CO2 Emissions And A Dose Of Reality -- Platts

Platts has an incredibly good essay on CO2 emissions. Too bad it won't be read by cultists or faux environmentalists who don't mind torturing tortoises and slicing and dicing whooping cranes.

The introduction:

Several years ago, Brice Lalonde, who at the time was France’s ambassador to successive rounds of climate change talks, explained to me what concerned him most about the role carbon dioxide emissions play in global warming.

He argued that CO2 emissions stay in the atmosphere for decades, don’t dissipate, but rather accumulate. Thus, only a huge annual reduction of CO2, starting now, has any chance of ultimately making any real difference. Small reductions hardly matter.

Frankly, Lalonde thought we were all doomed. My only counter at the time parroted that of Freeman Dyson, the theoretical physicist and mathematician who is retired and lives in Princeton, New Jersey, who reasoned, also a few years back, that we do not likely know and we cannot predict with any certainty how the chemistry in the atmosphere is going to behave over time.

The EIA and IEA data points:

The Paris-based IEA, which keeps tabs on CO2 emissions on a global basis, said that energy-related CO2 emissions increased 1.4% in 2012, and totaled 31.6 billion metric tons.

The Washington-based EIA, which is part of the US government and looks primarily at US stats, has reported that in 2012 US energy-related CO2 emissions totaled 5.29 billion mt, a very significant 12.1% decrease from the 2007 peak year of 6.023 billion mt, and below where CO2 emissions were in the year 1995.

Of the IEA and the EIA’s two 2012 totals, the most significant is the IEA’s global 31.6 billion mt number, since–as scientists like to tell us–it doesn’t really matter where the emissions occur. We all share the same atmosphere.

The reason for the decrease has been posted previously.

Politically?

If Brice Lalonde is right, then quibbling over this increase here versus that decrease there, is really all irrelevant.

But then, so too may be CO2 legislation in the US. In the summer of 2010, when the Waxman-Markey cap-and-trade climate change legislation failed to pass the Senate, the idea was to reduce US CO2 emissions by 17% from 2005 levels (5.999 billion mt) by the year 2020.

The legislation therefore envisioned a 1.018 billion mt reduction from the 2005 level over a 10-year period. What has come about without legislation is a 709 million mt reduction from the 2005 level in just three years.

Bottom line:

The conclusion to all this is that some headway is being made in reducing emissions in some key places such as the US, which has gone from being responsible for generating 20.7% of all the CO2 in 2007 to generating 16.7% in 2012.

Platts has it right:

Who knows if that will make any difference whatsoever.

But the president will take no chances. He will announce his global warming policies in July which will a) cost US taxpayers gazillions of dollars; and, b) will give aid and comfort to China. Google it.

Global warming stopped 15 years ago. But no one knows why.

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A Note To The Granddaughters

Some financial advice: CNBC has a story today suggesting that "young people are ditching credit cards."

I wouldn't read too much into that story or the statistics. There appears to be an East Coast / elitist slant to the story.

At some point most people need a credit history (unless they plan to pay for their car, home, or some other big ticket item with cash). The easiest way to get a credit history is with a credit card. If one is worried about overspending, one can ask that the credit card have a $500 limit.  There are other ways to grow a credit history, but again, a credit card is the easiest. Paying one's bills on-line can be done without a credit card (debit cards, direct bank transfers) and can probably establish a credit history by paying utility bills on time.

But the majority of those without a history of paying off credit cards will be shocked when they find how difficult it is to get a loan for a used or new car, or for a home, or even "pass" an apartment rental credit check.

The article mentions that many of these folks without credit cards have high credit scores based on paying off their education loans. The key there: make sure the loans are in your name, even if your parents are paying off the loan.

Creditors need to see that borrowers have a) the wherewithal to pay back the loan; and, b) the discipline to make monthly payments over a period of time.