Guest essay by Eric Worrall
If we behave we won’t have to accept a full command economy to save the planet.
On climate change, it’s time to start panicking
The crisis over global warming warrants an unparalleled response
MATTHEW ROZSA
AUGUST 5, 2018 11:30PM (UTC)It is time for us to panic about global warming. Indeed, a proper state of panic is long overdue.
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“I would place a price on carbon,” Michael E. Mann, a Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Penn State, told Salon by email. “Whether this takes the form of a carbon tax (a revenue-neutral carbon tax? fee and dividend? cap-and-trade?), I leave that to the policymakers to determine as long as they accept, as the premise for policy, what the science has to say about the reality and threat of climate change. The price on carbon needs to be set such that it leads to a reduction in carbon emissions of several percent a year for the next few decades. If we do that, we can avoid a catastrophic 2C (~3.5 F) warming of the planet.”
He also rejected the idea promoted by many on the left that a lasting solution to global warming is impossible under a free-market capitalist economic system.
“I’m unconvinced that is true,” Mann explained. “In the past, market mechanisms for pricing environmental externalities have worked. We acted on acid rain and ozone depletion within a market economy framework. The real problem, in my view, isn’t the nature of our economic system, it’s the way that special interests and plutocrats have blocked the sort of common-sense market approaches to dealing with environmental problems that were once supported by democrats and republicans alike. The problem is the moral and ethical rot that now lies at the very center of the republican establishment, the lack of good faith and the total sellout to special interests and plutocrats.”
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Read more: https://www.salon.com/2018/08/05/on-climate-change-its-time-to-start-panicking
Capitalism and Democracy still has an opportunity to prove itself worthy. Mann is happy for the people’s representatives to decide the exact form of the carbon burden Mann and his friends have demanded we accept.
It is so ironic that Mann should identify the regulations combatting “acid rain” (enacted before the completion of the scientific study demonstrating that most of its so-called effects had natural causes) and the “ozone-saving Montreal Protocol” (passed before the ozone-eating molecule was found to be plain old ocean chlorine) as “market-oriented solutions”. What, in his mind, would be a “political” solution?
Despite extremely high fuel taxes in the EU, Germans still speed the autobahn. I’m at a loss as to how this will have a significant impact CO2 emissions. Does he really think people will turn off the heat and AC? It has the potential to cause sky rocketing wage inflation. Also has he tabled his demands to the Chinese communist party?
MIKIE MCHENRY
How can one speed on an autobahn where it doesn’t have a speed limit?
And fuel efficiency increases at higher speeds, so they’re consuming less fuel to pay taxes on anyway.
drednicolson
Sorry mate, but fuel efficiency decreases the faster one goes in a car. An ICE may theoretically operate more efficiently at a given speed, but a vehicle has to displace an enormous volume of air to make progress. That’s the killer.
Launch a rocket through the atmosphere into space and burn up enormous amounts of fuel, because of the atmosphere (and gravity of course) but once free of both, a fart would see one off into space because there is no atmosphere and therefore no resistance.
Of course CO2 represents only 0.04% of that resistance but the greens would love to convince us it’s much, much more.
I dunno. Sounds like a huge load of projection to me.
Translation: Michael Mann: “Let’s let capitalism solve climate change, as long as people are forced to pay for it through taxes.”
Climate Capitalism sounds very similar to Crony Capitalism!
The climate change scam is about communism and destroying capitalist free markets.
Will our representatives guarantee to pay us out of tax revenue when the premiums exceed the risk?
“As they say on the London insurance market, ‘When the premium exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure.’” Christopher Lord Monckton
Why mitigating CO2 emissions is cost ineffective.
“Capitalism and Democracy still has an opportunity to prove itself worthy.”
Yes, and with Trump as president, they will do so. MAGA.
I always worry when a politician (Mann is a politician in my view) proposes a solution that is “common sense.”
For almost invariably it will be neither common nor sensible.
