An Inconvenient Ruth II
Man, some conservative bloggers ought to buy Stupid-Abatement packages to offset their writing on this Al Gore’s House business. Wizbang allows a fact I did not know, that Gore buys as much “green power” for his mansion as possible, only to call this a bad thing! because
This is a zero-sum game, folks. The more of the 29 megawatts [from TVA's existing wind generators] he uses the less there is for others to use, so he still looks really gluttonous. Additionally, based upon the law of supply and demand, he drives up the price of this green energy, preventing others from using it because it becomes too cost prohibitive.
This prompts <irony>flaming libertarian Tim Lambert</irony> to remind us that
I guess Priestap’s version of the law of supply and demand must say “Supply is fixed and cannot be changed.” If demand drives up the price of green energy, it will be profitable for the TVA to install more wind machines and supply more green energy. I think Priestap probably could have figured this out if Gore wasn’t involved, but he’s obviously pushed these folks over the edge into insanity.
Hey, I’ve hated Al Gore myself within living memory. I know what it’s like. But god damn, what Lambert calls “Gore Derangement Syndrome” leads Wizbang’s writer to construe market forces in such a way to impeach almost any market-based solution to almost any problem. Why, if we let the rich buy things, the demand will tend to make them more expensive for the po’ folks! Wizbang ought to put one of those Ché heads on their masthead. Further evidence that “conservatism” in America now consists of little more than hating liberals and rooting for more wars.
Meanwhile, Laer, at a blog called Cheat Seeking Missiles thinks he’s figured out a gotcha:
Several of the leftyposts have challenged the Tennessee Center’s math — not with facts, but with suppositions — but none raise a question about the foundational mathematical assumptions of carbon neutrality.
Suppose Al buys trees to offset the carbon footprint of his private jet. If they’re seedlings, they’re not scrubbing the amount of carbon of mature trees, the trees that are used in neutrality calculations. If the money preserves mature forests, is he compensating for the tree-buying organization’s management costs and over-contributing to take care of his true carbon footprint?
Good questions. Don’t expect the Warmie Left to answer them.
Actually, the questions about the trees are very close to good questions. Terapass, for instance, about which I’ve blogged before, refuses to invest in forestry precisely because the company’s principals don’t believe it’s a permanent solution – every tree is going to die and rot at some point, or be burned, and then your carbon has escaped bwa-ha-ha! Warmie Left – warm leftie? – Your Talking Dog interviewed Terapass cofounder Adam Stein earlier this month. Interestingly, Stein himself avers that
I am reluctant to pick winners, because there is no silver bullet for climate change. The solutions will be broad-based; technology is critical, but so is conservation. I’ve noticed an unfortunate tendency for people to anoint this or that technology as the savior.
which is an interesting statement in light of Terapass’s refusal to fund forestation – Terapass may be wrong about forestation! So since carbon abatement is still in its infancy, it might be good that someone is pursuing forestation as a strategy while others eschew it. Stein says later in the interview
We avoid forestry projects. Although, to be honest, our reasons for avoiding these projects really aren’t related to all the issues you hear about with clearing of tropical rainforest. At a more basic level, there are still a lot of questions around the basic science of accounting for carbon reductions from forestry projects. Personally, I would very much like to see forestry brought into the fold, because deforestation accounts for about 20% of climate change. But we just don’t feel that these projects are the best use of our members’ dollars at this time.
In other words, he inclines Laer’s way, but admits that he is unsure! Would Laer do the same? Would it help if we cover over the name “Al Gore” and replace it with “Dick Cheney” or “Joe Shmoe?”
One last note. Laer writes that “lefty posts” attacked the original publicity stunt “not with facts, but with suppositions.” But the articles I’ve seen on Gore’s offset purchases don’t specifically state that Gore buys forestation-based offsets. Nor do any links from Laer’s piece establish that that’s Gore’s strategy. I guess he’s . . . supposing.
