Perhaps Thomas is unaware that there is a concern in the Congress that we will not be on a level playing field with the Chinese and India.
Note:
Democrats Reject Pollution Parity With China, India (Update2)
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By Lorraine Woellert and Simon Lomax
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Democrats debating climate-change legislation in the House Energy and Commerce Committee rejected Republican attempt to delay a cap on U.S. pollution levels until China and India adopt similar standards.
The committee also voted against an “emergency exit” amendment that would have lifted pollution caps if electricity rates rose more than 10 percent.
The votes were part of a weeklong effort to craft legislation that would set limits on U.S. greenhouse gas emissions and allow companies to buy and sell pollution permits.
Republican Representative Roy Blunt of Missouri offered language to abandon a cap-and-trade system to reduce greenhouse gas emissions if electricity rates increase. Missouri utility regulators have estimated that the proposed legislation would increase electricity rates by as much as 40 percent, Blunt said.
“We must look at the real ramifications this bill will have on our already struggling economy,” he said. The committee rejected the amendment on 32-23 vote that broke largely along party lines.
Rogers Amendment
The provision focusing on China and India, offered by Republican Representative Mike Rogers of Michigan, would have allowed greenhouse-gas emission limits in the U.S. only if those two countries adopted standards that were “at least as stringent.” The committee rejected the proposal on a 36-23 party-line vote.
Republican Representative Fred Upton of Michigan argued that the U.S. economy would lose jobs if Congress enacted a pollution cap-and-trade bill without similar environmental guidelines adhered to in China and India.
“If we don’t demand that they have the same kind of criteria that we do, we’re going to see those jobs go,” Upton said. “We can put a gun to China’s head” to push them to adopt pollution limits, he said.
Democrats said the climate program would create jobs by spurring demand for clean energy technologies in the U.S. The American Clean Energy and Security Act would give free pollution permits to steel, aluminum, paper, chemical and other manufacturers whose prices are sensitive to foreign imports.
Tariff Authority
The free permits would last until at least 2025 to protect against energy cost increases that could benefit non-U.S. competitors, said Representative Mike Doyle, a Pennsylvania Democrat who opposed Rogers’s amendment. After 2025, the cap- and-trade legislation would let the president impose a tariff on goods produced in countries without limits on greenhouse gas emissions.
“I wouldn’t vote for a bill if I believed this was going to cause us to lose jobs in the steel industry,” Doyle said.
Rogers’s amendment triggered a debate over the potential effect of the greenhouse-gas limits on domestic manufacturing, international trade and global climate change negotiations.
I am certain that Mr. Thomas does not know that the new Energy Czar appointed by Barack Hussein Obama has bitten off more than he could Chu.
Note:
America's new green guru sparks anger over climate change U-turnsPresident Obama's energy secretary, Nobel prize-winner Steven Chu, arrives in Europe this week to discuss global warming. But his recent policy decisions on coal-fired power stations and hydrogen cars have angered many environmentalists
Robin McKie in London and Ed Helmore in New York The Observer, Sunday 24 May 2009
US energy secretary Steven Chu will fly to Europe this week to begin talks that will be crucial in the global battle against climate change. The 61-year-old physicist will hold key discussions with energy ministers from the G8 nations in Rome before travelling to London to take part in a debate with Nobel prize winners on global warming.
The arrival of Chu, himself a physics Nobel laureate, comes as the scientist-turned-politician finds himself attacked by environmentalists over decisions he has made about America's campaign to fight global warming. Green groups have accused him of being "contradictory and illogical" and of failing to demonstrate sufficient dynamism in establishing a new, low-carbon approach to transport and power-generation in the United States.
In recent weeks, Chu - who was appointed energy secretary by Barack Obama in December - has revealed that he is no longer willing to block the construction of new coal-powered electricity plants in the US, despite widespread opposition from green groups and having initially said that he would not permit their construction.
Environmental campaigners object vociferously to coal plants - which atmosphere scientist James Hansen, director of Nasa's Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York, recently labelled "factories of death" in an article he wrote for the Observer - because of their high carbon emissions.
In addition, Chu has called for a slowdown in the development of hydrogen-powered vehicles in the US and slashed funding for new projects by 60%. "We asked ourselves: is it likely in the next 10 or 15, or even 20, years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?" Chu explained. "The answer, we felt, was no."
On top of these controversial pronouncements, Chu has eliminated funding for a project to build a nuclear waste store at Yucca Mountain in Nevada. Instead of storage, he has backed the construction of fast neutron reactors that could burn long-lived waste. Such a move, which would require a major expansion of the US nuclear industry, has horrified ecology groups.
