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Re: fHuman vs. natural influences on the environment



All locked up and nowhere to go <cage@critech.com> wrote:
>tomgray <tomgray@igc.apc.org> wrote:
>>Hmmm.  You didn't respond to my previous disagreement on this >>point--any possibility you could do so now?
>
>Sorry.  I was busy at the time, and you did not directly address my >point.

No problem, I'll keep harassing you till I get your attention. 8^)
Your comments on climate change make so much sense that I feel sure
you just need to examine the literature a little more closely on
CO2 reductions to realize that their cost is a much more open question.

>>... They 
>>find that CO2 emissions can be reduced substantially without enormous 
>>pain and disruption.  I realize this is not the same as freezing 
>>atmospheric concentrations immediately, but they are talking numbers in 
>>the same ballpark and asserting that the economic consequences are 
>>modest.
>
>The numbers are in the same ballpark?  Really?  This is news to me.
>Stabilizing emissions at 1990 levels would not be extremely difficult.
>It was my impression that reducing them to the point where they are
>equal to the sinks is quite another matter.  It is always the first
>increment that is easiest and cheapest to get, and the last fraction
>is horribly difficult and expensive.

Hmmmm.  Well, I don't seem to have the numbers handy, but the source
is a report from IPCC Working Group II released in November of last
year.  The working group provided five scenarios for "deep reductions
of CO2 emissions" and said "[W]ithin the wide range of future energy 
prices, one or more of the [scenarios] would plausibly be capable of 
providing the demanded energy services at estimated costs that are 
approximately the same as estimated future costs for current conventional 
energy."  More is available in the FAQ section of our Web site at 
http://www.econet.org/awea  .

>Some amount of our fossil carbon emissions is being sequestered, by
>means known and unknown.  If I recall correctly, the amount of this
>sequestration isn't as great as the emissions from the transportation
>sector.  Even if changing every stationary source to non-combustion
>or non-emitting technology is easy, converting the installed base of
>vehicles to some form of energy which does not emit fossil carbon
>would be far more expensive and painful.  The expense and pain would
>include buying off regimes such as China, which is basing plans for
>economic growth on energy from coal.

Transportation is certainly the most difficult problem.  The report
doesn't provide detail to that level, but I imagine they are thinking
in terms of biogas and compressed natural gas for the most part.
Still, transportation is only one-third of the problem.

>I agree that paring emissions back to 1990 levels is a good down >payment. Since the energy intensity of the American economy (energy 
>per unit of GNP) has been dropping steadily for the entire century, 
>this would not require anything but the continuation of an existing >trend.  It is always simplest when inertia is on your side.

Yes.  Recall that it was not so long ago that people were warning
that energy intensity was a fixed ratio, in much the same way that
the same interests argue today that greenhouse gas emissions cannot
be cut.

Tom Gray
Director of Communications
American Wind Energy Association

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-----------------------------------------------------------------
Tom Gray <tomgray@econet.org>



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