What Is the Product Carbon Content and is it Useful

The recent announcement of the partnership between the Environmental Defense Fund and Wal-Mart has once more raised the issue of product carbon content. Lately, it has been popular to measure sustainability by the individual and national carbon footprint. Carbon dioxide is a by product of combustion, all combustion. Human beings exhale it at over 3 pounds per day for the average sedentary adult. Carbon dioxide is also released when we burn fossil fuels such as gas, coal or oil to produce electricity, move vehicles, manufacture products etc. In a natural carbon cycle, carbon dioxide is used by plants and trees. However, the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has been rising. Carbon dioxide content in the atmosphere has risen from approximately 250 parts per million (0.025%) to 386 part per million (0.039%) in the past 100 years. This increase has been attributed by many to human activity. The belief is that we are producing more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed by the plants and trees because we are burning too much fuel. The certainty of the direct relationship between global temperature and carbon dioxide concentrations has been called into question in the most recent revelations of manipulated data from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia and the revelations of unsubstantiated claims from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

The popular belief is that this increase in carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has caused the 1 degree Fahrenheit increase in average global temperature since 1900. It was postulated that burning fossil fuels for industry and power was the direct cause of this increase, though other contributing causes might exist. The methods used to determine global average temperature has come into question with the data manipulation disclosures from the CRU at the University of East Anglia, so currently, there is no consensus on what the global average temperature actually is. Nonetheless, the popular climate change theory postulates that the overall temperature of the planet is increasing (global warming) at a faster rate now and causing the earth’s climate to change in unpredictable ways (from floods and hurricanes to heat waves and droughts). The strongest adherents to this belief hold that the burning of fossil fuels must be reduced immediately. The belief is that if we could reduce our carbon dioxide emissions enough we could stop the climate of the earth from changing.

At the height of the Global Warming movement regulators and universities began to calculate the carbon dioxide released when making, shipping and using various products. These were only estimates, depending on some of the assumptions; drastically different totals could be reached. This concept was jumped on by merchants and manufacturers, to advertise a scheme to save the planet thought guided acquisition-purchase enough of the right things and save the planet. The makers of everything from milk to jackets to cars were estimating the carbon dioxide released when making, shipping and using of their products and advertising the results. These were called carbon content labels. For companies looking to get their products carbon labeled, three carbon labeling services are currently in the market. The labels are available in the UK and US and require a processed-based life-cycle analysis (LCA) to be carried out, usually in the price range of $10,000-$20,000 depending on the product. The methods of estimating the carbon content contained a large number of estimates, guesses and assumptions making this calculation easily manipulated and practically worthless for true allocation of resources because it only estimated the generalized cost of a product in terms of energy used in its life cycle. These labels at best are only broad generalizations and may not be particularly useful in evaluating choices for a sustainable life because of the underlying use assumptions as well. While it is very important to reduce the burning or fossil fuels and increase the planting of trees; we should approach this goal as only one aspect of sustainable living.

The fashion for carbon labels may simply fade away and soon be forgotten. Questions remain about how carbon footprints should be measured and whether putting such figures on the label is practical or something shoppers will even care about. Carbon labels beg for a recommended (or mandated) daily allowance for carbon. Building a bureaucracy to ensure that carbon dioxide in each product is measured at a cost of $10,000-$20,000, and potentially develop a recommended daily carbon allowance without a well documented connection between carbon allowance level and sustainable living is simply wasteful. Given the nature of the carbon cycle; how does one create a sustainable and accurate carbon budget?

Another method suggested has been to purchase carbon offsets for all products. The world's biggest carbon offset market, the Kyoto Protocol's clean development mechanism (CDM), is run by the UN, administered by the World Bank, and is intended to reduce emissions by rewarding developing countries that invest in clean technologies. According to David Victor, of Stanford University, as many as two-thirds of the supposed "emission reduction" credits being produced by the CDM from projects in developing countries are not backed by real reductions in pollution. In fact, in the February 2010 Harpers’ Magazine spelled out inconsistencies, questionable practices, and potential fraud in the CDM market raising the possibility emission reductions credits are increasing CO2 emissions behind the guise of promoting sustainable development. Even when a CDM credit does represent an "emission reduction", there is no global benefit because offsetting is a "zero sum" game.

