The Nation's Energy Expert Speaks Out on Climate...Not

Quiz: What soon-to-be-ex-governor of a very northern state could write an op-ed about climate legislation without once mentioning the word "climate"?

That's right; Sarah Palin is against the "president's cap-and-trade energy plan, ... an enormous threat to our economy. It would undermine our recovery over the short term and would inflict permanent damage. ... [And] immediately increas[e] unemployment in the energy sector."

There is a lot to pick at in the Alaska governor's piece and many have already weighed in. (See here, here, and the rant that is here.) I'll focus on two aspects of her take on the cap-and-trade legislation.

Economic Impacts Overblown

Yes, it is absolutely true that reining in our carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions to address climate change is going to come with some price -- to pretend otherwise would be disingenuous. But virtually all careful analyses of the impacts have concluded that, if done intelligently and gradually, the economic price will be modest. For example, the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office estimated that the Waxman-Markey American Clean Energy and Security Act would cost the average household about $175 per year; and by the way, $175 in 2020 is not "immediately."

The costs are not insignificant but hardly the disaster the as-yet-still governor would have us believe. (More on this later.) It is true that the poor will be most stressed by the price increases, and that is why the Waxman-Markey bill reserved some of the funds collected from the auction of allowances to assist poor and middle-class families -- the CBO analysis also indicated that the lowest income families would experience a net benefit of about $40 in 2020.

Where's the Climate?

It blows my mind that someone could write a critique of a bill designed to address climate change and never once mention the word "climate." And I mean this literally. Nowhere in the op-ed is climate mentioned, although, to be fair, she does include the words "environment" and "environmental" two times apiece.

Examples of What Climate Change Is Doing to Alaska
Longer summers and higher temperatures are causing drier conditions.
Insect outbreaks and wildfires are increasing with warming.
Warmer conditions have allowed insects to thrive when cooler summers and colder winters would have normally held them in check; for example, the spruce beetle has destroyed around three million acres of forest.
Lakes are declining in area.
Thawing permafrost is damaging roads, runways, water and sewer systems, and other infrastructure.
Increased road maintenance costs and major landscape changes from accelerated thawing of permafrost.
Coastal storms increase risks to villages and fishing fleets.
(Sources: U.S. Global Change Research Program, USGS: National Climate Change Assessment, U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service)

To read the Palin op-ed, one might conclude the reason for a cap and trade on carbon emissions is to prevent us from "tap[ping] the resources that God created right underfoot on American soil."

Actually, the reason for a cap-and-trade system is to protect the planet that, in the governor's argot, "God created" and that we are currently undermining through our unrestrained exploitation of its resources. If left to natural processes, the fossil fuels we are tapping with abandon would remain in the Earth's interior for hundreds of millions of years, but we are extracting and using them up in a matter of about a century or two.

Don't Forget the Costs of Inaction

It has become a common tactic of those who would stop climate legislation to focus on the costs of such legislation without mentioning the costs of inaction, the costs of allowing greenhouse gas emissions to increase without limit and trying to live with the climate consequences that would result. (John Kerry has a great comment on this aspect of Palin's post, using the analogy of not repairing a roof because of repair costs but ignoring the costs of the leaks.)

Ironically, of all the states in the union, the governor's own state of Alaska, which, incidentally, features the country's longest coastline, is bearing the brunt of climate change. (See here, here and here for details.) Temperatures in the state have already increased by an average of 3.4 degrees Fahrenheit -- a warming rate that is twice what the lower 48 states have experienced. One of the most apparent and also disruptive consequences of the Alaskan warming is melting permafrost -- the permanently frozen ground that underlies about 80 percent of Alaska's land area.

When permafrost melts, a formerly firm, hard ground is transformed into pockets of mushy morass, causing roads to buckle and homes and buildings to teeter and fall. And that 80 percent number I just cited should actually be used in the past tense, because the permafrost is melting and the thaw is already undermining infrastructure throughout the state. In 2003 Alaska was spending an estimated $35 million per year in infrastructure (primarily road) repairs made necessary by permafrost melting.

Is that a lot of money? Consider this: there are about 220,000 households in Alaska. So the annual cost per Alaskan household of melting permafrost -- but one of a number of cost-carrying climate change impacts -- is currently (i.e., today in 2009) about $160. That's essentially the same as the CBO's per-household cost estimate of Waxman-Markey in 2020.

Now consider that:

• the costs of infrastructure repair from melting permafrost are projected to increase by a factor of 10 or more in the next 20 years, and
• a host of other impacts from climate change are already exacting a cost to Alaskans, including, but in no way limited to, the widespread loss of Alpine forests from infestation of pests like the spruce beetle.

This is my take on the economics of cap and trade for Alaskans:

• Burning all that fossil fuel may have made sense when gasoline was $4 a gallon and Alaskans could live high off the hog on petro-dollars from the rest of us, and climate impacts were just beginning.
• But with current gasoline prices and growing climate impacts, a cap-and-trade program to slow a warming globe looks like a pretty good economic bet for Alaska.

Suffice it to say, it's a no-brainer for those of us who don't stand to make huge profits through the sale of fossil fuels at exorbitant prices.

Gotta Stop Emitting CO2 If You Want to Get to Alaskan Oil and Gas

And here is the greatest irony. Melting permafrost is inhibiting the extraction of oil and gas in Alaska! To extract oil and gas you must be able to move big, heavy exploration and extraction machinery over the land, and you can't do that in Alaska if the permafrost melts -- because you are left with a mucky, unstable mess. Over the past 30 years the number of days that oil and gas exploration and extraction equipment can operate in Alaska has decreased from more than 200 days per year to 100 days.

