Absolute rubbish
The Harper Conservatives have stunned the House of Commons by supporting a Bloc Quebecois motion that calls for absolute limits on greenhouse gas emissions.It's an apparent contradiction of Conservative policies...
The Harper Conservatives have stunned the House of Commons by supporting a Bloc Quebecois motion that calls for absolute limits on greenhouse gas emissions.If the Tories had "rejected" absolute limits, how did they expect to get to the 45 to 65% reduction (from 2003 levels) projected in the Clean Air Act (Ambrose version)?It's an apparent contradiction of Conservative policies.The motion was passed unanimously, a rare occurrence in the Commons.
The Bloc motion calls for the government to urgently set absolute targets for cutting greenhouse emissions in order to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto Accord.
Incredulous opposition MP's initially attributed the government's support for the Bloc motion to a translation error, which translated "absolute" targets as "fixed" targets.
But after the error was corrected, the government voted in favour.
The Tories have explicitly rejected absolute limits on emissions in favour of "intensity targets," which would allow emissions to rise along with economic growth.
The whole "intensity" vs "absolute" target controversy, as I've written before, is a complete red herring. It's simple arithmetic: before you can get to absolute reductions, you have to reduce the "intensity," in the same way that before you can stop your car, you have to slow down.
4/24/2007
related
Keep bookmarked posts here.
48 Comments
This post has been removed by the author.
Your driving metaphor just exposes the Conservatives' real goal - to slow down carbon emissions, not to stop them as they need to be stopped!
Its also a bad metaphor. What the Tory's are actually advocating as that our emissions should accelerate at a slower rate.
Studpi, Andrew, Stupid.
Get a grip. A 45 to 65% reduction is an absolute reduction. Indeed, the Tories initially promised an absolute cap as of 2020 to 2025. You can call that too little, or too slow -- the Tories are likely to move that up to 2012, according to a leaked version of the redraft, with a reduction of 20% targeted by 2020 -- but you can't say it's not an absolute reduction.
I hope Andrew Doyle is being sarcastic.
The CP story raises an interesting question. Despite introducing one of the biggest program-spending budgets in history (the biggest?), the Harper Tories are still criticized for things like cutting Status of Women. When the Tories introduce their greenhouse plan this week, can they expect any better treatment? Or will they simply be criticized for a) being hypocrites and b) not doing 'enough'? It seems to me Tories will never get credit for enacting Liberal policies; that being the case, you have to wonder whether it's worth it.
Ac,
Follow the logic of your own metaphor:
...in the same way that before you can stop your car, you have to slow down.
But before you slow down you don't have to allow a space where you speed up at a less intense pace. You just step on the brakes. But that's what your reading of the Tory position amounts to: letting emission rates (like MPH) rise but at a slower pace before, some day down the road when we may all be dead, actually having them slow down.
"some day down the road when we may all be dead,"
People who think like this are no different from Pat Robertson and his ilk. Ignorance, superstition and hysteria: the complete package of idiocy.
Ahhhhh, BCL is back to reprise his role as village idiot. It appears you have something other than an infantile world view in common with my teenage daughter, you are also out of your depth discussing physics.
give it up folks . . talking to BCL is like talking to a fence post . . .. you won't get a response.
BCl is just another wanna be Alberta hater, so typical of the torrana latte liberal ilk.
bcl wants to just put the car into reverse without stopping it.
It doesn't matter what we do with our emissions as long as chinas keep doubling every year.
All we are doing is moving our economy there, yahoo for suzuki and gore.
Isn't focusing on "relative" vs. "absolute" the real red herring?
Isn't the more important phrase "in order to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto Accord"!?!?
Didn't Baird just finish saying that meeting the objectives of the the Kyoto accord would destroy our economy? And now the Tories are voting for motions to set "absolute targets for cutting greenhouse emissions in order to achieve the objectives of the Kyoto Accord"??? Did I miss something?
Now, I suppose the Tories may argue that "meeting the objectives of the Kyoto accord" does not mean, you know, meeting the objectives actually written in the Kyoto accord. That Kyoto has specific targets for reductions, and that the motion (calling for them to meet the "objectives" of the Kyoto protocol) doesn't actually call for them to meet Kyoto's "targets", just Kyoto's "objectives". But isn't that too cute by half?
