Cap and Trade

[Rezwan]

I’ve been told that there are lots of sites hashing over the issue of Cap and Trade, that it is a VERY incendiary issue that will cause many violent arguments and members becoming extremely upset.

I am curious to see if that happens here.

I have also been told that when FF gets to working, there will be no need for this silly Cap and Trade nonsense because it eliminates the Anthropogenic Global Warming spectre.

I’m not interested in AGW here. Just the utility of Cap and Trade. Don’t let AGW distract you. I guess for some people cap and trade is gospel with AGW and for others, a complete economy crippler. But that may be more of an AGW matter, and the mis-application of capntrade.

My interest in this is for its use in water rights. I’d like to explore the issue, with a simple (and hopefully no-shrills) listing of pros and cons. There’s plenty of cheating and stealing and sabotaging of economies that goes on with water rights systems currently, so a shift to a different set of scams doesn’t make much difference to me. I just wonder how it works (or doesn’t).

I was under the impression that Cap and trade was an emerging economic/externalities regulation tool that is still finding its sea legs. So, despite the previous warnings and dismissal, I’m going to start a thread on it. Wonder if it has any role whatsoever in an FF world, for other resources.

Here’s some handy Cap and Trade info to get you started: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emissions_trading

And here’s some critical info from a source who shall remain anonymous because he’s trying to avoid the tempation of incendiarizing:

Cap-and-Trade had the very worst consequences, except for Gore’s recommendations.
Here’s a review by Freeman Dyson:
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

Note that the only option that comes out really well is a hypothetical clean cheap alternate energy source he calls a “low-cost fallback”. Sound familiar? FF is the major shining possibility for that.

[Aeronaut]

Incendiary is a major understatement, imo. As long as we focus on cheap energy that just happens to be clean, all sides will link to FF as the only published testing schedule, heh, heh, heh.

[Rezwan]

OK, I read the Freeman Dyson article. http://www.nybooks.com/articles/21494

I was told, above, “Cap-and-Trade had the very worst consequences, except for Gore’s recommendations.” But Kyoto, which uses cap and trade, is actually neutral or beneficial, according to Dyson. It’s close to their optimal – global carbon tax. A plus one, vs. plus 3 for their optimal.

Perhaps Stern (which is terrible, but better than Gore) uses cap and trade with a vengeance and that’s why the above quote about “cap and trade” being the worst? But there must be other factors involved, however that make a difference in the -15 vs. +1 scores for two systems which incorporate cap and trade.

Here’s the quote from Dyson article:

Here are the net values of the various policies as calculated by the DICE model. The values are calculated as differences from the business-as-usual model, without any emission controls. A plus value means that the policy is better than business-as-usual, with the reduction of damage due to climate change exceeding the cost of controls. A minus value means that the policy is worse than business-as-usual, with costs exceeding the reduction of damage. The unit of value is $1 trillion, and the values are specified to the nearest trillion.

The net value of the optimal program, a global carbon tax increasing gradually with time, is plus three—that is, a benefit of some $3 trillion.

The Kyoto Protocol has a value of plus one with US participation, zero without US participation.

The “Stern” policy has a value of minus fifteen,

the “Gore” policy minus twenty-one, and

“low-cost backstop” plus seventeen.

Which brings me back to not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Cap and trade – I need more info. It’s theoretically a market based solution to environmental problems, which seems worth looking into. Although “religiosity” seems to be clouding an investigation into it, both pro and con.

[Aeronaut]

Rezwan wrote:

Which brings me back to not throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Cap and trade – I need more info. It’s theoretically a market based solution to environmental problems, which seems worth looking into. Although “religiosity” seems to be clouding an investigation into it, both pro and con.

Rez, the most important thing to remember is that the rest of the world is doing the best they can with what they have. Two factors that will likely change that in the next 12 months are that the treaty will be fleshed out in more detail, probably not yet ratified, and Baby will have produced enough neutrons and X-rays per shot to show that profitable (predictable and easily repeatable in Baby’s case) fusion has arrived. If you think the holy war rhetoric is something now, 16 months from now are going to be the home stretch in a LOT of US elections. Think you know what a spitting contest looks like? You’ll need waders to get in the same room with the carbon and business camps.

