Feinstein Takes Aim at Global Warming

Inside Bay Area.com ^ | 3/21/06 | Ian Hoffman

[Tokra]

Feinstein takes aim at global warming

Environmentalists praise proposal targeting immediate reductions in greenhouse gas emissions By Ian Hoffman, STAFF WRITER

US Senator Dianne Feinstein speaks to the media during a celebration of restoriation progess at Don Edwards San Francisco Bay National Wildlife Refuge environmental education center in Alviso Monday, March 20, 2006. (Bea Ahbeck - STAFF)

California's senior senator laid out a blueprint Monday for curbing global warming, the latest congressional proposal for turning greenhouse-gas pollution into a multibillion-dollar commodity in hope of doing away with it.

Environmentalists gave generally good marks to Sen. Dianne Feinstein's new climate bill because they say it commits to immediate reductions in greenhouse gases, with an initial target of returning to 2006 levels of emissions by 2010 and making gentle but steady cuts totaling just more than 7 percent from then until 2020.

Feinstein pointed to signs of warming through-out the world, from more severe storms to masses of ice flowing into the oceans at the poles.

"The clock is ticking on global warming," she said in a statement. "If we do not slow, stop and reverse global warming soon, we will do irreparable harm to the world around us."

Her language is familiar to theorists who have been searching for ways to cut greenhouse gas releases without hurting energy supplies and crippling the economy.

"That is actually a pretty significant reduction, because that's avoiding a fairly significant wedge of increased emissions between now and 2010," said Dallas Burtraw, an economist at the nonprofit, nonpartisan research institute Resources for the Future. "Most economists embrace the notion of slow-stop-reverse as a strategy for carbon policy that would minimize the economic costs of climate policy,"

Many industries heavily reliant on fossil fuels, especially energy, steel and concrete producers, favor a more gradualist approach, such as one proposed by Sen. Jeff Bingaman, D-N.M., which would slow the accelerating growth of emissions annually to an eventual stop and reversal, he says. Industries could move to lower-emitting technologies — say, switching from coal to natural gas or capturing carbon-dioxide for injection into underground reservoirs — as those become economical.

Feinstein's prescription for an immediate cap and then reductions, said Tom Wilson, a climate policy researcher at the Electric Power Research Institute in Palo Alto, "is much more costly according to all the economic studies than to slow emissions growth, then stop it."

"The economy is like a ship and you need to slowly turn it, then the emissions peak and then decline," he said.

Climate scientists say the global temperature is creeping up because of greenhouse gas emissions decades ago and that it already is too late to make cuts as slowly as Feinstein's bill would.

"Capping emissions at today's level is not going to make things better," said Phil Duffy, a senior atmospheric scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. "That by itself is not going to make a big dent, because the greenhouse gases do accumulate in the atmosphere. But the political significance is taking some sort of step. It would be useful to have even a small program of that sort to understand how it works."

Avoiding serious global warming impacts means cutting greenhouse gas emissions in half at least in the developed world and then in the developing world by 2050, said David Doniger, policy director for the Natural Resources Defense Council's Climate Center in Washington, D.C.

"You've got to get to it right now," he said. "A slow start means a crash finish."

Feinstein's bill, said Doniger, "has the right idea."

Environmentalists and industry representatives are debating how large the U.S. carbon market will be, what industry sectors should be included and when. Feinstein's bill would define the market as the overwhelming majority of the nation's biggest stationary contributors to greenhouse emissions, from power plants and steel factories to refineries and paper mills.

That market is huge, and exactly how the currency of the market — permits to emit greenhouse gases — is issued could bear heavily on the prices that ordinary consumers pay to power their homes and fill up their cars.

"It's sort of like the railroad land giveaway of the late 19th century that imparted value worth enormous sums of money. That's what's going on now," said Burtraw of Resources for the Future. "Sen. Feinstein's playing a lead role in something as important as social security in decades hence."

Feinstein provides for industrial emitters to buy credits from farmers and foresters growing plants that absorb carbon dioxide or other nations investing in projects to reduce greenhouse emissions worldwide. But she left open, for now, the crucial question of whether the initial greenhouse pollution permits, called allowances, will be given or auctioned to industry, or both.

"The problem with the free giveaway of emission allowances is it dramatically overcompensates the industry," said Burtaw. That's become a problem in the European Union, where a 2-year-old carbon market appears to be providing utilities with windfall profits.

Contact Ian Hoffman at ihoffman@angnewspapers.com.

[Tokra]

Ms. Feinstein might begin by shutting her piehole.

[Still Thinking]

LOL, exactly. When I saw the headline, I thought she was going to vow to stop converting oxygen into CO2, "a deadly greenhouse gas" (TM Democratic party)

[finnman69]

We have had global warming for 16,000 years.NYC and Boston was under a glacial ice sheet 300 feet thick 50,000 years ago.

