The Quest by Daniel Yergin devotes a fair number of pages to explaining how Carbon dioxide (CO2) was proven to be a critical component of the atmosphere allowing the earth’s climate to be maintained. This blog will summarize how we know that CO2 traps heat and the issues that prevent curbing U.S. CO2 emissions in the near term.
CO2, as well as methane and nitrous oxide, are part of the atmosphere. 98% of the 62 mile thick atmosphere is oxygen and nitrogen. The other 2% prevent the sun’s infrared rays from rebounding into outer space by trapping the heat in the rebounding infrared rays and redistributing them throughout the atmosphere. This balance of incoming heat during the day and the portion trapped for use during the night keep the earth temperature in balance and hospitable for life.
John Tyndall in 1859 placed coal gas into a spectrophotometer and proved that it was opaque and darkened. This was proof that it was trapping infrared light. He repeated the experiment with water and CO2. They were opaque and trapped heat. Thus for over 150 years science has had the opportunity to test and retest this theory and no knowledgeable scientist challenges it. As a non-scientist I don’t understand how this is proved, but I trust Mr. Yergin and other scientists to have disputed this conclusion if it were not true, and no one does.
In the 1890’s, a Swedish chemist named Svante Arrhenius set out to determine what effects a change in CO2 content would make in the atmosphere. His calculations showed that cutting CO2 in half would reduce the global temperature by 4 to 5 degrees centigrade and doubling CO2 would increase the global temperature by 5 to 6 degrees. Since this was a mathematic calculation, supercomputers have since confirmed these sorts of values.
There are many natural sources of CO2 and methane, and the earth has had many periods of rising and declining temperatures. But none of these periods had the vastness of the current global population of homo sapiens. So how to prove that human activity was increasing CO2 and having an effect on climate.
At first, in the time before and after WWII, it was thought that the oceans absorbed CO2. However, scientific research finally suggested that the oceans both absorbed and released CO2.
The ability to measure CO2 was developed and the air above Hawaii, which eliminated many of the sources that cause CO2 content to vary closer to ground, was tested. Through the years, it showed that the CO2 in the atmosphere increased from 316 ppm in 1959 to 325 ppm in 1970 to 354 ppm in 1990. Studies of Antarctic ice allow for measurements of CO2 going back 400,000 years. They show a natural range of between 200 ppm and 270 ppm, likely coinciding with the ebb & flow of the ice ages. It is now 387ppm.
Since man discovered and started to burn hydrocarbons, the atmospheric CO2 has steadily increased. The coincidence of timing and lack of variation in this increase is proof to me that mankind is responsible for increasing CO2.
While much of the world accepts this conclusion, it must be noted that the Republican Party and much of its voter backing doubts the science or the value of the predicted outcomes. They have questions: Some models predict 450 ppm will be where CO2 levels off, but how warm will that be? Will it change existing weather patterns? Can the U.S. afford to move too quickly away from its established hydrocarbon use? Why should the U.S. do it and not the Developing Economies as it will affect employment levels?
So where is the world going?
The U.S. is about the only developed country that does not have some policies in place to motivate movement toward limiting carbon usage. China has woken up and decided that being green is an essential policy. Chinese citizens are demanding cleaner air. Their economic planners woke up at some point and realized that by 2030, their demand for oil would be greater than the world’s daily production if something didn’t change. Economic planners realized that jobs would be created producing green technology. Now China has a committed effort to become green. India is also committed to being part of the solution to global warming. But it is all haphazard at this point and there is little actual progress at cutting global CO2 emissions.
It seems to me that the U.S. should want to be part of the solution in that it will create new employment and prevent unforeseen expenditures from things we cannot predict about climate change. I know my home is only 40’ above sea level and New York City, which drives my property value, is less. Do we really want to see how high the oceans rise if all the ice melts? Do we really want to see how rainfall varies if the atmosphere is warmer? The CIA and the Department of Defense consider Global Warming a National Security Issue.
Yergin explains why Cap & Trade is the best way to manage the cost of controlling CO2 emissions. Cap & Trade is controversial because some environmentalists don’t like the polluters being given “permission” to pollute and some conservatives don’t like the concept of there being an incremental tax that will be passed on to consumers.
Cap & Trade is a proven market based concept. In the early 1980’s, lead in gasoline was a pollution problem. Instead of simply issuing a regulation, the Reagan administration issued “lead permits” that the users of lead could buy and sell so they had the right level of permit for the lead that they were going to use. Within 5 years, there was no more lead in gasoline. The cost of buying more permits or the ability to monetize the permits held provided the economic incentive to develop alternatives to lead.
Acid rain was a problem through out the 1970’s & 1980’s. Acid rain was caused by electricity plants in the Midwest burning coal and emitting sulfur dioxide (SO2). In 1990, President George H.W. Bush signed a bill that established an emission trading system for SO2. The permits would decline over time making the permits more expensive. Emissions trading of SO2 delivered larger reductions in SO2 emissions than the permits scheduled, at a lower cost then anticipated at the beginning and faster than a regulatory system would have. By 2008, SO2 emissions were 60% less than those in 1980.
The U.S. has proposed Cap & Trade internationally but the Europeans prefer a regulatory approach. Meanwhile, getting Cap & Trade passed has proven impossible for the Obama Administration owing to the aforementioned Republican intransigence, despite George W. Bush proposing that this be a priority in 2007.
Nothing is going to happen in 2012 in the U.S., but I expect China and Europe to continue to lead the way on trying to come up with solutions to CO2. So expect to see the economic benefits of this technology development to be centered in China, Japan and Germany. Without Cap and Trade, there is no incentive in the U.S. to spend the money on Research and Development. Embracing this even 10 years ago could have provided the U.S. with a significant lead on green job creation, not to mention placing the U.S. in the lead politically with the world.
The key Republican objection to Cap & Trade is it would have the effect of a tax and thus harm employment. This is not valid. We don’t know what effect global warming has on climate, but there is a scientific basis to believe that the atmosphere’s CO2 concentration is increasing, that it does cause global warming and different temperatures will drive the weather patterns in new directions and raise the ocean’s sea level by some amount. All that has to have some effect on disaster spending at a minimum, and the potential for massive costs in relocation of ocean side urban centers. While there would be a near term cost increase, over time there could well be job creation and economic growth resulting from a conversion to new technologies that emit less CO2.
Alas, this is a political issue and nothing will change in the near term. However, after reading Yergin's The Quest, I can now explain why Cap and Trade of CO2 should be enacted.
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