Carbon Credits

[tommcginnis]

QUOTE="DallasCowboysFan]Emissions are always going to be produced because something has to occur at the source, whether it is more coal being fed into a boiler or more uranium being being produced at a nuclear power plant.
### Unless of course it comes from photovoltaic or wind, or even bio fuels, since the global carbon budget sees bio fuels (who's carbon content was taken during the [recent] life of the plant, not sequestered and accumulating underground for the last 200,000,000 years) as NOT contributing to problematic emissions. Whoops.

But when the cars are moving in urban areas and along interstates, they aren't polluting the local air we breathe. The electricity we use recharging our cars at night would be unused anyhow. The power companies have to produce electricity whether it is sold to me and you or if it goes unsold.
### Absolutely wrong. Load-following is an art form that utilities absolutely need to master, or units blow, power quality goes to shit, lines overheat/sag and BOOM...... The only thing that actually *stores* electricity is a capacitor -- simply impractical, and very dangerous, to think of on a utility scale. (The thing that makes the spark in your car is about the size of your fist. Imagine that on a GW basis. Ouchie!)

The major benefit of electric vehicles is that they do not consume petroleum, of which 50 percent of everything we use is imported. If we use coal, natural gas or hydro to power our local electrical plants we consume local resources. If we consume oil, it comes from unstable regions like the Middle East and Venezuela. The less oil we import, the less likely we will have soldiers returning home in body bags and Middle Eastern influence on domestic policy is diminished.
### More wrongness. A major portion of our (U.S.) consumed petroleum goes into materials production for things like, ohhhhh, the plastics THAT SURROUND YOUR SCREEN RIGHT NOW. Further, the United States is a major *exporter* of petroleum -- including the majority from Alaska (heading to Japan and China, FWIW).....

It's not just saving the environment, it's good foreign policy.
### Well, not to hijack the thread or anything, but..... WATER is already much more of a issue around the world, than that purported to involve hydrocarbons. Jus' sayin'.....

 

[DallasCowboysFan]

Too far off base? Yes.

Pollution laws were first based on amount: STOP.
Then the Command&Control regime pushed a given technology: DO THIS.


Multiple top-flight economists designed policies and wrote papers to argue and demonstrate that putting a price on pollution -- *internalizing* an external effect of some activity (i.e., electricity generation) would cause [a] market mechanism to be triggered, bringing the full, AND UNFETTERED, technological weight of science and industry to bear, and find the cheapest way of reducing *biosphere-wide* pollution, as long as participants were allowed to trade in the reduction technology and in the *monetized* results. Cap&Trade, which (since about 2000) is wrongly claimed by both sides to be a "liberal" idea, is in fact the creation of free-market wonks seeking to free industry from (the very onerous) Command&Control.

Technologically, the reduction methods almost all entail a ferocious use of electricity -- but they are *all* expensive, and they *all* benefit from economies of scale. They are NOT "efficient" compared to the prior, externality-imposing activities. Whoa no. And because of that expense in building AND expense in operation, the market mechanism drives each company to reduce/OR PURCHASE right up to its own, LEAST COST, marginal cost of emission, OR BE PAID for the extra, by a company who's own cost of reduction would be higher.

The reducing company benefits; the paying company benefits; the economy benefits; our air supply benefits.

And it worked wonders. 30-40 years ago, graduate degrees based on research in "Acid Deposition" (what was popularly -- if erroneously called, "Acid Rain") were a dime-a-dozen, whether in forestry, fisheries, hydrology, recreation, entomology, whatever. Now? "Less so."

I don't doubt that cap and trade has had a positive effect on business for several years. But that was in the beginning. It doesn't solve the problem that the industries producing excessive levels of pollution are still producing it decades later. It's an old idea that was good when it was introduced, but now it needs to go.

It would be more productive for the govt to provide low interest loans to polluting industries like steel producers or coal consuming utilities than allow cap and trade. The loans would be used to buy more efficient coal plants or 'scrubbers' to clean the exhaust.