I believe that we’ll get the best mileage by quietly approaching these combatants off-camera, so to speak, presenting FF as THE solution to their problem. No need to mention that it’s also their enemy’s ideal solution. ;-).

Even if this is preaching to the choir, every FF installed eliminates the burning of hundreds of thousands of tons of coal or its fossil equivalent over its 50 year(?) lifetime. Since energy demand will rise anyway, meeting that demand (and retrofitting with FF) will be the most cost-effective way to reduce future pollutants spewed. What is that, 5,000 to 15,000 FF’s for only 3 trillion dollars at low-production pricing?

This means that we can pitch with variations of “What IF FF delivers, according to the schedule published over two years ago?” to change the tool set in the carbon debate, since all it comes down to scientifically is how we as a planet make energy. The Repowering the Electric Utility Industry thread has some interesting projections about how fast just one utility could implement FF. If we can tap even a small amount of the pent up emotion of the carbon wars, Brian’s analysis that all forms of political resistance to FF would quickly vanish could come to pass before the first FF comes off the first assembly line.

So I see the carbon wars as a scam as well as an incredible time and emotional energy sink.

[Torulf]

From watt I know have emission trading been a good ting in US. But if so it is trade inside one country. A global trade involving several counties with different type of industry and economy may give a different result. The economical science has not convinced they can make proper predictions of the consequences from economical/political actions.
Cap and trade may be a good idea but it can have severe unwanted consequences, special for the poor people in the world. It’s important to be observant for these negative effects.
At the moment I think its political impossible with a global carbon tax

[Phil’s Dad]

Aeronaut; I agree with your basic premise but I think you underestimate what could be done for $3trillion. 5,000 to 15,000 FF installations? Rematog says “At the most optimistic, (20MW power blocks with installed cost of $500k ea), repowering America’s electrical generating capacity will cost about 30 BILLION dollars”. On that basis $3trillion gives you 6 million units or 1,000 times the total US requirement. How would that rate on the score card that started this thread.

[Phil’s Dad]

Sorry – 100 times :red:

[Torulf]

Carbon Trading Scheme Pushing Indigenous People off Their Land In Uganda.
http://www.zimbio.com/Global+Warming/articles/2NdGRgjYxYL/Carbon+Trading+Scheme+Pushing+Indigenous+People

[Aeronaut]

Phil’s Dad wrote: Aeronaut; I agree with your basic premise but I think you underestimate what could be done for $3trillion. 5,000 to 15,000 FF installations? Rematog says “At the most optimistic, (20MW power blocks with installed cost of $500k ea), repowering America’s electrical generating capacity will cost about 30 BILLION dollars”. On that basis $3trillion gives you 6 million units or 1,000 times the total US requirement. How would that rate on the score card that started this thread.

100 times the US needs just might be enough to repower most of the world’s population. Now all we have to do is sell the various special interest groups the idea of spending an hour or two in a garage with a running car or charcoal fire. (Dramatization, not smart-aleck ;-P ). Wouldn’t hurt to show them how they can actually make more by promoting FF. This would hopefully show up in favorable political/regulatory environment…

Remember, it’s possible to show laboratory breakeven in 2010 and a crude engineering prototype above Q in 2011.

[dash]

I can’t read “Cap and Trade” without thinking “Cap and Gown”. The name seems cute and ridiculous.

[Brian H]

Remember also, that the Nordhaus study reviewed by Dyson takes AGW as a given, and attributes positive $$ results to “saving” us from its ravages.
What changes the calculations is that AGW is a total hoax, and that there are no “savings” from avoiding the non-existent negative consequences of it. Cap-and-Trade is almost a pure cost with no payback, therefor. A carbon tax is then less bad, but still a simple transfer of wealth to governments, which have demonstrated a severe lack of competence through the ages in using it productively.

