You're all fascists

[Metsfanmax]

inb4 policy makers ignore Mets' opinions about government policy for the exact same reasons and he gets mad

They don't have to listen to me if they know more about a carbon tax than I do (though it is safe to say that most members of Congress don't). If I were the one who came up with this policy and simply asserted that the carbon tax is good for the economy, it would be fair to ignore me since my knowledge of economics is pretty elementary. (Same caveat about Congress though...) But I'm not. The people who endorse a carbon tax over other climate change policy alternatives include something like 90+% of economists in one survey I saw, and a number of prominent climate scientists such as James Hansen who are not unschooled in the arena of environmental policy. And in the broader context of whether economists think we should do anything at all on climate change, you still find heavy support for doing something, even from prominent conservatives like Greg Mankiw, Art Laffer, and others. This isn't like austerity vs. deficit spending where it's hard to suss out what to believe about anything economists think. This is something where the experts are saying something pretty clearly: fossil fuels produce an externality and we need to raise the gas tax. There are a number of econometric analyses that demonstrate that a revenue-neutral carbon tax would either be essentially neutral or positive on the economy in the US. And there are places where it has actually been tried, and the economy has improved and didn't falter. So there's a lot of evidence and expert opinion backing it.

I think it is correct to say that a carbon tax is the closest we've got to a consensus position on how to deal with climate change if we're going to deal with it. So I support it just as I support the near-consensus view of climate scientists that climate change is happening and is human-caused because I don't know enough to prove otherwise. I usually stick to the trust-the-experts heuristic unless I have a pretty darn good reason to do otherwise. I'm telling Phatscotty that he should do the same. So when I go to policy makers, I don't say "take my word for it," I say take their word for it. Both on climate change, and on what to do about it.

Any other approach would be pretty damn arrogant.

[tzor]

Temperature is a real quantity and so the temperature is not going to be exactly the same two years in a row.

I know a large number of quantities that are not real and not the same two years in a row.

I also know a large number of quantities that are real and have remained the same for several years in a row.

[tzor]

I think it is correct to say that a carbon tax is the closest we've got to a consensus position on how to deal with climate change if we're going to deal with it.

As the Holy Father said in his recent letter on the subject ...

171. The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation
which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to
provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but
in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may
simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries
and sectors.

[notyou2]

I think it is correct to say that a carbon tax is the closest we've got to a consensus position on how to deal with climate change if we're going to deal with it.

As the Holy Father said in his recent letter on the subject ...

171. The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation
which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to
provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but
in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may
simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries
and sectors.

Why would you quote the pope when you have clearly stated you don't believe in climate change?

[Metsfanmax]

I think it is correct to say that a carbon tax is the closest we've got to a consensus position on how to deal with climate change if we're going to deal with it.

As the Holy Father said in his recent letter on the subject ...

171. The strategy of buying and selling “carbon credits” can lead to a new form of speculation
which would not help reduce the emission of polluting gases worldwide. This system seems to
provide a quick and easy solution under the guise of a certain commitment to the environment, but
in no way does it allow for the radical change which present circumstances require. Rather, it may
simply become a ploy which permits maintaining the excessive consumption of some countries
and sectors.

On this issue I completely agree with the Holy Father. I disagree with carbon credits, i.e. cap-and-trade, because the market isn't going to set the right price for emissions. We need a carbon tax that puts a flat fee on emissions, leaving no way for a company to 'trade' its emissions allowances, in a way that guarantees that the market cannot speculate on the price of the emissions credits and negate their impact.

So, even the Pope agrees with me. GG.

[tzor]

Why would you quote the pope when you have clearly stated you don't believe in climate change?

I have never "clearly stated" that. I have clearly stated I do not think that CO2 emissions are the threat that advocates for more government solutions are insisting it is. But burning down rainforests, industries belching pollutants, and so forth is clearly a problem in the planet. In fact, this is the biggest concern in the Pope's encyclical. CO2 is only mentioned in conjunction with pollutants and only in a very small portion of the letter.

[tzor]

We need a carbon tax that puts a flat fee on emissions, ...

So how are you going to get Bambi to pay her share of carbon emission taxes?
Did you know that even trees at night emit CO2?

Large wildfires in the western United States can pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in just a few weeks as cars do in those areas in an entire year. You want to tax them as well? Good luck with that.

And the biggest question is whether or not it will have any impact on the CO2 numbers in any manner whatsoever.

