By Roger Caiazza
According to Resources for the Future, carbon pricing is a climate policy approach that works by charging industrial sources for the tons of emissions of carbon dioxide (CO2) they emit. I have been following this for quite a while and think that despite the attractiveness of the theory there are practical reasons why it will not work as advertised.
I am prompted to prepare this summary of my concerns because a coalition has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hold a technical conference or workshop on carbon pricing. In my opinion this coalition consists of vested interests that do not consider the effect on ratepayers.
I first became involved with pollution trading programs nearly 30 years ago and have been involved in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative (RGGI) carbon pricing program since it was being developed in 2003. During that time, I analyzed effects of these programs on operations and was responsible for compliance planning and reporting. I write about the issues related to the energy and environmental interface from the viewpoint of staff people who have to deal with implementing these programs. I have followed the New York State Independent System Operator’s carbon pricing initiative since its inception and my work on that program is the primary basis for this summary.
Proponents have convinced themselves that somehow this is different than a tax but, in my experience working with affected sources, it is treated just like a tax. As a result, the over-riding problem with carbon pricing is that it is a regressive tax. In the following, I describe a number of other practical reasons that cap-and-invest carbon pricing or any variation thereof will not work as theorized: leakage, revenues over time, theory vs. reality, market signal inefficiency, control options, total costs of alternatives, and implementation logistics. In addition, The Regulatory Analysis Project (RAP) recently completed a study for Vermont, Economic Benefits and Energy Savings through Low-Cost Carbon Management, that raises additional relevant concerns about carbon pricing implementation.
Pollution leakage refers to the situation where a pollution reduction policy simply moves the pollution around geographically rather than actually reducing it. Ideally you want the carbon price to apply to all sectors across the globe so that cannot occur. I don’t think a global carbon pricing scheme is ever going to happen because of the tradeoff between the benefits which are all long term versus the costs which are mostly short term. I don’t see how anyone could ever come up with a pricing scheme that equitably addresses the gulf between the energy abundant “haves” and those who don’t have access to reliable energy such that “have nots” will be willing to pay more (as carbon taxes) just to catch up with those who have abundant energy.
For any carbon pricing scheme in a limited geographical area I think that leakage will be an insurmountable problem. I am primarily concerned about energy policy in New York and have written about New York’s electric sector carbon pricing initiative. The New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) is currently campaigning for its Carbon Pricing Initiative. Trying to force fit this global theory into just the New York electricity market is an extraordinarily difficult problem. As proposed, it will likely result in power leakage where energy and emissions are not reduced but simply shift emissions associated with power production out of the state within the inter-connected electric grid. Additionally, note that a carbon price on just the electric sector may even result in leakage if more consumers generate their own power using unpriced fossil fuel.
Revenues Over Time
A fundamental problem with all carbon pricing schemes is that funds decrease over time as carbon emissions decrease unless the carbon price is adjusted significantly upwards over time. Air pollution control costs increase exponentially as efficiency increases so it is clear that the need for stable revenues over time is acute. It has been observed that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes and everyone knows the implications of the low hanging fruit analogy. This phenomenon has been observed with regard to New York’s observed CO2 emission reductions to date. Supporters of the RGGI point out that since its inception that New York electric sector emissions have dropped over 40% between 2006 and 2018. However, I have shown that those reductions were primarily because of retirements and fuel switching to lower emitting fuels. It can be argued that those reductions would have happened anyway because retirements and fuel switching were lower cost options without even considering CO2 emissions. New York State is now in the more difficult emissions reduction position where all future reductions will have to decrease the use of low-cost generating facilities with something that is more expensive.
This difficulty should be even more of a concern with CO2 emission reductions because at some point replacing existing fossil-fired generation not only has to consider the direct power output conversion costs but must also address dispatchability and grid support costs. When those costs are included there will be a sharp increase in total costs per CO2 reduced. Like many others, the NYISO Carbon Pricing Initiative proposes to use the social cost of carbon (SCC) as the carbon price. The SCC cost increases over time but, in my opinion, the costs over time do not increase enough to keep pace with the necessarily more expensive total costs to maintain reliable electricity to consumers.
