Is Pollution the Solution?

I've been blogging a lot about the fiscal crisis. It's time to do something more fun. The New York Times is very happy that the EPA has issued an "Aggressive Ruling on Clean Air".

The Environmental Protection Agency on Thursday issued a welcome and overdue rule compelling power plants in 27 states and the District of Columbia to reduce smokestack emissions that pollute the air and poison forests, lakes and streams across the eastern United States. The regulation reflects the E.P.A.'s determination to carry out its mandates under the Clean Air Act despite fierce Congressional opposition, and bodes well for progress on a host of other regulatory challenges the agency faces.

It would be churlish to complain that the Executive Branch out to pay some attention to the branch that actually makes the law. This is what happens when Congress hands over vast powers and decisions to unelected bureaucrats.

It is curious, however, that the Times is now suddenly in favor of global warming. That would be the implication of a recent study published by the National Academy of Sciences. Here is the abstract:

Given the widely noted increase in the warming effects of rising greenhouse gas concentrations, it has been unclear why global surface temperatures did not rise between 1998 and 2008. We find that this hiatus in warming coincides with a period of little increase in the sum of anthropogenic and natural forcings. Declining solar insolation as part of a normal eleven-year cycle, and a cyclical change from an El Nino to a La Nina dominate our measure of anthropogenic effects because rapid growth in short-lived sulfur emissions partially offsets rising greenhouse gas concentrations. As such, we find that recent global temperature records are consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship among global surface temperature, internal variability, and radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well known warming and cooling effects.

There is a lot in that abstract to think about. The first sentence concedes what a lot of folks pointed out and a lot of other folks tried to deny or ignore: global surface temperatures have been flat for ten years. This was not, I think, predicted by any of the models relied upon by the IPCC. A decade is a small space on the historical temperature line and may be just an anomaly. However, this clearly challenges any direct relation between an increase in greenhouse gases and a rise in global temperatures.

The third sentence acknowledges what a lot of us non-climate-scientists had already figured out: the factors driving climate change (or non-change) are rather complicated. One might suspect that the recent flattening of global temperatures is over-determined. Solar Cycles, El Nino and his sister, and a rapid growth in sulfur emissions is a lot of causation to juggle.

That last part is the kicker, surely. Apparently sulfur emissions from coal fired plants are at least partially responsible for a hiatus in global warming. If true, isn't that really big news? All the world community's great efforts toward addressing climate change have so far contributed nothing to addressing climate change. All they have done is provide an excuse for jetting a lot of bureaucrats to sexy locations. Here, at last, we have something that works and works fast and that we are really capable of producing: air pollution.

I am sure that sulfur emissions must cause a lot of health problems. That's the sort of thing that you worry about when you can afford to. Does this compare with the catastrophic scenarios imagined by Al Gore? If you believe that we are really about to see the oceans rise and swallow every low lying island, force millions of poor around the world to retreat to higher ground, not to mention millions who voted for Gore in 2000, would you really think that a significant decrease in air quality in major urban centers was too high a price to pay to avoid that? Besides, what counts more, our lungs or the planet? Pollution is local. Global warming is, well, global. What's more important, a hacking cough in Beijing or the extinction of the newly Irish polar bears?

If Al Gore were serious he would not only sell six of his houses along with his houseboat; he would raise funds for a sulfur solution. If the New York Times were serious, the paper would have its science correspondents (assuming they can afford more than one) asking whether we have found the solution to anthropogenic global warming. Air pollution is something we can not only produce in large amounts, we can produce it cheaply. We can produce it while generating rapid economic growth. That's not exactly a win-win, but it is a win-win-lose, and that's two out of three.

Of course, none of these folks are serious. They aren't serious enough to stop flying first class. Unfortunately, none of this matters. As Italy now is joining the list of fiscally unstable European states and the U.S. is on track to join them sooner rather than later, we aren't going to be worried much about the environment in the next decade. That's not a projection, it's a prediction.

Comments

[larry kurtz]

Hey, people say stupid shit when there are guns to their heads. Hope the James River takes out Aberdeen and flushes it into the Gulf.

[George Mason]

Another intelligent contribution from Larryland. What is not mentioned in the paragraph, and usually ignored by the NYT and cult of global warming, is the U.S. has had restrictions on sulfur emissions for 40+ years. The big contributors of all types of pollution are second and third world emerging industrial powers. Neither the cult, the NYT or the Obama administration ever demands action by these countries. They much prefer to destroy American industries with unreasonable restrictions far beyond what is required to maintain a clean environment here. Another exam[ple of the continuing war on America.

[larry kurtz]

From The Street: "MDU spokesman Mark Hanson said the 88-megawatt plant would be built next to the company's 100-megawatt coal-fired Heskett Station, two miles north of Mandan. That plant, built in 1954 and updated with a second unit in 1963, burns about 500,000 tons of lignite annually from a mine near Beulah, in western North Dakota." http://www.thestreet.com/story/11178789/1/mdu-proposes-natural-gas-power-plant-near-mandan.html

Health care industry raging: http://www.argusleader.com/article/20110710/NEWS/107100314/Avera-Sanford-beacons-growth-otherwise-slumbering-economy

How's yer stock in NorthWestern Energy doing, Ken?

[Miranda]

Was someone holding a gun to your head, Mr. Kurtz?

[larry kurtz]

Oh, Ms. Flint: it chaps my glutei listening to another wearisome tenured academic droning on without offering solutions. Vice President Gore is just one rotund example of a dignitary selling a message. Dr. Blanchard is a pro at blaming Washington ad nauseum and yet can't detect the ill winds blowing out of out his own endangered colon.

[Donald Pay]

Here, boiled down as only KB can do, is the essence of Republican evil: "I am sure that sulfur emissions must cause a lot of health problems. That's the sort of thing that you worry about when you can afford to."

The rest of us poor peons can just breath it in and die.

[George Mason]

Donald this will only happen to you in a socialist country, like your beloved Venezuela or Cuba.

[larry kurtz]

Consider this chortling: http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/07/like-pravda-covering-chernobyl-fox-news-on-the-murdoch-problems/241875/

[Ken Blanchard]

And you Donald prove that you are no more serious about global warming than Al Gore. Thanks for confirming my point.

[penny auction]

That's the sort of thing that you worry about when you can afford to.