other factor is capacity. I was under the impression that most nuclear plants had high capacity. Would they replace the plant that burns 15T of coal a day or would they actually be able to replace two, three or even more of those plants? That would make a huge difference.

Another way mechanical improvements can be a negative to CO2 emissions would be when a mechanical improvement in a CO2 'dirty' type of machine makes the machine more competitive than 'cleaner' machines. For example, if a new discovery made coal generators even cheaper it may undercut gas and other types of generators causing an incentive to switch from low CO2 emitting to high CO2 emission.

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