Comment by Jackmormon —
February 27, 2007 @ 9:08 pm
Strangely enough, my sister’s postdoc research focusses on carbon cycles in forests. When I can understand what the hell she’s talking about, it seems to be: “a lot of the science is still uncertain.” Another part, if I’ve got it right, is that the whole forest–dirt, microorganisms, root network, fungi, schmutz and all–is involved in the carbon recycling. You can’t cut down all the trees and then five years later replant trees of the same size and expect to see the same chemistry instantly.
Anyway, we’ve gone so far towards altering the environment that mocking Al Gore’s carbon offsets for not yet saving the world is just silly. Not even rearranging deck chairs on the Titantic silly, more like writing a nasty letter about the tea service on the Titantic.
Comment by Barry —
February 27, 2007 @ 9:18 pm
Not meaning to restart the liberal-libertarian wars, but the commentators at Reason remind me of those posers who claim to be libertarian, but seem to delight in bashing liberals.
Perhaps you should excommunicate them
Trackback by Deltoid —
February 27, 2007 @ 9:36 pm
Gore Derangement Syndrome…
Conservatives and faux libertarians have been running with an attack on Al Gore from a junior version of the Competitive Enterprise Institute — apparently he has a big house/office and it uses a lot of energy. Genuine libertarian Jim Henley……
Comment by Matt Weiner —
February 27, 2007 @ 10:47 pm
You’ll be happy to know that when I was at dinner CNN was featuring a story on this with two pretty long facetime quotes from the Tennessee Center guy. It later had some discussion of websites for calculating your carbon footprint — I can’t judge whether that part was any good, because I was eating — but I was steamed that a hack job like this is getting mainstream exposure at all.
Also, if anyone wants to tell me what Gore’s personal energy expenditures have to do with anything, I’d appreciate it. I mean, suppose he cools his house with dry ice. Does that tell us anything about what public policy is best?
Comment by Thoreau —
February 27, 2007 @ 11:30 pm
They’re just jealous of Al Gore: He’s the first person to win a presidential election and an Oscar.
Comment by Fledermaus —
February 27, 2007 @ 11:44 pm
Also, if anyone wants to tell me what Gore’s personal energy expenditures have to do with anything
Oh silly Matt. Who says arguments have to be relevant?
Comment by Thomas Nephew —
February 28, 2007 @ 2:35 am
Terapass, for instance, about which I’ve blogged before, refuses to invest in forestry precisely because the company’s principals don’t believe it’s a permanent solution – every tree is going to die and rot at some point, or be burned, and then your carbon has escaped bwa-ha-ha!
(1) If I could turn half the CO2 in the atmosphere into trees (or algae, or prairie, or whatever), I’d do it. (Assuming that wouldn’t trigger an ice age.) Sure, the trees will turn back into C02 sometime, but I wouldn’t plan to stop planting more trees, plus the ones I planted would be seeding and making more trees too, all of which would/could soak up the rotted-tree-CO2 again. Trees are great not-CO2 carbon storage; they don’t do it as long as diamonds, but they’re easier to make, and hang on to the carbon for a decent length of time, 20-40-100 years; it’s kind of their raison d’etre. We should have lots more trees.
(2) It seemed to me the Stein comment you cite isn’t about “trees turn back into CO2 so what good is that,” but rather about issues of how to *value* the contribution to atmospheric CO2 removal by an impermanent, dynamic solution like planting forests. We should help Mr. Stein figure out how to properly value storing carbon, albeit temporarily, in trees.
Comment by Ian Gould —
February 28, 2007 @ 3:25 am
Reputable carbon sink forestry projects work on the following basis:
1. Planted areas must be deforested and must be maintained in perpetuity as forests. Yes, individual trees will die but the overall peak carbon contained has to be roughly constant.
2. The carbon sequestered over how many years it’ll take to reach peak growth in calculated and this is the amount of offsets the area will generate.
3. So in year one, Al Gore pays for 10 tons of sequestration, the sink manager plants sufficient trees to sequester 10 tonnes of carbon – and then adds an extra margin to allow for drought, other unfavorable growing conditions, disease etc.
