Should we have a "carbon tax" in Sebastopol?

[Zeno Swijtink]

Should we have a "carbon tax" in Sebastopol? The tax level would be similar to Boulder's. The proceeds would be used by the City Council to fund energy saving measures. To make this tax progressive is part of the proceeds will be used to fund energy efficient appliances for low income people [added in response to a commend of Willie]. Please read the article below and vote in the poll.


"In November, 2006, Boulder became the nation's first city to pass a "carbon tax" aimed at reducing heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The tax took effect April 1, 2007, and will run through 2012. Average homeowners will pay $16 more per year on their electricity bills, and businesses $46 more. Officials hope the tax will generate more than $6 million over the next six years."

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https://www.dailyherald.com/story/?id=91429

Energy-saving gadgets for home generate interest
By Gargi Chakrabarty | Scripps Howard News Service

Published: 12/9/2007 12:19 AM

You've bought flat-screen plasma TVs, Blu-ray DVD players, iPods, Bluetooth cell phones and BlackBerrys to enhance your lifestyle.

Now it's time to bring your house up to speed by adding some high-tech, energy-saving gadgets.

Think hydronic heating, electrochromic windows, desiccant cooling and LED or light-emitting diode bulbs. If that's not enough, you could always go for tankless water heaters or combined photovoltaic and hot-water panels.

The items are not necessarily cheap, and some are hard to find. But they could come in handy as fuel prices rise, and they could help the environment.

"Some people like new gadgets. They get satisfaction in being the first one in their neighborhood to adopt a technology even if it is not cost-effective but has environmental benefits," says Howard Geller, executive director of the Boulder, Colo.-based Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. "Early adopters are a good way to get a technology started in the marketplace."

The big push to conserve energy is slowly but surely gaining ground, and experts say that in a few years the high-tech, energy-saving gadgets will become more accepted -- much like hybrid cars and compact fluorescent bulbs.

Once conservation takes hold, those gadgets will become cheaper and more available. That, in turn, will drive up demand from average customers and lead to their widespread adoption. At least that's how scientists and conservationists see it.

Simple energy-saving items such as double- or triple-glazed windows, thicker insulation and a better furnace can cut the electricity bill in half for an average home or business, researchers say. Installing high-tech gadgets could stretch savings even further, they say.

The United States lags behind other developed countries such as Japan and Germany in energy savings.

For example, the U.S. in 2004 consumed energy equal to an estimated 5.4 tons of oil per person, compared with Japan's 2.8 tons per person and Germany's 3.2 tons per person. Many Japanese families power their homes with fuel cells or reuse bath water for laundry -- ideas that probably sound futuristic or just plain weird to most Americans.

Energy savings in the U.S. have a checkered history. The idea gained acceptance during the oil crisis of the 1970s, but the zeal tapered off as oil prices fell.

Today, energy efficiency is in vogue again.

"Installing more energy-efficient devices now may prove to be a very wise investment if the upward trend in energy prices continues," says Ron Judkoff, director of buildings and thermal systems at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden. "These technologies reduce energy bills and carbon emissions."

Given that oil prices vacillate and gas prices remain high, Americans understand the consequences of depending on foreign oil and the importance of conservation, experts say. President Bush has promised to break what he calls the nation's "addiction to oil" by switching to renewable energy and becoming more energy-efficient.

Environmentalists including former Vice President Al Gore who made the Oscar-winning documentary "An Inconvenient Truth" are drumming up concern about global warming, making more people aware of their energy choices and what impact those choices have on the environment.

"People are becoming aware that climate change needs to be addressed," says Yael Gichon with Boulder's office of environmental affairs. "Since it is not happening at the federal level, it's left to local governments and individuals to do what they can."

Gichon should know.

In November, 2006, Boulder became the nation's first city to pass a "carbon tax" aimed at reducing heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere. The tax took effect April 1, 2007, and will run through 2012. Average homeowners will pay $16 more per year on their electricity bills, and businesses $46 more. Officials hope the tax will generate more than $6 million over the next six years.

Revenue from the tax will be used to promote higher energy efficiency in buildings, alternative fuels and reduction in vehicle miles traveled, Gichon says.

Xcel Energy, Colorado's largest utility, plans to spend $196 million through 2013 to save or reduce peak power production by 40 megawatts each year, or 320 megawatts over the next seven years.

Xcel will spend the money in rebates and incentives to customers to encourage efficient lights, furnaces, air-conditioners and energy-efficient building designs.

One megawatt serves the electric needs of about 1,000 customers. The utility saved 39 megawatts in 2005.

"Saving energy is an important part of the overall power production process and allows us to delay the building of new power plants," said Xcel spokesman Tom Henley.

But the public is already using a variety of technologies to conserve energy.

Tom Polikalas, of Montrose, Colo., lowers his utility bill during summer and winter with a geo-exchanger.