Despite hyping up the ‘coming’ El Nino (NOAA 65%), as Ive argued since the end of the last one, ENSO isn’t behaving in the normal manner. The former large ‘hot SST blobs’ in the temperate zones of rhe Pacific that augmented the effect of the last El Nino changed to cold blobs.
Much of the cold equatorial water that brought El Nino down so abruptly, did so by slanting equatorward from the cold blobs rather than upwelling strongly in the eastern Pacific. For the expected El Nino, the small volume and modest warmth of the equatorial waters are similarly being ” watered down” by influx from these persistent cold blobs. I think Bob Tisdale’s recent forecast of a new El Nino failed to take this paradigm change into consideration.
I’m forecasting an Enso neutral, to la Nina conditions over the next couple of years with cooling of the Planet and continued decoupling of global temperatures from the usual ENSO activity. The Dreaded Pause is on its way back, although another of the team may adjust us out of it again and then retire. I hope Marohasy is keeping an eye on the OZZIE BMO.
The El Nino forecast is not likely to happen. Already cooling. Probably stay neutral but another weak La Nina is possible.
Yes, let’s do remember how the problems of “acid rain” were solved.
We ignored it, and it went away.
MarkW
Not in the good ole U of K.
We agonised over it, wrung our little handsies and bemoaned the damage we were doing to Swedish forest’s.
The Swede’s on the other hand had a good laugh.
It’s like listening to sad music – it gets you depressed even when there’s nothing actually wrong.
“…..pH of around 5.7 for rainwater, according to Harvard University.”
Acid rain is a problem that will NEVER go away.
“The moral and ethical rot” of Republican politics. Aaaaand ….. Mann just said 50% of the US population should be cut from the social body.
Deplorables, unredeemables, toothless, rotten, immoral, corrupt ….. all because they aren’t Hillary-Democrats.
Mann et al have a God complex.
I called my Hillary-supporting daughter the other day and, in my best Okie slang, confessed I was a toothless Trump supporter that just happened to be her dad.
She had a good laugh but I hope she sees the irony in the lies being perpetrated by the media.
If all of these corporations committing to going 100% renewable would change that stance and commitment to 100% Carbon Free Energy to include the energy produced by Zero CO2 committing Nuclear Power, the problem would be solved.
However, me thinks, that is not what the Envirowhacos want. They Know Nuclear Power would solve the problem and they do not want the problem solved. The only people killed by production of electricity by Nuclear Power were in Russia and that was caused by a blatant violation of all rules and regulations. Even considering those deaths, more have died from the use of and implementation of Wind and Solar power.
Phil Donahue: Is there a case for the government to do something about pollution?
Milton Friedman: Yes, there’s a case for the government to do something. There’s always a case for the government to do something about it. Because there’s always a case for the government to some extent when what two people do affects a third party. There’s no case for the government whatsoever to mandate air bags, because air bags protect the people inside the car. That’s my business. If I want to protect myself, I should do it at my expense. But there is a case for the government protecting third parties, protecting people who have not voluntarily agreed to enter. So there’s more of a case, for example, for emissions controls than for airbags. But the question is what’s the best way to do it? And the best way to do it is not to have bureaucrats in Washington write rules and regulations saying a car has to carry this that or the other. The way to do it is to impose a tax on the cost of the pollutants emitted by a car and make an incentive for car manufacturers and for consumers to keep down the amount of pollution.
[ … ]
Michael Greenstone, the Milton Friedman Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago and the director of the Energy Policy Institute of Chicago: “The media always reports that there’s near consensus among scientists about the effect of human activity on the climate. What gets less attention is that I think there’s even greater consensus, starting from Milton Friedman and going to the most left-wing economist you can find, that the obvious practical solution is to put a price on carbon. It’s not controversial.”
