[Vision2020] Comments to Nick's article

Fri Sep 23 11:57:26 PDT 2005

My point is perhaps mostly that the minor change in the last four years from 
American contributions under Kyoto requirements can not have been the result 
in increases in destructive force in the case of Katrina. It also brings up 
the following;

The problem of CO2 and global climate change is largely a question of the 
willingness of end users of hydrocarbon fuels to pay for the sequestration 
of end products of the process of energy delivery.  At the current time, 
even if Kyoto were passed in full and implemented globally, the plan is 
simply to reduce the increases in annual atmospheric greenhouse gases.  The 
real question is how exactly the world’s economy affords to fully stabilize 
the current CO2 we emit.

There are 25 billion tons of CO2 produced from all sources on an annual 
basis from all of the globe’s uses, including non-energy ones such as cement 
production.  Assuming that we need to sequester all of that to reach stable 
CO2 contents, what sort of tax on the basis of tons of CO2 would be 
required?  Figures put out to fix carbon range from lows of $10 to highs of 
$100 per ton, but let’s figure a middle point that works out to about $20 
per ton of CO2 rather than on a carbon basis.  That means half a trillion 
dollars are required per year to fund sequestration.

Global gasoline production is 589 billion gallons per year.  If all of the 
costs for a sequestration program were funded by a gasoline tax, that would 
increase the cost of gasoline globally by a little less than a dollar a 
gallon.

So the question is, are the people of the planet, not just the United States 
or the Annex B countries, but the whole globe, willing to pay that extra 
buck a gallon?

Or if you wish, each American produces just slightly less than 19 tons of 
CO2 a year, which at $20 per ton means a tax for each man woman and child or 
$380 a year or $1520 for a family of four.  How many here are willing to 
sign up for that tax, one which would only deal with 22% of the world’s 
problem?

To get Kyoto passed, the First world agreed to allow unlimited expansion in 
CO2 production in the Third World until 2012 levels.  So assume that the 
Annex B countries are required to solve the problem.  Are you willing to pay 
$2 a gallon of gas or $3,040 per family of four a year to achieve full 
sequestration of CO2, since the third world is not likely to agree to pay 
its share of those costs?

It’s easy for a few to insist that we undertake such measures, but where is 
the global will, let alone the American will, to take on this problem?

Phil Nisbet

>From: Tim Ewers <tewers at uidaho.edu>
>To: "'Phil Nisbet'" <pcnisbet1 at hotmail.com>
>Subject: RE: [Vision2020] Comments to Nick's article
>Date: Fri, 23 Sep 2005 11:31:23 -0700
>
>And to continue with your whatif scenario, in order to have effected the
>reduction in CO2 release you indicated, we would have disabled the means to
>provide support and get in and help those in need of support.  Although, if
>one maintains that the hurricane would not have caused such damage if not
>for global warming then this becomes moot.  But if one is going that route
>then we might also put more faith in the theory the hurricane was brought 
>to
>us by the Japanese in retaliation for WWII bombing.
>
>My point....  I don’t think you will sway anyone here by reason and logical
>argument.
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: vision2020-bounces at moscow.com [mailto:vision2020-bounces at moscow.com]
>On Behalf Of Phil Nisbet
>Sent: Friday, September 23, 2005 11:07 AM
>To: vision2020 at moscow.com
>Subject: [Vision2020] Comments to Nick's article
>
>I posted this to New West, where Nick placed his article after previewing 
>it
>
>to V2020.
>
>Nick
>
>Wow, a treatise worthy of a freshman Philosophy Major.  I somehow expected
>far more of you on the Problem of Evil and something that at least covered
>the Holocaust Philosophers and their refutation of the G-d is dead schools
>you seem to prefer.
>
>But my real bone with you and this article is your last paragraph.  You
>might want to study more fully prior to posting to areas with which you 
>have
>
>less knowledge than Philosophy.
>
>Passage of Kyoto was related to Katrina how?
>
>Let’s assume that though Clinton failed to get Kyoto passed through the
>Senate, somehow the minute he was elected, G W Bush put a full court press
>on and the United States of America instantly not only passed Kyoto, but
>implemented all the provisions of the Treaty.  The treaty calls for 
>emission
>
>reduction to the level of 7% below 1990 for CO2 for the United States, 
>which
>
>with the added 13% which we have grown from 1990 levels now in 2005, is a
>20% reduction in total US CO2 emissions.  Of course the treaty does not
>actually say that we have to meet this goal until 2012, but heck, lets say
>that Bush was really gung ho and in the first four years of his actually
>being able to get things done prior to Katrina hitting shore, they managed
>to get the reductions wished for.
>
>That would be a reduction in New CO2 added atmospherically of about a
>billion tons by the USA, which accounts for 22% of total world emissions.
>That sounds like a pretty large number and a real backslapper victory for
>some, but what does the figure really mean in terms of either Global 
>Climate
>
>Change or total global CO2?
>
>There are 2.70 trillion tons of CO2 in the atmosphere and we are not likely
>to wish to remove it all, unless of course you want massive cooling and the
>next glacial epoch to come screaming in on us.  The global use of carbon
>based technology adds 25 billion tons of CO2 to the mix every year now.
>Non-Annex B countries are exempt from reduction of their inputs to the
>system and they account for 45% of the total global emissions currently 
>with
>
>a growth rate of 18% annually.
>
>So let us assume that Bush had managed to reduce the increase of global
>emissions by 4% on a global basis; that would be a change in total CO2
>atmospherically of 0.03%.  So, how exactly is it that failure in this, that
>0.03% of change in total atmospheric CO2 over the years 2001-2005, was
>responsible for Katrina?
>
>Even if you assumed that Bush in his best of the best reduced US CO2
>emissions to Zero, it’s only a change in global CO2 of 0.15% on a global
>basis.  That much larger change is not what spawned this season’s hurricane
>cycle, a cycle which in the past has indeed sent storms as large as Katrina
>zooming on to the Gulf Coast region.  Katrina was not the largest storm 
>ever
>
>to hit that coast nor are the numbers of storms much different than in the
>normal cycle of low hurricane years versus high hurricane years.  That may
>indeed change in the future, but changes of a few hundred parts per billion
>in Global CO2 content are not going to have been the cause.
>
>Phil Nisbet
>
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