Theory vs. Reality
Another problem with carbon pricing theory is that in practice affected sources may not act rationally or as theory expects. RGGI is a market-based carbon pricing program and I have written extensively on it. The academic theory for RGGI market behavior is that affected sources will treat allowances as a storable commodity and act in their own best interest on that basis. If that were true, then affected sources would be purchasing allowances for long-term needs and “playing” the market to maximize earnings. In practice, RGGI affected sources plan and operate on short time frames and have shown no signs of making allowance compliance obligations a profit center.
Carbon pricing theory claims that when the cost of using higher emitting energy increases that will provide incentives to develop alternatives and discourage continued use of existing resources. However, these incentives are indirect and again assume rational behavior in the market. While theory says that a company that currently operates a fossil-fired plant will change its business plan and develop a renewable energy facility to stay in business, there are a whole host of reasons why the company may not go that route and instead treat the carbon price as a tax, continue to operate with that constraint, and give up on a fossil-fired plant as a long term asset when they can no longer make a profit. In my opinion RGGI did not induce any New York companies to change their business plans.
Control Options
A fundamental difference between any carbon cap control program and cap programs for other emissions at power plants is that there are no cost-effective add-on controls for CO2 whereas there are control technology options for SO2, NOx and most other pollutants. As a result, the affected sources have fewer options to comply with a CO2 price or cap. Ultimately, the affected source control strategy is to operate under the cap; if the cap is lower that means selling less fuel. In addition, because there are so few CO2 control options for the affected sources, this increases the likelihood that they will simply treat the costs of purchasing allowances as a tax.
A carbon price initiative for the transportation sector would try to reduce fuel use. Clearly moving to an electric vehicle is the preferred option but there is not only a large cost hurdle but a host of practicality issues as well. Paul Homewood at the Not a Lot of People Know That blog described the flaws of an article supporting a carbon tax plan that addresses this issue. He said that “The only logical reason for a carbon tax is to reduce emissions. Such a tax might help to reduce energy consumption, but only at punitive levels, because energy demand is so inelastic. Therefore, the real intention is to make fossil fuels so expensive that renewables can eventually become competitive, along with CCS, hydrogen heating etc.”
Market Signal Inefficiency
One of the underlying presumptions in any carbon price program is that the funds received will be spent effectively. I have evaluated the results of the investments made by regulatory agencies to date in RGGI measured as the cost per ton reduced. The RGGI states have been investing investments of RGGI proceeds since 2008 but their investments to date are only directly responsible for less than 5% of the total observed reductions. Furthermore, from the start of the program in 2009 through 2017, RGGI has invested $2,527,635,414 and reduced annual CO2 emissions 2,818,775 tons. The resulting cost efficiency, $897 per ton reduced, far exceeds the SCC that represents the value of reducing CO2 today to prevent damages in the future.
I looked at New York’s investments in more detail to see why those investments were so inefficient. The New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) report New York’s RGGI-Funded Programs Status Report – Semiannual Report through December 31, 2018 describes how New York invested the proceeds from the RGGI auctions. That report lists the programs that are funded using RGGI proceeds in six categories: Green Jobs – Green New York, Energy Efficiency, Renewable Energy, Community Clean Energy, Innovative GHG Abatement Strategies, and Clean Energy Fund. From the titles alone it is clear that waving a pot of money in front of politically-driven bureaucracies is an incentive to build empires. I evaluated the projects within these categories and found that there were 19 programs with associated CO2 reduction benefits and another 18 programs with no claimed CO2 reductions. None of the 19 programs with CO2 reduction benefits met the $50 SCC metric for cost effective investments. Clearly the 18 programs with no claimed reductions would not be able to meet the metric either.