Yet most US eco-campaigners were overjoyed by Chu's appointment last year. They saw his arrival as the start of a new, enlightened approach to the issues of global warming and the environment. But recently many have been angered by Chu's actions, a point stressed by Damon Moglen from Greenpeace USA. "We are getting very concerned. Professor Chu is a good man and a good scientist, but the science on global warming is clear and he should be guided by the science not the politics," Moglen said. "It is out of the question that the US should agree new power stations for burning coal - the dirtiest fuel. Our targets on emissions are too low anyway - and there is no way we will meet even those low targets if we allow more coal to be burned."
For his part, Chu admits he was taken aback by his entry to Washington life. "I didn't appreciate how much of a public figure you become," he said. Chu is the youngest son in a high-achieving Chinese-immigrant family from New York. His father emigrated from China to study chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, while his mother studied economics in China and at MIT. One brother is a professor of medicine and biochemistry at Stanford; the other is an intellectual property lawyer in Los Angeles.
Chu at first seemed a modest achiever - until his work at Stanford, where his research on cooling and trapping atoms with laser light earned him a Nobel prize. Even then his family seems to have been unimpressed; he told the New York Times, when asked if his parents had been excited about his award, "Probably, but who knows? I called my mother up when they announced the Nobel prize, waiting until seven in the morning. She said, 'That's nice - and when are you going to see me next?'"
However, Chu now faces a very different, and ultimately more critical, audience after being appointed energy secretary. At the time, he was director of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, a civilian research organisation with 4,000 employees and a $600m annual budget.
His green views were well known at the time and Chu has argued that he is merely being pragmatic in making his recent pronouncement, and that he is still enthusiastically committed to the cause of cutting US carbon emissions. "As someone very concerned about climate I want to be as aggressive as possible but I also want to get started," he told the BBC. "And if we say we want something much more aggressive on the early timescales that would draw considerable opposition, and that would delay the process for several years."
As a result, Chu has been extremely careful in his statements. For example, solar power, he says, is still far too expensive to compete with conventional power plants. At the same time, he has been quick to outline plans for reducing carbon dioxide emissions through energy efficiencies. He estimates that better buildings could cut energy use in the US by roughly one-third, and that even modest changes in building stock could bring energy reductions of 10%. In other key measures, he supports the idea of replacing of the US electricity grid with a so-called "smart grid" that would aid small-scale generators, and is close to allocating $18.5bn in government loan guarantees for building the first new nuclear plants in four decades.
However, the real problem for the slight, softly spoken man is that America isolated itself over the issue of climate change for eight years under the presidency of George Bush. As a result, opposition to the idea of reducing carbon emissions has become entrenched. Obama has indicated he wants America to cut its greenhouse gas emissions significantly but has left it to Congress to pass the necessary legislation. However, the energy industry continues to lobby politicians fiercely and the forthcoming climate and energy bill faces considerable hurdles.
At the same time, the US is coming under increasing diplomatic pressure - particularly from Europe - to take a lead in the current round of global negotiations which are aimed at cutting carbon emissions throughout the developed and developing worlds. The next round of these talks will begin in Bonn on 1 June, and will reach a climax in December when world leaders will gather in Copenhagen to ratify an international agreement that will replace the current Kyoto climate change deal.
With Obama committed to the idea of tackling climate change, many world leaders are now looking to the US to set a lead and to persuade emerging industrial giants such as China and India to agree to a tight, effective new deal in Copenhagen. But the US itself faces major problems in cutting its carbon output. While Europe has faced up to the problem of climate change for more than a decade and has reduced its output of greenhouse gases significantly, the US has continued to pump out more and more carbon. "Its output is now so high, the US cannot now turn round and get that down to anything like the baseline figure being established by Europe for the end of the next decade," said a British diplomat.
As a result, the US is seeking to raise that baseline figure - from its 1990 output to the far greater figure set in 2005. This would mean the US would not have to reduce its carbon emissions too radically for the next 10 years. "That would be acceptable only if the US pledges it will make far greater cuts in the succeeding decades and reduces its output, proportionally, to the same final level as the rest of the world," added the source.
The move would ease criticism of future climate deals at home but will cause significant irritation among many negotiators in Europe and other parts of the world. Chu will have to tread a careful path. For his part, the physicist has shown himself to be a pragmatist rather than an ideologically bound administrator.