The technology relies on the Earth's natural thermal energy to heat or cool, and uses a small amount of electricity to concentrate that energy and circulate heating and cooling throughout the home.

Polikalas' Christmas lights this year are LEDs, which use a fraction of the electricity needed by typical lights.

"I have changed out virtually all the lights in my house to compact fluorescent lights, even the chandelier in my kitchen," Polikalas says.

If customers replace the five most-used incandescent bulbs in their homes with CFLs, or compact fluorescent bulbs, they could save up to $55 a year in electricity costs, says Xcel Energy.

Stephanie Gill-Kelly's home in Morrison, Colo., has solar films on the windows. The films block the heat from sunlight during summer, and insulate the home during winter -- reducing her electric bill throughout the year.

The films -- like many other energy-efficient home improvement items -- qualify for a tax credit of up to $500, or 10 percent of the cost.

Greg Dean, who installed the solar films at Gill-Kelly's home, says his business has grown 50 percent each year for the past few years.

Conservation is catching up with business owners, too.

Kay Larson, whose Boulder company sells fuel cells to universities and research labs throughout the world, pays her employees to use ride-sharing and public transportation. Larson herself walks to work most days, unless "there are glaciers in the middle of the street," she says.

Fuel cells, Larson says, could become commercially available in the U.S. in a few years. And that lead time is true for other technologies too, such as polymer solar hot water heaters, vacuum insulations and advanced building materials that store heat from sunlight for later use.

"For large-scale adoption, technologies need to be cost-effective," says Geller of the Southwest Energy Efficiency Project. "Then technologies can get started, economies of scale can begin, and technologies can improve over time."

Some energy-saving features

• Tankless water heater

Unlike typical water heaters that store hot water in 40-to 50-gallon tanks, a tankless heater heats water instantly when a faucet or shower is turned on.

• Condensing furnace

The highly efficient furnace extracts so much heat from the burning fuel that water vapor in the flue gases condenses. These furnaces tend to be about 90 percent to 96 percent efficient.

• Polymer solar water heater

Similar to currently available solar hot-water heaters, the polymer or plastic solar heater is expected to lower the installed cost from about $4,000 to about $1,000 a unit once they go into large-scale production. The products likely will be available within a year.

• Vacuum insulation

Still in a research stage, a vacuum insulation panel consists of a special panel enclosed in an airtight envelope to which a vacuum is applied. The product gives three to seven times as much insulation as the same thickness of materials such as rigid foam boards or foam beads. It could be available in markets three years from now.

• LED light

LED or light-emitting diode technology currently is used to light up car dashboards and is very efficient for colored lights. LED lights can last up to 30 years .

• Electro-chromic window

Smart windows that change optical properties with outside conditions. During summer, the windows become darker to reduce the sunlight entering a room. During winter, they remain transparent to allow the heat of sunlight to warm up a room.

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[Valley Oak]

I have voted "Yes" on this poll.

I noticed that the author chose not to vote and I'm assuming that he did not do so for the sake of neutrality, impartiality on the issue, and to avoid bias or "leading" the poll.

An energy tax is long overdue not only in Sebastopol but all over the US.

Edward

[Braggi]

Yeah, I think Sebastopol should have a a carbon tax. Of course, I don't live there so it won't affect me very much.

I read that article and it's truly a yuppie's guide to gadgetry that may save some energy some day. What the author doesn't tell you is that it takes many years of efficient usage for an item like a tankless water heater to pay for the amount of energy it took to manufacture the thing over and above the cost of a more conventional design. There is a reason they cost four times as much as a comparable tank style heater: there is a lot of copper and high tech metals involved as well as a computer (on most of the high end models) and you have to spend nearly a thousand dollars on the chimney for the thing. And then you'll have fun finding a plumber to install it. And you'll probably need an electrician too to run the lines to the thing. How much are you saving? You could buy a thousand gallons of propane for the cost of all that which would last you for years.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of putting all the latest yuppie energy saving goodies under their LED lit Yule tree, but at least be aware it took a lot of energy to bring those things to market and it makes sense to wait until the old washer and dryer are worn out before running out to buy the latest and greatest.

It saves no energy at all buying something you don't really need.

-Jeff

[Willie Lumplump]

Should we have a "carbon tax" in Sebastopol? The tax level would be similar to Boulder's. The proceeds would be used by the City Council to fund energy saving measures. Please read the article below and vote in the poll.

I like the basic idea of a carbon tax, but I have a hard time supporting any tax that's regressive, and the carbon tax that you're proposing is basically a regressive sales tax on an essential commodity--electricity. We definitely need to move forward, but the poor shouldn't be required to foot more than their fair share of the bill, and I believe that their fair share is zero. My views on this subject were shaped by my own life experience; I spent some years living at the bottom of the barrel. My urgent concern then was how to feed myself and pay doctor bills, not how to reduce CO2 emissions. The only tax that seems fair to me is a graduated income tax, and I don't know of any reason that local governments couldn't hitch their taxes to the federal government's income tax.

