My opinion on Cap and Trade systems.

I started summer school last week. No, I don't ride the short bus. I am taking Social Responsibility and Business Ethics. So of course we are going to be talking a lot about people being unethical. I'm really going to enjoy this class because it will require us to share our opinions on a lot of things.

And if there is one thing I am not short on its opinions.

Then, my position as an environmental compliance specialist at a copper mine also lends me a very unique perspective.

One question that came up in class the other day that I didn't comment on because the conversation turned too rapidly away from it was the proposed CO2 cap and trade system. The question was asked: Is it ethical to trade pollution credits?

The simple answer is that it is unethical not to. If a production facility is told to simply cap their emissions they will do so precisely at the legal limit because there is no economic incentive to do otherwise. Where, if the same facility is rewarded for reducing their emissions below the required limit by being allowed to sale the excess pollution to less clean facilities, they will do so.

The great part is that the "dirty" facility that is purchasing the excess credit will still be limited by pollutant limits because there is a financial disincentive to purchase credits.How cap and trade really excels is in the second round of emission reductions.

Then, say five years into the program, the government reduces emission limits even further than the initial round and the most innovative polluters have prepared by installing even better control technologies.

Also, if an environmental NGO wants to be forward thinking, they can purchase the excess credits thereby directly reducing pollution. It would be unethical to use any other system because no other system works as smoothly or efficiently to reduce pollution

Solving more world problems

I already suspect that my twin is going to nay-say this post. I think this solution is more realistic than my Saharan Jungle solution. What are the two most politically sensitive topics right now? Iraq and global warming. (Never mind that number two after Iraq on the public conscience is health care, because the media hasn't really caught onto that idea yet.)

Here's how you solve both: The United States initiates a true self sufficiency program with regards to energy. Something on the scale of the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act of 1956. They ended up spending $116 Billion dollars laying out the highways which in todays dollars is equal to about $833 Billion dollars. Not chump change.

The good news is my proposed solution already has the infrastructure almost started.

What we do:

The government MASSIVELY starts subsidizing any alternative energy source that gets us off of foreign oil. Bio-diesel, solar, wind, ethanol, you get the point. The emphasis should be on upgrading existing systems, not putting new systems in place, like a hydrogen economy would need.

How would they subsidize it? The subsidies would pay for solar and wind installations costs over and above what it would cost for them to install petroleum consuming resourses. Including, half of the cost of solar panels that the typical homeowner could install on his home to power up. Make it a no brainer to take your house off of the electrical grid. More specifically, a no painer.

The political results would be interesting and rapid:

First, we would lose almost all interest in what happens in the Middle East. The only thing we would have left to defend there is our interest in Israel. (Which I'm afraid would also deminish in proportion to our dependancy on the oil reserves of their neighbors.)

Second, oil countries would have to change their welfare state structure because they wouldn't be getting so much of their funding directly from the gas pumps of America.

Third, America would once again be creating resourses rather than consuming them. No one ever built strength by only consuming. You must CREATE resourses. Mine them, grow them, generate them, whatever. Wealth does not ever flow away from resources. It flows to them.

Yes, this is a kind of econmic warfare, but if we don't do it now, we aren't going to be left with the choice. Eventually the warfare will be even more real than Iraq. It will involve the entire region and could spread to other oil producing states.

The lines are now open for your critisisms.

And now for something totally different:
I don't know if I can keep watching American Idol now that Lakisha is gone.

I'm NOT obsessed with Global Warming I Swear

Okay, I realize that this is my third post about global warming, but I just can't help it. The supreme court has rendered an opionion about global warming that goes one step further to legitimitize the weak science behind the concept.

Today, the court ruled that the EPA cannot ignore car and truck emissions in the Clean Air Act. Specifically, Justice Stephens said in the majority opinion, "A well-documented rise in global temperatures has coincided with a significant increase in the concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere."

So, I guess the next logical step is what? We can't stop the vehicles on today's roads stop spitting out carbon dioxide. In fact the only fuel that doesn't produce CO2 is Hydrogen. (Which is not particularly easy to use as fuels go.)

More significantly, the supreme court has just made global warming official in the United States.

I guess my cap and trade idea really could make me rich if every schlub had to pay a CO2 tax at the pump to be used in carbon offsets.

I better get busy.

I'm a Genius

So, on NPR last Friday they talked about Carbon Dioxide cap and trade schemes. It got me thinking about an idea that I have had for a long time and I've decided to fling it to the blogging world for the voluminous feedback that I always recieve.

You see, we are releasing so much carbon dioxide into the world by burning everything we can lay our hands on that of course global warming is all our fault. The earth has a fever and is going to die.

So here is my solution. You set up a huge pipe line running straight out of the ocean, through a desalinization plant, and into the Sahara. You begin growing trees on the most remote part of the desert so that you can purchase millions of acres on the cheap. Then you start selling "carbon credits" to the industrial countries for all of your new grown jungle. Heck to get the project running you could presale the credits to beat future carbon emission limitations. They get to keep burning their fossil fuels. You get to terraform a useless chunk of the world into a huge carbon sink that undoubtedly would generate piles of tourist cash. The Al Gore's of the world name you the hero of the planet. They'll probably name the new river that forms in the desert after you.

In theory once the terraformed area is large enough and wet enough, it would become a self sustaining habitat.

Genius.

Please send your save the planet checks to:

Running the numbers and the experiment

Because some people don't understand how an earth warming cycle looks I have included a highly technical schematic as part of my blog today.

On the top line of the drawing we are looking at a warming and cooling trend on the earth that has a period of around 20,000 years. While my drawing isn't based on specific data this is pretty much what it looks like. You can find the real 12,000 year span on Wikipedia.

The second line is a magnification of one 10,000 year section through which time we cycle down to a cool era and are heading up. This is what we call an ice age. Not a "little ice age." A full blown ice age.

The third line represents a 2,500 year time span and when you get this close to the data it gets much harder to figure out what is going on.

I then drew a one hundred year stretch with a very steep upward trend. The real data shows a very steep upward trend, changing higher upwards than anyone has ever seen since the last ice age. The problem is we can't reconstruct the data going any further back. So it leaves people guessing what is going to happen. People who are convinced that humans are the cause for this trend jump up and down swearing that the curve will go up forever, swamping all of the the world's low lands in the process.

My undergraduate is in Geology and a student once asked the professor if he believed that there was global warming and if we were causing it. He pointed to the same data I layed out and then sidestepped the issue by pointing out that whether or not you agree on the cause, man is running a global science experiment. We are converting all of our fossil fuels into Carbon dioxide, heat, water, and a few other nasties. So, whether or not you agree that man is the cause, the data shows a phenominal uptick in the OVERALL global temperature.

Being a geologist and used to thinking in terms of Millions...and Billions of years, I personally think that even if we humans are supplying our inputs, our impact or even a major change in our behavior will not change what the earth has done forever. And that is be a huge chemistry lab where oxygen, carbon dioxide, and water are the main chemical reactants.

Anyone that claims catagorically that man is the main cause for global warming has left the realm of science and entered the realm of politics. A realm that in order to look like a hero, you've got to create the problem you are going to solve first.