Cost drives Senate climate debate By H. JOSEF HEBERT,AP Posted: 2008-06-01 05:02:16
WASHINGTON (AP) - The possible economic cost of confronting global warming - from higher electricity bills to more expensive gasoline - is driving the debate as climate change takes center stage in Congress.
The Senate will begin considering legislation Monday that would mandate a reduction in carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases from power plants, refineries, factories and transportation, cutting heat-trapping pollution by two-thirds by mid-century.
The debate opens as Americans are reeling over $4 gasoline and soaring expenses to heat and cool their homes. That's making it all that harder to sell the merits of a bill that would transform the nation's energy industries and - as its critics will argue - cause energy prices to increase even more.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, I-Conn., one of the chief sponsors of the bill, says computer studies suggest the overall impact on energy costs could be modest with several projections showing overall continued economic growth. The measure calls for tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks to offset higher energy bills, its sponsors say.
Returning from the Memorial Day recess, lawmakers also have to fix the international food aid and trade components of a farm bill that, through a printing error, were left out of the parchment version that President Bush signed into law last month. And the House and Senate are still working on a bill to fund the Iraq war another year, expand G.I. Bill college benefits and strengthen New Orleans levees.
While this week's Senate debate on global warming is viewed as a watershed in climate change politics, both sides of the issue acknowledge the likelihood of getting the bill passed is slim, at least this year.
POSTED: Thursday, April 24, 2008 FROM BLOG: NewsHog - Politics, Foreign Affairs, Opinion and the "News Less Traveled" From a Transatlantic Progressive.
The following blog post is from an independent writer and is not connected with Reuters News. The opinions and views expressed herein are those of the author and are not endorsed by Reuters.com.
By Fester
The first rule of getting out of a hole is to stop digging any deeper. The second rule is to start filling in the hole by creating a controlled collapse of option space.
We are still digging a deeper hole with greenhouse gas levels and the digging has increased in speed and impact as we get closer and closer to tipping points that could cascade in destructive, non-linear fashion. Science daily.com is reporting that the atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide has increased by 2.5 parts per million in the past year to a total of 385 ppm.
Viewed another way, last year’s carbon dioxide increase means 2.4 molecules of the gas were added to every million molecules of air, boosting the global concentration to nearly 385 parts per million (ppm). Pre-industrial carbon dioxide levels hovered around 280 ppm until 1850. Human activities pushed those levels up to 380 ppm by early 2006.
The rate of increase in carbon dioxide concentrations accelerated over recent decades along with fossil fuel emissions. Since 2000, annual increases of two ppm or more have been common, compared with 1.5 ppm per year in the 1980s and less than one ppm per year during the 1960s.
One of the major contributors to the faster rise in atmospheric CO2 and methane concentrations is the melting of permafrost and tundra regions due to previous global warming. These areas are releasing more greenhouse gases into the air while absorbing fewer gases. This is an example of a short term positive feedback loop where increased emissions leads to warming which leads to more emissions and thus more warming.
One of the major concerns is a rapid disruption of the ocean currents and the transfer of thermal energy from the topics to the temperate and sub-arctic regions. The Antarctica currents are becoming less salty and less dense which means cold water may sink slower and that would slow down the tropical to sub-tropical energy transfer. If this actually occurs, most of Europe will have Russian style winters and the Indian Ocean becomes significantly cooler as well which would disrupt the monsoon systems that water the crops for 25% of the world's population.
We are seeing increasing costs become more probable and yet we are still increasing the size and the difficulty of corrective action or at least mitigating action.
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