[Zeno Swijtink]

Yeah, I think Sebastopol should have a a carbon tax. Of course, I don't live there so it won't affect me very much.

I read that article and it's truly a yuppie's guide to gadgetry that may save some energy some day. What the author doesn't tell you is that it takes many years of efficient usage for an item like a tankless water heater to pay for the amount of energy it took to manufacture the thing over and above the cost of a more conventional design. There is a reason they cost four times as much as a comparable tank style heater: there is a lot of copper and high tech metals involved as well as a computer (on most of the high end models) and you have to spend nearly a thousand dollars on the chimney for the thing. And then you'll have fun finding a plumber to install it. And you'll probably need an electrician too to run the lines to the thing. How much are you saving? You could buy a thousand gallons of propane for the cost of all that which would last you for years.

I'm not trying to talk anyone out of putting all the latest yuppie energy saving goodies under their LED lit Yule tree, but at least be aware it took a lot of energy to bring those things to market and it makes sense to wait until the old washer and dryer are worn out before running out to buy the latest and greatest.

It saves no energy at all buying something you don't really need.

-Jeff

I agree that many of the gadgets mentioned in the article are yuppie, and that it saves no energy at all buying something you don't really need.

Lowtech tankless water heaters at point of need are common however in Europe and Asia and one of the reasons these part of the world are more energy efficient, delivering more happiness/BTU.

We recommended them in our "Charting a Path for a New Energy Future for Sebastopol" and they are already part of the City's Green Building Program for new construction.

[Zeno Swijtink]

I like the basic idea of a carbon tax, but I have a hard time supporting any tax that's regressive, and the carbon tax that you're proposing is basically a regressive sales tax on an essential commodity--electricity. We definitely need to move forward, but the poor shouldn't be required to foot more than their fair share of the bill, and I believe that their fair share is zero. My views on this subject were shaped by my own life experience; I spent some years living at the bottom of the barrel. My urgent concern then was how to feed myself and pay doctor bills, not how to reduce CO2 emissions. The only tax that seems fair to me is a graduated income tax, and I don't know of any reason that local governments couldn't hitch their taxes to the federal government's income tax.

I agree with your observation. One way to make the program progressive is spending part of the proceeds to fund energy efficient appliances for low income people. I've modified the poll accordingly. Please consider whether you can vote for this idea now.

[Braggi]

... I've modified the poll accordingly. Please consider whether you can vote for this idea now.

Zeno, another way to make the tax less regressive is to make it three tiered: a "lifeline" limit where no tax is charged, a "moderate usage" tax where a standard percent of the bill is charged, and an "energy hog" tax where the standard percentage is increased.

The real carbon tax that should be levied immediately is a $1.00 a gallon federal gas tax. Perhaps it should just be a $50 a barrel import duty on foreign oil. That would get some attention. All the proceeds from the oil tax would go to purchase solar and solar variant electrical generation and plug in hybrids for all government vehicles. Let's get off the foreign oil!

-Jeff

[Tars]

Big bold solution: Let's add more tax burden to local property owners and businesses!

The quoted article suggested taxing homeowners and businesses. Anyone who receives a property tax bill and reads the details of what goes into it, knows that the voters' most-popular means of dealing with any community financial issue usually involves sticking property owners and businesses with the bill. More convenient than "progressive" in my opinion. It gives voters the illusion that they're dealing with an issue, when in reality they're just dumping it completely in their neighbors' laps.

Perhaps there are ideas a bit more outside the box, - and quite a bit fairer to all?

How about requiring everyone who lives in Sebastopol share the burden equally? Put the "carbon tax" on vehicles registered to Sebastopol addresses. If a family of 4 owns four vehicles, than they should pay 4-times as much as the Main Street cobbler who owns a small shop, and walks to work each day. Should that conserving local shop owner (who in reality has to compete with businesses around the globe) have to endure the local tax burden, while the knucklehead who lives here and drives the big-wheeled-carbon-belching pickup truck gets a free slide?

How about parking stickers for Sebastopol residents? If they want to park their carbon-blatting Humvee fuel hog in Sebastopol, their parking sticker will cost 10 times as much as the Prius owner has to pay.

How about direct property tax credits for property owners who improve the carbon footprint of their home or business? If they install a tankless water heater for example, shouldn't they deserve comparable relief from their Sebastopol property tax?

How about a local sales tax add-on to provide fund-matching rewards for local property/business owners who make energy conserving improvements?

Hopefully, a "progressive" community like ours, can come up with more original ideas than merely dumping the problem on property owners.

I'm open to progressive options to help Sebastopol residents do their fair share of addressing global warming. I'm all for Sebastopol taking bold steps to set examples for other communities. I just don't think that merely adding yet another tax on businesses and property owners is fair, or progressive, or even significantly effective in addressing the global warming problem.

