Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal (2004)

What's needed, I think, is for someone credible to come up with an environmental version of the Laffer curve.

Something like, the more you cut emissions, the more it raises GDP. Or something. Something seductive but hard to verify, voodoo swaddled in bunk to make it sound reasonable and easy to believe.

No the laffer curve equivalant would be, the more emissions, the cleaner the air becomes.

I corrected Easterbrook's claim in TNR last year that the oceans were 2/3 hydrogen, and his response leads me to believe that he does't understand middle school science. All told, I just don't think he's a terribly bright guy.

"No the laffer curve equivalant would be, the more emissions, the cleaner the air becomes"

From a Republican ideological bent, this is true.

But a more direct (and environmentally useful) analog would be of a nature where cuts here result in more money there. Gotta have the money or it won't work. Cleaner air isn't important enough.

It's possible for a Republican to think the environment is "clean enough", but unlikely that a Republican would think they have enough income or corporate revenue.

But there are Republicans who think that as we become richer, we should spend more on environmental cleanup...

What bugs me most is that several times he has claimed that some mainstream press article has distorted some action or report or policy initiative by the current admin, or has distorted the historical record.

So, then I go read the article and it seems to me to say about the same thing that Easterbrook said. The last case I remember was the Mercury guidelines fuss. All the stuff that Easterbrook said the article had omitted where there -if you read the whole article- or seemed to be as accurate as they could be in a popular newspaper article -certainly not much worse than in Easterbrooks articles.

So, I am puzzled and irritated by his behavior. He makes what seem to me to be inaccurate charges that can be checked out by anybody with access to a major newspaper.

Drum quoting the NYT: “ . . . but scientific research continues to ratchet down the amount of pollution that is considered healthy to breathe."

I like to see the source for that factoid. And factoids about pollution are quite common. Remember acid rain? How come we don’t hear about that anymore? Because it’s not really a problem.

When my daughter was in a (private) high school (circa 1993) she told me that her chemistry teacher taught that acid rain was a big problem. I told her to ask her teacher for the source of that factoid. And what was it? A pamphlet written by teachers at the Albany California Middle School. The pamphlet had no references only bald (and incorrect) assertions. Then I obtained a large EPA report on a multi-year $500m study of acid rain. It made interesting reading. One by one almost all the assertions about acid rain from our army of no-nothing environmentalists got debunked. Did this report get any publicity? No. A friend of mine called NPR and asked how come they don’t talk about this really definitive (and expensive) study of the subject. They were not interested. It also appears that little of the mass media were interested either. She gave the report to her teacher, but never really got a response. For all I know he is still teaching his classes about the evils of acid rain.

On reflection, the equivalant of the Laffer Curve for CO2 emissions would be the "Greening Earth Society".

Ummmm....I've been following Easterbrook, and he's flipped out over the past few years.

He's not drunk the Bush Koolaid, he's taken, and the failed the more generic Electric Koolaid Acid Test.

A Zarkov: do you have a reference for that report?

Apparently the US EPA doesn't believe its own reports:
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/acidrain/

And the Canada EPA doesn't either:
http://www.ec.gc.ca/acidrain/

And the USGS still thinks it is worth measuring
http://bqs.usgs.gov/acidrain/

It would be interesting to see what is happening here. I'm not a physicist, but isn't acid rain just a way of delivering SO2 pollution? Certainly there is a lot of talk about SO2.

A Zarkov:

- PM10 and PM2.5 are likely what Kevin Drum is talking about. Ozone possibly.

- You hear plenty about the effects of acid rain in the environmental field. Stand mortality, acidity of Northeastern lakes and the resultant biotic dieoffs, soil biotic changes... I have plenty of journal articles quantifying the effects if you're interested. Book references, too, if you wish to visit the library and follow up.

And looking at acid rain as a delivery mechanism for SO2 is one way to look at it.

D

I do not have a reference for that report right now, but I might be able get it tomorrow. I know at least one guy who contributed to it, but he retired some years ago. He did numerous exposure studies on various types of plants, and lent me a copy in 1993. It included a complete inventory of the acidity Northeastern lakes including soil analysis.
I’m not 100% sure it was an EPA report, it might have been USGS. Here is a guess:

Gordon, J.D., Willoughby, T.C., and Schroder, L.J., 1991,
Summary of the National Atmospheric Deposition
Program/National Trends Network intersite-comparison
program, November 1978-November 1989: U.S.
Geological Survey Water-Resources Investigations
Report 91-4061, 26 p

As I recall it was a massive document running to perhaps multiple volumes and many hundreds of pages. I read the executive summary (a volume in itself) as well as selected portions of specific interest to me. In particular the effects produced on lakes and forests; primary conclusion: acid rain is not killing our lakes and forests.