(Well of course not, because that is not the purpose of the tax. The purpose of the tax is to impose MORE GOVERNMENT and cause more people to be dependent on the GOVERNMENT through unemployment and scarce resources that can only be obtained through the government. It has nothing to do with either people or the environment.)

[Metsfanmax]

We need a carbon tax that puts a flat fee on emissions, ...

So how are you going to get Bambi to pay her share of carbon emission taxes?
Did you know that even trees at night emit CO2?

Large wildfires in the western United States can pump as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere in just a few weeks as cars do in those areas in an entire year. You want to tax them as well? Good luck with that.

This is all a total non sequitur. The Earth wasn't warming (certainly not at the present rate) for thousands of years before humans became industrial, and there were wildfires and trees and Bambi before humans became industrial. What that says is that the current warming is the result of the emissions over and above these natural sources of CO2.

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

But yes, if we can find someone responsible for wildfires, we will charge them carbon tax on it. Arson isnt worth it.

[tzor]

This is all a total non sequitur. The Earth wasn't warming (certainly not at the present rate) for thousands of years before humans became industrial, and there were wildfires and trees and Bambi before humans became industrial. What that says is that the current warming is the result of the emissions over and above these natural sources of CO2.

You were talking about a carbon tax, were you not? As for the weather, please let me know when grapes grow freely in north east Canada, you know, the place the Vikings called "Vinland?"



When we start to go past the Medieval warming period, I'll panic. We are not there yet. Don't blame the Vikings for 12th and 14th century real global warming.

[Metsfanmax]

This is all a total non sequitur. The Earth wasn't warming (certainly not at the present rate) for thousands of years before humans became industrial, and there were wildfires and trees and Bambi before humans became industrial. What that says is that the current warming is the result of the emissions over and above these natural sources of CO2.

You were talking about a carbon tax, were you not?

Yes, which makes it strange why you dodged the carbon tax conversation and started talking about global warming.

Anyway, if you bring up this point it just demonstrates that you're not understanding the basic physics. (Or you do and are being intentionally obtuse because you don't like government policy on this.) The Earth has a carbon cycle, and prior to humans coming around that involved a lot of carbon being emitted and a lot of carbon being absorbed. It's fine that carbon was being released into the atmosphere, because a roughly equal amount of carbon was being absorbed somewhere else. As a result, there was approximately an equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere, hence warming didn't happen. Humans have disrupted that balance by releasing more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed, meaning we are no longer in temperature equilibrium. So I'm calling for a carbon tax on the part of the carbon emissions that are over and above the natural level of emissions, the part responsible for the warming. Not coincidentally, that corresponds to the part that humans are emitting. I don't want to go any further than that, I just want the climate to remain basically where it was before industrial-scale carbon emissions started.

When we start to go past the Medieval warming period, I'll panic. We are not there yet.

It's funny you should mention that. It turns out that global average temperatures in the Medieval warm period were actually cooler than they are now. I'm not entirely sure where you got the MS Paint figure from, but it's quite incorrect.

So, now that you are in panic mode, what shall we do?

[notyou2]

This is all a total non sequitur. The Earth wasn't warming (certainly not at the present rate) for thousands of years before humans became industrial, and there were wildfires and trees and Bambi before humans became industrial. What that says is that the current warming is the result of the emissions over and above these natural sources of CO2.

You were talking about a carbon tax, were you not? As for the weather, please let me know when grapes grow freely in north east Canada, you know, the place the Vikings called "Vinland?"



When we start to go past the Medieval warming period, I'll panic. We are not there yet. Don't blame the Vikings for 12th and 14th century real global warming.

Sources please

[Metsfanmax]

I checked the image URL and it comes from surprise, surprise, Steven Goddard. The fake name of a guy with a master's in electrical engineering who insists that global warming is the result of a massive scientific conspiracy.

tzor, you can trust that guy if you want to, but you lose any respect you have from me if you do.

[warmonger1981]

I'm not trying to call you out but a source with a graph would be nice to see. I'm genuinely interested.

Mets wrote.
The Earth has a carbon cycle, and prior to humans coming around that involved a lot of carbon being emitted and a lot of carbon being absorbed. It's fine that carbon was being released into the atmosphere, because a roughly equal amount of carbon was being absorbed somewhere else. As a result, there was approximately an equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere, hence warming didn't happen. Humans have disrupted that balance by releasing more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed, meaning we are no longer in temperature equilibrium.