[Zeno Swijtink]

Big bold solution: Let's add more tax burden to local property owners and businesses!

Some good ideas here to talk about. In particular I like your point about rural residential people who live outside the City boundary but use our facilities. How to include them?

Let me just add that a carbon tax is not directed to property owners and businesses as such. The article is unclear about that.

A carbon tax as in Boulder taxes electricity use, and reinvests the proceeds back into the community by earmarked funding of efficiency improvements and green house gas reduction measures.

This could include water efficiency programs (since pumping, heating, and treating water requires a lot of energy), making the city more walkable and bikeable (incl. bringing in bikes that work for regular people), supporting local agriculture and nutritional advice to cut back meat consumption (since worldwide the meat and diary industry releases more greenhouse gasses than transportation), or promoting green energy loans, a Sonoma developed financial program

https://www.greenenergyloan.org/

"a new way for smart homeowners to painlessly finance water and energy efficiency measures and set a model for other communities to follow." You get a loan that is paid back over time from your energy $$ savings!!

Such a tax can be designed to be budget neutral for low income people since it develops programs that help them to cut back on their gas and energy bill.

[handy]

Absolutely not!

"We" have given the State/bureaucracy the power to (attempt to) regulate:
1) which weeds we are permitted to water (War on Drugs)
2) the permitted minimums of life support (War on Poverty)
3) response to an emotion (War on Terror)

How are those working for you?

You really Want! to give these same corrupt yahoos the power to arbitrarily regulate an Element? The Element which, with water, accounts for the very format of Life itself.

Utter insanity. Sick and wrong. This is the same form of thinking that gave us the incompetents we have now.

[Zeno Swijtink]

Absolutely not!

"We" have given the State/bureaucracy the power to (attempt to) regulate:
1) which weeds we are permitted to water (War on Drugs)
2) the permitted minimums of life support (War on Poverty)
3) response to an emotion (War on Terror)

How are those working for you?

You really Want! to give these same corrupt yahoos the power to arbitrarily regulate an Element? The Element which, with water, accounts for the very format of Life itself.

Utter insanity. Sick and wrong. This is the same form of thinking that gave us the incompetents we have now.

Soon this Element, with the drying up of our water thru overuse by our free and independent citizens, will account for the very format of Death itself.

How do you propose a libertarian response to our collective vomiting of 49 gigatons of CO2e a year [2004 data]?

[Willie Lumplump]

How do you propose a libertarian response to our collective vomiting of 49 gigatons of CO2e a year [2004 data]?

I would REALLY like to see the answer to this!

[Zeno Swijtink]

Zeno, another way to make the tax less regressive is to make it three tiered: a "lifeline" limit where no tax is charged, a "moderate usage" tax where a standard percent of the bill is charged, and an "energy hog" tax where the standard percentage is increased.

The real carbon tax that should be levied immediately is a $1.00 a gallon federal gas tax. Perhaps it should just be a $50 a barrel import duty on foreign oil. That would get some attention. All the proceeds from the oil tax would go to purchase solar and solar variant electrical generation and plug in hybrids for all government vehicles. Let's get off the foreign oil!

-Jeff

So you have no problems with a regressive tax? This stiff gas tax is quite regressive.

[Braggi]

So you have no problems with a regressive tax? This stiff gas tax is quite regressive.

No. Who said I have problems with a regressive tax? So what? The problem is consumption of foreign oil and oil in general. Yes, let's tax it. We should probably each get 20 lashes when we fill up. (Just kidding, except for those who'd like that.) Too bad we didn't elect John Anderson back in the '70s who wanted to add a fifty cent a gallon gas tax back then. We wouldn't be in this world of hurt had we done that. It's a little late but there's no time like the present to get started.

Did you see what I want to do with the money? I want to make electricity cheaper forever. I want to stimulate the production of plug in hybrid vehicles. Everyone will benefit from that. I want to outlaw nuclear power and encourage any power source that is solar or otherwise non-consumptive and carbon neutral or negative. We need A LOT of money to do this. A dollar a gallon gas tax now isn't too much. Obviously. Remember how much gas cost when The Leader took office? I don't either but I think it was about half what we're paying now. Are you paying attention? It's obvious we can afford more. We'll pay anything our masters ask. I'd just like some of that money to come back to us. My proposal would do just that.

-Jeff

[handy]

Soon this Element, with the drying up of our water thru overuse by our free and independent citizens, will account for the very format of Death itself.

This is pure scaremongering to ignorance. "Drying up" of "our" water?!!

C'mon, Zeno, get some basic physics. All of the Elements that are here now have always been here. (Okay, the annual meteoric and cosmic dust infall adds a few tons...) We re-arrange things as we can, and we valve energy through various transforms as we learn how to, but we do not and cannot create or destroy matter or energy.


How do you propose a libertarian response to our collective vomiting of 49 gigatons of CO2e a year [2004 data]?

