Climate Climate & Energy

WSJ on the carbon tax vs. cap-and-trade debate

People keep emailing me this Wall Street Journal piece on the debate between carbon tax and cap-and-trade, but as far as I can tell there’s nothing new in it. This is well-trod ground on sites like Grist. The one interesting thing about it is this graphic: For reasons Sean has well–described, I don’t believe these […]

Demand for oil remains strong despite price increases

I was wrong.

Back in the summer of '05, when oil prices were flirting with $60 per barrel, I predicted that oil would surpass $70 before it fell below $50. That is, I thought that oil prices would continue to rise in the short term.

I got that part right. Oil prices on the futures market briefly touched the $70-mark that fall, and reached the mid-$70s by the following spring.

But I also predicted that oil would fall to $40 per barrel before it reached $80 -- on the theory that, over the course of several years, rising oil prices would put a crimp in demand, while goosing production a bit.

That part I got dead wrong.

Desertification amplifies climate change, and vice versa

Here is yet another carbon-cycle amplifying feedback not in most climate models.

On the one hand, the United Nations' top climate official, Yvo de Boer, announced that:

Climate change has become the prime cause of an accelerating spread of deserts which threatens the world's drylands.

On the other hand, he pointed out that desertification would, in turn, accelerate climate change:

You'll see a sort of feedback mechanism ... quite a lot of carbon is captured in soil, so with more desertification (exposing the soil), you also get more CO2 emissions. They are two halves of the same coin.

Well, two sides of the same coin, anyway. But we get his point. He was interviewed at a U.N. desertification conference in Madrid. What's coming?

Debating Bjorn Lomborg on global warming

I taped a debate with Lomborg today on a Denver radio station. I'll post a link when it will be broadcast on the Internet. I'll be interested to hear your reactions.

I have long thought it is pretty much impossible to win a one-on-one debate on climate change with anybody who knows what they're doing -- who knows the literature and is willing to make statements that are not really true but can't be quickly disproved. After all, the audience is not in a position to adjudicate scientific and technological issues, so it just comes down to who sounds more persuasive. And Lomborg is quite good at sounding reasonable -- he doesn't deny the reality of climate change, only its seriousness.

Lomborg is more of what I term a delayer -- the clever person's denier. Lomborg is especially persuasive because he is so clearly concerned about reducing suffering and death in the Third World.

Religious leaders convene for a floating climate-change symposium

Religious leaders from Buddhist, Christian, Hindu, Jewish, Shiite, Shinto, and Sunni traditions are in the midst of a six-day climate-change symposium coordinated by Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew I. Traveling on a ship down the coast of rapidly melting Greenland, the leaders are floating ideas on cooperating to close the perceived gap between religious and environmental interests. […]

BusinessWeek allows Whitman to lobby for nukes under the guise of an op-ed

Here’s yet another op-ed from Christie Whitman cheerleading for nuclear power. To get a sense of the bad faith that infuses the whole thing, check out this paragraph: Of course, we could buy energy-saving appliances or drive fuel-efficient cars. We can recycle cans, bottles, and newspapers. We can even plant carbon-absorbing trees. But, no matter […]

Warming globe will have major security issues, says think tank

The security implications of climate change resemble those of nuclear war, a security think tank said today. “Fundamental environmental issues of food, water, and energy security ultimately lie behind many present security concerns, and climate change will magnify all three,” wrote the International Institute for Strategic Studies, which foresees collapsed governments, heightened racial and ethnic […]

Harvard economist disses most climate cost-benefit analyses

Harvard economist Martin Weitzman has a new paper in which he points out that the vast majority of conventional economic analyses of climate change should carry the following label:

WARNING: to be used ONLY for cost-benefit analysis of non-extreme climate change possibilities. NOT INTENDED to cover welfare evaluation of extreme tail possibilities, for which a complete accounting might produce ARBITRARILY DIFFERENT welfare outcomes.

In short, if you don't factor in plausible worst-case scenarios -- and the vast majority of economic analyses don't (this means you, William Nordhaus, and you, too, Bjørn Lomborg) -- your analysis is useless. Pretty strong stuff for a Harvard economist!

Oil company Conoco agrees to offset carbon emissions from refinery project

California has reached a settlement with oil giant ConocoPhillips that requires the company to spend $10 million to offset greenhouse-gas emissions from a proposed refinery expansion in the state’s East Bay area. As part of the deal, the company will spend $7 million on as-yet-unspecified environmental projects in the San Francisco Bay Area as well […]

American Electric Power to install large battery banks to store wind energy

Sweet. A utility called American Electric Power is going to set up a huge bank of batteries to store wind power. The short write-up in the NYT is both exciting, in that it’s good to see storage moving to the deployment phase, and sobering, in that it highlights the limitations of current battery technology. Here’s […]