Fossil Fuel “Externalities” Creating a deadly free ride“

“Facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence.” — John Adams, U.S. president 1797–1801

At the end of this story is a listing of stories, with hyperlinks, I’ve written over the last three or four months. By way of introduction, all of the stories are related to how we’re placing extraordinary burdens on our children and especially our grandchildren. Burdens none of us born before 1960 were ever asked to bear.

Essentially, all of the stories are about “externalities” which are costs created in the production or use of a product but never incurred or paid. Rather the externalities are past-off to someone else, often later generations, all while the producer and consumer enjoy the benefit of the item to which the externality was related. For example, manufacturing activities that create air pollution impose health and clean-up costs on the public and younger generations but manufacturers and consumers, who receive benefits from the sale and use of the manufactured items pay none of the external costs related to the pollution. In fact when external costs, such as pollution, are not recognized the producer feels free to produce more and consumers feel free to consumer more of the product than they would if required to pay all the associated costs.

The following chart usually makes the eyes of most readers gloss-over but it makes three simple points regarding the price and quantity of a product using the direction of two blue lines to illustrate costs of producing the product and one red line to illustrate consumer demand for the product:

1. It Costs more to make more of something than to make less of something. Both social (i.e. externalities) and private costs increase ( i.e. the blue lines slope up to the right) as quantity (Q) produced and consumed increases.

2. People generally buy more of something when it costs less than when it costs more. Quantity (Q) demanded by consumers increases as price (P) declines (i.e. red line slopes down to the right).

3. If only private costs of a product are recognized (PpQp) the price (Pp) will be set too low to cover all costs and the quantity produced and consumed (Qp) will be unnecessarily high (because the producer and consumers are not required to pay the full costs of the product (Ps,Qs)( i.e. Social Costs + Private Costs ).

However, No need for glossy eyes because none of that is more difficult to understand than a Black Friday Sale when products are priced so low consumers fight to buy more products which are quickly sold-out. Conventional economics for private goods say “as the price of a good goes down, consumers demand more of it but less supply enters the market because producers hold-out for higher prices.” If the price is too low, demand will eventually exceed supply, and some consumers , like the ones in the following picture will be unable to obtain as much as they would like at that price — the supply is effectively rationed, sometimes by “fights in store aisles”.

These same rules do not apply to public goods like fresh air and clean water, the supply of which appears to be limitless. In the case of public goods social costs are generally not recognized because, politicians, wanting to be reelected, minimize costs by ignoring them or keeping them low by spreading them across a broad tax base like real estate. Consequently, tax payers/consumers are not charged full cost and they demand more of low priced public goods.

However, unlike private goods, less supply does not result with public goods because the supply, of clean air for example, is not controlled by politicians. In fact the price is not controlled at all, the product is available in unlimited supplies that satisfy demand at almost all levels.

Almost all of the articles, in the list that follows, are written with the idea that global warming is an external cost arising from the production and use of fossil fuels, but not recovered in the pricing of the fossil fuels at either the wholesale or retail level. The pricing of fossil fuels does not include the external costs of damage to the environment or of cleaning-up the environment to alleviate the damage.

Like the following chart illustrates my articles take the position that the damage to the environment, the global warming, results from excessive amounts of CO2 and increasing accumulated greenhouse gases trapped in the troposphere. After writing the articles, however, I realized I failed to discuss an additional externality that results from production of many consumer products, Ozone depletion.

The following drawing shows four different levels of ozone in the atmosphere.

1. At top of stratosphere, 30 miles high, ozone absorbs most of the harmful ultraviolet radiation from the Sun

2. At the top of the troposphere, 12 miles high, ozone acts as a greenhouse gas (i.e. “Tropospheric Ozone)”, trapping heat.

3. In the middle of the troposphere, ozone helps clean up certain pollutants.

4. At the bottom of the troposphere, at Earth’s surface, ozone makes smog.

If UV radiation is not absorbed by Ozone, because the ozone has been depleted, the radiation reaches earth and when it later attempts to move back into the atmosphere excess CO2 strengthens Greenhouse gases and traps the excess UV radiation in lower levels of the atmosphere increasing heat even more than might otherwise be if UV radiation were allowed to return to higher levels of atmosphere.