The approach currently underway at Wal-Mart may hold more promise. There is real benefit to increasing the efficiency in energy use by selecting efficient technologies in everyday life. There is tremendous benefit to improving insulation in buildings and homes, and passive use of solar and wind. Improving manufacturing practices and farming practice to reduce energy consumption and utilization of pesticides and protect water supplies will yield ecological benefits, but may or may not reduce CO2 emissions. Changes in how and where we live; urban dweller, rural dweller, suburban dweller; whether or not we commute or if we commute using public or private transportation, alone or in a groups, our purchasing and activity choices all will impact our carbon use. Carbon content labels do not give the individual tools to evaluate a purchase choice against not purchasing, which is an important aspect of any decision. However, carbon content only looks at one aspect of the carbon cycle and fails to consider the other resources of the earth. At this point it is unlikely that the labeling of carbon content in products will be mandated. Legislating the measurement of carbon dioxide release in all things will cost money and resources and of itself will not make our lives more sustainable, but will certainly add costs to all things.

The EPA Endangerment Determination

Back in April 2007, in a suit filed by Massachusetts against the US EPA the Supreme Court found that greenhouse gases are air pollutants under the Clean Air Act. The case was brought to force the US EPA to determine whether or not emissions of greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles cause or contribute to air pollution which endanger public health or welfare, or whether the science is too uncertain to make a reasoned decision.

Two years later in April 2009, the EPA Administrator signed a proposed endangerment and a cause or contribute findings for greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act.  (That links to the draft of 2007 since the final was taken down. EPA held a 60-day public comment period, which ended June 23, 2009. If you will recall at the end of the comment period Alan Carlin and John Davidson of the US EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics detailed their concerns about the science underpinning the agency's "endangerment finding" for carbon dioxide. The two said the US EPA accepted findings reached by outside groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, "without a careful and critical examination of their own conclusions and documentation." They raise questions about data that EPA used to develop the proposed finding.

The EPA dismissed these concerns and barred the two from working in this area in the future. The hacked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) a collaborator with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals support for the concerns of Alan Carlin and John Davidson who said the EPA accepted findings reached by outside groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, "without a careful and critical examination of their own conclusions and documentation." More importantly, the US EPA is required to make its own evaluation of the underlying science not depend on the findings of others for its Endangerment Determination and must that greenhouse gases are harmful to human health.

Though these days when you say greenhouse gasses most people think carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide represents less than 0.04% (386 parts per million) of the atmosphere and its increase over the past hundred years or so is no doubt due to man’s impact on earth. The other greenhouse gasses are methane (1.8 parts per million), nitrous oxide (0.3 parts per million), hydrofluocarbons (0.00025 parts per million), Perfluorocarbons (0.00086 parts per million), and sulfur hexafloride (0.000006 parts per million). Ozone is also a greenhouse gas, but is not part of the endangerment finding.

On December 7, 2009, EPA Administrator Jackson signed two distinct findings regarding greenhouse gases under section 202(a) of the Clean Air Act:
Endangerment Finding:

The Administrator finds that the current and projected concentrations of the six
key well-mixed greenhouse gases--carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous
oxide (N2O), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), and sulfur
hexafluoride (SF6)--in the atmosphere threaten the public health and welfare of
current and future generations.

Cause or Contribute Finding:

The Administrator finds that the combined emissions of these well-mixed
greenhouse gases from new motor vehicles and new motor vehicle engines
contribute to the greenhouse gas pollution which threatens public health and
welfare.

