ARB Releases Update On Study Showing Pavley Regs Deliver Greater Total GHG Reductions Than Federal CAFE
09 May 2008
 |
| Comparison of cumulative CO2e benefits achieved by Pavley Regulation and Federal CAFE by 2020 under different implementation scenarios. Click to enlarge. |
The California Air Resources Board has issued an addendum to an earlier technical study (earlier post) that shows that California’s clean cars law (the Pavley regulations) could achieve 41% greater total reductions of greenhouse gases nationwide if implemented nationally compared to the recently proposed federal fuel economy standards by 2020.
The previous ARB study, published before the schedule for achieving the CAFE (Corporate Average Fuel Economy) standards had been released by the National Highway and Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) on 22 April (earlier post) assumed that attaining the CAFE standard of 35 mpg by 2020 would be on a regular year-by-year incremental basis. The schedule for implementing the CAFE standards proposed by NHTSA is instead front-loaded, requiring the bulk of the increases in fuel economy to come into effect earlier during the 2011-2015 time period.
The ARB addendum takes that new schedule into consideration, and also considers revisions to the federal fleet mix assumptions used by NHTSA.
This new ARB analysis concludes that although the proposed 2011-2015 model year federal fuel economy standards result in larger reductions than the previous analysis assumed, the federal program still falls short of the GHG emission reductions that would result if the California Pavley rules are implemented in the United States and Canada.
Between 2009 and 2016, the California standards would prevent emissions of 411 million metric tons (MMT) of GHG in the United States. This is 36% more than the 303 MMT of GHG prevented if the proposed federal fuel economy rules are implemented.
By 2020, the Pavley standards would reduce a cumulative total of 1,283 MMT of GHG in the United States compared to 912 MMT of GHG achieved by the proposed federal standards—a difference of 41%—assuming the federal standards are strengthened in the 2016 to 2020 period to meet the full requirements of the 2007 Energy Bill (EISA).
Similar benefits will accrue to Canada, with a cumulative total of 87 MMT of GHG reductions by calendar year 2020 with the Pavley rules, compared to 58 MMT of GHG reductions achieved by the proposed federal standards.
We applaud the federal fuel economy standards. They will help reduce our use of fossil fuels. But they simply do not provide us with adequate protection against climate change. The California regulation is the only one that deals directly with greenhouse gases and it stands head and shoulders above the federal standards. It will ensure that auto manufacturers provide consumers with cleaner cars using readily available technology to reduce pollution and fight global warming.
—ARB chairman Mary Nichols
The ARB study also shows that just on a California basis:
By 2016, the California regulations will have prevented a total of 55 million metric tons (MMT) of CO2 from being emitted into the air in California as compared to 36 MMT under the proposed federal fuel economy standards—50% more.
By 2020, California’s rules will have prevented a total of 158 MMT of CO2 from being emitted in California as compared to 106 MMT of CO2 under federal regulations—almost 50 percent more.
Twenty other states with close to half of all the registered vehicles in the nation have either formally adopted the California regulations or are in the process of doing so.
The proposed fuel economy standards issued by the National Highway Transportation and Safety Administration on 22 April also included language which prevents California (and all states that wished to follow California) from ever enforcing standards to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from cars. This prompted a letter to the Secretary of Transportation from Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and the governors of eleven other states expressing their opposition to the language.
Resources
The CARBite Idiots fight back looking to justify their own high paying government jobs.
Its kind of ironic that on May 1st the principal IPCC authors of the AR4 have just published a peer -reviewed scientific paper in Nature, that says in effect: " Oops, Global Warming is now called off for another decade. It has mildly cooled for the last decade, and it will cool for about another 10 years..."
In the AR4, the ultimate global warmists published only a year ago, they were saying warming marches monotonically upward as CO2 rises. Not anymore.
The AGW war has been called off.
Now they t say that AGW is happening at all, for the past ten or for next ten years. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7376301.stm
Just when the CARBite idiots were going to get their way, their entire effort to justify continued existence has been undermined.
It appears that we should just do what we have been and are doing. That is to develop cleaner automobiles, that pollute less, and that get better mileage, even as we switch from hydrocarbon fuels to electrons. The effort to develop electric cars as substitutes for conventional cars is costly enough. We don't need useless, expensive unnecessary expenditures to keep a bunch of idiots in their high paying jobs.
