Harry Marks wrote:I guess I could just read Tim Flannery, but this is the first I have heard of it.
Harry, I responded in this thread to the eye rolling laughter
expressed at the idea that actual results for the climate could be better with a Trump Presidency than a Clinton Presidency. In fact that seems clear to me.
However, climate is a very complex topic, and the simplistic claim that the climate will be better under left wing policies naturally has the broad support of the whole IPCC and its UN Paris Agreement. Both Clinton and Trump operate on the basis of spin and deception, due to the depraved corruption of politics. The Trump Presidency however provides an opportunity to analyse the qualities of delusion that infest the whole false claim that emission reduction is the key to climate salvation.
I mentioned Flannery, the head of Australia’s Climate Council, because he cites research of the Ocean Foresters, a science-engineering group that I am a member of, about the potential of seaweed to play a decisive part in stabilising the global climate. The Guardian headlined this seaweed point in its review
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/ ... m-flannery of Flannery’s book,
An Atmosphere of Hope, but the New York Review of Books review
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/2016/10 ... the-worst/ described Flannery’s citation of our Ocean Forest research as fringe. Such groundless dismissal is symptomatic of the arrogant way the emission reduction ideology treats scientific and economic debate, and why climate science is viewed with contempt by conservatives.
Harry Marks wrote:Are people supposed to eat the algae, as soylent green?
No. Charlton Heston gave algae a bad name. Algae nutrient comes from upwelling deep ocean water, not from murdered young human corpses as in that dysto-pic. Algae provides fish food, which can be eaten by humans, saving the ocean from mass extinction and supporting global food security. Algae also provides fertilizer for land based use as in biochar, as well as being the base of crude oil, with all its various uses.
Harry Marks wrote: Will it be burned?
Algae can be burned as biodiesel or coal or gas substitute, as a way of converting our current carbon haemorrhage into a sustainable ecological economy while retaining the fossil fuel economy for transport and electricity.
Harry Marks wrote: Is this the proposal to seed plankton growth with iron particles spread over the oceans (actually being tried, I understand).
I am friends with Russ George, who is mercilessly attacked by the emission reduction ideologues for proving them wrong. He has proved that ocean iron fertilization is the best way to protect fish stocks, but his work gets ignored and lampooned by the maniacs at the UN. Ocean Iron Fertilization is a very pointed example of the hostility of the UN to entrepreneurs. See
http://russgeorge.net/ for a very clear explanation of this scandal, how OIF doubled salmon stocks and the refusal of the UN to allow improvement of ocean pasture is killing the seas.
Harry Marks wrote: It matters a lot how it is supposed to be made commercially viable.
True. My observation of the climate debate is that the most commercial sense comes from Bjorn Lomborg of the Copenhagen Institute, and the large number of Nobel Economics Laureates who support him, but this whole agenda of commercialisation gets systematically ignored by the UN for ideological reasons. The inability to engage commerce effectively for large scale research and development as proposed by Lomborg is a scandal and a disgrace, showing the emission reduction ideologues have failed to provide a workable theory of change for climate security.
Initiatives with commercial potential include
Mission Innovation and the
Global Apollo Programme.
Harry Marks wrote:
At the moment, large-scale emissions reductions are not at all a false hope.
Yes they are. First lets just leave aside the backlash from the American electorate who have demonstrated in making Trump President that they will not support emission reductions. That political reaction, based on economic impact, makes emission reduction a false hope by itself. Your forehead is not an effective tool to demolish a brick wall.
However, the scientific reason why emission reduction is a false hope is even worse than this political context, justifying Trump’s view that emission reduction is a hoax. Climate science is not a hoax, but the idea that emission reduction is a useful mitigation strategy most definitely is a big hoax.
Even if we successfully reduced net emissions to zero we would be in a situation where the planetary geological drivers put sea level about sixty feet higher than at present due to the amount of carbon already in the air. That is catastrophic, and such a Sword of Damocles should be unacceptable. We have to work out as a matter of urgency how to remove carbon from the air, inventing scaleable negative emission technology. Emission reduction is a useless distraction from this primary global security emergency.
Harry Marks wrote: My own estimate of the necessary carbon tax to reduce emissions by 80 percent (needed within 10 years - the Paris targets are really inadequate) would only be roughly equivalent to two and a half times the current cost of gasoline, natural gas and coal. Compensated by tax reductions or other means, this would impose a fairly small cost on the average consumer. At most 10 percent of their income, probably more like 2 percent.
