Don’t Worry About the First Ten Years
May 11th, 2009Posted by: Roger Pielke, Jr.
In ClimateWire Darren Samuelson has a very nice roundup of the current state of play of cap and trade legislation. The following statement from Congressman Mike Doyle (D-PA) aptly sums up why I think that cap and trade will both pass as law and do little or nothing to reduce emissions:
“Remember, this is an 80 percent reduction by 2050,” Doyle said. “This is 2009. We’ve got 41 years in this deal, and we shouldn’t be so worried about the first 10 years. Because if we can’t mitigate the economic impact of the first 10 years, we’re not going to have a bill anyway. You’re just not going to build public support for it and members of Congress to vote for it.”
May 11th, 2009 at 10:10 am
Using MAGICC: Model for the Assessment of Greenhouse-gas Induced Climate Change, a climate model simulator developed by NCAR scientists (reportedly by Dr. Tom Wigley, primarily), Paul “Chip” Knappenberger over at ***http://masterresource.org/?p=2355*** (May 6 and May 7) and ***http://www.worldclimatereport.com/*** (April 30 and May 6) concludes that even if the US, by the Waxman-Markey Climate Bill, reduced its carbon dioxide emissions by 83% below 2005 levels by 2050, it would only amount to a reduction of global warming of less than three-thousandths (3/1000) of a ºC per year. I understand that the result is furthermore based upon an assumption of a linear (rather than logarithmic) relationship between CO2 emissions and temperature, and that a logarithmic assumption would produce an even more meaningless reduction in global warming.
Does not appear worth the economic displacement affecting only the US, and more legislators should know this.