.

A Zarkov:
thanks, I will look for a reference to it on the EPA internet site, or whatever you come up with in a day or so. Interesting to see if technical reports and popular pages say different things.

So, now I am curious about this. I get interested in these scientific "everyone thinks it's true but it's bunk" stories.

Any acid rain or air pollution experts out there?

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=624&e=1&u=/ap/20040415/ap_on_sc/smoky_mountains_report_1

GATLINBURG, Tenn. - A new report by the National Parks Conservation Association on the future of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park paints a dire picture. "This park is beginning to die," said Tom Kiernan, the conservation group's president. "This assessment clearly shows the park is in danger, and its long-term viability is at risk." High ozone levels, **ACID RAIN**, continued underfunding and a proposed road on the north shore of Fontana Lake in North Carolina are combining to endanger the park's future, Kiernan said. Much of the damage could be slowed or prevented if certain steps are taken, he said, including rigorous enforcement of the federal Clean Air Act and increasing the park's budget.
...
Several areas of concern were noted in the report on the Smokies. Among them are:

--Ground level ozone and **ACID RAIN** "threaten the health of park visitors, staff, vegetation, soils and streams."

--Air pollution has diminished visibility from an average of 113 miles from prime viewing locations to an average of 25 miles.

note: emphases are mine, maybe obviously

"But there are Republicans who think that as we become richer, we should spend more on environmental cleanup..."

This made me think of the brain-teaser Brad posted a while back on the deal with the Devil: the Devil offers you a chance to get out of hell, but in such a way that every day which passed improved the odds in your favor. That way, no matter how long you've been in, you're always tempted to let one more day pass before taking action.

"But if we wait ANOTHER ten years before tackling global warning, we'll be so much richer that we'll be even MORE capable of dealing with it properly...."

jml: Yes that’s exactly the kind of scare stories I’m talking about. Rarely are they backed up by reliable data. There’s a lot of variation within a forest, and you can always find some areas that look terrible. Then you call in reporters and tell them the forest is dying. We heard this all the time in the 1970s, especially about Germany. However O3 is a different story from SO2. For example the San Bernardino National Forest had extensive O3 damage at least back in the 1970s when I looked at a detailed data set we had.

About Zarkov's urban legends: Where is "this really definitive (and expensive) study of the subject?". Water + SO2 becomes sulfuric acid- sulfate emissions are less than they were in the 80s, but they are harmful. The fundamental point is that pollution contains umpteen different variables- no one of them is strong enough to have consistent effects in isolation; that's one reason that environmentalists are sometimes justly accused of exaggeration and lack of perspective. However, acid rain is not a myth, we really are fouling our nest- especially the oceans.
Instead of the pollutant of the month, we need to step back and say hey who is thinking of the next generation? If we continue to pave over California and grain yields continue to fall, all those developments are going to look like stupid investments. I'd say that Easterbrook doesn't understand science.

Easterbrook has been fairly solid on global warming, and he gets surprisingly moralistic about SUVs. His virtual apologias for the Bush EPA come border on the surreal, however. There are some writers who enjoy confounding conventional wisdom within a dominant paradigm of the left or right. Easterbrook, e.g., defends suburbanization, the automobile infrastructure, etc. while pretending there are easy ways to mitigate environmental degradation. What he comes up with is a hodgepodge of personal anecdotes and airy theories about marketplace self-regulation. Ultimately, Easterbrook is a narcissistic gadfly, who flips off more serious environmentalists while paying lip service to some of their ideas.

Well, I will watch this thread to see what folks have to say about acid rain, since the comments so far make some intersting points. As for Easterbrook, check out two Environmental Defense publications:

http://www.edf.org/documents/2246_AMomentofTruth_PartOne.pdf

http://www.edf.org/documents/2247_AMomentofTruth_PartTwo.pdf

I never read his books on the environment, only his blog and articles, and obviously the these reports are not going to quote the good parts. But on acid rain, YIKES!!, even I wouldn't mistake nitrous oxide for nitrogen oxide. And I was probably the worst chemistry student in the history of chemistry -unless I really was creating matter and energy from nothing in the labs, and was unknowingly on to something big.

How do you get one of these public universial-expert-opinionator jobs, anyway? Some one let me know.

... and to whom do editors send out these books for review!? For mistakes like this, seems like any chemistry or biology prof at a community college would be able to do some good.