And my own estimate of the amount of sea required to reduce emissions by 200% is 1% of the world ocean covered with algae farms, with the result of increased income, not imposition of costs. I think that is feasible, whereas the carbon tax model is not feasible.
Harry Marks wrote:
Let's see, would I pay 10 percent of my income to save the planet? If not, why not?
No in this case I would not, for three reasons. Emission reduction will not save the planet, will impose frictional costs like sand in gears, and is a waste of money on something that will not work for its stated purpose. By contrast, a focus on the negative emission technologies of carbon mining using large scale ocean based algae production will increase incomes, not decrease them, and will rapidly stabilise the global climate.
Harry Marks wrote:
There are three ways public goods have been financed. The ancient way was to tap large landowners to pay. The modern ways are government and advertising. If you think algae farming is going to be financed by advertising, I would love to see the plan.
You are defining public goods too narrowly. Many public goods are funded by profit, as Adam Smith explained in
The Wealth of Nations. Large scale ocean based algae production can produce food, fuel, feed, fabric, fertilizer and infrastructure, while delivering the public goods of cooling the sea, removing acidity, protecting coral and other biodiversity and mining carbon from the air. It will be funded by profit, providing a readily scalable and innovative new global industry aiming to transform CO2 from dangerous waste to useful commodities.
Harry Marks wrote:
Government protection of the environment is not central planning.
Imagining that emission reduction will fix the climate involves a very heavy dollop of central planning. The lead role of science in environmental policy has unfortunately supported the false idea that governments must have a central vanguard role in fixing the climate. Unfortunately this has produced the false theories of emission reduction as the dominant left wing climate ideology.
Trump and the other denialists only says climate science is wrong because they have not found a more popular way to give voice to their doubts about emission reduction. My goal is to convert them to recognising that fixing the climate is good and necessary for the capitalist system.
Harry Marks wrote:
Bernie Sanders polled better against Trump right from the start of the primaries.
Sanders would have been crushed by Trump if the Democrats had been foolish enough to make him their candidate. He is so far away from mainstream values that the prospect of him becoming President would have created widespread alarm, far outweighing the alarm among liberals about Trump.
Harry Marks wrote:
Emission trading is sufficient to provide incentives. This has been amply demonstrated on SO2. The number of permits can be gradually reduced to match environmental carrying capacity, to provide needed adjustment time.
Acid rain from sulphur dioxide is a far smaller and more manageable problem than global warming. The economic harm from reducing CO2 emissions by making energy more expensive is only partly offset by the benefits of reduced pollution. The sand in the gears of the world economy caused by making energy more expensive as a primary climate strategy will never be politically acceptable.
Harry Marks wrote:Sinks, like algae farms, need to be able to earn permits, which they have not always been able to do, but certainly can be in principle.
Algae farms are not a carbon sink but rather are a new profitable industry. A carbon sink is a place of permanent useless sequestration. The algae model is very different from forestry or geological burial of CO2.Algae grows about a hundred times faster than trees, and provides useful products which can enable all that carbon to be constantly recycled in the world economy, or stored in very useful places like roads and buildings and algae farm fabric.
Harry Marks wrote:
If the coal companies cannot generate enough value from consumers to pay for their damage to the rest of the economy, then they should go out of business. Otherwise they are just thieves with a good lawyer.
Harry, my comment that you respond to here was in answer to your statement that “Solid economic analysis shows there is literally no reason for business to oppose charging for externalities.” I was pointing out that businesses routinely oppose paying for their externalities. Another example is that the sugar industry do not pay for the harm caused by obesity. Your “literally” statement is rhetorical.
Harry Marks wrote:why aren't they getting on with it? Or, more to the point, why don't we just give them the incentives so they can get on with it?
The scale of global transformation required to move to an algae based energy economy is so big that people have not yet been able to take the first steps.
In
Climbing Mount Improbable by Richard Dawkins, he points out that evolution moves by tiny incremental steps building on existing precedent, and that a better system which lacks an incremental evolutionary path will never arise. The incremental evolutionary path to an algae economy requires recognition that ocean algae systems will only operate effectively on a big scale, but can be tested and proven on small scale, with eyes on the prize.
I think this system will be commercially profitable, so a shareholder prospectus is a better investment path than public subsidy, given that governments are idiots when it comes to entrepreneurial activity, albeit with a necessary role to ensure safety. NASA and a range of other inventors have made a start on the components, but the overall John Galt new system for ocean based algae production has not yet been presented. We are at the Kitty Hawk stage of the new global algae energy industry.