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Posted on 12/08/2008 8:18:45 AM PST by NormsRevenge
On Friday, the California Air Resources Board will decide whether to adopt its “scoping plan” for the implementation of AB 32, the 2006 anti-global warming law. It requires state energy suppliers to use far more power from cleaner but more costly sources.
Given that this would impose unique burdens on California businesses, many observers (including this editorial page) have been skeptical and said a national or international approach to global warming makes more sense.
The response from Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has been that the opposite is true: Far from burdening the economy, the forced transition to new sources of power would touch off a statewide boom as California companies become world leaders in alternate energy and as businesses benefit from efficient new technologies.
The ARB's scoping plan confirms this rosy view. Now, however, several highly credible authorities have emerged to shred these claims.
First, the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst's Office – the most respected voice in Sacramento – issued a Nov. 17 analysis that said the ARB's methodology was deeply flawed and often ignored evidence that would counter the economic-boom thesis.
Its most startling finding was that the ARB arbitrarily defined any reduction in greenhouse gas emission as being cost-effective.
If, say, energy costs double for a small business because of AB 32, how is that possibly cost-effective?
Then came the release of a scathing “peer review” of the scoping plan.
Harvard's Robert Stavins wrote that the ARB's “economic analysis is terribly deficient in critical ways” and could not be relied on.
Janet Peace and Liwayway Adkins of the Pew Center for Global Climate Change wrote that the analysis “gives the appearance of justifying the chosen package of regulatory measures rather than evaluating it.”
Wesleyan University's Gary Yohe wrote it was “almost beyond belief” that the agency could claim vast economic gains and decried the “spurious precision” of its forecasts.
UCLA's Matthew Kahn noted the considerable evidence contradicting the ARB's claims that manufacturers, who employ 1.5 million Californians, would not be hurt by higher energy costs.
Dallas Burtraw of the Resources for the Future group said the models used by the ARB underestimate costs, wrongly anticipate a “frictionless,” easy transition to new energy sources and are in troubling “harmony” about the economic upside of the scoping plan.
These analyses make it obvious that there must be a do-over on the ARB plan – one that takes an honest look at the effects of AB 32. Instead, both the governor and the ARB are essentially dismissing the LAO and peer-review reports – and as of Friday, the Union-Tribune was the only newspaper in the state to have even mentioned either.
How is this possible? How does this make any sense? How can all the elephants in the room be ignored?
Californians deserve infinitely better from Arnold Schwarzenegger – and from the media.
The Captain of the SS California says
Full Speed Ahead, Damn the Icebergs!
and his lackies and the media cheer him on.
Attention all Collifornia businesses. Abandon ship before it is too late. And bring the flag.
If they keep this up, they will see more economic problems when industry and the people move out of the state.
There are a good many businesses and individuals looking to cash in on this monstrous AGW scam; else it would not exist.
One of the biggest problems we ‘deniers’ face is that few real facts are ever given by the AGW crowd. This is intentional, of course. For instance, they throw around labels like ‘green’ and ‘clean’ but never define them. It can be demonstrated that the atmosphere is ‘cleaner’ today that it has been in decades (in the U.S.), if not centuries (parts of Europe). How can something like CO2, necessary for life itself, be labeled ‘dirty’? It boggles the mind.
I’ve come up with (what I think is) a simple, understandable-by-anyone concept to explain why folks should stop being ‘afraid’ of Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.
Here’s line of thinking:
Question1:
What are the molecules that compose air? Name them in order of most-to-least abundant.
Answer:
Nitrogen, Oxygen, Water, Argon, Carbon Dioxide, and Other.
Question2:
If you take a random (or average) sampling of 10,000 molecules of air and assume that each molecule is worth a penny, how much would each of the different components of the air be worth?
(Note: 10,000 pennies is the same as $100.00. If you couch the discussion in dollars and cents rather than, say, PPM - folks will have an easier time grasping the numbers. Even a second grader understands completely the difference between a $20. bill and 4 pennies.)
Answer:
Nitrogen: $77.00
Oxygen: $20.00 (animals NEED this to live)
Water: $ 2.00 (this is the ‘real’ GHG)
Argon: $ 0.95 (that’s right, 25x the amount of CO2)
CO2: 4 cents (plants NEED this to live)
Other: 1 penny
Question3:
As you’ve heard, Humans have pumped MASSIVE amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere, yet it only makes up 4 cents of the entire $100.00 of the atmosphere. (That’s 4 CO2 molecules per 10,000 air molecules). How much of these 4 cents worth of CO2 has been added by Humans?
Answer:
1 penny. (280ppm to 380ppm)
Question4:
Let’s say that Humans had subtracted a penny’s worth of CO2 from the $100.00 worth of our entire atmosphere, instead of adding CO2. What would be the impact?
Answer:
Plants would be severly impacted and dying.
There are many more points that can be made. For instance, if we continue to pump out CO2, we can probably only push the concentration of CO2 to about 5-6 cent’s worth. Also, the threshold level of CO2 above which the MSDS suggests CO2 becomes a problem for workers is 50 cents worth (5000ppm). The amount of CO2 in our breath (using the $100.00 concept) is worth $4.5 of the $100.00 worth of air we exhale.
Anyhow, you get the idea.
Feel free to steal the concept, if you find it useful...
cheee
Alternative energy in CA is a myth. The environmentalists oppose it. They shot down development of our substantial local geothermal resources; recently fought a cogeneration plant (biomass); and are currently poised to remove 4 dams on the Klamath River, several of which provide hydropower.
Very well thought out and presented. I will, in fact be using this, with proper credit given, of course.
Yep.
Actually, they deserve far worse, and will likely get it before long.
"Green" is the new "Red".
There can be nothing sustainable in the "sustainable" wind or solar power that can't even sustain itself over 24 hours, or in batteries that are made of toxic (and sometimes rare and fully recyclable) materials that are far more dangerous than any amount of carbon dioxide which is necessary for life of flora on this planet.
sometimes rare and fully recyclable = sometimes rare and NOT fully recyclable
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Criminal conspiracy would be my guess. Now ... who will investigate and prosecute it?
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