Theory says that the carbon price alone can incentivize lower emitting energy production and that the market choices will be more efficient than government-mandated choices. Ultimately the market signal question is whether the SCC value is sufficient to incentivize the market to invest in zero GHG emitting generation resources. There is no sign that RGGI motivated the market to act and it is not clear that the carbon pricing schemes proposed under the purview of FERC will provide enough value either. If the market signal is inadequate, then New York’s experience illustrates that government-mandated choices must be chosen carefully to ensure that the cost per ton of CO2 reduced is less than the SCC. I believe that the more targeted the investment to actually reduce energy use or CO2 emissions the more likely that SCC effectiveness criterion can be met.
Another consideration in effectiveness is timing. New York has a legislative target to generate zero GHG emissions from electricity production by 2040. Even if investors do come forward, are they going to be able to develop alternative generating resources in the time frames necessary to meet the ever more aggressive goals set by states competing to be the most ambitious?
Cost Shifting Total Costs
As noted previously at some point replacing existing fossil-fired generation not only has to consider the direct power output conversion costs but must also address dispatchability and grid support costs. When the carbon pricing proposal simply increases the cost of the energy generated, I think that approach will lead to cost shifting where the total costs of fossil fuel alternatives are not addressed.
Consider an electric system carbon price. In that approach any generator that emits CO2 will have to include a carbon price in their bid which serves to provide the non-emitting generators with more revenue. However, solar and wind generators are not paying the full cost to get the power from the generator to consumers when and where it is needed. Because solar and wind are intermittent, as renewables become a larger share of electric production energy storage now provided by traditional generating sources will be needed but there is no carbon price revenue stream for that resource. Because solar and wind are diffuse transmission resources are needed but solar and wind do not directly provide grid services like traditional electric generating stations. Energy storage systems could provide that support but they are not subsidized by the increased cost to emitting generators.
There are ways to address this. The carbon price could be modified to direct revenues to energy storage systems. However, when you do that the direct cost will go up and those least able to afford energy price increases will be hit with a regressive tax. The simplest solution would be to require all electric power sold to the grid to be dispatchable. In other words, require wind and solar to only sell power through their own dedicated energy storage systems. That won’t be popular for those resources because it effectively doubles their cost but the fact is that someone, somewhere will have to pay for those services so why not them.
Implementation Logistics
I also believe that there are significant logistical issues associated with carbon pricing. In order to set a carbon price, you have to know what the carbon emissions are for every source providing energy to the market. For a global all-sector pricing scheme, you could set the price as the fuel is produced so that everyone pays the cost all the way through its end use. On the other hand, in the NYISO proposal they have to set the carbon price as electric energy as it is sold. Tracking emissions on that real-time basis is a non-trivial problem. In New York, NYISO knows which generators are running and has a pretty good idea of their emission rates. However, the final emission numbers are not available real-time because the emission values reported to prove compliance are not finalized until quality assurance post processing is complete and that can be months after the fact. The more significant problem is that NYISO has no way to calculate imported electricity carbon emissions on a real-time basis so cannot assign a carbon price value that accurately reflects how imported electricity is being generated. These issues have been glossed over to date.
The sources affected by RGGI had a long history working with cap and trade programs such as the Acid Rain Program before RGGI was implemented. On the other hand, if carbon tax schemes are implemented for other sectors the affected entities may not have experience with this kind of regulatory program. I believe that this increases the likelihood that affected sources will simply treat this as another tax.
Vermont Regulatory Analysis Project Carbon Management Study
There are not many critiques of carbon pricing schemes but there is one that deserves recognition. The Regulatory Analysis Project (RAP) recently completed a relevant study: Economic Benefits and Energy Savings through Low-Cost Carbon Management for Vermont that raises relevant concerns. The introduction describes the genesis of the analysis:
In the 2018 legislative session, the Vermont Legislature called for a study to examine the possible methods, costs, and benefits of using carbon pricing to address the problem of carbon pollution in the state. Resources for the Future (RFF) was commissioned by the legislature’s Joint Fiscal Office to conduct that study, using the economic models and approaches available to RFF.