[Metsfanmax]

Can you be more specific? Here's a graph of temperature and CO2 levels over the last century.



Source: http://www.skepticalscience.com/co2-tem ... ediate.htm

[warmonger1981]

Thank you for last post.

Mets wrote..prior to humans coming around that involved a lot of carbon being emitted and a lot of carbon being absorbed. It's fine that carbon was being released into the atmosphere, because a roughly equal amount of carbon was being absorbed somewhere else.


Anything on this last statement? Thanks.

[Metsfanmax]

Well, there's kind of two separate statements in there. One is that the temperature wasn't rising. This is important because if the temperature was rising prior to human activity, it would have to be due to something like increased solar output or an imbalance of carbon dioxide. But actually the Earth had a pretty stable temperature over the last 1,000 years before the industrial revolution started. Here's data from the 4th IPCC assessment report back in 2007:



Source: https://www.ipcc.ch/publications_and_da ... 6s6-6.html

The black line is actual temperature data from measuring stations, while the orange shaded region is a reconstruction of the temperature from proxy records like tree rings. The darkest shading is the most likely result. Note that this disproves tzor's argument: the mean temperature even during the 'warm period' in the vicinity of the years 1000-1100 is significantly lower than it is now. (Not that the case for global warming is dependent on whether it was warmer at some particular date in the past.)

So from the direct temperature measurements we know that there can't have been a massive amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, because carbon dioxide is a known greenhouse gas and the Earth would necessarily have been much warmer.

The carbon dioxide concentration over that period tells the same story:



Source: http://cdiac.ornl.gov/trends/co2/lawdome

[warmonger1981]

1,000 years is an extremely short period of time. That doesn't say much compared to the earth's age. Thank you again. I heard carbon dioxide was the key factor to global warming. I've also heard carbon dioxide has never risen before temperatures. Can you please weigh in on this conundrum?

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

1,000 years is an extremely short period of time.

Hehe, lets discuss the time when CO2 levels were ridiculously high prior to the rainforests.

1000 years is quite a long section of time if we restrict this to the time period when the earth has been habitable to humans.

[mrswdk]

Didn't you guys already have this argument about 3000x before?

[notyou2]

Some people don't know when they lost. They are pawns of the oil industry and the 1% and the misinformation they have been spewing for years. They gobble it up like a fat kid on a chocolate bar.

[tzor]

Anyway, if you bring up this point it just demonstrates that you're not understanding the basic physics. (Or you do and are being intentionally obtuse because you don't like government policy on this.) The Earth has a carbon cycle, and prior to humans coming around that involved a lot of carbon being emitted and a lot of carbon being absorbed. It's fine that carbon was being released into the atmosphere, because a roughly equal amount of carbon was being absorbed somewhere else. As a result, there was approximately an equilibrium level of CO2 in the atmosphere, hence warming didn't happen. Humans have disrupted that balance by releasing more carbon dioxide than can be absorbed, meaning we are no longer in temperature equilibrium.

It's not physics, it's chemistry, but whatever. The earth has a carbon cycle. Carbon goes into the atmosphere and carbon is taken away from the atmosphere. There are two things to consider; the first is that the carbon cycle is not as simple as you wish it were and that the impact of variations in this carbon cycle is not as direct as you make it out to be. We can debate this until the cows come home (those evil methane producing cows). But let's stick to the carbon tax.

Is the carbon tax going to drastically cut the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by man? Probably not.

But will that actually make the problem WORSE? Perhaps.

While solar power certainly is less polluting than fossil fuels, some problems do exist. Some manufacturing processes are associated with greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen trifluroide and sulfur hexafluoride has been traced back to the production of solar panels. These are some of the most potent greenhouse gases and have many thousand times the impact on global warming compared to carbon dioxide. Transportation and installation of solar power systems can also indirectly cause pollution.

Other systems have other problems, but the solution is not a massive tax that only results in what works being expensive and what sort of works (current green energy) being given no incentive to improve whatsoever. Black market energy might actually increase and that might even cause more CO2 emissions as people attempt to get power under the radar, as it were.

Solar power is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't work at night. Transitioning from one fossil fuel to another (coal to natural gas) might be one short term solution. But a carbon tax or simply shutting down all coal plants before there are substitutes in the grid is only going to cause third world brown outs in the United States. It's an interesting fact that you could not reasonably prohibit horse pollution until you first had the automobile mass manufactured.