It is beyond past time to pension off the CARBite idiots. Gold Watches and don't let the door hit you in the ass, as you leave...
Posted by: stas peterson | 09 May 2008 at 07:44 AM
"Twenty other states with close to half of all the registered vehicles in the nation have either formally adopted the California regulations or are in the process of doing so."
It sounds like they have some pretty good support. NHTSA's efforts are out of place. We need a plan that will actually work and not just go through the motions in a token appearance of doing something.
Posted by: SJC | 09 May 2008 at 08:58 AM
Whatever Stan or CARB thinks, the way gas prices are going makes it a moot point. People are going to move to more efficient vehicles as a matter of choice. California will easily hit $4.50-$5.00/gallon this year. The price alone will motivate people to switch.
Posted by: Cervus | 09 May 2008 at 09:04 AM
Stan,
does this mean it's okay to consume carbonated drinks without guilt again? And if I read it correctly the paper predicts future temperature increases due to radiative forcing - not CO2 levels (though other GHGs may have an effect.) Anyway, glad to hear that the AGW war is called off. Give peace a chance!
Posted by: sulleny | 09 May 2008 at 10:02 AM
Stan,
Maybe you should read the articles that you quote first, before you post. I have caught you several times now telling flat out lies, by either a quick wikipedia check or by reading your own references.
Let me just quote a few lines from the BBC link, that you referenced : http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7376301.stm
Quote 1: "However, temperatures will again be rising quickly by about 2020, they say. "
Quote 2: "His group's projection diverges from other computer models only for about 15-20 years; after that, the curves come back together and temperatures rise. "
Posted by: Thomas | 09 May 2008 at 07:38 PM
At this point it would be good to see a new approach to renewable energy/sustainability that emphasizes the inevitable rise in global temperature IF steps are not taken. Some of those steps appear to be under way. The positive results for business, community and personal growth by taking these steps should be emphasized. When we see large and small business succeeding with sustainable services or products - it is a primary incentive. When we see the benefits of good will, personally and communally - it is a secondary incentive.
The next trick is to reverse the order. Perhaps then, this entire exercise will have been worth the struggle.
Posted by: gr | 10 May 2008 at 06:41 AM
I did read the full article. Only a year before the AR4 authored by these Gentelemen, says warming will increase monotonically, like CO2.
Worse, they said the strength of CO2 alone, must be magnified, now that all the other GHGs are under control, when it is patently obvious that the true calibration of its power as a climate factor, is declining, as ever more scientific evidence comes in.
Now they say 20 years of cooling after 20 years of warming following 30 years of cooling is manifest proof of the reality that the world is definetly undergoing a disatrous warming despite evidence that the world cooled for 50 out of the previous 70 years. Sure.
Do you want to buy a Bridge to Brooklyn, from these people, too?
They called off AGW for a decade or so, before it theoretically returns. Once the myth of AGW is punctured, the "profit-cy" on which it is based, won't return, as it is wholly supported on a gossamer tissue of psuedo-scientific hyperbole only, that Science everday underminses and disproves.
Posted by: stas peterson | 10 May 2008 at 09:58 AM
California is well on its way to joining the Third World in underdevelopment. Thanks to the cabal of idiots ruling it, including the geniuses that passed Pavley AB32. The rest of the US need not follow these clowns into oblivion.
For a realistic review of where California really is, thanks to the religious true-beleivers in the Great new god, Gaia, along with his Profit Algore, and disciple the Terminator.
http://www.city-journal.org/2008/18_2_californias_environmentalism.html
Posted by: stas peterson | 10 May 2008 at 10:06 AM
Stas
You can spit on California, but I am afraid you will be short of saliva when they will win in court against EPA, since it is obvious they will win, because they will argue that EPA did nothing to regulate CO2 emission and EPA will have nothing to oppose to this, not to mention that EPA made their decision of denying the waiver without consulting their own experts (by the Toyota already target fuel efficiency in their product road map that take into account that Californai will win), then it will become obvious that the decision was made under political pressure of the Bush administration. Keep your hate of California for yourself people who visit that site are not here to read this, California and Al-gore got the point that new and clean energies a will be the catalyst of a new wealth when people like you instead of embracing this new era will get bitter and bitter that things are moving in the opposite direction they wished it would go.