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffmcmahon/2014/10/12/what-would-milton-friedman-do-about-climate-change-tax-carbon/#266930eb6928
Who sets the price and how the “revenue neutral” part works always worries me.
very interesting – however – his statement on the Phil Donahue Show doesn’t take into account the possibility of a corrupt science – nor of other factors an economist might consider – this article (quoting his son) explains why he probably wouldn’t have supported a carbon tax
https://www.masterresource.org/friedman-milton/milton-friedman-climate-realist/
All based on the unproven assumption that CO2 is the cause of increased air temperatures. If the assumption is false, so is the solution. Sorry.
Reminds me of a lot of liberals who declare their support of democracy, but only so long as their candidate wins.
That is so magnanimous of him.
Ah, economics and politics…is there a subject remaining that Mikey Fraudpants is not an expert in?
As I have written here previously, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Dr. Michael Mann is a classic narcissist. He is “sure” he, and only he, is correct, and everyone else who disagrees with him and his ilk are wrong. He attacks actual and putative critics in an effort to exact retaliation. The lawsuits are a strong tell that Mann is a raving narcissist. In another very telling episode, he called the supervisor of a NWS office to complain about a sarcastic comment about termites and GHG emissions that a meteorologist had written in a weather discussion. (The irony there, of course, is that the supervisor is as big a narcissist as Mann is.) My understanding according to the DSM IV of Psychiatry is that a diagnosis of narcissism would be made after a fairly long period of time by a professional, as narcissists are very clever in concealing their symptoms from them. So, it is often the family, coworkers, and friends of these people who are much more likely to make such a diagnosis if they know what to look for, as they spend much more time around these individuals. Could one speculate that President Trump is a narcissist? He certainly exhibits classic symptoms as well, but at least he doesn’t think CO2 is evil, and he doesn’t want to subvert our economic system in order to bow at the feet of a false god.
‘there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that Dr. Michael Mann is a classic narcissist.’
His personality comes through clearly in the Climategate e-mails.
4caster
Can a narcissist ever be satisfied?
Therein lies the definition.
Capitalism is fully capable to solve any perceived Global Warming problem. All that is required is for those that believe Global Warming is a problem, is for them to dramatically reduce the CO2 footprint and convince their friends to do so. No Government subsidies or taxes are required.
Folks like Mann & algore need to set an example by doing such things as telecommuting from any energy neutral location, collecting groceries that their home farm can’t supply by bicycle, investing most of their net worth in projects that would help others to do the same, i.e. put their money where their mouth is.
Nay, capitalism would promote fossil fuel utilization as the cheapest energy source with the concomitant benefit of improving the biosphere. From 15-25% of foodstuff production is now attributable to the increase in atmospheric CO2 over the past 50 years, and trees, depending on the variety, are growing from 30 to 70% faster. CO2 sequestration is equivalent to economic castration!
“Climate” is both a theory, i.e. The Theory of Climate (1983, on Amazon), and an illusion. No one measures “climate” and all that can be measured is not “climate”.
Ha ha jajajajajajajaja
I suggest to pass on the spliffs while working the keyboard.
He has got one thing right – the CFD solvers used by all their models are basically throwing out entropy. He likely is pleading for much more money for better computer simulations, gargantuan centers on the scale of NSA’s. These of course will demand more data. And the solution we all know will be 42.
Part of the problem is the control theory variation trick/error/subterfuge reported here, but a more serious one is the very CFD maths approach itself.
How much “carbon” used for these computations?
The ethical rot in government is being phased out starting at EPA.
The market is already solving CO2, if such really needs to be solved – we’ve had record decreases in output by nature of people’s choices and industry changes. The absolutely best way to use Capitalism is to persuade people with facts that their choices matter and to allow competition to offer innovative alternatives.
It’s not capitalism’s job to ‘solve’ climate change.
It’s not socialism’s job either – they just say it is – apparently, the same way it ‘solves’ everything.
It must be tough going from being the basis of a UN division logo to kitchen commentary. At this rate the guy will become a regular NYT commentary piece alongside Krugman rants.
Mann is an absolute P.O.S.