In the mean time, we need to continue to look at the ways man is destroying the ability of the earth to absorb CO2 in the first place; the destruction of rainforests, urban sprawl, and so forth, and work at improving ways to convert CO2 into things we need everyday. Imagine if the roads were covered in Bioasphalt, for example.

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

Imagine if the roads were covered in Bioasphalt, for example.

I appreciate the sentiment here, but bitumen is itself a bi-product of the oil industry. If the bio-fuel industry picks up, then there will be long chain alkenes generated and usable. In which case they should be used as a genuine alternative, in isolation however, its not a good idea to generate waste bio-oils from road construction.

Also, note that Halik Asphalt havent been building new roads, the wikipedia page is incorrect, and I get very nervous about dead links to a shell trial, suggests the trial didnt go well.

[Metsfanmax]

It's not physics, it's chemistry, but whatever. The earth has a carbon cycle. Carbon goes into the atmosphere and carbon is taken away from the atmosphere. There are two things to consider; the first is that the carbon cycle is not as simple as you wish it were and that the impact of variations in this carbon cycle is not as direct as you make it out to be.

The hell is this? "The Earth is complicated, therefore you are wrong." If you're just going to make vague comments insisting that I'm wrong because you assert that I am, without producing any specific arguments or real evidence, why even bother posting?

Is the carbon tax going to drastically cut the amount of CO2 released into the atmosphere by man? Probably not.

Well, shit. tzor has said so, therefore it must be. I give up, folks.

But will that actually make the problem WORSE? Perhaps.

While solar power certainly is less polluting than fossil fuels, some problems do exist. Some manufacturing processes are associated with greenhouse gas emissions. Nitrogen trifluroide and sulfur hexafluoride has been traced back to the production of solar panels. These are some of the most potent greenhouse gases and have many thousand times the impact on global warming compared to carbon dioxide. Transportation and installation of solar power systems can also indirectly cause pollution.

Yes, because the production of solar, wind, and nuclear does not release exactly zero greenhouse gases, they are therefore just as bad as coal and oil in this regard. False equivalences win debates, folks, remember that!

Other systems have other problems, but the solution is not a massive tax that only results in what works being expensive

The entire argument for a carbon tax is that fossil fuels are expensive too, and we are just not paying the right price for them right now. We pay for the rest of it with damage from climate change down the line.

Black market energy might actually increase and that might even cause more CO2 emissions as people attempt to get power under the radar, as it were.

OK. Why don't you just write a whole book of this stuff without any sources? It'll be fun to read.

Solar power is a wonderful thing, but it doesn't work at night.

Yep, let's just give up because one of the alternatives to fossil fuels doesn't work at night. And we all know there are no alternative power sources that do work at night. And that we will never be able to improve on battery storage, not in a million years.

Transitioning from one fossil fuel to another (coal to natural gas) might be one short term solution. But a carbon tax or simply shutting down all coal plants before there are substitutes in the grid is only going to cause third world brown outs in the United States.

That's really, really not true. You should actually read about what you are talking about before commenting on it. A steadily rising carbon tax implemented would allow wind energy and natural gas to totally supplant coal basically within a decade. See, e.g., this report. Also, are you even paying attention to energy in the United States? Natural gas has been supplanting coal for several years now. There was the whole "shale revolution" and everything. The transition already started. I'm becoming less and less impressed with these comments as we go.

If you don't like taxes, even revenue-neutral taxes that return 100% of the collected funds to Americans, that's fine. But stop dressing it up in the veneer of other stuff that you don't have any subject knowledge in.

In the mean time, we need to continue to look at the ways man is destroying the ability of the earth to absorb CO2 in the first place; the destruction of rainforests, urban sprawl, and so forth, and work at improving ways to convert CO2 into things we need everyday.

Why in the mean time? Why can't we simultaneously focus on this? Why can't a carbon tax provide an incentive to do those things?

[WingCmdr Ginkapo]

In the mean time, we need to continue to look at the ways man is destroying the ability of the earth to absorb CO2 in the first place; the destruction of rainforests, urban sprawl, and so forth, and work at improving ways to convert CO2 into things we need everyday.

Why in the mean time? Why can't we simultaneously focus on this? Why can't a carbon tax provide an incentive to do those things?

Please dont argue that carbon offsetting should be a loophole in the tax, loopholes are the start of the tax failing to be effective.