A Zarkov:

Acid rain is assuredly an issue. I don't know where you get that it is not. You may want to do a search on Elsevier for the terms 'acid deposition'. Let me know what you find.

Anyway, for any others who may be wondering, acid deposition is a stressor for forest stands, acidifying the soil, changing soil biotic and nutrient flows. Al concentrations increase. Ca concentrations decrease. N increases, as may S. Foliar and crown condition qualities are lower in acid deposition regimes (less photosynthesis and lower quality leaf litter).

You can certainly argue that acid rain *proper* has not *directly* killed whole stands. But it certainly has weakend them, allowing attack by pathogens and pests, not to mention creating drought concerns. Foliar damage lowers photosynthetic capacity. Seed germination may be lessened. Zarkov's 'German' dismissal neglects the effects on soils and stand deaths (yes, stand deaths), and his 'There’s a lot of variation within a forest, and you can always find some areas that look terrible' is too flip to address.

Are many Northeast US, Western (and Northern) European and some Chinese forests in decline? Is acid rain a contributor?

Yes. That means there's an acid deposition problem.

I wonder what the monetary cost of that externality is for the lost ecosystem services of those dead, dying, and weakened stands. Is it calculable in today's economics?

D

Let's not worry about the environment, Brad! (The evidence isn't in yet!/It's too late to fix it and we can only adapt to, not prevent environmental degradation!)

Besides, consider the costs of environmental regulation, in terms of both liberty and the economy! (Do you really want government bureaucrats running your life without you having control over your own autonomy?/ It's a sacrifice worth making to have a bit more pollutant in the air without the breather's consent to create more wealth and jobs!)

Overall, we need a commonsense approach that doesn't pander to fearmongering eco-doomsayers. After all, (cleaning up the environment would be so costly and difficult that it isn't worth it./ the environment's spontaneously getting cleaner as we get richer anyway, and has been since the end of the industrial revolution, so things are fine as they are.)

Easterbrook has had *some* useful things to say. I posted a summary of his _The New Republic_ piece on why chemical and probably biological weapons really aren't WMDs here:
http://www.truthandpolitics.org/html_gen.php?entryId=77

One thing to remember about the "ratcheting up" is that testing methods are getting better and better. Pollutants that could only be detected at parts per million can now be measured at the parts per billion level.

You can only regulate what you can measure, and changes are often driven by improving technology.

As for the complaints about scaremongering environmentalists, I am always amazed at how the the bidness-knows-best crowd will completely turn a blind eye to the truly evil polluting and dumping going on. It is pure fantasy to believe that humans can live on this earth without leaving a trace, but the "he who gains the means to pollute has automatically shown he deserves to pollute" attitude is just off.

How I wish the Bush administration would show one-tenth the urgency in addressing climate change and environmental degradation as they did about Saddam's WMD.

But in the one case, absolute incontrovertable proof is required before we even think about doing anything. And in the other case...

The report I had circa 1993 was from the National Acid Precipitation Program (NPAP).

See http://www.oar.noaa.gov/organization/napap.html.

In 1990, they issued an Integrated Assessment Report. I don’t know if this is available on-line. NPAP is ongoing program, and they issue biennial reports to the US Congress.

Most forests and lakes are not significantly impacted by acid rain. Lakes on and around limestone bedrock have no problem because the limestone absorbs the acid. However, a few lakes mainly in the northeast are on granite bedrock. In this case, acid rain leaches out aluminum and this kills the fish. Likewise small number of forests are sensitive and suffer from acid rain, but NPAP says:

“Most forest ecosystems are not currently known to be adversely impacted by acid deposition.”

Read the whole summary at the above link to get a more complete picture.

For those of you following the acid rain portion of this thread here is a link to the USGS site on acid rain with a good deal of current info.

http://bqs.usgs.gov/acidrain/

A Zarkov:

Your ref is from over a decade ago, providing an incomplete picture.

Search Elsevier, like I mentioned above, and see how many hits you get on papers after 1993.

And the link kindly provided by Dubblblind has a paper about soil Ca depletion, as I mentioned above, and another link to a conference from a couple of years ago that should provide you with a more complete picture.

Good luck in updating your personal information to get a current picture.

Best,

D

"But there are Republicans who think that as we become richer, we should spend more on environmental cleanup..."
Nada, "environmental cleanup" means getting poorer, that's counterproductive...

Yes we have more data now with respect to the effects of acid rain, but the big picture had not changed very much during the last ten years. I spoke with an expert on these matters today, and he agrees that acid rain is not a major problem for our forests and lakes on the whole. While there are some problems in Vermont and New Hampshire with regard to Red Spruce at high altitudes, that region remains forested and beautiful as I could see with my own eyes when used I visited my daughter at Dartmouth. The scare stores I heard in the 1970s about acid rain destroying our eastern forests did not come true. Nevertheless I agree we should be vigilant about SO2 emissions.