I do not observe "collective vomiting", and I find such purposeful emotional loading to describe a natural chemical transform, at best, philosophically distasteful, and at worst, politically normal.

My individual 'libertarian' response is to arrange My life so as to use no more than I need, and waste as little of that as possible. Of course, your mileage may vary.

As free individuals, those who feel agonizing guilt regarding their "vomit" are always free to opt out. Just think, if the whole misanthropic control-freak "collective" committed suicide, it might result in a noticeable reduction in the hot air and CO2. 'course, then there's all that Carbon to dispose of...

Seriously though, all the Carbon, all the Oxygen, all the Hydrogen, etc., have always been here, will always be here. Some of it is temporarily busy being you.

Climate varies. Deal with it. Panic doesn't help.

Strident attempts at influencing that which we do not understand do not equate to systemic control.

Government as it exists has become a positive feedback mechanism; it is spinning up, bigger and faster and more intrusive, and it is failing miserably at solving ANY of the problems it claims to address. We are seeing the runaway oscillation and whipping about of a system that is beginning to fly apart.
More government is just throwing gasoline on the fire. It's long past time to hit the killswitch, cut off its air, cut off its fuel.



Breakthrough means Something Has To Break.

[Zeno Swijtink]

I do not observe "collective vomiting", and I find such purposeful emotional loading to describe a natural chemical transform, at best, philosophically distasteful, and at worst, politically normal.

My

Soon this Element, with the drying up of our water thru overuse by our free and independent citizens, will account for the very format of Death itself.

How do you propose a libertarian response to our collective vomiting of 49 gigatons of CO2e a year [2004 data]?

was a sarcastic mirroring of your lyrical "The Element which, with water, accounts for the very format of Life itself."

I applaud you for your life style, but don't see how fossil fuel burning on this scale is a "natural chemical transform" unless you think that everything that happens is natural and hence good. But that couldn't be, could it, because being a libertarian is an intense moral point of view. So you must grasp the difference between what is and what should be.

And you do: "Breakthrough means Something Has To Break." You are looking for a breakthrough. It's not coming from people who just want to take care of themselves since this "vomiting" (if I may use my own lyrical style) is muddying your creek.

We need you to think about approaches to reducing GHG emissions that protect individual liberties and creativity as much as possible. Nobody here is looking for Big Brother solutions.

[handy]

My



was a sarcastic mirroring of your lyrical "The Element which, with water, accounts for the very format of Life itself."

I applaud you for your life style, but don't see how fossil fuel burning on this scale is a "natural chemical transform" unless you think that everything that happens is natural and hence good. But that couldn't be, could it, because being a libertarian is an intense moral point of view. So you must grasp the difference between what is and what should be.

And you do: "Breakthrough means Something Has To Break." You are looking for a breakthrough. It's not coming from people who just want to take care of themselves since this "vomiting" (if I may use my own lyrical style) is muddying your creek.

We need you to think about approaches to reducing GHG emissions that protect individual liberties and creativity as much as possible. Nobody here is looking for Big Brother solutions.

Taxation is precisely and only a Big Brother behavior. There is no such thing as a Big Brother solution.

By definition, "natural" is that which Nature permits. Being included in Nature, we experience what Nature permits. We cannot experience that which Nature does not permit. The concept "unnatural" is nonsense.
The connection you (not I) make, natural... hence good, is unproven. In that fantasy, hurricane Katrina and the SoCal forest fires are wonderful!
I certainly disagree.

Panic response (We Gotta DO Something!!) to explosive complexity beyond our ability to comprehend is almost guaranteed to make things worse. Spinning our wheels on one hand, while standing on the brakes on the other, is certain to burn a lot of energy, generate a lot of heat and smoke, and support a lot of bureaucrats, but doesn't necessarily "solve the problem".

Going back to gradeschool physics, if you want to change direction rapidly, you have to Slow Down!

You said," "Breakthrough means Something Has To Break." You are looking for a breakthrough."

No. You are attempting to put words in my mouth. I was merely pointing out the blatantly obvious.

"Thinking is: the orderly dismissal of irrelevancy" -R. Buckminster Fuller

This is not taught in the state dumbing-down pens.

[Zeno Swijtink]

Panic response (We Gotta DO Something!!) to explosive complexity beyond our ability to comprehend is almost guaranteed to make things worse. Spinning our wheels on one hand, while standing on the brakes on the other, is certain to burn a lot of energy, generate a lot of heat and smoke, and support a lot of bureaucrats, but doesn't necessarily "solve the problem".

Going back to gradeschool physics, if you want to change direction rapidly, you have to Slow Down!

Slowing down is certainly the idea. The issue is not PANIC. This only creates badly focussed behavior.

The issue is that the problem is urgent, and that decisive action from people who can show leadership is needed, because of the analysis of the beast. Beast because it takes time to turn the thing around. It's carbon locked-in.

