Global Warming:
Implications for State Legislators
2004-18
First, is human activity causing the earth’s climate system to become warmer (or cooler) beyond what would occur naturally?
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Second, if we are altering world climate, is that bad?
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And third, if it is bad, is there anything we can do about it?
The answer to the first question is that no one really knows how human behavior is affecting climate. The growing use of fossil fuels since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution has raised the ambient concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) by about 30 percent, and since CO2 absorbs infrared radiation, this increase has the potential for warming the earth’s atmosphere. But no definitive causal link has ever been established, and as recently as 1975 many scientists were actually worried about catastrophic global cooling.
The evidence from monitoring stations produces trend lines going in multiple directions, depending on where, when and how climate parameters are measured. For instance, in the report, "Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis", published by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the authors note that "Surface, balloon and satellite temperature measurements show that the troposphere and Earth's surface have warmed and that the stratosphere has cooled. Over the shorter time period for which there have been both satellite and weather balloon data (since 1979), the balloon and satellite records show significantly less lower-tropospheric warming than observed at the surface. In the upper troposphere, no significant global temperature trends have been detected since the early 1960s.”
In addition to conflicting trends, there is a serious problem of measurement error. Measurement stations are relied upon to provide temperature information representing large areas that may be hundreds or thousands of square miles, but climate parameters can vary widely even at the most local level. Perhaps nothing illustrates this more than a news story that appeared in the Portland Tribune on December 20, 2003. The headline read, “Snow? Depends on where you live”. The article pointed out that even though most of Portland had been pounded with heavy snow the previous day, the “official” government measurement site at the Portland airport recorded no snow.
So if a team of climate scientists arrived in Portland tomorrow and began using the airport weather measurements as part of a global climate study, their statistical data base for December 19, 2003 would not just be biased; it would reflect the exact opposite of what was experienced by virtually everyone in the Portland region on that day.
Multiply this aberration by the billions of other dates and locations on the earth where measurement errors could occur, and it becomes apparent that “global” averages are virtually meaningless for policy analysis.
Notwithstanding these severe data gaps, climate alarmists claim that global temperature averages are increasing and that this poses substantial threats to human civilization. Among other gloomy outcomes, they predict that increased CO2 will lead to rising sea levels and an increase in the severity or frequency (or both) of extreme weather events such as floods, hurricanes and droughts. But this is all speculation based on computer models; the IPCC has stated, “There is no compelling evidence to indicate that the characteristics of tropical and extra-tropical storms have changed.”
A more realistic outlook would take into account the known benefits of CO2. Carbon dioxide is an essential element for the process of photosynthesis by plants. Literally thousands of empirical studies have shown that most plants thrive under conditions of increased CO2. Many experts believe that perhaps 10 percent of the increased agricultural production the world has experienced during the 20th Century can be attributed to the fertilization effects of man-made CO2.
This is important to keep in mind, because there is little evidence that we can actually reduce global warming anyway. Moreover, even if we felt confident that reducing CO2 locally would slow warming, a pound of CO2 has the same effect on climate whether it’s produced in the Pacific Northwest or China, and any actions we take here could (and probably would) be negated by off-setting actions elsewhere. So thinking globally and acting locally in this case would be an all-pain, no-gain proposition for taxpayers.
Notwithstanding these concerns, in 1997 Oregon passed the nation’s first law regulating CO2 from new electrical generating facilities. A similar law was recently enacted by Washington’ own Energy Facility Site Evaluation Committee (EFSEC), the organization that approves most major new power plants in the state. Under Oregon’s law emissions from most natural gas fired power plants are capped at a rate 17 percent below the cleanest known facility in the country. To obtain a state permit a plant developer has two choices: Either install the costly equipment mandated by state regulations or pay a state-sponsored non-profit group, called the Climate Trust, to “offset” any excess emissions.
In its first two years of operation the Trust received more than $6 million in revenue. One of the projects it sponsored was an internet-based carpool program run by the city of Portland. The Trust ranked this program very high for its potential to reduce single occupant driving, but after the first year of implementation so few people had signed up that each new carpool formed had cost electricity ratepayers about $29,000.
This highlights a problem with the regulatory approach: once money is taken from taxpayers, there is no guarantee it will be spent wisely. To the extent it is wasted, the tax program simply destroys wealth while having no impact on the climate. Yet wealth creation is the key to mitigating any impacts from climate change. Richer societies are better able to anticipate change and invest in better infrastructure. Spending ourselves into poverty in the pursuit of unobtainable goals will demonstrably make most people worse off, both now and for generations in the future.
John A. Charles, Jr. is the Senior Policy Analyst and Environmental Policy Director for Cascade Policy Institute in Portland, Oregon. For more information, visit www.cascadepolicy.org.