Kevin Drum singles out one actual Easterbrook quote, which says (in part) "....the media simply pretend these advances don't exist, in order to sustain the preferred script of Bush "undoing" clean-air policy."

Drum's entire (factual) point seems to be that Easterbrook shouldn't use the term "advances,"
because the Bush administration is simply following through on Clinton administration policies. (I.e., they're advances, but not ones Bush should get credit for). Drum may be correct that Easterbrook has been too positive about the Bush record, but then he brings up ANWR and the mercury issue and the new source rules without reference to Easterbrook's recent and very specific writings on these things, which seems a bit unfair. (For example, didn't Easterbrook recently criticize the Bush mercury proposals at some length?).

Drum has little to say on Easterbrook's point about the "preferred script of Bush undoing clean-air policy." Is the NYT being reasonable when they announce (in the headline) the "Undoing of 30 Years of Clean Air Policy," or not? It seems a little odd for Drum to describe Easterbrook as "pathological" when he has no (effective) criticism to offer of Easterbrook's main point....

As for BDL's comments, my guess is that he just posted a ton of stuff to push this one way down in the stack....

Reading the comments to Drum on the WM site, it appears that Drum is actually being disingenuous when he says that "Bush's only contribution was that he didn't overturn them." Apparently the regs in question were only drafted under Clinton and Bush has been implementing them. In an alternate universe where Gore was prez, it's pretty obvious that this would be (to Drum et al) a Gore administration achievement, just as Easterbrook says it is a Bush achievement.

So Drum has basically no (factual-type) point at all.

Drum would be smarter to simply give the Bush administration credit where it's (apparently, at least as far as I can tell from reading Easterbrook and Drum) due, and then rip Bush on global warming and mercury and SUVs, etc. Or he could just link to Easterbrook doing this (albeit too mildly - hence Easterbrook's true "pathology," apostasy - for the Clown Show People).

Regarding Easterbrook:

1. He can be sloppy. In the blog entry in question, he ends by writing "Grudgingly, on the last of its 13 pages, the Times Magazine article allows that Bush's January regulations might accomplish the goals of the Clinton new-source standard anyway, though doing so at lower cost. Poof! The entire story just disappeared. But how many people read all the way to the third-to-last paragraph, versus how many saw the doomsday cover?" In fact, the claim in question is clearly attributed to Bush supporters and the author rebuts the premise a couple of sentences later.

2. He's convinced of his own special insightfulness, which is terrifically entertaining in his football columns, but does not wear well outside.

3. He's got a tin ear.

4. As a wannabe contrarian, he's not half as pathological as Mickey Kaus.

"I corrected Easterbrook's claim in TNR last year that the oceans were 2/3 hydrogen..."

Approximately 2/3 of the atoms in the ocean are hydrogen, and approximately 1/3 of the atoms are oxygen.

So perhaps Mr. Easterbrook was counting atoms?

Kevin Drum wrote, "But as Easterbrook must well know, these "stricter antipollution standards for diesel fuel and diesel engines" were implemented by the Clinton administration."

Well, no. Not really. They were *promulgated* on January 18, 2001...exactly 2 days before G.W. Bush was sworn in. And they don't take effect until 2006. So they definitely were NOT "implemented" during the Clinton adminstration. (Promulgating is NOT the same thing as "implementing"...especially when the promulgation occurred exactly two days before G.W. Bush was sworn in.)

Per the National Petroleum Refiners Association (NPRA) website:

http://www.npradc.org/issues/fuels/diesel_sulfur.cfm

"The EPA issued final rules in January 2001 (66 FR 5063, January 18,2001) that require refiners to reduce sulfur content in highway diesel fuel by 97% to a level no greater than 15 ppm by June 2006. In addition, the rules allow for refiners to produce up to 20% of their highway diesel fuel at the 500 ppm level until June 2010, at which time 100% of the fuel must meet the 15 ppm standards The fuel controls are coupled with the required installation of advanced control technologies on heavy-duty diesel vehicles in 2007."

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Well, no. Not really. They were *promulgated* on January 18, 2001...exactly 2 days before G.W. Bush was sworn in. And they don't take effect until 2006. So they definitely were NOT "implemented" during the Clinton adminstration. (Promulgating is NOT the same thing as "implementing"...especially when the promulgation occurred exactly two days before G.W. Bush was sworn in.)