There will not be an easy way back. It's similar with what we do to water in this county. We are overpumping our watersheds, and because of that the ground, for example around Rohnert Park, is literally falling, compacting as satellite data show. When that has happened these aquifers cannot fill up again to the extent that they used to!

Here is an article from Science, the journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (est. 1848), "How Urgent Is Climate Change?"

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https://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/conte.../318/5854/1230

Science 23 November 2007:
Vol. 318. no. 5854, pp. 1230 - 1231
NEWS FOCUS
GLOBAL WARMING:
How Urgent Is Climate Change?
Richard A. Kerr

Having issued their fair and balanced consensus document, many climate scientists now cite oft-overlooked reasons for immediate and forceful action to curb global warming

The latest reports from the nobel Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) were informative enough. Humans are messing with climate and will, sooner or later, get burned if they keep it up. But just how urgent is this global warming business?

IPCC wasn't at all clear on that, at least not in its summary reports. In the absence of forthright guidance from the scientific community, news about melting ice and starving polar bears has stoked the public climate frenzy of the past couple of years. Climate researchers, on the other hand, prefer science to headlines when considering just how imminent the coming climate crunch might be. With a chance to digest the detailed IPCC products that are now available (www.ipcc.ch), many scientists are more convinced than ever that immediate action is required. The time to start "is right now," says climate modeler Gerald Meehl of the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado. "We can't wait any longer."

What worries these researchers is the prospect that we've started a slow-moving but relentless avalanche of change. A warming may well arrive by mid-century that would not only do immediate grievous harm--such as increase drought in vulnerable areas--but also commit the world to delayed and even more severe damage such as many meters of sea-level rise. The system has built-in time lags. Ice sheets take centuries to melt after a warming. The atmosphere takes decades to be warmed by today's greenhouse gas emissions. And then there are the decades-long lags involved in working through the political system and changing the world energy economy. "If you want to be able to head off a few trillions of [dollars of climate] damages per year a few decades out," says glaciologist Richard Alley of Pennsylvania State University in State College, "you need to start now."

Bad things, soon

The disturbing message on the timing of global warming's effects comes in the IPCC chapters and technical summaries quietly posted online months after each of three working groups released a much-publicized Summary for Policymakers (SPM). An overall synthesis of the working group reports was released Saturday at the 27th session of IPCC. Earlier this year, only the SPMs went through the wringer of word-by-word negotiations with governments, which squeezed out a crucial table and part of another (Science, 13 April, p. 188). That information--which was always in the full reports--along with other report material, makes it clear that substantial impacts are likely to arrive sooner rather than later.

Table TS.3 of Working Group II's technical summary, for example, lays out projected warmings. The uncertainties are obvious. Decades ahead, models don't agree on the amount of warming from a given amount of greenhouse gas, and no one can tell which of a half-dozen emission scenarios--from unbridled greenhouse-gas production to severe restraint--will be closest to reality. But this table strongly suggests that a middle-of-the-road, business-as-usual scenario would likely lead to a 2°C warming by about the middle of this century.

Lined up beneath the projected warmings in the table are the anticipated effects of each warming. Beneath a mid-century, 2°C warming is a litany of daunting ill effects that had previously had no clear timing attached to them: increasing drought in mid-latitudes and semiarid low latitudes, placing 1 billion to 2 billion additional people under increased water stress; most corals bleached, with widespread coral mortality following within a few decades; and decreases in low-latitude crop productivity, as in wheat and maize in India and rice in China, among other pervasive impacts.

At the bottom of the same table is a category of effects labeled "Singular Events," most dramatically sea level rise. The table shows a "Long term commitment to several metres of sea-level rise due to ice sheet loss" falling between the middle-of-the-road 2°C warming and a 3°C warming, which without drastic emissions reductions might well come by the end of the century. The report calls it a "commitment" because although the temperatures needed to melt much of the Greenland ice sheet might be reached in the next 50 to 100 years, the ice sheet, similar to an ice cube sitting on a countertop, will take time to melt even after the surrounding air is warm enough. Its huge thermal inertia means a lag of at least several centuries before it would largely melt away, flooding much of South Florida, Bangladesh, and major coastal cities.

A laggard system

Ice sheets aren't the only thing that stretches out the time between an action--say, building a coal-fired power plant--and a global warming impact. For example, the atmosphere is slow to warm because the oceans are absorbing some of the heat trapped by the strengthening greenhouse. IPCC estimates that even if no greenhouse gases were added after the year 2000, the oceans'heat would warm the atmosphere 0.6°C by the end of the century, or as much as it warmed in the last century. So the world is already committed to almost one-quarter of the warming that can be expected late in the century. And half the warming of the next couple of decades will be carried over from emissions in the past century.