I suppose the other argument could be "Hey, we agreed to set absolute targets for greenhouse gas emissions in order to meet Kyoto's objectives... we never said anything about actually achieving the targets we agreed to set". But again, does that pass the laugh test?
If you think the Bloc was just asking you to set goals that can't be met, why waste the taxpayers' time and money agreeing to set goals that can't be met? Why not just say "They're asking us to set goals that can't be met, so we're not going to waste time voting in favour of that"?
Does it not seem as though either the Tories just agreed to meet Kyoto's "objectives", with no intention of meeting Kyoto's "targets", or alternatively that they agreed to set targets for meeting Kyoto's objectives with no intention of actually meeting those targets?
The only other thing I can think of is that they're about to announce that we can reach our Kyoto targets.
Now THAT would be news.
That's how it reads to me.
I thought intensity targets allowed emission growth if the economy improved. For example, if the GDP grew by 10%, Canada's emissions can grow by 10% without violating the Clean Air Act.
Absolute targets do not allow for economic growth. A growing economy would require more dramatic cuts in emissions to negate new factories, transportation, etc.
Have I been suckered by the spin? If so, by all means set me straight.
I also really don't like the car analogy. It's not precise enough.
Andrew says that before one can make an absolute reduction, one must reduce intensity, in the same way as slowing down a car, before stopping. That just doesn't make sense.
If company X produces 100 widgets in 2006, and puts out 10 megatonnes of GHGs, an absolute cut would say that they must reduce their output of GHGs to, let's say, 8 megatonnes in 2007. The equivalent "intensity" cut would say that if the company produces 200 widgets in 2007, they can actually INCREASE their emission of GHGs in 2007 by anywhere up to a total of 16 megatonnes of GHGs. In the car analogy, if the speed of the car is analogous to levels of GHG emmissions, the car isn't slowing down at all, it's actually SPEEDING UP. Last year the company put out 10 megatonnes. This year, 16 megatonnes. What's more, there's no need (theoretically) for the company's emissions to EVER go down. As long as the relative "intensity" of the emissions the company produces decreases, the absolute amount of emissions can keep going up and up.
In theory, under "intensity targets", the company (and all companies) could keep putting out more and more GHGs each and every year, forever, as long as their GHG's per unit of production kept getting lower. There's no mandate, whatsoever, to actually decrease emissions. All you have to do is decrease emissions relative to production.
Andrew seems to think that "intensity targets" are equivalent to slowing down a car, before brining it to a halt. But "intensity targets" don't require the car to stop at all. They don't even require the car to slow down. As long as the right conditions are met, the car can just keep going faster and faster. Continuously accelerating.
Now, Andrew's right that the 45-65% reduction the Tories promised is an "absolute" reduction. I'm just less clear how they were ever going to achieve this absolute reduction using "intensity" targets.
Seems to me, this latest vote in the Commons indicates that they've realized they can't.
hmm. i'm actually not in favor of voting for this motion, or any motion that calls for action that is intended to fulfill the Kyoto targets.
because we already have hard reductions. (5.3 megatons by 2010)
which is especially ironic if you consider:
- that the "XXXX(hours):XX(minutes):XX(seconds) until we get action on the environment" hit counter that has been spread around leftist blogs as the golden anti-Conservative gospel.
- that no Liberal has ever offered a hard reduction target that is as immediate as 2010.
- that Andrew Coyne himself doesn't know about these hard targets!
that said, i do get this feeling that even if the facts are on our side, a lot of people will still be resentful of having the Conservatives on the environment file, just because. i talked to Mike from Rational Reasons about this on Aaron Lee Wudrick's blog (not a friendly conversation by any means though) a while back and i get the feeling that he'd still rather work with the Liberals on the environment - even if we can beat them on actual policy merit. them's the breaks. enjoy the ill-gotten gains of media bias while you can, Liberals.
so summarily, i still don't support the Conservatives voting in favor of this motion. i support hard reductions, but Kyoto is garbage to begin with.
