Scientists Contribute to Greenhouse Gas Emissions

dus writes "Many of the 10,000 scientists attending this week's annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) study climate change. Collecting them all in San Francisco undoubtedly increases our understanding of global warming, but it releases more than 12,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, pointed out one of this year's delegates."

Re:In other news

[Anonymous Coward]

You fight greenhouse effect, you cause it. You fight SARS, you spread it. You preach morality, you ruin it. You love children, you abuse them. You hate war, you start it. You love democracy, you destroy it.

Sometimes things don't work the way they are supposed to. Welcome to the real life.

On the Agenda

[theMerovingian]

While at the conference, be sure to attend:

ExxonMobil Morning Mixer for Students: Wednesday, 10 December, Yerba Buena Ballroom Salon 9, San Francisco Marriott, 6:30-8:00 A.M

A complimentary breakfast will be held in honor of all graduate and undergraduate students registered for the meeting. Students will have the opportunity to hear an overview of AGU programs that serve its student members, meet with AGU leadership and representatives from ExxonMobil, and network with other students and future colleagues attending the meeting.

(don't believe me?) [agu.org]

Re:Who decides the "best" excuse for pollution

[Phronesis]

As many economists [yale.edu] have pointed out [yale.edu], a major problem with tradable emissions permits is that the government is still trying to set limits on emissions. There are two problems:

1. How would you enforce CO2 emissions limits on things like individual automobiles (which emit about 30% of the anthropogenic CO2 produced in the US) and home heating/air conditioning, etc?
2. How would you trust the government to come up with the optimal CO2 emissions limits and how would the government achieve the flexibility to revise these limits as new information became available?

Carbon taxes, set to the value of the social cost of climate change, offer a way for the market to achieve optimal emission levels and keep the government out of the central planning business.