Evergreen Pulp vs. the Air Resources Board
As some of you might know by now, the State Air Resources Board (ARB) seems to have decided to go full speed ahead with the implementation of AB 32. Several columnists (my December 7 post) have commented on this already. Basically, it puts the future of nearly all California businesses in the hands of the ARB, or so some are saying.
The ARB's first target is companies and drivers that use the older diesel trucks. I can't help but wonder who's next in the line of attack?
Over at Richard Marks' blog, one commenter suggested that, with Evergreen Pulp's sale price going lower and lower, the mill might become affordable enough for that new owner to turn a profit. I had to reply that we don't know whether Evergreen Pulp's recent upgrades will be good enough for the Air Resources Board.
That commenter rightly mentioned that dealing with globally traded commodities, as Evergreen does, is a tough business. But now, not only does Evergreen have to deal with the pitfalls of international markets, they also might need to deal with the whims of a newly empowered ARB.
With the ARB now given what some say are dictatorial powers, only time will tell if Evergreen Pulp will escape further attention from them. I'm skeptical they'll be let to slide, as you might imagine. I'm one of those that believes in the old adage that, once you give the government a hammer, soon everything ends up looking like a nail.
posted by Fred Mangels @ 9:58 AM
12 comments
12 Comments:
This is why businesses are fleeing California. One thing after another, one by one by one.
And since when did tailpipe emissions become about "Global Warming?" I thought it was about air pollution and clean air?
Ridiculous. If it really is about 'carbon emissions' then when it turns out it's a coming ice age instead of "global warming' are they going to encourage spewing fumes out of the tailpipes? I sure HOPE not.
It's time to change the "narrative." CHANGE it back to honest terms.
I think you nailed it Fred.
It can be tough sledding when the international market is competing with you in your own country for market share. Especially when unprotected equatorial rain forests are being harvested at such an unbelievable rate. Perhaps some of the free trade treaties we have entered into should be fine tuned so that rain forests will be harvested at a more sustainable rate and a larger portion of our domestic market is protected for Evergreen Pulp and other domestic companies. If domestic pulp had a guaranteed domestic market, they could then afford to make the upgrades needed to pass ARB standards.
Dred
You still don't understand, Rose. Global warming precedes every ice age. The planet is warming. It is like the swing of a pendulum. This pendulum always swings back swiftly to an age when ice sheets cover the upper latitudes, and stays there longer. Has nothing to do with computer modeling. The record is in ice and ocean floor sediment core samples. Carbon loading the atmosphere by the activities of mankind is pushing us through the end of our current interglacial summer faster than normal. An ice age follows regardless.
Dred
Well, whad'ya know? You seem to actually agree with Rose, myself and a host of others who believe the earth, and its climate, have warmed and cooled throughout the millenia.
The difference seems to be that you (and waaay too many others) think that whatever miniscule effect man has on that climate, if any, is enough to actually worry about.
Might I suggest again that whatever miniscule effect we might have on the weather, it pales in significance to the forces of the sun, the oceans, and the earth itself on our climate.
Life on earth is made possible because, among other things, there exists a narrow range of temperatures which is supportive to life. What makes this possible is the heat trapping property of carbon dioxide that resides in the atmosphere.
The carbon cycle exchanges carbon dioxide between the atmosphere, which contains about 1 percent of the total carbon pool, and seas which contain about 71 percent of the world's carbon. Atmospheric CO2 enters the earth's oceans through diffusion when atmospheric levels are greater than ocean surface levels. When CO2 levels are greater in ocean surface layers, CO2 enters the air. In aquatic ecosystems, Excess CO2 combines with water to form carbonates that are deposited in bottom sediments. Some of the remaining carbon - 4 percent of the planet's total - is incorporated into forest vegetation where it may reside for hundreds of years. This lot gets converted through slow decay into peat and, ultimately, into fossil fuels that originally formed in the Carboniferous period.