Governor, if you want to be able to "tap the resources that God created right underfoot" in Alaska, you'd better get behind the president's cap-and-trade energy plan.

Originally published at thegreengrok.com.

Follow Bill Chameides on Twitter: www.twitter.com/theGreenGrok

Comments

[AKjah]

Bill Thank you for the excellent article. Brings to mind other Examples of what climate change can do. My friends have been enjoying much more sunny time, Thus potential for melanoma. Usually we are pasty white but now i see many very brown or burnt. Also melting permafrost sits on top for how long before it finds it's way to an underground aquafer? That could change the surface even faster. again thanks.

[RomeoMD25]

NASA has corrected its US temperature records, the hottest year on record is no longer 1998, but 1934.
Five of the ten hottest years since 1880 were between 1920 and 1940 " and the 15 hottest years since 1880 are spread across seven decades.
This suggests natural variation, not a warming trend. Plant and insect remains found at the base of Greenland"s ice sheet indicate that,
just 400,000 years ago, the island was blanketed in forests and basking in temperatures perhaps 27 degrees F warmer than today.

Newsweek said climate holocaust "deniers" had received $19 million from industry, to subvert the "consensus"
it claims exists about global warming. It made no mention of the $50 BILLION that alarmists and other beneficiaries have received since 1990
from governments, foundations and corporations (including Exxon,Big Banks,GE)

[Bill Chameides - Huffpost Blogger]

RomeoMD25: global warming means GLOBAL warming, not American warming. The hottest year of global temperatures is 1998.

Temperatures over the past decade all rank up there among the hottest on record in terms of global temperatures.

I am not sure what temperatures 400,000 years ago have to do with current climate change. Of course climate has changed in the past -- the question is what is causing the warming today? Check out some of my previous posts -- it's is pretty clear that greenhouse gas pollution is a big part of the answer.

Finally, ad hominem attacks: not welcome. I avoid them and you should as well. And in bringing up this argument, you reveal a complete misunderstanding of how scientists operate. Believe me, if I could prove that global warming is not occurring or is due to natural causes, I would do it in a heart beat -- it would secure my scientific reputation. Why haven't I? The answer to that should be fairly obvious.

[RomeoMD25]

David Wojick, expert reviewer for U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change:

"The media is promoting an unprecedented hyping related to global warming. The media and many scientists are ignoring very important facts that point to a natural variation in the climate system as the cause of the recent global warming."

A new study using methods endorsed by the Al Gore crowd concludes that there is no "consensus" among scientists that man is contributing to global warming. Also can 31,000 scientists be wrong?

* over 2/3rds of the signatories had advanced degrees,
* 2,660 were physicists, geophysicists, climatologists, meteorologists, oceanographers, and environmental scientists
* 5,017 were scientists whose fields of specialization in chemistry, biochemistry, biology, and other life sciences

Hardly a bunch of "flat earth" types as the global warming mass hysteria crowd likes to call anyone that dares to challenge their scientifically weak viewpoint that man is destroying the planet by causing global warming.

So the next time you hear the media throw out the terms "consensus view" or "scientific consensus" regarding man-made global warming (or CO2 causing global warming) you'll know they either haven't done their homework or they've drank the Al Gore Kool-Aid and don't want to report the truth.

[Bill Chameides - Huffpost Blogger]

Romeo: Check out the recent poll done by Pew. 84% of scientists polled "say the earth is getting warmer because of human activity." http://people-press.org/report/528

[RomeoMD25]

Carbon dioxide, a benign, life giving molecule has been miscast by a world wide political movement to be an environmental hazard in what
will soon be discovered to be the hoax of the century. This molecule, CO2 is vital to all life on earth. It is exhaled by all living
things and even comes from nocturnal emissions by plants. It forms the bubbles in your soda, wine and beer. Standard air has 370 parts
per million (PPM) of carbon dioxide of which 93% comes from "natural sources" which are all beyond human control.

[Bill Chameides - Huffpost Blogger]

Romeo: Carbon monoxide (CO) is a natural component of the atmosphere; many of us expel a little of it out with every breath. CO is also highly toxic when concentrations are enhanced above natural levels. As I am sure you know, every year some people die from exposure to CO. Is it a pollutant? Should we limit its emissions from cars and furnaces? Or should we not regulate because it is a natural part of our atmosphere?

[Rain-man]

Palin does not need no stinkin' roads to move big, heavy exploration and extraction machinery in Alaska. Palin just picks up the phone and request more money for bridges!

[Cootiedeemer]

Cap and Trade- she was for it before she was against it, also.

[jeanwny]

She will soon be gone and forgotten-count on it

[mydwyf]

Please remember that Miss Sarah is (and also) in favor of progressing a road to Nome.
That is ridiculous. The State of Alaska cannot maintain the few roads we have in decent condition.
And much of the way west from the current roads goes across -- permafrost.
We need a rail link to Canada, not a road to Nome.

[tdbach]

Good, informative article. Climate change deniers and status quo defenders are stunningly illogical. In what other pusuit does one "throw the dice" when the stakes are so great and the odds - as articulated by experts - so lousy? Better to dismiss the experts as conspirators in a hoax, I guess. Weird....

[rshrink]

It is typical of Palin and republicans in general, to ignore the basic elements of issues and focus only on one aspect. That also typically, is how they will be able to make or lose money based on the policy and they look only at the short range, lacking in imagination and the ability to invent. They only care about maintaining their gravy trains and are not concerned with everyone else being harmed and excessively burdened.