The carbon credits are a political tool to benefit new industries at the expense of older industries. But it does nothing to eliminate pollution. It was a good idea decades ago when higher efficiency tools were more expensive, but now they are common place and the old technology that created the pollution is obsolete and unavailable. Unless you live in China.

I disagree with the idea of acid rain. When I was in the Army stationed in Germany it most of their electricity was produced from coal plants, at least around 1990. I was driving a M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and it started misting. I didn't have goggles and stopping during a convoy is not an option. I was introduced to the concept of acid rain when my eyes started burning so bad it felt like they were on fire. They were watering and squinting shut. It's tough to drive when you can't see where you are going. It may not meet the definition of acid rain, but it felt like it when my eyes were burning.

 

[tommcginnis]

I don't doubt that cap and trade has had a positive effect on business for several years. But that was in the beginning. It doesn't solve the problem that the industries producing excessive levels of pollution are still producing it decades later. It's an old idea that was good when it was introduced, but now it needs to go.

It would be more productive for the govt to provide low interest loans to polluting industries like steel producers or coal consuming utilities than allow cap and trade. The loans would be used to buy more efficient coal plants or 'scrubbers' to clean the exhaust.

The carbon credits are a political tool to benefit new industries at the expense of older industries. But it does nothing to eliminate pollution. It was a good idea decades ago when higher efficiency tools were more expensive, but now they are common place and the old technology that created the pollution is obsolete and unavailable. Unless you live in China.

I disagree with the idea of acid rain. When I was in the Army stationed in Germany it most of their electricity was produced from coal plants, at least around 1990. I was driving a M113 Armored Personnel Carrier and it started misting. I didn't have goggles and stopping during a convoy is not an option. I was introduced to the concept of acid rain when my eyes started burning so bad it felt like they were on fire. They were watering and squinting shut. It's tough to drive when you can't see where you are going. It may not meet the definition of acid rain, but it felt like it when my eyes were burning.

Hmmmmm.
"In reverse order!"
Okay, then. The issue with the popular term Acid Rain was not any sort of "reality" about it, but the idea that it was *rain* that was the issue: acid deposition happens 24 hours a day, whether it's raining or not. At certain times, bodies of air would pause, cool, sink, and be overtaken by warmer and moist air -- you mix a bit of dust in there, and here comes the rain. But it doesn't mean at *all* that the acid was not being deposited throughout the biosphere (including very dry environments) whether it was raining or not. I was too much of a nerd to let that go. It's like "magazine" versus "clip;" or "The markets are random;" or "Brake with the rear brake."

Next!
You seek to indict the marginal cost of (recovered) emissions as "an old idea that was good when it was introduced, but now it needs to go." Do you realize that you are attempting to call cost-efficiency "old fashioned"?? Do you know how lame, and downright *stupid* that sounds? Do you realize that the marginal cost of Jevons and Marshall (and for that matter ol Adam Smith himself) REALLY DOESN'T CARE whether you think it "works" or not -- it simply IS. It's gravity. It's stoichiometry. It's freakin' economics, and whether you buy in, or not, it will continue to roll on. Wit' you, or without you. Or, since you trade, *over* you. Sheeesh.

If you were a politician, you would rightly be accused of "moving the goal posts" -- and what you'd find is that you'd turned Cap&Trade from a brilliant infusion of free-market discipline into an untapped externality market, into an unrelenting cheat scheme of government rent-seeking to usurp property and property rights, and you'd end up with a rebellion, and LOTS more pollution, and *lost* societal benefits.

 

[DallasCowboysFan]

### More wrongness. A major portion of our (U.S.) consumed petroleum goes into materials production for things like, ohhhhh, the plastics THAT SURROUND YOUR SCREEN RIGHT NOW. Further, the United States is a major *exporter* of petroleum -- including the majority from Alaska (heading to Japan and China, FWIW).....

