Waxman: “I certainly don’t claim to know everything that’s in this bill”

Cow Farts & Alge produce more C02 than all the industries in the world combined. We need all the congress people to go out and start putting corks up cow butts.

izoneguy on May 22, 2009 at 10:10 AM

The cows might object, and give the congress critters a well-deserved kick in the chops.

But have no fear, PETA and the ASPCA will sue.

Steve Z on May 22, 2009 at 10:14 AM

Can someone explain to me how cap and trade works

blatantblue on May 22, 2009 at 10:16 AM

I work as an environmental consultant, so I’ll take the bait. Cap-and-trade is a part-government part-market mechanism for encouraging businesses to reduce emissions of air pollutants, and it has been effective at reducing emissions of REAL, TOXIC POLLUTANTS such as sulfur dioxide, nitrous oxides, and particulate matter (soot).

Basically, the EPA sets a limit on the amount (in tons per year) of a pollutant that is allowed to be emitted, and sells (auctions) to private businesses vouchers for the “right” to emit X number of tons of pollutant without being fined, but the number of vouchers sold is progressively reduced over time.

For real pollutants, add-on pollution control technologies are available on the market that can capture 95% to 99% of pollutants emitted by an uncontrolled process. These technologies cost money, but if a business can reduce its emissions below its allowable limits, it can sell its emissions vouchers to other companies whose emissions are above their legal limits and unable to afford pollution control. If a business can receive more money in sold emissions vouchers than the cost of pollution-control equipment, it has a financial incentive to buy the pollution-control equipment, thereby reducing emissions AND increasing profits. As the overall emissions limits set by the EPA decrease over time, “clean” businesses make money, while “dirty” businesses are eventually squeezed out of the market, unable to afford emissions vouchers, and total emissions decrease.

This concept WORKS for REAL pollutants which are both HARMFUL to people and the environment, and EASILY captured. For example, sulfur dioxide (which causes acid rain) can be captured in scrubbers and converted to either sulfuric acid (for use in batteries) or gypsum (for use in wallboard). Nitrogen oxides can be neutralized using ammonia and converted to harmless nitrogen and water. Particulate matter can be filtered in baghouses and used in other industrial processes.

The problem with cap-and-trade on carbon dioxide is that CO2 is NOT TOXIC and NOT easily captured, and it is generated in large amounts by any process that burns fuel (coal, natural gas, or oil) for energy. We get about 50% of our electricity from coal and about 30% from natural gas, so that trying to limit CO2 emissions would increase the price of 80% of our electricity, yet the Obama Administration is unwilling to consider NUCLEAR power plants, which are efficient and do not emit CO2. All the talk about wind and solar power is just “hot air”, because they are not nearly efficient enough to replace more than a few percent of fossil-fuel plants.

Another problem is that CO2 is generated in large volumes and extremely expensive to capture, so that the price of a CO2 emission voucher would have to be very high to give anyone an incentive to capture it.

The other argument against cap-and-trade on CO2 is that it is NOT TOXIC, but only represents a vague threat of “climate change” centuries in the future, which has not really been proven. Climate depends on MANY factors, including sunspots (warming), volcanic activity (cooling), and El Nino / La Nina fluctuations (mixed results), none of which can be controlled by man, and man-made CO2 only represents about 0.03% of total warming effects. Do we really want to spend many trillions of dollars to affect the climate less than a trifling 0.03% ?

Even the IPCC (International Panel on Climate Change), which has the nasty habit of writing its conclusions before analyzing data (rather unscientific IMHO), predicts that sea levels will rise a whopping 60 cm (2 feet) in 100 years if we do nothing about CO2 emissions, although at current rates, sea levels would rise only 8 inches in 100 years.

Rather than spending trillions of dollars in a futile attempt to capture a harmless gas, wouldn’t some of this money be better spent building 2-foot-high sea walls along vulnerable coastlines over the next 100 years, if needed?

Steve Z on May 22, 2009 at 11:09 AM