From the previous article---
In recent weeks, Chu - who was appointed energy secretary by Barack Obama in December - has revealed that he is no longer willing to block the construction of new coal-powered electricity plants in the US, despite widespread opposition from green groups and having initially said that he would not permit their construction.
end of quote
Now why would he do that? Did he get the word that a 10% Unemployment Rate is to high to block construction of new coal-powered plants in the USA?
Does Thomas know about the new Chinese coal fired plants? He should read about the Chinese Drive to lower co2 emissions to ONLY 3% INCREASE A YEAR.
Note:
Doug Kanter for The New York Times
Published: May 10, 2009
TIANJIN, China " China’s frenetic construction of coal-fired power plants has raised worries around the world about the effect on climate change. China now uses more coal than the United States, Europe and Japan combined, making it the world’s largest emitter of gases that are warming the planet.
Doug Kanter for The New York Times
The Tianjin plant will be constructed in what is now a muddy field.
But largely missing in the hand-wringing is this: China has emerged in the past two years as the world’s leading builder of more efficient, less polluting coal power plants, mastering the technology and driving down the cost.
While the United States is still debating whether to build a more efficient kind of coal-fired power plant that uses extremely hot steam, China has begun building such plants at a rate of one a month.
Construction has stalled in the United States on a new generation of low-pollution power plants that turn coal into a gas before burning it, although Energy Secretary Steven Chu said Thursday that the Obama administration might revive one power plant of this type. But China has already approved equipment purchases for just such a power plant, to be assembled soon in a muddy field here in Tianjin.
“The steps they’ve taken are probably as fast and as serious as anywhere in power-generation history,” said Hal Harvey, president of ClimateWorks, a group in San Francisco that helps finance projects to limit global warming.
Western countries continue to rely heavily on coal-fired power plants built decades ago with outdated, inefficient technology that burn a lot of coal and emit considerable amounts of carbon dioxide. China has begun requiring power companies to retire an older, more polluting power plant for each new one they build.
Cao Peixi, the president of the China Huaneng Group, the country’s biggest state-owned electric utility and the majority partner in the joint venture building the Tianjin plant, said his company was committed to the project even though it would cost more than conventional plants.
“We shouldn’t look at this project from a purely financial perspective,” he said. “It represents the future.”
Without doubt, China’s coal-fired power sector still has many problems, and global warming gases from the country are expected to continue increasing. China’s aim is to use the newest technologies to limit the rate of increase.
Only half the country’s coal-fired power plants have the emissions control equipment to remove sulfur compounds that cause acid rain, and even power plants with that technology do not always use it. China has not begun regulating some of the emissions that lead to heavy smog in big cities.
Even among China’s newly built plants, not all are modern. Only about 60 percent of the new plants are being built using newer technology that is highly efficient, but more expensive.
With greater efficiency, a power plant burns less coal and emits less carbon dioxide for each unit of electricity it generates. Experts say the least efficient plants in China today convert 27 to 36 percent of the energy in coal into electricity. The most efficient plants achieve an efficiency as high as 44 percent, meaning they can cut global warming emissions by more than a third compared with the weakest plants.
In the United States, the most efficient plants achieve around 40 percent efficiency, because they do not use the highest steam temperatures being adopted in China. The average efficiency of American coal-fired plants is still higher than the average efficiency of Chinese power plants, because China built so many inefficient plants over the past decade. But China is rapidly closing the gap by using some of the world’s most advanced designs.
After relying until recently on older technology, “China has since become the major world market for advanced coal-fired power plants with high-specification emission control systems,” the International Energy Agency said in a report on April 20.
China’s improvements are starting to have an effect on climate models. In its latest annual report last November, the I.E.A. cut its forecast of the annual increase in Chinese emissions of global warming gases, to 3 percent from 3.2 percent, in response to technological gains, particularly in the coal sector, even as the agency raised slightly its forecast for Chinese economic growth. “It’s definitely changing the baseline, and that’s being taken into account,” said Jonathan Sinton, a China specialist at the energy agency.
But by continuing to rely heavily on coal, which supplies 80 percent of its electricity, China ensures that it will keep emitting a lot of carbon dioxide; even an efficient coal-fired power plant emits twice the carbon dioxide of a natural gas-fired plant.
Perhaps the biggest question now is how much further China can go beyond the recent steps. In particular, how fast will it move toward power plants that capture their emissions and store them underground or under the seafloor?
That technology could, in theory, create power plants that contribute virtually nothing to global warming. Many countries hope to develop such plants, though progress has been halting; Energy Secretary Chu has promised steps to speed up the technology in the United States.