GLOBAL WARMING PRIMER
http://www.clearlight.com/~mhieb/WVFossils/ice_ages.html
http://vathena.arc.nasa.gov/curric/land/global/climchng.html

These two figures show former temperatures with major periods of glaciation labeled. The dashed lines are the present global average temperature of about 15° C (59° F). Thus the solid curves show small changes from this average; note that the temperature drops only about 5° C during a glaciation. This has occurred about every 100,000 years, with smaller wiggles in between. That is, there has been a 100,000 year glaciation cycle for the past million years or so, and there may be shorter cycles as well.

The most recent glaciation, 20,000 years ago, is called the Laurentide, and Earth is still recovering from it. This map from the The Illinois State Museum exhibit on ice ages shows the extent of that ice.

The most recent small drop in average temperature caused the Little Ice Age of 1500-1700 AD, which history describes. Mountain glaciers advanced in Europe and rivers like the Thames in England froze solid, which doesn't happen now.

[tx_eggman]

[11Bush]

with an initial target of returning to 2006 levels of emissions by 2010

Is this a misprint, or is it as stupid as it sounds?

[Diana in Wisconsin]

"...where a 2-year-old carbon market appears to be providing utilities with windfall profits."

Then Ms. Feinstein better start investigating her own self, if she's going to start allowing companies to have "windfall profits!"

I demand an investigation before this is even put into action! I demand future reparations for when she investigates and sues me for my future "windfall profits!"

Do they think we're not paying attention? ;)

[talleyman]

Hey, it's worth a shot - as a test case, let's shut down California...

[FOG724]

Back door Kyoto alert.

[FOG724]

ping

[marron]

This allows a company to pay itself for moving operations to China.

[Battle Hymn of the Republic]

maybe she can have a global warming party at her new 16.5 million house in pacific heights!

[AFreeBird]

Perhaps Mz Fineswine would like to come over to my house and shovel the 6 inches of global warming that fell on my driveway this first day of Spring morning.

[Tokra]

Perhaps Mz Fineswine would like to come over to my house and shovel the 6 inches of global warming that fell on my driveway this first day of Spring morning.

While she's at it - she can ship some global warming my way - it was 18 degrees in Detroit this morning!

[maine-iac7]

My son had to back track and spend the night in Truckee - because Donner Pass was closed to all vehicles without chains -

Areas our west got over 400" of snow this winter - here in Maine, we never had more than 5" at one time - and only needed to be plowed twice! And Russia had one of their worst ever winters.

My theory is that the ole globe gets the same weather every year - same amount of snow, rain etc - it just dumps it in different places each year...,

[TBP]

Global warming is a dubious theory at best, but if she's so concerned about stopping human contributions to global warming, she should shut her piehole and stop emitting all that smelly, foul hot air.

[maine-iac7]

YEP Great documentary on this also: " The Little Ice Age" -

That's what drove the Vikings out of Greenland after over 300 successful years of living, farming there. (about AD 998 - 1330) WE likely wont get so lucky - but even a little would be welcomed. If some cities, built on the water, get wet =- well, tough tookies. People build below dams, in flood zones, on hurricane prone beaches, on mudslide prone hillsides and deep in dry, sage brush that can be counted on for fires.

If you go against nature - you loose...simple. there's also evidence that we may be subject to another mini ice age - PLEASE, bring on another mini-warming age like the Vikings had!

Litmus test for truth: Do the pronouncements of whichever theory have political/monetary/power motivations?

Global warming: YES

[maine-iac7]

masses of ice flowing into the oceans at the poles.

masses of ice melting into the oceans of Antarctica into the Gulf Stream, is what cooled the Gulf stream waters up north and brought on the Little Ice age - NOT warming!

That scenario is playing out now - so bring on the warming - maybe they can neutralize one another - sarc

[Czar]

DiFi, as left wing as ever, can at least speak intelligibly. Our other leftie "Senator", Babs, is terminally stupid, speaks like a high school dropout, and is saved only by a sharp crew of staffers.

We can't seem to persuade the voters to dump either of them.

[maine-iac7]

Hey, it's worth a shot - as a test case, let's shut down California...

I'll vote for that one

[Tarpon]

Start here ...

Hundreds of fires, outlined in red, continue to burn across Myanmar in this image acquired on March 10, 2006. Also visible are portions of China (upper right), India (far left), Laos (center right) and Thailand (lower right); the Bay of Bengal creeps into the lower left portion of the image. The grayish plumes of smoke blowing from left to right, with the prevailing winds, are readily distinguished from the brighter, white colored and clumped masses of clouds. Smoke tends to pool in the lower elevations, while the rugged Himalayas within the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of China provide a barrier to further movement. It is highly likely that these fires have been set intentionally for agricultural purposes; fire is used to clear fields of ground cover and residual crops, as well as to add nutrients to the soil.