I just heard a radio ad that was attacking Erik Paulsen for siding with the lobbyists to in essence "pollute our air and harm our children". I found this hard to believe since he has kids also...
See the first link for some thoughts regarding why we should slow down the EPA's good works. And the second to listen to the ads.
WSJ An EPA Moratorium
Environmental Defense Action Fund 2011 Ads
I find it interesting since the EPA has been overwhelming our industry for 10+ yrs by requiring cleaner burning diesel engines. And it is going to continue for another ~5 yrs. By the time we are done we will need very clean fuel, lots of expensive hardware on each machine, and the air coming out of the stack will sometimes be cleaner than that going into the air cleaner. EPA Tier Timeline
The upside is that it has given Engineers some great job security. The downside is that the equipment keeps getting more expensive, which is passed on to all of us citizens via higher construction costs and taxes.
So when is good, good enough? How much are you willing to pay for excellent?
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Interesting topic. Now that I am back to work and spending much of my online time trying to figure out twitter I didn't read the links, but will probably check them out later. I also recently became a climate change activist by accident when I went to Mpls. yesterday to check out some protests at Obama's visit and ended up holding a MN350 sign. I have been following the news of all the arrests in DC by the national protest group but really should learn more. Anyhow, I am against an EPA moratorium in a general and specifically support EPA rules intended to reduce the CO2 output by cars and power plants.
Laurie, do you also favor limits on the CO2 output of humans? And what, exactly, do you have against plant food? Don't plants need to "eat," too?
I'm sorry, but if you believe in global warming you have bought into a great hoax. Greater, even, than that email that said you could get $10 from Bill Gates just by forwarding an email. Right now, there is no reliable scientific evidence proving that manmade CO2 is the major cause of increased atmospheric CO2 (quite the opposite), nor that increasing CO2 is the major factor in greenhouse gas increases , nor that greenhouse gasses are the principal cause of global warming (quite the opposite, according to a new study by CERN), nor that any warming that will take place is catastrophic.
So, the only things wrong with the "Catastrophic Anthropogenic (man made)Global Warming" (CAGW) Theory" is that it isn't catastrophic, it isn't anthropogenic, it isn't global, and it isn't warming. Oh, and it isn't a "theory" in the scientific sense, because a theory is something which explains the observed natural phenomena in a structured test. Since we haven't observed the weather a hundred years hence, there is NO evidence whatsoever that the "theory" is correct.
In a real twist of irony, in fact, there is some reasonable basis to believe that the high temperatures of the 90s, though due in large part to natural fluctuations in climate, were higher because of the Clear Air Act of the 1970s! With less particulates (particularly from diesel exhaust and dirty coal plants) in the air, more sunshine strikes the earth and it gets warmer. So, I favor abolishing the EPA as an independent agency, making it, maybe, a small section of the commerce department where cost-benefit analysis might get applied to their stupid regulations. Pareto's law says 80% of the benefit comes from the first 20% of the job cost, and on diesel and coal emissions we are now at something like 98% reduction. The remaining cost, to get that last 2%, could be outrageous.
Sorry, Laurie, but I have to throw in one more. Global Warming fanatics get all excited about the CO2 coming out of a tailpipe, but the largest greenhouse gas is water vapor, and fully half of tailpipe emissions are H2O! Why is nobody worried about that?
J. Ewing
Thus be extremely environmentally friendly in the USA no matter how many jobs it costs us?
The upside of course is that it creates a large number of jobs due to the required development, production, installation, extra components and maintenance.
The downside is that all of this costs a HUGE amount of money. Therefore the USA becomes less competitive in many other areas. Therefore a very large number of jobs move to lesser regulated countries where these costs do not exist.
And with these jobs goes some more of our tax revenue that is needed to support the extra regulatory burden. Man what a cycle.
I agree that we need to keep improving, yet how fast? And at what cost?
J Ewing,
Like most every other issue, I'm sure the news we each read on this would have very little agreement on the basic facts. This story from Mother Jones sticks in my memory as one of my favs Climategate: What Really Happened? While you label climate change a hoax to me the smear campaign is the true story.