Dr. Peter L. Ward says “Solar energy reaching Earth when ozone is depleted is 48 times hotter than terrestrial energy absorbed by greenhouse gases.” According to Dr. Ward Global Warming is caused by Ozone Depletion allowing UV Radiation to reach Earth.” “If we really want to reduce our negative effect on climate, we need to focus on reducing ozone depletion.”

Dr. Ward’s analysis and theory are explained in detail on his website, “WhyClimateChanges.com“, and in his book: “What Really Causes Global Warming? Greenhouse Gases or Ozone Depletion?”

According to Dr. Ward warming appears to result from ozone depletion by volcanic emissions of chlorine and bromine, which allows more ultraviolet-B radiation to reach Earth’s surface, cooling the stratosphere and warming Earth…He also argues that chlorine from man-made chlorofluorocarbon gases (CFCs) caused the global warming observed from 1970 to 1998 by depleting the ozone layer. He also points-out that reduction of CFC emissions mandated by the Montreal Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer led to the Global Warming Hiatus from 1998 to 2013, during which no statistically significant warming occurred. ( https://whyclimatechanges.com )

In a greenhouse, shortwave (visible and UV) radiation passes into the greenhouse through the glass. This shortwave radiation is absorbed and re-radiated by objects in the greenhouse as longwave (IR) radiation, or heat.

However, most long-wave radiation is reflected by the glass. This traps the heat inside the greenhouse and causes the temperature within the greenhouse to rise. Similarly, shortwave radiation can pass through the Earth’s atmosphere easily. This radiation is then absorbed by the Earth’s surface, and re-radiated as longwave radiation.

The greenhouse gases in the atmosphere absorb or reflect some of the reflected longwave radiation, preventing it from escaping back into space. The effect of this is to increase the temperature of the lower atmosphere. (i.e. the globe is warmed and climate is changed from what it would be without the greenhouse gases being trapped and the depleted Ozone allowing more UV radiation to reach Earth’s surface).

None of these facts of astrospheric chemistry will change the externalities related to burning fossil fuels we fail to recognize and pay. The Paris Agreement may have been our last best chance to do that and save our children from our own selfishness.

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Notes:

1 https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/greenhouse/en/
2 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/UVB/uvb_radiation.php
3 https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/blogs/climateqa/are-the-ozone-hole-and-global-warming-related/

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Stories:

1. Who will Help the Children ? ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/who-will-help-the-children-1bcb0b96d0d1 )
2. Dystopian World Indeed! ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/dystopian-world-indeed-dd29bfec51fc )
3. Curing Atmospheric Cancer ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/curing-atmospheric-cancer-a8c0b3c3e689 )
4. We need Holy Men to get us into Heaven but we Need Astrophysicists to Keep us out of hell ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/we-may-need-holy-men-to-get-us-into-heaven-but-we-definitely-need-astrophysicists-to-keep-us-out-of-edc064d07d3 )
5. Parker Solar Probe ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/parker-solar-probe-35aa2d8c440a )
6. On Georgia Barrier Islands ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/on-georgia-barrier-islands-climate-change-is-on-the-ground-not-in-the-hot-air-9818604b1032 )
7. Longing for days when a Cotton Field felt comfortable ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/longing-for-days-when-a-cotton-field-felt-comfortable-ef34a54bef95 )
8. U.S. must rejoin Paris Climate Agreement ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/u-s-must-rejoin-paris-climate-agreement-6d47c7c48ed )
9. This is It ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/this-is-it-3f4f67a5e94c )
10. Our Future ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/our-future-9ca6a77c13f7 )
11. The Face of climate change ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/the-face-of-climate-change-c8c9fd4d3be0 )
12. Avoid Chaos ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/avoid-chaos-seek-the-truth-33cc4fa9efab )
13. Misinformation ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/misinformation-70f422ed9bbe )
14. Trump’s Bad Business Practices are Shortening Life Expectancies, even those of his friends ( https://medium.com/@WillmsmithSmith/trumps-bad-business-practices-are-shortening-life-expectancies-even-those-of-his-friends-c48e15d3b2f6 )

Originally published at neutec.wordpress.com on August 25, 2018.