Re: Wegman report. How many of you have read it? Do you know the scope of it, what Wegman et al were charged to do and not do? Do you know what they said about climate change? Also, Mann et al '98 was one of the first attempts at a large scale reconstruction like that, and not only were they bound to get some things wrong at first but that over time the methodology would improve. That's just how science works -- same for computers, cars, any technology that's not well established. Yet despite some methodological problems in the early work, the essence of it still stands, at least according to the National Academy of Sciences review, the later work of Mann and and practically everyone else in the field, and the >opinion< of Wegman et al.

Re: cost to California. Perhaps this is their way of beginning to account for those market externalities so conveniently overlooked. I do remember that when CARB enacted draconian emission restrictions, there was an awful lot of caterwauling about how business would abandon CA and it would become a 3rd world state. It remains the 6th largest economy in the world.

Neil:
You wouldn’t believe how many people in Russia die or become blind every year by mistaking methanol for ethanol (it is usually non-denaturated technical alcohol). BTW, some decades ago Russian government tried to produce vodka from oil and NG stock (talk about “addiction to oil”). For some undiscovered reasons, it had severe health effects, and vodka production returned to original “organic” beverage. What an irony that now we do it vice versa: fueling our cars by grain alcohol instead of oil.

Most of our industries use a great amount of energy. That is how it may effect the economy...by forcing them to use less energy and spend on more efficient methods bringing the costs of such goods as concrete, steel, and ready cut wood quite a bit higher. This then requires more tax money to support the higher infrastructure costs and at the same time basic construction materials for your housing rise in cost meaning the average joe finds housing less affordable than it is now, gets hit harder by taxes supporting more expensive infrastructure and then faces higher costs at any retail outlet due to the retail outlets having to recoup costs imposed on them. At the same time wages won't be increased as the higher cost of goods goes towards paying for the more expensive raw materials. Now, if you are working in the small segment addressing efficiency (like Danfoss) you may have a nice increase in your paycheck...but that will be all of what? 0.0001% of the population?

The main things I think this legislation is going to do are 1) create a new market for this oxymoron called clean coal, 2) make dirty coal cheaper for states that don't have simiilar laws, 3) hasten global warming, 4) come closer to asphyxiating the population of the interior west to pipe power to the coasts, especially from the National Sacrifice Area and the Diné (Navajo) Reservation, and, 5) hasten global warming and thus make life more perilous in the hurricane zones.

On the Navajo Reservation, Sithe Global Industries now plans to build one of the biggest, if not the biggest coal-fired plants ever built--like a mile long at least. Who cares if the emissions are 30% of those of dirty coal if you still have to make a mess, scar the earth, make people sick, and waste a lot of water mining coal? And, if you build five or ten more clean coal plants, increasing coal emissions by 150% to 300%?