The Chairman of Fairfax County’s Board of Supervisors is running for reelection on the shoulders of his “Cool Counties” initiative, the principle element of which is to reduce green house gases by 80% over the next 46 years. Indeed, he unilaterally committed the county to this goal and now trumpets it on the county’s web pages. Gerry Connolly promotes himself through this action by pandering to the general public ignorance on global warming. This may reflect legitimate political self-preservation, and perhaps even political acumen, but it does not reflect honest statesmanship, especially because Connolly already knows that the Cool Counties goal is bankrupt. The public deserves the truth on these issues and hence this posting.
In a paper soon to be published, Scott Barrett explains why we are not facing a global emergency, why we need not act precipitously and without sufficient regard to the economic consequences, and why we will never reach, nor need to reach an 80% reduction in greenhouse gases. So who is Scott Barrett and why should anyone listen to him?
Dr. Barrett is the Director of the Energy, Environment, Science & Technology Program, and a Professor of Environmental Economics & International Political Economy at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies. If you care about degrees, he graduated summa cum laude in resource economics from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and earned his doctorate in economics at the London School of Economics. He is also on the board of directors of the Climate Policy Center, a more or less centerist group that gets its money from foundations, many of which also fund climate alarmists and some of which fund climate deniers (if either of those terms mean anything).
In other words, this is the person to whom the political left goes for advice. In still other words, it’s ok to listen to him because he is not any kind of climate change “denier”. So what does he have to say? In essence he makes three points, together which explain why Cool Counties is irrelevant:
1. The world will never cooperate enough to reach an 80% reduction of greenhouse gases by 2050.
2. Geoengineering by seeding the atmosphere with reflective particles, in the same way as does a volcanic eruption, is virtually “costless”, has immediate results, and extends indefinitely the time we have to move from a carbon based economy to a non-CO2 producing energy.
3. Because the costs of geoengineering are so small, because the technology already exists, and because the economic consequences of increased warming are unacceptable to any of the major developed and developing nations, someone is going to do this with or without the rest of the world’s permission.
Here are a couple of important quotations from his paper, entitled, “The Incredible Economics of Geoengineering”. [When the paper has been posted to the web, I’ll provide a link here.]
Geoengineering is the deliberate modification of the climate by means other than by changing the atmospheric concentration of greenhouse gases. It is a concept that needs to be taken seriously.
It has been widely suggested that global mean temperature should not be allowed to increase by more than 2º C. At a concentration level of 550 parts per million CO2, mean global temperature is likely to rise 1.5º to 4.5º C. Put differently, to be confident (but not certain) of limiting temperature change to 2º C, concentrations would have to be capped at a level far below 550 ppm—to a level more like 380 ppm. This goal is essentially unattainable. Geoengineering might therefore be an indispensable ingredient of a policy aiming to ensure that mean global temperature rises by no more than 2º C.
Like volcanic eruptions, geoengineering would change the color of the sky. Volcanic particles whiten the sky by day (an environmental loss, presumably, though one that is already being caused by atmospheric pollution), but make sunsets and sunrises more vibrant (Crutzen 2006).
Nordhaus concluded that offsetting all greenhouse gas emissions today would cost about $8 billion per year—an amount so low that he treats the geoengineering option as being costless. According to Teller et al., engineered particles would be even cheaper; they estimate that the sunlight scattering needed to offset the warming effect of rising greenhouse gas concentrations by the year 2100 would cost just $1 billion per year. Keith thinks this is an optimistic estimate, but says that, “it is unlikely that cost would play any significant role in a decision to deploy stratospheric scatterers because the cost of any such system is trivial compared to the cost of other mitigation options.”
Taking into account the effect of engineered particles on scattering harmful UV radiation, Teller and his colleagues calculate that this health-related benefit for the U.S. alone would exceed the total cost of geoengineering by more than an order of magnitude. Deliberate climate modification would also allow carbon dioxide concentrations to remain elevated—an aid to agriculture.
Just as important as the cost of geoengineering relative to emission reductions is the nature of these two options. Geoengineering constitutes a large project (Schelling 1996). By means of this technology, a single country, acting alone, can offset its own emissions—and those of every other country. By contrast, mitigating climate change by reducing emissions requires unprecedented international cooperation and very substantial costs. Stabilizing atmospheric concentrations requires a 60 to 80 percent cut in CO2 emissions worldwide. In the years since the Framework Convention on Climate Change was adopted, global emissions have risen about 20 percent. Even if the Kyoto Protocol is implemented to the letter, global emissions will keep on rising. So will concentrations. Theory points to the difficulty in achieving substantial and wide scale cooperation for this problem, and the record to date sadly supports this prediction.
According to Nordhaus and Boyer, climate change might cost the United States alone about $82 billion in present value terms. Using a three percent rate of discount, this is equivalent to an annual loss of about $2.5 billion. If the United States cut its emissions, it could reduce this damage somewhat. If it turned to geoengineering, it could eliminate this damage. If geoengineering is as cheap and effective as is claimed, the U.S. might prefer the geoengineering option. So, of course, might other countries.
Notably, Dr. Barrett is neither the first nor the only individual to discuss geoengineering as the most likely candidate for moderating global warming (whether man made or not). See, for example, Joel Schwartz’s comments on National Review Online , or Cruzen’s seminal paper. Indeed, as early as 1992, the National Research Council concluded geoengineering would be effective and inexpensive. Dr. Barrett places the period at the end of the sentence – concluding that it geoengineering is inevitable.
We may now politely say goodbye to the 80% goal and instead concentrate on means to reduce energy costs, improve the local environment and move to new, non-carbon energy sources.