Regardless of the validity of AC's car analogy (which works just fine for me - you guys are getting WAY too nitpicky about this) it's better than driving in 4th and throwing it into reverse, which sounds like the shrill argument coming from most rabid Harper-haters.
I don't always agree with the Conservatives, but is it really that difficult to give credit where credit is due??
Andrew's contention some time ago,
that Canadians just want posturing on this issue, no real action that would cause us economic pain,
is correct.
And thank god for that. The thought of some self employed truck driver having less food on his family's table because his gas prices sky rocket on the fiction that reducing our tiny fraction of emissions is actually material in the face of China, Brazil ects ramping up emissions, makes my blood boil.
Kyoto doesn't deal with the worst emitters (even assuming you accept that man is causing the increase in the Earth's temperature....this time around after repeated natural cycles of this happening).
Kyto is a treaty about international narcissism.
It has no place in actual government policy.
This motion is just part of the fictional stage play.
Thank goodness for that.
I don't see how the criticisms of the car analogy are merely "nitpicky". The point of the car analogy is to imply that the result of intensity targets is to slow the car down by gently applying the break, in order to bring the car to an eventual halt before we reach the wall scientists see ahead. What intensity targets ACTUALLY DO is give us the option of either applying the break, OR stepping on the gas, and with some people (/companies) stepping on the breaks, and some hitting the accelerator, it's not at all clear that the car will even slow down, let alone stop.
Now, I understand many conservatives don't think there's a wall ahead. And even those who can see the wall, don't necessarily think it's dangerous. It might be made of paper. Heck, it might just be fog. But reputable scientists see a wall. And we're heading towards it. I understand we'll stall if we move from 4th to reverse. I understand not everyone's sure what we should do to avoid the wall, and that some believe there's no wall to be avoided, so why not just keep driving. I just don't see why we should still be entertaining the option (or allowing others to entertain the option) of stomping on the accelerator. If there's no wall, and we apply the break, the car will slow down. If there's a wall, and we accelerate, we may not be able to avoid the wall once we all realize it's really there.
All of this quibbling over an analogy misses the point that the Conservatives have already endorsed hard targets which will end in reductions in absolute terms. Andrew is right. The story was shoddy.
Why would any Leftoid give credit to a Conservative government.
Even when they agree with the Opposition on a motion criticism follows.
It is amusing to say the least.
So if Coyne says so it's right and it should be etched in stone? He's got an opinion but it doesn't means he right.
Lord Kitchener has set it out nicely I think.
I think Coyne like to rattle cages. Face it, is he an expert? No.
Lynne
I should point out that I don't disagree that Andrew has a point. I WAS "merely" quibbling with the analogy, and it does seem as though, even before last night's vote, the Conservatives did have some "absolute" targets in mind, not just "intensity" targets (again, I'm less clear on how their plan aimed to meet absolute targets for reductions with intensity targets (that allow for increases) built into the system, but I can't say for certain it's impossible to do so).
I do think it was important to point out though that it is erroneous to claim that one cannot reach absolute targets without first going through intensity targets in the sense that "before you can get to absolute reductions, you have to reduce the 'intensity', in the same way that before you can stop your car, you have to slow down." Again, since emmissions in this scenario are analogous to speed, and "intensity targets" don't actually require emissions to go down (and, in fact, allow emissions to go up under the right circumstances... I would say, the most LIKELY circumstances) it's a horrible analogy. It sets up "intensity targets" as analogous to applying the break to slow the car (or at the very least, easing off the accelerator) when intensity targets clearly also allow for the application of more gas, and an increase in speed. You certainly need to slow the car down before you stop it. You DON'T need to allow for the option of accelerating in order to stop the car. And "intensity targets" clearly allow for the car to speed up. Increase production, and you can increase emissions (as long as your emmissions per unit of production goes down).
Biff,
i understand why China's large amounts of emissions upset you, but I would simply ask, if "intensity targets" are good enough for Canadian industries, why not China and Brazil?
