More on Carbon Tax and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change
My colleague Glenn Doty (pictured–sorry about the resolution–maybe Glenn can send me a better one) writes about my earlier post on international emissions reductions agreements that would mitigate climate disruption:
I hope you’re right on the international community coming together on this… but I fear China, SE Asia, and India will not play ball. It’s just in their greater interest to continue to modernize as quickly as possible and accept the damage from global warming, and they know it…
Consider if someone came to you and said “we want you to make a choice, you can have air conditioning, heat, and a refrigerator… or you can give those up for years to come for the sake of an international treaty on climate change…” You wouldn’t give up your climate control and your refrigerator. It’s just asking too much. But by asking them to reduce their emissions profile without offering them something, we’re asking them to make those sacrifices that we would not make…. I don’t see a viable path to get this done… I hope Dr. Raj Pachauri is a whole lot smarter than I am.
I understand your point. Fortunately, I think we’re very close to a tipping point at which pure market economics relegate fossil fuel generation to history. This, as you know, is the concept of my current book project: “Bullish on Renewable Energy – Eleven Reasons Why Clean Energy Investors Can’t Lose.”
As you can see from the chapter titles, I see a great number of factors coming together very rapidly. (I know you’re not as optimistic as I am on all this, btw.)
• Energy Efficiency — The Much Ballyhooed “Low-Hanging Fruit” (Includes a discussion of Combined Heat & Power and Tri-generation, Power Generation from Industrial Waste Heat)
• The Development of Advanced Nuclear Reactors Could Be a Big Help (molten salt thorium reactors)
• Cheap Wind
• Cheap Solar
• Energy Storage in Dozens of Different Forms (Includes a discussion of Ancillary Services and Demand Response)
• Storage Is Only One of Several Good Solutions to the Variability of Solar and Wind
• Costs Are Becoming Predictable
• Other “Flavors” of Renewable Energy Are Making Progress Too
• The Upheaval of the Power Utilities
• Google, Tesla, Apple, and the Other Forces of Super-Innovation Will Not Sit Around While the World of 20th Century Energy Destroys the Planet
• Electric Transportation Will Become Ubiquitous
• Certain Concepts Are Clear Losers, Thus Making the Investment Decision-Making Process Even Easier
• Waning Support for Ultra-Right-Wing Causes and Heightened Consumer Sensibilities Will Extend Incentives, Accelerating All This Even Faster
The confluence of all these factors serves to make IPCC chairperson Dr. Raj Pachauri’s job far easier with each passing month. Again, my interview with him can be found in “Renewable Energy – Following the Money.”
We can’t keep pumping all that carbon into the atmosphere without something eventually happening.
We may disagree about exactly what will happen (heating Vs cooling), but for sure, something is going to happen.
And if we don’t know exactly how bad this “something” is going to be, doesn’t it make sense to stop pumping all that carbon into our air?
It’s a bit like kicking a dog. You know it’s going to do something in response to your unwelcome kicking, but you have absolutely no idea what it will be. So why do it.
Politicians and those controlling the mega wealth are the only ones who can implement appropriate action, but they won’t. Their agendas and other interests lure them away from listening to advice from the experts.
This cartoon looks at that aspect . . . .
http://cartoonmick.wordpress.com/editorial-political/#jp-carousel-775
Cheers
Mick
cartoonmick,
I can only assume you’re trolling here. There is some uncertainty as to the rate of warming and the nature of how that warming will manifest in the climate… but the uncertainties are of a variety of things like: the Earth’s temperature will warm between 2 and 4 degrees C, with some very far outliers that are projecting as high as 6 degrees C (highly unlikely). Another uncertainty shows sea levels rising between 1 and 2 meters in the next century – again with some extreme outliers showing greater rise, but these are unlikely..
THESE are the uncertainties. There is no uncertainty as to whether the Earth will warm due to CO2 emissions. That’s not in question.