China has just built a small, experimental facility near Beijing to remove carbon dioxide from power station emissions and use it to provide carbonation for beverages, and the government has a short list of possible locations for a large experiment to capture and store carbon dioxide. But so far, it has no plans to make this a national policy.
China is making other efforts to reduce its global warming emissions. It has doubled its total wind energy capacity in each of the past four years, and is poised to pass the United States as soon as this year as the world’s largest market for wind power equipment. China is building considerably more nuclear power plants than the rest of the world combined, and these do not emit carbon dioxide after they are built.
But coal remains the cheapest energy source in China by a wide margin. China has the world’s third-largest coal reserves, after the United States and Russia.
“No matter how much renewable or nuclear is in the mix, coal will remain the dominant power source,” said Ashok Bhargava, a China energy expert at the Asian Development Bank in Manila.
Another problem is that China has finally developed the ability to build high-technology power plants only at the end of a national binge of building lower-tech coal-fired plants. Construction is now slowing because of the economic slump
genoves drinks out of the toilet.
@DontTreadOnMe,
So does Setanta's dog but then the Dog urinates on him!
Adhering to Chairman "never been vetted 'cause I'm black" Steele's dictate that the Republicans will be dignified and classy by alleging that the Democrats are undignified and classless, an RNC "official" announced:
"The Republicans are going to strike a tone that's fair, that allows the vetting process to happen like it should, and that's in stark contrast to how the Democrats dealt with Judge Roberts when you look back a couple years ago," the official said. However, the official said: "I don't think that you can describe the tone as neutral, but you can describe it as fair."
Source: CNN Political Ticker
@Foxfyre,
Quote:
The quotations I posted were taken from an e-mail that quoted them in an online discussion about various contemporary political literature including just recently Soros' book.
What a nice way to say 'from a chain email smearing the Democrats.'
Cycloptichorn
genoves wrote:Mr. Thomas--Have you really read Nordhaus carefully? Bjorn Lomborg, in his ground breaking analysis in "The Skeptical Environmentalist certainly has and makes these comments which appear to back Mr. Morrison's view.
Yes, I have read Nordhaus carefully.
There are two points to distinguish here:
1) In principle, global warming causes damage, justifying some reduction of greenhouse gas emissions through a carbon tax or a cap-and-trade system.
2) In practice, if you assess the damage over time, and assess the cost of preventing it over time, applying the standard tools of microeconomics, the optimal CO2 reduction turns out to be pretty low, and so does the optimal tax rate for getting it. That's Nordhaus's result, and Lomborg follows it pretty closely.
genoves wrote:Perhaps Thomas is unaware that there is a concern in the Congress that we will not be on a level playing field with the Chinese and India.
I'm aware of that concern. I'm also aware that there is
no concern in Congress that the playing field with Europe is tilted too, and heavily in America's favor. So why use China and India as an excuse? Why not use Europe as an inspiration for America to finally keep up its end?
@Cycloptichorn,
Hehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehehe . . .
okbye
Mr. Thomas wrote:
I'm aware of that concern. I'm also aware that there is no concern in Congress that the playing field with Europe is tilted too, and heavily in America's favor. So why use China and India as an excuse? Why not use Europe as an inspiration for America to finally keep up its end?
********************************************************************
You are joking, aren't you? Surely, you know that the Kyoto Protocol was a massive failure with regards to lowering co2 output. Use Europe as an inspiration?
Note:
population trust blog population growth issues in the news Contact the blog Discussion groups Join OPT from £15 World will not meet 2C warming target
Posted on May 2, 2009
Filed Under 1 |
Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2C will succeed, a Guardian poll reveals today. An average rise of 4-5C by the end of this century is more likely, they say, given soaring carbon emissions and political constraints.
Such a change would disrupt food and water supplies, exterminate thousands of species of plants and animals and trigger massive sea level rises that would swamp the homes of hundreds of millions of people.
The poll of those who follow global warming most closely exposes a widening gulf between political rhetoric and scientific opinions on climate change. While policymakers and campaigners focus on the 2C target, 86% of the experts told the survey they did not think it would be achieved. A continued focus on an unrealistic 2C rise, which the EU defines as dangerous, could even undermine essential efforts to adapt to inevitable higher temperature rises in the coming decades, they warned.
The survey follows a scientific conference last month in Copenhagen, where a series of studies were presented that suggested global warming could strike harder and faster than realised.
The Guardian contacted all 1,756 people who registered to attend the conference and asked for their opinions on the likely course of global warming. Of 261 experts who responded, 200 were researchers in climate science and related fields. The rest were drawn from industry or worked in areas such as economics and social and political science.