Kyoto’s only saving grace is that it’s trivial.

FF has a good chance of “cutting the Gordian Knot” by making energy production carbon-neutral and thus immune from the ravages of green legislation like cap-and-trade. And by generating so much wealth directly and indirectly that all manner of other issues (pollution remediation, drought-fighting, etc.) can be handled fairly easily.

The numbers: CO2 is 3.5% of GH gasses. Human production accounts for 3.5% of that amount, or 0.12% of all GH gas variation. You could double or eliminate it, and it would make NO detectable difference to the operations of the atmosphere (which is only 2% GH gasses in TOTAL, meaning human CO2 output variation is 0.0024% of the atmosphere). AGW is a venal HOAX.

[Breakable]

In my opinion it is a very good idea to create a carbon pollution tax – the oil and coal wont look such an attractive energy source.
The implementation is not so easy though, but something (imperfect) is better than nothing.

[Brian H]

Breakable wrote: In my opinion it is a very good idea to create a carbon pollution tax – the oil and coal wont look such an attractive energy source.
The implementation is not so easy though, but something (imperfect) is better than nothing.

No tax is a good idea. Remember who gets the money, and what they’re likely to do with it.

Anyhow, if a 10-20X cost disadvantage doesn’t make oil and coal power plants look like a bad idea, an extra tax won’t make much difference.

And there are things you need oil for, still. Some forms of transportation (aircraft, until Elon Musk realizes his next dream (after stabilizing SpaceX and TeslaMotors), the electric VTOL passenger jet) require oil, and it is still a crucial feedstock (until/if tobacco hybrids with plastic bubbles inside their leaf cells are perfected). But it will be cheap, once demand declines for automobile use. There’s no reason to make oil more expensive and thereby reduce living standards.

BTW, Rezwan, water rights trading is not a good analogy. Water is an actual good, with economic benefits and value. Carbon reduction is the opposite.

Lots of other issues are related to this. Deforestation is one. It now turns out that outside of the tropics, trees and forests actually increase CO2 loading. We’re headed in the right direction, as N.A. actually now has more forest cover than when the Pilgrims landed. 😆
And illegal tropical hardwood harvesting may have met its match. It has been discovered that mild heat-treating of northern softwoods and hardwoods with furfuryl alcohol, a waste byproduct of sugar cane processing, results in a harder and more durable product than even teak, etc. http://www.economist.com/search/displaystory.cfm?story_id=14299540

[Aeronaut]

Breakable wrote: In my opinion it is a very good idea to create a carbon pollution tax – the oil and coal wont look such an attractive energy source.
The implementation is not so easy though, but something (imperfect) is better than nothing.

President Obama’s recent UN speech was right on the mark. It remains to be seen if his reasons align with ours, though, since his immediate concerns seem to be financially and politically motivated.

Once we do publicly show an alternative, people and corporations will effectively be taxed to burn fossil fuels. And it could happen in a New York minute. 😉

[Brian H]

Aeronaut wrote:

In my opinion it is a very good idea to create a carbon pollution tax – the oil and coal wont look such an attractive energy source.
The implementation is not so easy though, but something (imperfect) is better than nothing.

President Obama’s recent UN speech was right on the mark. It remains to be seen if his reasons align with ours, though, since his immediate concerns seem to be financially and politically motivated.

Once we do publicly show an alternative, people and corporations will effectively be taxed to burn fossil fuels. And it could happen in a New York minute. 😉
Obama’s speech was a travesty, as usual. Remember that suppressing carbon output pauperizes the already pauperized even more, and hugely distorts capital and other economic decisions. E.g.: Spain’s recent highly touted “Green Jobs” national initiative turns out to have cost 2.2 jobs elsewhere in the country for every Green Job ‘created’, according to its govenment’s own figures. You can’t drain capital out of the economy without encountering ‘the unseen’, to cite the classic economist Bastiat.

India and China have used diplomatic language to give him (and the IPCC, etc.) the right message: “Fuggedaboudit!”

[Author]

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