It certainly true that China's carbon emissions, at 3650 Mt in 2004 are terrible, and a big problem to solve. Certainly a bigger problem, and larger contribution to the problem than our 740 Mt (2003) (numbers from www.carbonplanet.com)
However, it's also true that this means in 2004, China put out 3.05 Mt of CO2 per person. Canada put out 23.45 Mt per person (the EU puts out 10.74 Mt per person, the U.S. 24.09, Australia, 27.54).
I understand that China puts out, in absolute terms, WAY more greenhouse gases than us. It's rather obvious given that their population is almost 40 times ours. I just don't see how we'll ever convince the Chinese to reduce their emissions, as long as our emissions (per capita) are over 7.5 times as high as theirs.
If I were the Chinese, I'm not sure I'd sign on for emissions reductions until Canada and the U.S. brought their emissions per capita to, say, 5 times China's. Hell, I'd say that's being pretty generous.
Is it less than what it would have been? Yes so on that front it is better, assuming CO2 is a problem.
As AC said, you can argue go faster, go slower but it is a reduction.
Reminds me of the joke, albeit off colour, what's the difference between a mistress, a prostitute and a wife. A mistress says slower slower, a prostitute says faster faster and wife says...beige, definitely paint the ceiling beige....
Point being some people miss the point and arent engaged in what is going on, I'll let you decide who is who in the debate for yourselves.
Lord,
I always thought it was about saving the planet not about any individual in particular. If reductions are required on a global basis then they need to be done.
What you are addressing is a distribution of those emissions. Of course the best way to look at it, if allowable carbon emissions are a scarce resource is who is the most efficient with them. I suspect if you do that measure the US may very well come out on top and justrify their status as largest user.
Of course this once again assumes that CO2 emissions are really bad thing and that increasing them will cause more and more damage....Mind you what happens when there is another Mt Pinatubo, or KRakatoa blows up again? What do we do then?
Just asking?
Thanks for highlighting the irrationality of that argument LCO (why should we do anything when they are polluting more)...
It has to start somewhere (well it has started in the Nordic countries) and Canada would be right to set the example and then spread their knowledge to other countries.
AC: "..you have to reduce the 'intensity', in the same way that before you can stop your car, you have to slow down.."
The analogy is only partially correct. The "car engine" represents industrial activity causing GHG emissions.
Imposing "hard caps" means you are being asked to reduce the RPM of this engine to zero by a combination of brakes, reduced acceleration and improved engine technology.
People who advocate the use of "intensity targets" do not want the "brakes" at all. They would rather have just the other two, because they claim - justifiably one might say - that using the brakes would stop you from going where you want to go (i.e. economic prosperity, jobs, etc).
"Hard cap" advocates claim that stopping the "car engine" is the only way to guarantee a reversal of the GHG effect. They argue, reasonably I might add, that society would be forced to adapt to alternative mechanisms and that corresponding economic activity will - in the long term - adequately compensate for any short-term shocks to the economy.
What about the 90 Gigatonnes of CO2 emitted by the Ocean. Those darned widget producing dolphins. Why didn't they sign on to Kyoto? They must be climate change deniers.
(The industrial C02 emissions have about as much effect on atmosphere as a fart in the wind)
But hey, what's a couple of orders of magnitude between friends.
-- Lore Weaver
Maybe we should be referring to the ocean as producing 90,000 MT so we can compare that to Canada reducng its contribution by 150 MT
Just a thought
Now, that's cute.
Point out that the oceans release carbon dioxide at the surface, and ignore the fact that they also ABSORB carbon dioxide.
Oceans are a net SINK. They absorb more carbon then they release. (LINK)
I've heard conservatives say industry made CO2 wasn't a problem because the oceans are so huge, and absorb so much. I've never heard someone argue the opposite. It was funny though.
Of course, all the extra man-made CO2 the oceans are sucking up is also changing the chemistry of the oceans, and impacting their ability to suck up more CO2 (and bleaching coral reefs, and basically messing up the whole ecosystem) so eventually, the ocean's ability to absorb more carbon than it emits at the surface WILL be so compromised that they will indeed go from being net reducers to net contributors. At that point, the oceans really WILL be contrinuting to global warming. However, this state of affairs is a RESULT OF GLOBAL WARMING.
