Thanks for the link. Frightening — and I hope, a heavy dose of reality and context for this bill.

So the legislation will give us a 10% to 20% chance of averting a 5º C rise in temperature? I remember the health care reform legislation of 1993. It failed miserably in the Congress. We’re just talking about it again and yes the special interests dominate the agenda.

We’re also talking about reduction of green house gasses again. I’ll take that 10% to 20% chance to avert a 5º C temperature rise because if it fails we will have to wait 16 years for this to come around again. By then it will already be too late to make a difference. By 2025 it will be all to obvious that we are beginning on a road to global climate disruption.

Thanks for putting the ACES bill into context.

Adding to your points, it is the _global_ average for methane that has been rising (again) for the last three years. Given methane’s short life in the atmosphere (~10 years), its highest density being in the northern latitudes, and the likelihood that changes in agricultural practices (ex.: rice strains) fed strongly into “decrease” in global average, it is not only possible, but likely, that the methane time bomb is already detonated. Adding to our general ignorance is the report from the ICCS this past March that there are only 20 scientists world wide studying atmospheric methane (likely because the risk was seen as very low . . . and sometimes even science is all about the money).

I’ve spent a fair amount of time staring at the animated graph at this URL:
http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/ gmd/ ccgg/ globalview/ ch4/ ch4_intro.html

The most relevant thing I have gleaned from this is that the metric of a global average is not the best way to measure or think about atmospheric methane. The positive feedbacks you note as a future occurrence seem highly probable to already be in play and the “average” is only now unmasking this.

I’m leaning toward ACES but when I get stuff like this from Progressive Democrats for America it makes me stand up and think. They are posing this form letter to edit before sending to your congressman. It starts out:

The American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009, HR 2454, is a very flawed bill. The bill does not even attempt to meet the reductions targets that climate scientists warn are necessary to avert catastrophic climate disruption.

As your constituent who is deeply concerned about the future of our children, I am writing to ask you to address the following concerns:

• The Renewable Energy Standard (RES) must be restored to the more stringent levels that were in the ACESA draft released in March,
• Strengthen emissions reduction targets, and eliminate or significantly reduce offsets and strengthen verification of offset quality,
• Protect low and middle-income families: eliminate free allowances to industry, and recycle revenue directly to households.
• Eliminate carbon markets and substitute a direct pricing mechanism,
• Eliminate carbon capture and sequestration (CCS) and limit transition assistance to trade-exposed industries. Increase investment in renewables.
• Protect EPA’s authority to directly regulate emissions of greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.

For more in-depth details on these provisions, [follow this link: INSERT LINK TO LETTER]

I am also concerned that Congress is rushing to action without considering other effective mechanisms; the revenue-neutral carbon tax, managed price approaches and the cap-and-dividend approach have yet to be debated.

It will be very difficult to extricate ourselves from this course of action should ACESA fail, and I am counting on you on to ensure that any climate legislation that earns your support, will actually meet the targeted goals for carbon emissions within the recognized timeline.

Please support the above changes to HR2454, or VOTE NO on ACESA.

Please forward this urgent alert to like-minded friends and family members.

Unless we act quickly to amend the ACESA, a very flawed climate bill will pass the House without considering other effective options. As written the ACESA will not meet the required targets to reduce emissions, will create a $2 trillion dollar derivatives market, and will cost consumers like us more for our energy without much benefit–that’s just a few of it’s flaws. Please ask your representative to amend the bill or vote NO.

END OF TEXT

Put in those terms ACES doesn’t come close to matching the threat from global warming.

[JR: Since they don't answer either of the two key questions, they are really wasting a lot of people's time with this unproductive lobbying campaign. They have the luxury of pretending that there is another game in town, realists don't. The derivatives market is nonsense. The CO2 trading system may be many things, but it is not derivative. It is a primary market, and frankly much easier to verify them many other things that we trade daily and have for decades. It is really quite difficult to hide substantial purchases of coal, oil, or natural gas -- let alone to continue doing so year after year, which is what it would take for any major fraud to succeed.]

Everything we need to do has been made harder by debt. Net state debt now exceeds £700bn. The RBS and Lloyds shambles will add between £1 trillion and 1.5tn. National debt is likely to reach 150% of GDP next year: well beyond the point at which the IMF declares developing countries basket cases.

This introduces two environmental problems. The first is that there is no money left with which to fund a green new deal. The second is that we’ll be able to pay off these debts only by resuming economic growth. Greenhouse gases grow because the economy grows. The UK’s liabilities make the transition to a steady state economy, let alone a managed contraction, much harder to achieve. They appear to commit us to either growth or default for at least a generation. The debt crisis is an environmental disaster.

george isn’t allowing for the possibility of spending new infrastruture into existence without borrowing money, which is looking like the best option to me the more “fiscal policy” is applied to rescue a stupidly-credit-dependent system.

people talk about “unlimited growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.” i try to stay away from formulations like that. but when i was thinking about this the other day i had to admit i don’t see the mainline thinking putting 2 and 2 together about what future labor productivity will be doing.

will it be rescuing the biosphere? or will it be repaying yesterday’s creditors?

you can’t say “it will be repaying yesterday’s creditors by restoring the planet.” the work the planet needs will incur its own costs, and ordinarily the economy grows by “putting more people to work in more productive ways.”

tomorrow, the skimmable cream of our labor productivity will be very busy — reducing our ecological footprint, and the main source of population growth will be robots, eh?

the ponzi scheme metaphor doesn’t get us close enough to this.…

1) Methane concentrations have been rising for 3 years now;
2) sattelite data shows it’s coming from the melting perma frost and calthrates in the northern lattitudes.