Administrator Jackson explained her decision "relied on decades of sound, peer-reviewed, extensively evaluated scientific data." The declaration has been expected for months, after the Obama administration said earlier this year that it would act on a 2007 Supreme Court decision that found carbon dioxide and five other so-called greenhouse gases are pollutants covered by the Clean Air Act. To use that law to regulate greenhouse gases, the EPA has to prove those gases are harmful to human health. As Kim Strassel or the Wall Street Journal points out, The EPA must prove first that carbon dioxide will cause global warming and that a warmer earth will cause Americans injury or death. Given that most climate scientists admit that a warmer earth could provide "net benefits" to the West, this may not be possible to demonstrate.

Although the EPA could have delayed until March the announcement of findings, in picking this time the administration chose to signal the US’s dismissal of any questions raised by the disclosure of emails hack from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) a collaborator with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Though the emails released appear to reveal some researchers willingness to suppress or massage data and rig the peer-review process and control the publication of scholarly work, the Administration has dismissed any questions raised as a the “couple of naysayers,” deniers and dismissed them out of hand. The emails do raise new questions about how honest the peer-review process was. The Administration chose the first day of the United Nations global warming conference in Copenhagen as a way to signal full US acceptance of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change determinations and that President Obama wants to demonstrate to other nations that the U.S. is committed to cut its greenhouse gas emissions either through legislation or regulation.

The Global Warming Debate May Actually Begin

Until recently, questions about accepted global warming models and other modeling strategies took place only in fringe journal, there was no funding for differing points of view, the discussion was over and only approved research was funded. Not even the most fantastic statements were questioned. Thus I enjoyed reading George F. Will’s editorial comments in the Washington Post yesterday when he said, “Barack Obama …promises that U.S. emissions in 2050 will be 83 percent below 2005 levels. If so, 2050 emissions will equal those in 1910, when there were 92 million Americans. But there will be 420 million Americans in 2050, so Obama's promise means that per capita emissions then will be about what they were in 1875.” It does put that promise in perspective.

The hacked emails from the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit (CRU) a collaborator with the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change reveals some researchers willingness to suppress or massage data and rig the peer-review process and control the publication of scholarly work. Hacked emails have shown some of the weaknesses in the climate data and models used to forecast global warming as well as some rather questionable behavior. Richard Lindzen, a meteorology professor at MIT recently wrote about his questions about the climate models.

It is likely that global average temperature has increased about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit since the middle of the 19th century, but he points out that the quality of the data is poor, and because the changes are small, it is easy to nudge such data a few tenths of a degree in any direction. Several of the hacked emails from CRU talk about how to do just that to support the prime theory of global warming.

Though these days when you say greenhouse gasses most people think carbon dioxide, the main greenhouse substances in the earth's atmosphere are water vapor and clouds. Carbon dioxide represents less than 0.04% of the atmosphere and its increase over the past hundred years or so is no doubt due to man’s impact on earth. According to Professor Lindzen, even a doubling of CO2 would only upset the original balance between incoming and outgoing solar radiation by about 2%. Due to what he calls “climate forcing."

The main statement publicized after the last IPCC Scientific Assessment two years ago was that it was likely that most of the warming since 1957 (an anomalous cold year) was due to man’s activity. This was based on the fact that the various climate models couldn't reproduce the warming from about 1978 to 1998 without some climate forcing. They concluded that the climate forcing was due to man, not a fault in their models’ assumptions and understanding of climate.

Yet, articles from major modeling centers acknowledged that the failure of these models to anticipate the absence of warming for the past dozen years was due to the failure of these models to account for natural variability. Unaccountable variability is the reasons the climate models did not predict the failure of the earth to warm in the past decade, but unaccountable variability is the evidence that man’s activity caused the temperature warming that occurred in the previous twenty year period.

Recall that according to Professor Lindzen a doubling of CO2 would only increase incoming and outgoing radiation by about 2% over outgoing radiation; we are still talking about a two degree Fahrenheit increase associated with a doubling of CO2. The potential for alarm at increasing CO2 levels is basted on the concept of climate sensitivity-will an increase in CO2 act as a catalyst on global temperature increases.