I'd say it goes well beyong "skeptisism" to point to an effect of the anthropogenic nature of climate change in an attempt to disprove the anthropogenic nature of climate change.
It's like your slapping the ocean in its head with its own hand and saying "Stop hitting yourself. Why are you hitting yourself?"
It makes about as much sense as claiming that Walmart is an unsuccessful company because they spent a billion dollars on operating costs, and ignoring the fact that they MADE 2 billion dollars.
>>Andrew seems to think that "intensity targets" are equivalent to slowing down a car, before brining it to a halt. But "intensity targets" don't require the car to stop at all. They don't even require the car to slow down. As long as the right conditions are met, the car can just keep going faster and faster. Continuously accelerating.<<
But carbon trading is precisely the same thing. Pollute til the cows come home as long as you buy credits from a third world country.
I want this issue to go away. My eyes hurt.
Arguments based on per capita emissions as they are currently calculated are complete trash.
If Canada moved all of its heavy industry to third world countries and we were somehow able to sustain our standard of living, we wouldn't have reduced one tonne of GHG (we probably would have increased them due to transportation necessities) but our per capita emissions would drop because the emissions that take place in the production of our goods took place in another country.
Per capita emissions would be a relevant statistic if they included all the GHGs produced through the manufacturing of our imports and subtracted all the GHGs produced during the manufacturing of our exports. But they don't, so the statistic is a poor indicator of a country's real GHG emissions.
My point wasn't that intensity reductions necessarily imply absolute reductions. My point was that absolute reductions necessarily imply intensity reductions.
If you dial up enough of an intensity reduction, that is, you get an absolute reduction. So if you start off with a 10% intensity reduction over some time interval x, but output grows by 25%, then you've made no absolute reduction: in fact emissions grow. But a 20% intensity reduction in the same interval keeps you level, and a 30% intensity reduction results in a modest absolute reduction.
About my analogy. It should better have been phrased: before you can slow down you have to take your foot off the accelerator (since no one is proposing to stop emissions altogether, but only to reduce them). Fair enough. But the Tory plan envisages both taking the foot off the accelerator (emissions have to stop rising, before they can fall) and putting it on the brake. That's the only way you can get to an absolute reduction of 45-65% from 2003 levels, as in the Ambrose plan. They just don't plan on standing on the brakes, as would be required to make a 33% reduction by next year.
hey Ms. Lynne:
are you an expert? are you in a position to judge who has "set it out nicely"?
this cheap shot has been brought to you by Steve L.'s Political Cheap Shots Inc., UN-FRIGGING-LIMITED.
haha.
BCL: "But before you slow down you don't have to allow a space where you speed up at a less intense pace."
I'll make a wild guess here, but I'm guessing you weren't a physics major, or took physics 101?
If you're going 100 kph, you travel 100 km's each hour. You are not accelerating, but going at the same constant speed. To actually move into negative distance travelled, you must first bring the car to 0 kph, before accelerating in reverse. Even after getting to a point where you are in reverse, it will take some hours before you get to the original starting point.
The only way to go from 100 kph to 0 kph immediately is to hit a BRICK WALL, with all the attendant mess that entails. Following along the metaphor, that's what you're advocating for Canada to do!!
Admittedly, I don't expect much better from someone who wrote this on their blog:
"The original story broke during the midst of the 2006 campaign, and I always hoped it would cancel out the whole Adscam thing. It didn't, but Mr. Zeisman might be at least partly responsible for the fact that we don't have a Conservative majority today. Thank you, Mr. Zeisman."
That you could possibly think that the Zeisman story could in any conceivable way, shape or form cancel out the Sponsorship Scandal marks you out as someone not entirely attached to reality, and far, far removed from anything approaching objectivity. Yeah, that Adscam ... it was nothing, really. Really!
LKO: I understand we'll stall if we move from 4th to reverse.
Oh, please, please, please try out your theory of what would happen if you threw it in R from 4th gear going at speed, and then tell me all about your "stall".
:-P
the "science" of global warming as brought to you by the IPCC . . . you know
The Little Ice didn't happen - sorry Charles Dickens, your description of snowy English winters was all made up.