Bad stuff, happening now. The only real question for us is , “At what point does this become a self-reinforcing feedback loop?”

We can close our eyes, cross our fingers and hope that point is sometime after the weak 2020 goals in Waxman, OR we can push for more aggressive goals.

More aggresive goals would have the added benefit of putting us in a better position to negotiate with China and India at Copenhagen.

I just can’t see how anyone who knows the science can be anything but scared as hell that this bill will pass as is.

And yet, having said that, the only thing scarier is no bill passing.

On this I am confident it will deliver.

“As a result, the Environmental Protection Agency projects that even if the emissions limits go into effect, the U.S. would use more carbon-dioxide-heavy coal in 2020 than it did in 2005.”

and

“Environmental groups also say the bill could set off a boom in the construction of new coal plants because of provisions that would restrict legal efforts to block such projects.”

[JR: Gimme a break. Those "environmental groups" are The Breakthrough Institute!!! If the coal industry wants to believe their crap, I say that's great. But if you believe their crap over my analysis, well, you are clearly at the wrong blog. This bill would start squeezing out new coal once it becomes law, and begin to pinch existing coal by the middle of the next decade.]

and

“Under the plan, the EPA projects that after 2020, conventional coal use would begin to fall quickly. That prediction rests on a still-uncertain assumption that new nuclear power plants would begin to come on line.”

Full story at:
http://www.latimes.com/ news/ nationworld/ nation/ la-na-coal22-2009jun22,0,6722721.story

So, we settle for a not-good-enough-to-prevent-600 ppm “target” of a lousy 17% CO2 reduction by 2020, then give the coal industry everything they want, including a $60 Billion “clean coal” development slush fund, then make it harder for local communities to stop new coal plants from being built, and then pin the theory that coal burning might start “rapidly declining after 2020″ dependent on the gotcha of getting a bunch of new nuke plants built by then, and then implement an uber-complex paper-trading Cap&Trade ponzi scheme that nobody even pretends they understand completely… but, hey, it has to be complex legislation, right? Complex like a fox is what it is.

600 pages hides a lot of sins, folks. And the more I find out about Waxman-Markey, the more it sounds like a government bail-out for the coal and nuclear power industry and the less like a bill that will do anything meaningful to prevent catastrophic climate change.

I think we been had — and are now having it pushed down our throats by our own advocates just because they’ve been worn down into accepting the trickle-down philosophy prevalent in Washington that “capitulation disguised as compromise is everything” and that “something, no matter how pitiful and corrupt, is better than nothing”.

I think not, because (1) China and other developing counties will not accept binding emission caps; and (2) if they did, then the U.S. Congress probably would not because the massive international offsets that Waxman-Markey is relying on –- exceeding our entire national emission target in 2050 -– would be appropriated by other countries to meet their own compliance obligations.

[JR: Your analysis is exactly backwards. If China won't accept binding emissions caps, then nothing we do matters, so your comment is irrelevant. But I strongly disagree with that view. The key point is that if China could, then this bill is clearly integral to making that possible. And if they do, then the international offsets market will indeed shrink and become much more expensive. That's my point!!]

“Second, what would be the outcome if the bill failed?”

If it fails, then the Waxman-Markey approach to climate policy would no longer be the “only game in town”. For that matter, carbon tax legislation — which is more about extracting revenue from regulated industries than about reducing emissions — would not be the only other game in town. The political leadership would be open to more creative and pragmatic approaches to GHG regulation.

Case in point: Obama’s “strongest regulations ever for tailpipe greenhouse gas emissions” will motivate investment in vehicle efficiency technologies only around half the breakeven (zero-net-cost) investment level, considering only the direct benefit of fuel savings. (Never mind environmental and energy security benefits.) Congress does not yet know how to effectively regulate vehicles.

The fundamental flaw of Waxman-Markey’s caps-and-standards-based regulatory approach is that the policy objective of achieving a predetermined emission target at minimum cost is inappropriate when the target is not science-based and is insufficient to achieve environmental sustainability. In view of political realities, the appropriate goal of climate policy is not to achieve an unsustainable emission target at minimum cost; the goal should be to achieve minimum emissions at acceptable cost. Waxman-Markey’s economy-wide trading system will not do this. It will nullify potential environmental benefits of technology advancement and economies of scale by exploiting such advances to further reduce the global emissions price, not to further reduce global emissions. Voluntary efforts by individuals and corporations to further reduce their carbon footprint would be futile, as any such actions would simply allow industrial emitters to correspondingly increase their carbon footprint.

[JR: But the target is science-based. It just happens to be inadequate. Your voluntary mechanisms, however, are doomed to fail.]

IMHO Joe, and djrabbit are correct here. We gotta show we can make even a paltry level of progress. Then we gotta show, that it won’t kill our economic prospects. Only then do we have a hope of switching towards a more appropriate speed of transition. The tragedy, is that we are starting this twenty years too late. But, that is water over the dam. We can only progress from the current state of affairs. And we can only change the course of a supertanker slowly. Risking, our place at the wheel by insisting on too much too soon could be deadly.

Personally i doubt we can make 2C (or 450ppm). But those are arbitray targets. Sacrificing (say) 3C, because we can’t reach 2C, could commit us to 6C.