The 261 respondents represented 26 countries and included dozens of senior figures, including laboratory directors, heads of university departments and authors of the 2007 report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).
The poll asked the experts whether the 2C target could still be achieved, and whether they thought that it would be met: 60% of respondents argued that, in theory, it was still technically and economically possible to meet the target, which represents an average global warming of 2C since the industrial revolution. The world has already warmed by about 0.8C since then, and another 0.5C or so is inevitable over coming decades given past greenhouse gas emissions. But 39% said the 2C target was impossible.
The poll comes as UN negotiations to agree a new global treaty to regulate carbon pollution gather pace in advance of a key meeting in Copenhagen in December. Officials will try to agree a successor to the Kyoto protocol, the first phase of which expires in 2012. The 2C target is unlikely to feature in a new treaty, but most of the carbon cuts proposed for rich countries are based on it. Bob Watson, chief scientist to Defra, told the Guardian last year that the world needed to focus on the 2C target, but should also prepare for a possible 4C rise.
Asked what temperature rise was most likely, 84 of the 182 specialists (46%) who answered the question said it would reach 3-4C by the end of the century; 47 (26%) suggested a rise of 2-3C, while a handful said 6C or more. While 24 experts predicted a catastrophic rise of 4-5C, just 18 thought it would stay at 2C or under.
Some of those surveyed who said the 2C target would be met confessed they did so more out of hope rather than belief. “As a mother of young children I choose to believe this, and work hard toward it,” one said.
“This optimism is not primarily due to scientific facts, but to hope,” said another. Some said they thought geoengineering measures, such as seeding the ocean with iron to encourage plankton growth, would help meet the target.
Many of the experts stressed that an inability to hit the 2C target did not mean that efforts to tackle global warming should be abandoned, but that the emphasis is now on damage limitation.
If you believe, as I do, that the so called global warming is a natural phenomenon which occurs every 1,500 years, then, of course, the Gorista hysteria is misplaced.
As Bjorn Lomborg has written, we should use scarce resources to combat a problem that is truly a problem and which we know we can solve.
For a sliver of the cost of dismantling the US economy unnecessarily and increasing the Unemployment Rate, the US along with other countries can work to defeat Malaria in Africa which kills MILLIONS every year.
This can be done and it would be a far better expenditure of money on a problem we can solve.
@genoves,
genoves wrote:You are joking, aren't you? Surely, you know that the Kyoto Protocol was a massive failure with regards to lowering co2 output. Use Europe as an inspiration?
No, I'm not joking. Yes, I agree that the Kyoto was a failure, and would have been more trouble than it was worth even if it had been implement. Even so, it is a fact that European countries use about half as much CO2 per capita as the US does, with little impact on economic productivity.
@Foxfyre,
More, from that article -
Quote:Overall, the report contains much that's likely to hearten energized Democrats looking to build upon Obama's popularity for lasting success and much that could further discourage Republicans seeking rebirth after back-to-back losses in national elections.
"There's certainly a lot of bad news for Republicans and better news, if not good news, for Democrats," said Andrew Kohut, director of the nonpartisan center that conducted the survey. He said both sides should take particular note of this finding: "Independents are very much the trump card these days and their views are not all one way."
Indeed, the survey found that 36 percent of people call themselves independent, an uptick from two years ago, while 35 percent claim the Democratic label and only 23 percent say they are Republicans. Among independents, 17 percent lean toward Democrats while 12 percent lean toward the GOP.
Not looking too bad for the boys in blue...
Cycloptichorn
@Foxfyre,
From that Pew poll:
And the link:
http://people-press.org/report/517/political-values-and-core-attitudes
Both parties continue to lose favor with the general public, but the Democrats more so at a faster rate since President Obama took office. It would appear that a lot of folks are not all that pleased with the way that things are going.
@Cycloptichorn,
Interesting.
The sea change in 08 may have been larger than I thought.
K
O
@Diest TKO,
Diest TKO wrote:
Interesting.
The sea change in 08 may have been larger than I thought.
K
O
Don't be mistaken - the best we can hope for is to drag the center to the left somewhat over the next 4-8 years. Americans have not lost their ability to be stupid, scared sheep, and I'm sure they will begin to reassert this soon enough.
However, the entire playing field can be changed between now and then if we put in enough work.
Cycloptichorn
@Foxfyre,
Republican Party identification at the lowest point in 30 years ..
(Source: above mentioned website.)