The medieval warm period didn't happen - There never were any vineyards in England -it was a real estate scam to attract southern Europeans to buy condos in Dorset
Ooopsie, we seem to have misplaced our Hockey Stick, but pssst, don't tell anyone and maybe they won't notice it is gone from SPM4.
Co2 makes up 0.0383% of the Earth's atmosphere.
The human contribution to that 0.03% is 3%. So the human part of the great global warming scare job is 0.0014 %
one one-thousandths of a percent.
Does AL gore & Dr, Fruit Fly think they can maintain the scam for very much longer ??
Oh ya and the last 15+ years of the most accurate temperature data, derived from satellite measurements says the atmospheric warming period that started in the late 1960's has peaked and now heading into a cooling period.
Break out the woolies my friends . . . its getting colder.
LKO: I understand we'll stall if we move from 4th to reverse.
Oh, please, please, please try out your theory of what would happen if you threw it in R from 4th gear going at speed, and then tell me all about your "stall".
reading your boy who cried wolf article earlier this week, i thought nobody could make a worse analogy than that...but here you are. congrats on the worst analogy ever ;-).
"My point wasn't that intensity reductions necessarily imply absolute reductions. My point was that absolute reductions necessarily imply intensity reductions. "
except they don't. you could just mandate an absolute reduction forcing companies to reduce production. however, no sensible people are arguing for that.
i am gobsmacked that the gov't voted for this motion though. as LKO pointed out, they have just votde in favour of something that they have been arguing against for a long time and are continuing to do so. strange.
Man that car analogy just crashed into a brick wall at 120 kph and AC's loyal (conservative) fans have all suffered head trauma.
Thank God no one will be able to tell the difference. Heh heh...
Crashed, anon? More like his car metaphor has run out of gas.
Wait a second...what kind of car is it anyway?
If it's a hybrid, does that change anything?
Gah!
Kwest,
If the car is a hybrid, then when it brakes it actually GAINS POWER,as the energy is RECYCLED back into the electric engine, in the same way the Canadian economy can GROW while cutting GWG emissions. If Andrew's car is a hybrid, then Andrew is Stephane Dion.
Well that backfired.
By the way, you can't GAIN power during braking.
Brakes produce heat. The energy level of the system is a constant. So:
Efast = Heat + Eslower
since heat is a positive here, then:
Eslower < Efast
In this system you are simply wasting less energy as heat than normal.
It's an example of lowering the INTENSITY of an energy loss, without...err, now I'm lost.
Anyway, don`t worry about it. Enviro-dilletantes never let rigorous analysis get in their way.
I liked your analogy...if the car is a hybrid, then AC = SD (you never see them in the same room after all).
So if the car is a '75 Ford Torino, is Andrew Starsky or Hutch?
No wait, I've got it...if the car's a Honda Jazz, then Andrew Coyne is Paul Wells, no?
Several posters have clearly explained that we are not in a situation where we can talk at all about braking a car, gently or in panic. Intensity means, in this case, that you can keep right on at your present proportionality of emissions to production or whatever ratio your regulator requires. Trouble is we have no regulator and so the real point is that the planet killers of Alberta are, in effect, running our Federal government. The sky is the limit, so to speak on their emissions.
And for the Cons to vote for the bloc motion makes us ask: were they awake at the time?
Can they possibly be that stupid or panicky? Sure, wny not. When your political theory is that it is ok to lie in fact that is what you should do because the people are too stupid to handle the truth, the Straussian mantra, then you will soon find youself walking into telephone poles. See the Cons doing just that on Afganistan, which now looks to be enough to wipe out the political future of at least 4 Ministers.
And Mr. Coyne could help the general understanding by passing on to some subject that will not tax his arithmetic skills.
They do not know what they are doing? Right.
Anon,
What part of the car is the "regulator"? Is that that green knob under the dash? How does it cut gas emissions?
It's the turnip shaped guy with the helicopter beanie and what it does no body has ever figured out. Try, produces pointless comment.
By the way annon is not my cup of tea, I am garhane and at gary_mh@telus.net, but this dammed system will not accept any names or email address I give it anymore.
Perhaps you're not welcome here? You are a known troll.