John,
I think the new cafe standards recently set will make US made cars more competitive in the global marketplace and thus be good for both our economy/jobs and the environment. I really don't have the knowledge or interest to make a stronger case, but would read a good link or two that counters my pro EPA regulation point of view.
CAFE is about fuel efficiency. Customers around the world are willing to pay for this.
Not sure who wants to pay for that last little bit of emissions reduction that has such a high marginal cost.
I am guessing Liberals do as long as the rich pay for most of it...
Or maybe they think it is okay if businesses bear the burden...
All the time forgetting that they must pass the costs on to us or send the work overseas in order to stay in business...
Laurie,
"Like most every other issue, I'm sure the news we each read on this would have very little agreement on the basic facts." That's a very sad commentary on the state of our news sources, but to some degree I must agree with you. Facts are facts, but what gets called a fact in the news, and what facts are chosen to be reported are very often something altogether different. And unless you have learned to read between the lines and/or learned to deduce the truth from competing storylines, it's hard to know where the truth lies, and where the lies lie.
That's where, on this issue at least, I have a substantial advantage. I have an education in the sciences, with minors in physics and chemistry. I have also read very widely, including the IPCC report, which is quite frankly a hodgepodge of some pretty poor basic science. What most convinced me of the hoax, however, was watching Al Gore's movie :-0. Five minutes in, his whole theory fell apart with his first piece of scientific evidence – the 600,000 years of ice core data showing CO2 concentrations and temperatures. "Doesn't it look like those two things go up and down together?" he asked. And indeed they do. But the immediately obvious fallacy in his argument was that CO2 went up long AFTER temperature did (an average of 800 years according to later studies). So CO2 does not cause global warming, global warming causes CO2!
I could go on at great length, on request, but I will also say that even if one manages to squeeze all the facts out correctly, your final conclusions must follow from those facts by simple logic and in this case they do not. The long causal chain between man-made CO2 and global catastrophe has not been proven, anywhere. Scientifically speaking, they will not be proven until temperatures 100 years from now match the predictions being made today. Unfortunately for the hoaxers, their predictions have already missed the mark rather substantially. Believe what you want, but the facts might be otherwise.
J. Ewing
As for auto regulations, I think what is missed here is that businesses, any business, must be responsive to market demands for quality and features, and to competitive pressures on cost. When government dictates quality or features, market demand loses primacy and the business suffers from competition that does not have the government regulatory cost built in.
More specifically, if people around the world are willing to pay a $1000 premium for a car that gets 45 mpg rather than 35mpg, and GM can do it for less than that, GM wins. If it costs GM another $5000/car to get to 55mpg, the new CAFE standard, and nobody is willing to pay for that, GM loses. And will.
J. Ewing
I am not anti-government regulation, sometimes it takes Society/Govt to mandate improvements. Especially when the benefits are gained by one party and the costs are paid by another party.(or by society/govt as a whole)
Companies that used to dump their wastes into the rivers. Great deal for them, very expensive for people down stream and society as a whole.
The problem is there seems to be little discussion of the trade offs, or marginal costs/benefits. The most Liberal Tree Huggers seem to want NO human foot print no matter the cost. I hope they gave up their cars, electricity, natural gas, etc to live by their values. Or not...Snopes Glass Houses
As for Global Warming... I have a simple viewpoint.. Mother Nature will correct for system issues...
The core gets too hot, Volcanoes start blowing and spewing debris into the atmosphere, sun is blocked, earth cools, etc. Hope I am not too close to the volcanoes or needing to fly at that time...
How do the Global Warming folks explain previous ice age / warming cycles? Long before humans were here to impact the system?
I know little about the marginal costs / benefits of proposed EPA regulations so nothing to say on that. I do belong to the League of Conservation Voters, but don't take time to become well informed on their issues. My concern would be that they have too little influence lobbying on pollution laws rather than too much. Typing this does make me wonder about the power of congress compared to the EPA and how much the EPA would change under, say, President Perry.
On climate change, I am quite surprised that 2 guys with science backgrounds are dismissive of the evidence. I guess ideology is a strong factor in both news consumption and analysis. I don't want to debate any particulars, but am persuaded by stories such as this,Study Affirms Consensus on Climate Change. I think our govt should be subsidizing clean/renewable energy through the tax code rather than fossil fuels.