Then there are the lags that come into play ahead of the climate system. The technological infrastructure that does most of the emitting--the gasoline-fed cars and coal-fired power plants, primarily--will have to be radically altered if greenhouse emissions are to be drastically reduced. The speed at which infrastructure can be changed depends on the perceived urgency, says energy-climate analyst James Edmonds of the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory's office in College Park, Maryland. Past transitions from one energy source to another--say, wood to coal--took upward of 50 to 100 years, he notes. But even with a Manhattan Project imperative--something nowhere in sight--weaning cars off oil, building nuclear power plants, and rigging coal power plants to shoot the carbon dioxide into the ground will take decades, not years.

And there's the lag while governments crank up the will to fundamentally alter the global energy system. "The biggest lag is in the political system," says geoscientist Michael Oppenheimer of Princeton University. A couple of decades have already passed discussing the seriousness of the threat, as he sees it, and at the present rate it could be another 20 years before a worldwide program up to the task is in place.

Yet another lag would enter the calculation for taking action if policymakers waited for more research to narrow the scientific uncertainties. In the 1980s, for example, the biggest uncertainty in climate science was clouds and how they would react to climate change. Fifteen years later, "we are essentially where we were then," says atmospheric scientist Robert Charlson of the University of Washington, Seattle. Clouds are still poorly understood, as are pollutant hazes, another collection of microscopic particles with a highly uncertain effect on future climate.

With all these known time lags adding up to many decades, a lot of climate scientists say that the time for serious action is now. "We can't really afford to do a 'wait and learn' policy," says Oppenheimer. "The most important question is, when do we commit to 2°? Really, there isn't a lot of headroom left. We better get cracking."

Fear of the unknown

Physics and socioeconomics may make piloting the ponderous ship of climate a cumbersome business, but researchers are also worried about navigating around the hazards they fear may be lurking unseen beneath the surface. They've hit hidden obstacles before. Back in the 1970s, atmospheric chemists were worrying that pollutant chlorine might be destroying stratospheric ozone over their heads. Yet all the while, that chlorine was teaming up with ice-cloud particles over Antarctica to wipe out stratospheric ozone through a mechanism that scientists had overlooked.

Prestigious committees have been warning for 25 years that similar surprises could spring from the climate system. A few may be starting to show themselves. Arctic sea ice took a nosedive last summer, prompting concerns that feedbacks not properly included in models are taking hold and accelerating ice loss (Science, 5 October, p. 33). Glaciers draining both southern Greenland and West Antarctic have suddenly begun rushing to the sea, and glaciologists aren't sure why (Science, 24 March 2006, p. 1698). And theorists recently reminded their colleagues that they will never be able to eliminate the small but very real chance that the climate system--contrary to most modeling--is hypersensitive to greenhouse gases.

The uncertainties are adding up. "You can hope the uncertainties are going to break your way," says policy analyst Roger Pielke Jr. of the University of Colorado, Boulder. "There have been times they did. But if you play that game often enough, you're going to lose some pretty big bets sometimes." In the case of global warming, Pielke says, "we don't have a lot of time to wait around." Edmonds agrees. If avoiding a 2°C warming is the goal, "the world really has to get its act together pretty damn fast. The current pace isn't going to do it."

[Zeno Swijtink]

Taxation is precisely and only a Big Brother behavior. There is no such thing as a Big Brother solution.

By definition, "natural" is that which Nature permits. Being included in Nature, we experience what Nature permits. We cannot experience that which Nature does not permit. The concept "unnatural" is nonsense.
The connection you (not I) make, natural... hence good, is unproven. In that fantasy, hurricane Katrina and the SoCal forest fires are wonderful!
I certainly disagree.

Panic response (We Gotta DO Something!!) to explosive complexity beyond our ability to comprehend is almost guaranteed to make things worse. Spinning our wheels on one hand, while standing on the brakes on the other, is certain to burn a lot of energy, generate a lot of heat and smoke, and support a lot of bureaucrats, but doesn't necessarily "solve the problem".

Going back to gradeschool physics, if you want to change direction rapidly, you have to Slow Down!

You said," "Breakthrough means Something Has To Break." You are looking for a breakthrough."

No. You are attempting to put words in my mouth. I was merely pointing out the blatantly obvious.

"Thinking is: the orderly dismissal of irrelevancy" -R. Buckminster Fuller

This is not taught in the state dumbing-down pens.

I do enjoy reading this kind of aphoristic thinking, slightly - and then often not so slightly - off from where I would take things myself. Believe it or not, among my friends I am wont to throw in Hayekian curve balls, just to test the edges of ideas.

For a highly articulate British form of this see https://www.spiked-online.com/

[handy]

I do enjoy reading this kind of aphoristic thinking, slightly - and then often not so slightly - off from where I would take things myself. Believe it or not, among my friends I am wont to throw in Hayekian curve balls, just to test the edges of ideas.