It's not just saving the environment, it's good foreign policy.
### Well, not to hijack the thread or anything, but..... WATER is already much more of a issue around the world, than that purported to involve hydrocarbons. Jus' sayin'.....[/QUOTE]

Yeah, fresh water is only 2 percent of the Earth's total and half of that is polluted.
It has already created a lot of flash points in India/China and Venezuela.

I wonder what will happen in China and India in 20-30 years when they have more people than they can support with their agriculture and their lack of fresh water resources.

There will be a lot of internal strife, high prices for food and water....nothing good.

 

[DallasCowboysFan]

Hmmmmm.
"In reverse order!"
Okay, then. The issue with the popular term Acid Rain was not any sort of "reality" about it, but the idea that it was *rain* that was the issue: acid deposition happens 24 hours a day, whether it's raining or not. At certain times, bodies of air would pause, cool, sink, and be overtaken by warmer and moist air -- you mix a bit of dust in there, and here comes the rain. But it doesn't mean at *all* that the acid was not being deposited throughout the biosphere (including very dry environments) whether it was raining or not. I was too much of a nerd to let that go. It's like "magazine" versus "clip;" or "The markets are random;" or "Brake with the rear brake."

Next!
You seek to indict the marginal cost of (recovered) emissions as "an old idea that was good when it was introduced, but now it needs to go." Do you realize that you are attempting to call cost-efficiency "old fashioned"?? Do you know how lame, and downright *stupid* that sounds? Do you realize that the marginal cost of Jevons and Marshall (and for that matter ol Adam Smith himself) REALLY DOESN'T CARE whether you think it "works" or not -- it simply IS. It's gravity. It's stoichiometry. It's freakin' economics, and whether you buy in, or not, it will continue to roll on. Wit' you, or without you. Or, since you trade, *over* you. Sheeesh.

If you were a politician, you would rightly be accused of "moving the goal posts" -- and what you'd find is that you'd turned Cap&Trade from a brilliant infusion of free-market discipline into an untapped externality market, into an unrelenting cheat scheme of government rent-seeking to usurp property and property rights, and you'd end up with a rebellion, and LOTS more pollution, and *lost* societal benefits.

Yeah, I understand it was not real acid in the atmosphere, but if you eyes burned like mine, you would have thought so.

I am not concerned about efficiency. Because the products being produced today are infinitely cleaner and more efficient than the ones produced 40, 60,75 years ago. These are the things that need to be replaced. The newer manufacturing sites are using modern machinery and manufacturing methods that they would create regardless of cap and trade. It's free money to them.

But it does nothing to modernize our manufacturing base and clean the air and water.

BTW, they ran a few tests.....and the air in NW Canada , Montana , Idaho and Wyoming were below federal levels for cleanliness. It 's surprising when you consider there are more fish in an aquarium than in some of those states. They discovered that the air was filled with particulates from China and Russia. The air currents flowed around the Pacific and carried them to the East. I can only imagine how bad it was at the source of the pollution in those countries.

 

[tommcginnis]

A couple of thoughts:
as far as the effort to produce it and to light it, the incandescent bulb freed us from an *ungodly* amount of work and filth, to produce the light (and heat!) that it provided -- to allow us to continue on with human-productive activities JUST ONE HUNDRED years ago. Candles, kerosene, WHALE OIL, were the biggies throughout the world, AND throughout the US. By the end of WWII, most of the U.S. was constructively "electrified." The end of WWII brought us university research that would turn into semi-conductors in the next decade, and pocket transistor radios would be the fad of the 60s. Now, we have l.e.d.s, which use 1% of the power, and ARE PURPORTED to have MTBFs of 10,000 hours. (I bought a case that went .... maybe 1000 hours. NOT pleased.)

At any event, "efficiency" will *always* be a goal at which to aim. It will free time, it will unleash power, it will allow lots of *other*, competing, uses for time and power and money, to go about *getting done*.