4. The sink is insured against forest fire or other disasters and the manager is contractually obliged to use the insurance money to replant or to purchase equivalent offsets elsewhere.
5. As with any contract of this complexity, there are outside auditors to monitor compliance and certify that the contracted reductions have actually occurred.
So there’s a lag between the credits being purchased and the offsets occurring but given that carbon dioxide has an atmospheric residence time of several hundred years, that makes little difference.
As the market develops we can expect to see firms and investors buying credits as an investment or as a hedge (i.e. a firm may want to expand in the future and they want to lock in the current carbon price).
As the market develops people should start to buy credits for forest sequestration which has already occurred.
Trackback by Unpartisan.com Political News and Blog Aggregator —
February 28, 2007 @ 5:04 am
Gore’s home hogs power, group alleges…
NASHVILLE, Tenn. | Al Gore, a leading opponent of global warming, is being called a hypocrite by a c…
Comment by Matt Weiner —
February 28, 2007 @ 9:23 am
Oh silly Matt. Who says arguments have to be relevant?
To be fair Brian Doherty just left a comment in the other thread addressing that point, and a gracious followup. I’ve responded to him there.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
February 28, 2007 @ 9:31 am
I’m doubtful about reforestry projects for carbon sequestration, because I don’t think that in practise anyone can guarantee that the land will be locked up even over a half-century timescale. A very common response to major social failure is that agriculturalists come in and cut down the trees.
That said, I think that I read a study once that suggested that the best prospects for long-term carbon sequestration through reforestry was to periodically cut down the trees and dump them into a peat bog.
Comment by Avram —
February 28, 2007 @ 11:33 am
If I could turn half the CO2 in the atmosphere into diamonds, the DeBeers family would hire someone to kill me.
Comment by Rich Puchalsky —
February 28, 2007 @ 1:14 pm
There is a principled argument against carbon offsets through efficiency, too, although it doesn’t have anything to do with the Gore Derangment Syndrome victims. Let’s say that you make all power stations 10% more efficient. (This can be done through investments in more modern turbines and so on.) In theory, you could then take each 10th coal burning power plant and turn it off. However, if demand for electricity has been growing — which it’s going to do for the foreseable future, probably — then what it more likely to happen is that you don’t turn off any plants, you just use them to produce 10% more electricity. The end effect is that you never get CO2 reductions, you only avoid increases, and meanwhile you’ve been making investments in plants that you therefore don’t want to replace.
The same thing can happen with demand reductions (i.e. efficiency increases in use of energy), although in that case you’re at least investing in items that will be useful no matter what.
One way or another, this isn’t a problem that “the market” can solve by itself, because there is no immediate penalty for releasing CO2. Whether it’s done through government command-and-control or through what people call “market mechanisms” (i.e. the government does social enginneering using a tax system or a system of unreal property), the market is a sideshow.
Comment by lemuel pitkin —
February 28, 2007 @ 3:21 pm
Whether it’s done through government command-and-control or through what people call “market mechanisms†(i.e. the government does social enginneering using a tax system or a system of unreal property), the market is a sideshow.
Rich, that’s just not true. “The market” in the sense of dispersed decision making based on incentives plays a much bigger role with taxes or fictitious property than with a simple command-and-control system.
Suppose the government sets a carbon tax of a nickel per ton. It’s up to every individual powerplant operator to decide what carbon reductions make sense at this cost. And they will have a much better knowledge of this than the government does. And then they will increase their prices accordingly, at which point it will be up to the energy consuemr to decide how and how much to reduce consumption. That is VERY different from simply mandating certain changes in consumption.
I mean, does the fact that the Fed sets one interest rate mean that the financial market is a sideshow? Does the mortgage interest deduction mean the housing market is just a sideshow?
Comment by Barry —
February 28, 2007 @ 4:15 pm
Comment by Avram —
“If I could turn half the CO2 in the atmosphere into diamonds, the DeBeers family would hire someone to kill me. ”
Nah, for that they’d probably do it personally, to make sure. That would *really* terrify them; selling diamonds without cartel permission merely pisses them off.