California's Tough CO2 Emissions Laws (FWIW) Failing -- September 16, 2018

Two movies released the same month: California CO2 and California gasoline prices -- see below. 

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Global Warming

Updates

October 28, 2018: this pretty much sums it up. From a reader:

Bad combination of willfully ignorant voters, corrupt government officials, grant seeking university professors and profit seeking corporate employees. 

Anyone with basic economic, science and technology understanding and access to the internet quickly finds that solar/wind renewable's have been proven to be economically prohibitive for power generation (2-4 X cost of conventional). 

As renewable penetration increases it gets more, not less, expensive (dramatically expensive at 50%). Bulk storage of electricity is a cruel lie. 

A doubling of trace gas CO2 concentration in the atmosphere from 0.03% 100 years ago, to  0.04% currently, to 0.08% in a couple hundred years is not a pollution concern.

Note: submariner's do just fine in 0.8% 8000 ppm!

Original Post 

California's carbon emissions are back to '90s levels: link here. No mention was made that the state is moving its source for coal-derived electricity out-of-state. Pretty funny.

Now, a reality check, from Investor's Business Daily -- California's costly global warming campaign turns out to be worse than useless. From the article:

For more than a decade, California has won high praise from environmentalists for its stringent greenhouse gas restrictions. But a new report shows that despite the enormous costs of this effort, the state is doing a worse job at cutting CO2 emissions than the rest of the country, while badly hurting its working families.

Back in 2007, California became the first state to cap CO2 emissions when then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger signed AB32, which mandated the state cut greenhouse gas emissions back to 1990 levels by 2020. Schwarzenegger called it "a bold new era of environmental protection."

Not to be outdone, Gov. Jerry Brown signed a bill last year requiring the state to cut emissions 40% below 1990 levels by 2030.

So, what happened? From 2007 to 2015, California managed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 9%. But the rest of the country cut them by more than 10%, according to a new report from the Center for Demographics and Policy at Chapman University in Orange, California.

On a per capita basis, 41 states outperformed California on CO2 cuts over those same years.

Here's another way to look at it. Ohio, Georgia, Indiana, and Pennsylvania have about the same combined population as California. But these states saw emission reductions five times as great as California. (To be fair, California started from a lower base.)

Even that is exaggerating California's achievement. The study notes that because the state has become so inhospitable to manufacturing and energy production, it now imports more energy than any other state in the nation and relies heavily on imported goods.

In fact, California imports 66% of its crude oil, 91% of its natural gas, and 88% of the ethanol is uses from other states and countries. California alone accounts for almost a quarter of U.S. oil imports from the Persian Gulf and from Saudi Arabia.

Meanwhile, in 2015, it imported about $408 billion in products from other nations, or 16% of the state's GDP.

In other words, California is exporting its energy production and manufacturing base to other, more carbon-intensive states and countries, while patting itself on the back for its own CO2 reductions.

Even if California were able to meet its ambitious CO2 cuts, it would have no impact on global temperatures — assuming the climate scientists are right in their predictions — because the state represents a tiny portion of global CO2 emissions.

And what have Californians received in return for their state's "bold" effort? As the report notes, these environmentalist policies have "significantly distorted the California economy." And not in a good way.

Outside Silicon Valley, this unilateral effort to cut CO2 emissions is hampering the states' economy, eliminating opportunities for working families, and increasing poverty. Housing and energy prices are climbing faster than the national average. Wages for Latinos, African Americans and the less educated have stagnated.

One can probably get whatever number wants. Here's another link. This may be one of the better links: California's greenhouse gas emissions fall by less than 1%.

The state’s emissions in 2015 dropped just 0.3 percent from the prior year, according to data released Wednesday by the California Air Resources Board.

The board’s detailed annual greenhouse gas inventories are issued more than a year after the fact.

While emissions from electrical plants fell in 2015, driven down partly by the rapid growth of large solar facilities, the amount of greenhouse gases spewed by cars and planes rose. That may be due to low fuel prices and an improving economy, both of which typically entice people to drive more. Transportation accounted for 39 percent of the state’s emissions in 2015, making it California’s largest source of greenhouse gases.

Again, no mention that California is outsourcing its coal-generated electricity out-of-state.

Obviously, the solution: ban non-EVs in the metropolitan area from Santa Barbara, CA, to San Diego, CA; and similarly in the Bay Area. It can be done folks.

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High Price of Gasoline In California

I'm often asked by my brother-in-law why gasoline prices are so high in California. We need to start with where California gets its heavy oil. Saudi Arabia.

• Bakken light: $50
• WTI: $70
• OPEC Basket (California):  $76
• Brent crude (California): $78 
• Alaska North Slope, west coast: $78

Then, we can move on to transportation costs, regulations, taxes, and cost of living.