Posted by: treehugger | 10 May 2008 at 02:06 PM
stas - "Its kind of ironic that on May 1st the principal IPCC authors of the AR4 have just published a peer -reviewed scientific paper in Nature, that says in effect: " Oops, Global Warming is now called off for another decade. It has mildly cooled for the last decade, and it will cool for about another 10 years...""
It would be if it were true. This is computer model that incoporates a natural cycle of Atlantic circulation. One it may not be correct and two natural forces have always been known to amplify and suppress the underlying warming that is AGW.
If this is true then it will be breathing space for us while we change over. If it is wrong the next El Nino could be really bad, worse than 1998.
"Only within the last few years have researchers begun systematically deploying mobile floats and tethered buoys that will, in time, tell us how this circulation is changing."
This is from the article - how can AR4 have recent research. It is a summary of agreed science not what is coming up. New discoveries will always be incorporated into the next report when it becomes more mainstream.
BTW did you read the paper - I think this is it
http://ams.allenpress.com/perlserv/?request=get-abstract&doi=10.1175%2FJCLI3945.1
BTW 2 Only Latif is listed as a contributor to AR4 - did you actually check this or are you using the popular but frequently incorrect denier blogs.
http://www.ipcc.ch/pdf/assessment-report/ar4/wg1/ar4-wg1-annexes.pdf
Posted by: Ender | 11 May 2008 at 05:07 PM
Cervus,
You and i agree, the price of hydrocarbon fuels will make the adoption of electric substitutes al the more certain. And force the adoption on a large scale even sooner than otherwise.
Posted by: stas peterson | 12 May 2008 at 09:56 AM
Did it ever occur to you that local cooling for twenty years or so, as the sacred Delphic GCMs now prophecy, can just as easily, be used to criticize the comparative few years of warming recorded between 1979 and 1998. The greatest year of warming was supposedly 1998, but now corrected to the 1930s. But that was measured warming was caused by an anomaly, the local heating effect from a periodic weather phenomenon called the ENSO, aka an intense "Los Ninos".
By definition, that is a weather phenomenon, and not a climate phenomenon. It merely shift heat from one point to another. So why can't "warming" be a local weather phenomenom as these estimable individuals have just suggested is the basis for for the next decade's cooling? If you remove the weather phenomenon of Los Ninos than the climate warming trend from 1979 to 1998 almost disappears.
It can.
By the way, if the Earth warmed as the climatologists suggest, peaking in 1998, where did the accumulated Heat go? It seems to have just magically disappeared. The heat is obviously not in the atmosphere. Our satellite measurement prove it. Its not hiding in the Oceans as the AQUA arrays of buoys now affirm, which measure temperatures from the ocean surface to a depth of almost ten thousand feet, (three thousand meters), so where did the heat go? Or was it ever really there? Los Ninos is a periodic weather phenomenon, not signifying general warming, merely a redistribution of the existing heat. Another periodic phenomenon moves the heat around too. As the La Ninas demonstrate a re-distribution of the cooling from areas of interest to us, that we measure.
When GHG were first hypothesized to create warming, the effect was uncalibrated. No other modifiers were recognized to exist, so by default it got all the assumed power.
The scientific effort over the last 30 years is to calibrate it correctly. In th absence of any othe phenomenon to warm the Earth save the Sun, all the power defaulted to GHGs.
New phenomenon, such as direct irradiation difference; sulfate aerosols from volcanoes and pollution; and changes in cloud cover all have been shown to have an effect on the climate.
Back then, the amount of clouds was thought to be a worldwide constant.
Wrong.
The Sun's irradiation, "the Solar Constant" was thought to be a constant. Wrong.
The volcano sulfates were thought to be a constant Wrong.
The solar wind was thought to be a constant Wrong.
Open ocean condensation sites for clouds were thought to be plentiful and constant. Wrong.
Every one of these effects adds of mostly subtracts from GHG power to warm.
Open ocean surveys of cloud cover show it varies by about 2% depending apparently on the existence of a means to condense water vapor into clouds in dust free mid-ocean areas. This phenomenon alone removes all the power of the GHGs to warm the Earth, and then some. It turns out that Galactic Cosmic rays are modulated by the variable strength of the solar wind. This effect removes virtually all of the strength originally defaulted to GHGs.
It is a scientific fact, GHGs can warm the Earth. It is now also a scientific fact, that the power of GHGs to alter the climate was grossly over estimatedby almost 100%.
Posted by: | 12 May 2008 at 10:40 AM