For a highly articulate British form of this see https://www.spiked-online.com/

Gee, I've never been called an aphorist before...https://www.waccobb.net/forums/image...ilies/wink.gif
I thought I was merely attempting to be adequately concise.

Thanks for the 'spiked' link. Rob Lyons' column on Greenland is much closer to my thinking than anything from the 'state-coercion-is-essential' cult.

Haven't read Hayek yet, but he's on my list. I do enjoy the essays on:
https://www.lewrockwell.com/

My Basic Straining Manual over the years has included most of Bucky Fuller's work, esp., Synergetics: Explorations in the Geometry of Thinking; No More Secondhand God; Inventory of World Resources, Human Trends and Needs, etc.
Stafford Beer's Designing Freedom, Platform for Change, Brain of the Firm: A Development in Management Cybernetics, The Heart of Enterprise

I also like the work of Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral Visions, and Composing a Life, and her father, Gregory Bateson's Steps to an Ecology of Mind.

There are (too many) others, but I've work to do, and I'm way too slow a typist.
------------------------------------
Can't remember who said it, but always thought it rang true:

"A mind that is always open is like a wastebasket;
people will throw trash in it."

[Braggi]

Taxation is precisely and only a Big Brother behavior. There is no such thing as a Big Brother solution.
...

I accept the possibility that I don't understand what you're saying, but if I do, and I think you are being clear enough, your statement is clearly wrong.

Big Brother helped us out in World War II, for one example. No single libertarian could have done that very well. Nor could they as a group. Kind of like a well organized group of anarchists. (I spent 15 years in the Libertarian party so I know what I'm talking about.)


Government has the power to tax. It also has the power to spend. These are immense tools and can be used for good or ill.

Libertarians (both large and small "L") see taxation as a punishment from "Big Brother." So be it. Big Brother, in this case, should add punishment for wasting carbon based energy (as in, burning it up in an internal combustion engine), while the Government may offer tax incentives, low interest loans or even grants to those wishing to develop non carbon based energy. Also, government has the power to stimulate an industry by becoming a large scale customer of that industry and giving it a jump start the private market alone wouldn't. I don't see that as a problem.

I think an immediate carbon tax on all coal, oil and natural gas based fuels is a perfect response to our current crisis. No knee jerk here or panicked thoughts. This is well thought out and well reasoned.

At the same time, government(s) should set an example for industries and individuals by becoming a large scale purchaser of photo voltaic and wind energy generation equipment. Imagine if every government building was a net energy producer! Just cover every roof and every parking lot with PVs and you're there. Well, on most of them anyway.

This approach should be used in every environmental field. Water use, toxic product development, solid waste generation and management etc..

It works in Europe.

-Jeff

[Sonomamark]

I completely agree with all of this, Jeff.

My only concern here has to do with scale. There are things that really need to be done top-down rather than bottom-up. Say, voting rights: we don't want to leave those to the states because the racist states will disenfranchise minorities. I don't know what benefit there would be to a carbon tax in Sebastopol, when people could go right outside the city limits to buy their carbon-based products.

And I'd wonder what the money would go to: there are limits to what a little burg of 7,000 people can do, especially when surrounded by a much higher population living in the rural areas nearby and not subject to the tax.

Finally, if we're going to go after carbon, I'd say let's go after carbon. That means lumber and firewood. That means gasoline and diesel. That means propane. Not just electricity. Even finding ways to meter such products could be difficult, the howl would be heard in Fresno, and people would just leave the city to get their firewood, propane, lumber, gas, etc.

I'd rather see a national carbon tax.


SM

I accept the possibility that I don't understand what you're saying, but if I do, and I think you are being clear enough, your statement is clearly wrong.

Big Brother helped us out in World War II, for one example. No single libertarian could have done that very well. Nor could they as a group. Kind of like a well organized group of anarchists. (I spent 15 years in the Libertarian party so I know what I'm talking about.)


Government has the power to tax. It also has the power to spend. These are immense tools and can be used for good or ill.

Libertarians (both large and small "L") see taxation as a punishment from "Big Brother." So be it. Big Brother, in this case, should add punishment for wasting carbon based energy (as in, burning it up in an internal combustion engine), while the Government may offer tax incentives, low interest loans or even grants to those wishing to develop non carbon based energy. Also, government has the power to stimulate an industry by becoming a large scale customer of that industry and giving it a jump start the private market alone wouldn't. I don't see that as a problem.

I think an immediate carbon tax on all coal, oil and natural gas based fuels is a perfect response to our current crisis. No knee jerk here or panicked thoughts. This is well thought out and well reasoned.

At the same time, government(s) should set an example for industries and individuals by becoming a large scale purchaser of photo voltaic and wind energy generation equipment. Imagine if every government building was a net energy producer! Just cover every roof and every parking lot with PVs and you're there. Well, on most of them anyway.

This approach should be used in every environmental field. Water use, toxic product development, solid waste generation and management etc..

It works in Europe.

-Jeff