<blockquote>Carbon trading schemes assume that one technology can be easily substituted for another, but that's not real life.</blockquote>

Excellent point.

The rate at which the global economy is decarbonising is slowing. The rate of building nuclear and hydro-electric plants has slowed markedly.

To reduce CO2 emissions from energy by 80% by 2050 would require that the world decarbonise energy - i.e. reduce carbon intensity of energy (CO2 emissions per $ of GDP) at the rate of -5% to -6% per year to 2050. However, we are decarbonising at the rate of about -1.5% per year average since 1991. Furthermore the rate is slowing (from about -2% per year in 1991 to about -0.7% per year in 2009 http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2010/07/decelerating-decarbonization-of-global.html

Arguing about and focusing on energy efficiency is a diversion from tackling what is important and a waste of time. Energy efficiency will have only a small and slow impact on decarnbonisation. http://rogerpielkejr.blogspot.com.au/2011/02/reality-check.html

To decarbonise we must have cost-competitive alternatives to fossil fuels. They must be a genuine cost-competitive alternative without artificial costs being applied to fossil fuels (such as carbon tax and ETS). The reason is because the developing countries, especially the poorest, will not agree to raising the cost of energy – and nor should they. Energy is development. Development requires energy – lots of it. Therefore we need least cost energy.

It is the developing and the poorest countries which will show the fastest rate of development this century. They will consume energy at an increasing rate. If they do not have a cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels they will burn fossil fuels – and so they should.

So it is up to the developed and recently industrialised countries to provide a cost competitive alternative to fossil fuels. This explains how it can be done: http://www.collide-a-scape.com/2012/06/05/conservatives-who-think-seriously-about-the-planet/#comment-111744

The author made the point that his was an opinion piece. However he makes a number of interesting points, none more observant than the amount of time and money required to bring an alternative to commercial success?
We the people have poured billions into alternative development.
And the subsidies for a solar roll out has all but dried up. Nonetheless, we choose wind and solar voltaic as the two principle alternatives?
Why?
Well, they are the least effective or most expensive options.
Wind farms are only 35% effective, solar voltaic only uses 15% of the available light that falls on it and then only in full sunshine and daylight hours!
We know from the Chilean experience, that solar thermal is vastly more efficient and can actually undercut the cost of coal-fired power!
Which probably underlines the patent reluctance of virtually all Australian govt's, to actually invest our money in it.
Even though we can expect substantial and rising returns from the very long life of these solar thermal projects!
It would put the very powerful CMU and the coal mining industry, currently earning billions for the national economy; offside, and cost critical votes and or election funding?
This even though the widespread use of solar thermal arrays, would resuscitate the steel industry and local manufacture.
It is said that very large scale arrays and automation, would produce solar thermal projects large enough, with economies of scale, that would allow power to be produced for considerably less than current coal.
We have both the sunshine and the vast empty inland spaces, to make very long term solar thermal projects viable. And salt heat traps would cope with any foreseeable peak demand.
This is the sort of alternative, which along with wave power, have a chance to compete with current coal-fired power! And that is the only place or alternatives, we should be injecting limited taxpayer funds?
Rhrosty.

“Carbon pricing (of which the tax is a temporary start) is the standard economic remedy for problems like carbon dioxide emissions.”

It may be the economists’ proposed solution. But it has failed everywhere it has been tried so far and there is not sign of international adoption of such a scheme. The economists make many assumptions which are entirely academic and could never be achieved. http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#82373 They are totally impracticable. Since they cannot be achieved in practice the benefits cannot be delivered. Furthermore, the costs will be much higher than is being admitted.

The Australian CO2 tax and ETS will cost $10 for every projected $1 of savings. But the projected savings will not be delivered and the costs will be far higher than is being admitted. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578&page=0

Australia is planning to spend $10 dollars for every $1 of benefit it hopes to derive - provided the assumptions about the consequences of AGW are correct. This suggests that our climate policies are flawed and need major change.

The assumptions are academic but totally impracticable to achieve in the real world. Here are some of the assumptions:

• Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries)

• All emission sources are included (all countries and all emissions in each country)

• Negligible compliance cost

• Negligible fraud

• An optimal carbon price

• The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison

• The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically

• The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter).

If these assumptions are not met, the net benefits estimated will not be achieved. As Nordhaus says, p198 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf :

"Moreover, the results here incorporate an estimate of the importance of participation for economic efficiency. Complete participation is important because the cost function for abatement appears to be highly convex. We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent instead of 100 percent will impose a cost penalty on abatement of 250 percent."

In other words, if only 50% of emissions are captured in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are caught, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are caught in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded).

Given the above, we can see that the assumptions are theoretical and totally impracticable. To recognize this, try to imagine how we could capture 100% of emissions from 100% of emitters in Australia (every cow, sheep, goat) in the CO2 pricing scheme, let alone expecting the same to be done across the whole world; e.g. China, India, Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia.

Whatever you might think of global warming, as the author points out renewables are next to useless as a substitute for fossil fuels..

There is no indication that they will affect the rate of growth in energy markets, let alone make inroads into the market itself.

As part of that, there is a very real question about just how much carbon is saved by renewables. Activists may scream that I don't have any proof of this which is true, as no one with any expertise and claim to independence, has been asked to do a thorough analysis..

The assumption is that one megawatt hour from a renewable source is a megawatt hour saved from a a conventional plant, but it is known that there are losses because of changes that have to be made in the rest of the network and the way the other plants are run, changes in reserve requirements and so on.. activists will scream that all those concerns are exagerated but, okay, how do we know this? And, no, its not enough to point to activist-commissioned modelling.. what can we say about the existing real world networks with substantial renewables connected? Where is the analysis?

These hard questions have never been asked, and that is simply extraordinary.

Fossil fuel is a once only gift from nature, and will need to be eventually replaced! No two ways about it!
We currently import around 80% of our oil. These come to us as extensively refined products, which produce four times as much carbon as, local hydrocarbon products.
Given the sulphur content, one assumes that these products came from an increasingly volatile Middle East.
You'd think genuinely concerned, left leaning green activists would be climbing all over this and protesting!
Like those Canadian activists, who hung their protest banners over OUR infant shale oil projects!
Even as the Canuks were developing their vast long life extremely dirty tar sands, needing even more carbon creating processing!
We have to our immediate north hydrocarbon prospects, that could even exceed the entire know Middle East reserves.
Moreover, if it follows traditionally sourced supplies, it will leave the ground as virtually ready to use, locally available, low carbon, sulphur free alternatives. [Our own traditional sweet light crude leaves the ground as a virtually ready to use diesel, needing only a little insitu chill filtering to convert it into diesel. Conversely, NG leaves the ground as a sub zero product needing a little warming to prevent it freezing the delivery pipes!]
Norway had no trouble accessing and achieving huge permanent benefits from North Sea oil.
It used these very finite resources to build a truly formidable sovereign fund, rather than tax breaks for those, who clearly did not need them. And now pours significant sums into education and R+D, to set itself up for a fossil fuel free future.
We could do worse than emulate that most admirable Scandinavian pragmatism!
We absolutely must have income earning capital projects, to affordablly convert to a carbon neutral economy!
Rather than mindlessly kill the one we have now, by rendering essential energy just too dam expensive, along with all the things that rely on it, like affordable Australian produced food!
Rhrosty.