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[Phys-L] carbon wars



You can calculate the amount of carbon that can be dumped
into the environment before it leads to utter catastrophe,
such as the end of civilization as we know it, or possibly
extinction of the human species. This is a finite number,
on the order of 500 gigatons. You can also add up the
known reserves of fossil carbon fuels. That's something
like 2500 or maybe 3000 gigatons. That means that roughly
80% of the known carbon reserves must be *LEFT IN THE GROUND*
for hundreds of years if you want to avoid catastrophe.

Let's be clear: If you were worried about running out
of fossil carbon energy supplies, you can stop worrying
about that. If present trends continue, the world will
become uninhabitable long before we run out of fossil
carbon fuels.

That's tricky, because the existing stocks are carried as
assets on the books of the energy companies. They borrow
against these assets. In other words, they are committing
securities fraud on an epic scale, assigning a high value
to assets that have zero NPV, assets they cannot possibly
sell on any relevant timescale.

I don't normally give investment advice, but if you (or
your retirement fund) have anything invested in fossil
carbon companies, get out now. If you wait until the
last minute, until everybody else figures out about the
stranded assets, it will be too late.

What's even more astonishing is that the fossil carbon
energy industry is spending a billion dollars a day
exploring for new reserves ... even though they cannot
possibly sell what they've already got.

At some point, those companies (and the states like Saudi
Arabia and Venezuela that act like oil companies) will
collectively have to take a 20 trillion dollar writedown.
This will make the 2008 economic meltdown seem like a spit
in the ocean. In other words, not only are those guys
destroying the world environment, they are destabilizing
the entire economic system. Again.

If you politely ask those guys to properly account for
their stranded assets, they will politely refuse. If
you try to compel them, they will kill you dead. Nobody
walks away from 20 trillion dollars. Wars have been
started for far less reason.

Carbon sequestration is not economically feasible, as
discussed in a previous message.

Now let's discuss a hypothetical carbon tax. By way of
analogy, if you own a restaurant, you are required by
law to pay somebody to carry away your garbage. You
can't just dump it in the street, or throw it over the
fence into your neighbor's yard. Every industry on earth
/tries/ to externalize the cost of getting rid of their
waste, which is why we need laws to prevent that. The
Koch brothers' Georgia Pacific paper mills are a visible
example. The fossil carbon industry is the same, except
that CO2 is less visible in the short run.

A smallish carbon tax would have a tremendous effect,
because we are very near the tipping point where solar
energy becomes cheaper than fossil carbon energy anyway.
A small subsidy to the solar energy -- and/or removal
of some of the enormous subsidies to the carbon energy
industry -- would tip the balance overnight.

On the other hand, when you are playing chess, you have
to think more than half a move in advance. The carbon
merchants such as Exxon and Saudi Arabia are not stupid.
If you try to impose a carbon tax, they will see you
coming. If you say (correctly) that you are only going
to level the playing field, they will realize (correctly)
that doing so will indirectly force them to write off a
20 trillion dollar asset. If you think they are going
to tolerate that, think again.

Politicians in coal-mining states talk metaphorically
about a "war on coal". Ha! They have no idea what the
real carbon war is going to look like.

AFAICT there is going to be a non-metaphorical war between
the long-term guys and the short-term guys ... that is,
between those who want to protect the human species from
extinction and those who want to protect their 20 trillion
dollar asset. This is not a good thing, but I don't see
how to prevent it.

I do not say this lightly. I am by nature opposed to
drastic measures of all kinds. Warfare is pretty drastic.
Back in 1776 my buddy TJ said:

all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer,
while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing
the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of
abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a
design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it
is their duty, to throw off such ...

Then he proceeded to rattle off a couple dozen supposedly
intolerable abuses. On the other hand, compared to extinction
of the human species, the 1776 casus belli seems utterly
trivial IMHO.
http://www.archives.gov/exhibits/charters/declaration_transcript.html

Every day of delay makes the solution more expensive.
This is a big deal. Do the math.