"How do the Global Warming folks explain previous ice age / warming cycles? "
They have two approaches. First is to simply deny they ever happened, as is the case with the famous "hockey stick" chart. The second, but similar, is to say that today's warming is "unprecedented," and that Earth has never heated so rapidly before. The trick here is very carefully picking the start and end points of your graph. This is what Al Gore does, taking ten years of the 90s and then extrapolating that out linearly for another 100 years. But mathematics can be used to "prove" utter nonsense.
J. Ewing
J. Ewing
I wasn't going to get hooked, but I did. About that hockey stick graph, as you seem not to have read my MJ's link here is a key excerpt:
"In fact, some complained that it (hockey stick chart) was too simple, glossing over uncertainties in historical climate readings in order to make a more dramatic point. Yet numerous other reconstructions of historical temperature records made since Mann's graph have also shown a dramatic uptick in the 20th century, and a 2006 assessment from the National Academy of Sciences concluded (PDF) that while Mann's methodology wasn't perfect, the story the chart told was accurate."
The story has a link to the NAS report. Now I am done for real with this climate change sub topic.
I guess I am not doubting that releasing a bunch of previously stored chemical energy into the system as heat energy and pollution is not causing a change in the system. My point is that the system will adjust as it has for a very long time. Us humans may not like the adjustments, but it will self correct.
Since Laurie has closed her mind to the possibility that those using junk science to propose radically changing our entire economic system (thereby curtailing all human development and condemning billions to a pitiable poverty in perpetuity) are wrong, I suppose we who believe that the case for such radical change has not been made should respect that.
But on the general subject of whether the EPA should make rules which govern such things, I say they should not. Science-- real science-- does not often figure into political decisions, and the EPA is a creature of politics. It's judgements are arbitrary and capricious, and totally unsuited to the solving of the stated (and often unstated) problem. I would rather trust such matters to the enlightened self-interest of the free market of corporations and consumer associations. We adapt, and we do that best when given the freedom to choose our adaptations. Moreover, Mother Nature adapts, and has for a billion years, and we have to live with that because, if Mother gets too unhappy, nobody's happy.
J. Ewing
J. Ewing
J. Ewing,
I really was done on this topic until I came across this:
Science Stunner: Editor of Journal that Published Flawed Denier Bunk Apologizes, Resigns, Slams Spencer for Exaggerations
we will just have to disagree about who has a closed mind re the possibility of the use of junk science to advocate a position.
John,
since the original post was about cost benefits of EPA regulations I have to throw this MJ excerpt in as well, re the Obama admin.'s announced delay in implantation new rules on ozone:
"The EPA also noted that while compliance with the new rule would cost polluters between $19 billion and $90 billion a year by 2020, the benefits to human health will be worth between $13 billion and $100 billion every year."
The c/b seem about equal, though the wide range tells me that don't really have much of a clue. I am also skeptical of a prediction I saw in a USA story that adopting the rules would cost 7 million jobs.
Laurie,
Good link! But I haven't changed my mind, and I find it puzzling that anyone else would find this as a test of closed-mindedness. As I read this, in fact, the only problem with this paper is that it did not agree with the Warmist worldview. That is, the paper says that the satellite data does NOT show the same warming as the (much manipulated) surface data does, and that the paper is somehow WRONG because it does not agree with the computer models. What a backwards proposition, when you elevate computer guesstimates above actual data!
The editor should not have resigned unless he failed to see glaring errors in methodology or data, which he apparently did NOT find. The only thing wrong with the paper was that it was a "minority view" as near as I can tell. He resigned because the mobs with fluorescent torches and renewable bamboo pitchforks came after him.
I appreciate your posting cost-benefit numbers, too, since that's more or less the subject here. The problem with these numbers, especially from the EPA, is that they tend to underestimate costs radically and overestimate benefits. Taking the high cost and low benefit would get you closer to right, but the "truth" might be closer to a factor of 10 further off. Just my experience.
J. Ewing
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