Famously, one less-than-stellar head of the U.S. Patent Office said "Everything that will be useful to man has already been invented." That was around 1890, if I recall.

Don't get trapped.

The number of U.S. Patents granted in total has increased geometrically for a very long time. But a new phenomenon -- very troubling -- has been that a growing proportion -- and since about 10 years ago, THE MAJORITY -- of patents granted in the United States -- has been to foreign citizens.

(We're pretty far afield from carbon credits, aren't we?)

Hit Youtube, and you'll find M.I.T., Harvard, Yale, Stanford, UCDavis, and a number of other schools, have posted entire classes of math, econ, finance, -- and those are just the ones *I* might lust over. There must be all kinds of others.

The U.S. had a special thing: we *rewarded* the better mousetrap. A free market, and a sound price-signalling system, and The Cream Shall Rise To The Top. And sure, it wasn't flawless, but WOW have we benefited.

But our gift starts with our schools, and what magic remains in our schools -- that used to draw The Best & The Brightest from around the world, is not available for free (AS IT SHOULD BE) on the net. Right there with Mumbai and Dakarta and Moscow and Lima.

It's not just us that need to watch for greater, more efficient, farther-reaching ideas, but the world. And if we don't recharge that magic, IT WILL GO.

Don't get trapped. CARE about efficiency, and ideas, and making shit work.

(My thoughts. FWIW and all that.)
It's Friday night. *Where's* my beer?

 

[sle]

With electric cars, they give off no emissions when they are running, but give off emissions when they are not running and charging.

(a) That sounds outright wacky, so please explain what type of emissions they are "giving off" when they are neither running or charging?
(b) If there are indeed emissions that are "given off" during their idle time, how does the amount/impact compare to gasoline-based vehicles?

 

[Overnight]

(a) That sounds outright wacky, so please explain what type of emissions they are "giving off" when they are neither running or charging?

K, let me rephrase the statement, since it was not grammatically correct...

"...but give off emissions when they are not running but are charging."

(b) If there are indeed emissions that are "given off" during their idle time, how does the amount/impact compare to gasoline-based vehicles?

A gasoline car, when it comes home, doesn't need to be charged. That is the idle time I am speaking of.

The best solution, to be honest, are the hybrids that shut the engine down and switch to electric when at idle on the road and do not consume gasoline. (Oh, and regenerative braking of course). The ones that never have to be plugged in. That is the best of both worlds at the moment.

 

[tommcginnis]

The best solution, to be honest, are the hybrids that shut the engine down and switch to electric when at idle on the road and do not consume gasoline. (Oh, and regenerative braking of course). The ones that never have to be plugged in. That is the best of both worlds at the moment.

Ehhhh.
As it stands, there is no logical, engineering, or economic basis for your conclusion.

 

[tommcginnis]

### Well, not to hijack the thread or anything, but..... WATER is already much more of a issue around the world, than that purported to involve hydrocarbons. Jus' sayin'.....

Yeah, fresh water is only 2 percent of the Earth's total and half of that is polluted.
It has already created a lot of flash points in India/China and Venezuela.
I wonder what will happen in China and India in 20-30 years when they have more people than they can support with their agriculture and their lack of fresh water resources.
There will be a lot of internal strife, high prices for food and water....nothing good.[/QUOTE]

### "...More people than they can support with their agriculture and their lack of fresh water resources." Well, in a single sentence, you just nailed why China -- *never* a country with a strong nautical history, is suddenly interested in building a navy, and expanding its 'sphere of influence' out 300-400 miles into the seas.
https://www.meetup.com/Dancing-Naked-On-Wall-Street/messages/boards/thread/50466016

BTW, while I have been commenting on this for 5years?10years? I don't believe I have ever connected the growing desertification to China's activities -- only the shipping/resources/commerce end of things. As a long-time "water-watcher", I have to admit that it's *your* comments above that complete the picture for me. Sweet, that, and Thank You.