In 1850, atmospheric levels of CO2 stood at 280 ppm. By the mid - 1990s it had increased to 360 ppm. The increase accounts for half of what has been released into the atmosphere. The rest has largely been taken up and stored by the seas.
A portion of the Suns rays are able to penetrate the atmosphere and reach the surface of the Earth's surface which warms and reflects energy back into the atmosphere in the form of long wave radiation, much of which is absorbed by molecules of CO2 and water vapor. This energy is reflected back to the earth as heat. Were it not for this greenhouse warming effect, Earth's temperatures would plummet by 60 degrees F turning the oceans into ice.
CO2 levels are rising. Should temperatures rise by 2 to 3 degrees Celsius (about 3.6 to 5.4 degrees F) in the twenty-first century, there will be negative effects on human welfare, and that of other species. The oceans abilities to take up excess CO2 has maxed. Carbon loading the atmosphere through the burning of equatorial rain forests and increasing use of fossil fuels is adding CO2 at an alarming rate. Most of the warmest years on record have been in the last twenty years.
Dred
If Dred is right, it would seem that the solution to the atmospheric co2 problem would be to fix carbon (Trees) into houses and paper products. Then and grow more trees to do the same. Therby fixing more carbon.
Why is it that Dred can't see that?
He seems to be happy that he has found an excuse to stop progress, and that gives himself great importance by doing so. Wheras if he advocated proper solutions he would be lost in the wind.
"Then and grow more trees to do the same. Therby fixing more carbon.".
Yes. Trees use carbon dioxide. It makes them grow. All plants do. That's why you rarely find a decent greenhouse catalog that doesn't have at least a couple CO2 generators for sale.
CO2 Generators like this one:
http://tinyurl.com/6zvbdg
Not many houses being built at the moment.
Current global deforestation of 13 million hectares per year (32,110,000 acres)is twenty percent of the carbon dioxide load we are dumping into the atmosphere annually.
Countless billions of tons are locked within the canopy of the World's rain forests. Intentional logging and burning is releasing it into the atmosphere and converting the land use for cattle.
Do you wonder that Europe's forests were cleared to make room for agriculture? Do you consider what remains of the forests that stretched from the Atlantic seaboard to the Mississippi River? What portion of that has been converted to agriculture, residential, and business use.
Amazon rain forest grows on soil so poor that it is a closed system. Cut it down and the soil is hardly fit to grow grass. But skinny Brahma and Zebu cattle don't mind so much - they were made for desert living.
China, India, and the United States are big coal producers. More carbon dioxide from coal burning is dumped into the atmosphere annually, worldwide, than from burning petroleum. One cubic mile of petroleum is produced for energy consumption annually.
Every carbon atom released into the atmosphere is first combined with two atmospheric oxygen atoms. Fossil sources of carbon were safely sequestered in density as a solid,(coal), or a viscous liquid,(Petroleum) and converted into a gas that disperses in the atmosphere. Oxygen atoms are heavier than carbon atoms. One molecule of carbon dioxide is more than three times larger than one carbon atom.
So, if you cut every goddam tree in California tomorrow and replanted, you couldn't sequester enough carbon to make a dent in atmospheric carbon loading - no matter how fast your harvest rotation.
We don't lack for paper.
Dred
Maybe I came across as being a little harsh on Dred, so I want to make it up to him by offering him an application to collect $100,000.00 for his co2 theory.
Well actually that was back in 2007, is now up to $500,000.00
Well, that was rude, Ernie. But, it proves nothing. Taking a gratuitous swipe at Al Gore and sneering about carbon credits is what I have come to expect from your side of the argument. Oh, your man versus Sun argument is real thought provoker, too, Fred. So, Rose, Fred, and Ernie, lets change the narrative back to honest terms, as Rose proposed at the top of this thread. Go ahead and talk amongst yourselves and I will bow out of this conversation as air quality regulations seem to have put your minds - and emotions in turmoil.
Dred
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