Current climate models predict very high sensitivities of climate to changes in CO2. They do so because in these models, the main greenhouse substances (water vapor and clouds) act to amplify anything that CO2 does. This is referred to as positive feedback. But as the IPCC notes, clouds continue to be a source of major uncertainty in current models. Low sensitivity is entirely compatible with the small warming that has been observed in the past 12 years. The models with high sensitivity simulate the currently small response to the steep increase in CO2 by using aerosols to arbitrarily cancel as much greenhouse warming as needed to match the data, with each model choosing a different degree of cancellation according to the sensitivity of that model.

Many disasters associated with global warming are simply normal occurrences whose existence is claimed to be evidence of global warming and taken as omens, portending doom due to our carbon footprint. As George Will stated, “Some climate scientists …seem to suppose themselves a small clerisy entrusted with the most urgent truth ever discovered. On it, and hence on them, the planet's fate depends. So some of them consider it virtuous to embroider facts, exaggerate certitudes, suppress inconvenient data, and manipulate the peer-review process to suppress scholarly dissent and, above all, to declare that the debate is over.”

Now the debate should truly begin.

The Global Warming Data Scandal

A large number of emails from the Climate Research Unit (CRU) at the University of East Anglia webmail server were hacked recently from computers at the University of East Anglia's Climate Research Unit in the United Kingdom. The CRU is the data repository for much of the world's climate research and is a major source for the judgments reached by the U.N.'s climate reports.

Available now for anyone to read are hundreds of emails that give the appearance of a concerted and coordinated program by the leading climatologists to make the data fit their conclusions instead of modifying their models to accurately reflect the data. In addition, they engaged in attempts to silence and discredit their critics. This form of intimidation and manipulation is despicable and serves to silence true scientific inquiry. These scientists truly believed their conclusions and were operating in a world where the ends justify the means. In trying to rush forward, these scientists have now undermined their cause and damaged their own credibility.

In the June article by Michael J Economides PhD and Xina Xie PhD “Climate Change-What Does the Research Mean?” was a brief review of the scientific literature and research on the some of the postulated impacts that global warming might have on hurricane frequency and intensity, shrinking the ice field of Mount Kilimanjaro, melting the polar ice caps and rising sea levels. Both sides of each argument appear to be documented and supported by specific scientific measurements. Such contradictory conclusions indicated that the modeling of the earth’s climate and environment needed to be significantly reexamined and tested. Now we have some inkling of why the models were not predictive. Some research suggests that climate change may have some anthropogenic (human) causes. However, human cause is not the sole component in climate change. The consequences of climate change that have been cited as reasons for government action have not so far been born out by the facts.

The CRU e-mail scandal, changes the focus of the upcoming Copenhagen climate summit next month from attempting political action during a global downturn to discussing a potential fraud. Republicans are launching investigations, and the pressure is building on Democrats to hold hearings, since climate scientists were funded with U.S. taxpayer dollars. The office of Senator Jim Inhofe the ranking republican on the Senate’s Environment and Public Works Committee sent letters to federal agencies and outside scientists warning them not to delete their own CRU-related emails and documents, which may also be subject to Freedom of Information requests.

Carol Browner, the White House Environmental Czar in trying to downplay the controversy that the hacked e-mail has raised said “… we have 2,500 of the word’s foremost scientists who are in absolute agreement that this is a real problem and that we need to do something and we need to do something as soon as possible. What am I going to do, side with the couple of naysayers out there or the 2,500 scientists? I’m sticking with the 2,500 scientists.” The US EPA has stated repeatedly in the past that it based its findings on the UN science, which is now in question.

If you will recall at the end of June Alan Carlin and John Davidson of the US EPA’s National Center for Environmental Economics detailed their concerns about the science underpinning the agency's "endangerment finding" for carbon dioxide. The two said the US EPA accepted findings reached by outside groups, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the U.S. Climate Change Science Program, "without a careful and critical examination of their own conclusions and documentation." They raise questions about data that EPA used to develop the proposed finding. The Washington-based Competitive Enterprise Institute posted the document on its Web site and you can find it there. Can the US EPA move forward with their “endangerment finding” based on science that now needs to be reexamined?