The Regulatory Assistance Project (RAP) has been asked to assess the RFF study and its conclusions, and to offer suggestions for action based on its results and our expertise in energy and climate policy. RAP has, over the past 25 years, examined these issues not only in Vermont but across the globe. Our observations and recommendations are based on that broad base of experience.
For the purposes of this report, in the short time available, we commissioned two expert studies. The first, on low-carbon transportation, was completed by M.J. Bradley & Associates (MJBA), which has conducted several studies on this topic across our region and beyond. The second, on opportunities for energy savings in housing and public buildings, was completed by the Energy Futures Group (EFG), an expert consulting firm based in Hinesburg, Vermont. We are grateful to these two firms for lending their expertise to Vermont and offering leading insights to this review.
What have we found? Based on the plain facts of Vermont’s physical and economic conditions, we conclude that an attempt to reduce Vermont’s carbon emissions based on carbon pricing alone will cost more, and deliver less, than a program of carbon reductions that is based on practical public policies—policies that attack the main sources of carbon pollution through tailored, cost-effective programs geared to Vermont’s families, businesses, and physical conditions.
Although the focus of the RAP study was on transportation and energy efficiency the over-arching conclusions are also applicable to all carbon pricing proposals. The report raises the important policy question: What does a climate policy cost consumers per ton of carbon avoided? Their answer is relevant:
Many advocates of carbon pricing begin with the proposition that the main point is to charge for carbon emissions “appropriately” and that carbon reductions will surely follow in the most efficient manner. While carbon pricing is a useful tool in the fight against climate change, there is now substantial experience to suggest that wise use of the resulting carbon revenues is equally important, or even more important, if the goal is to actually reduce emissions at the lowest reasonable cost. One of the principal conclusions of the RFF study is that, even if carbon charges were set as high as $100/ton, the reduction in carbon emissions achieved statewide would be only about 10 percent below the expected business-as-usual case.
This seems to present us with an insoluble problem. On the one hand carbon pricing is said by many to be the “best” and “most efficient” way to drive down emissions in line with global targets and Vermont’s statutory goals. But on the other hand, as common sense and studies—including even RFF’s analysis—conclude, carbon pricing alone will be a weak tool to deal with the realities of consumer behavior, our historic buildings infrastructure, rural settlement patterns, and the many barriers that working families and businesses face in choosing to invest in energy efficiency or other low-carbon options.
I believe that the RAP analysis supports my concern about carbon market pricing signal investment efficiency. Even though they still claim that “energy pricing can be married to public policies”, the high hurdles of leakage, reduced revenues over time and the disconnect between the theory and reality are unaddressed.
Carbon Pricing Cautionary Summary
Proponents claim that “An increasing number of organizations recognize this unique, market-based solution as a viable, scalable option for helping to reduce carbon emissions market-based solution”. I frankly don’t think most of those organizations have had actual experience with a carbon pricing initiative logistics and have not evaluated whether the carbon prices proposed will provide the market signals necessary to spur the necessary renewable development needed to meet any CO2 emission reduction goals as a viable, scalable option for helping to reduce carbon emissions. The success of any carbon pricing scheme boils down to the question whether the carbon price set will provide enough of an incentive for projects that produce emission reductions that displace today’s generators and eventually covers the costs to provide the dispatchability and grid support functions provided by today’s generation mix.
In my opinion, carbon price support is based on parochial interests. In the case of the NYISO carbon pricing initiative they appear to believe it will simplify the cost accounting for New York’s renewable implementation efforts. I think they have under-estimated the difficulty implementing the infrastructure necessary to accurately track the price of carbon and have ignored the potential that the complex scheme needed to reduce leakage will lead to unintended consequences. Other support appears to be based on the potential to make money and it is not clear that is in the best interest of the New York’s desire to reduce CO2 emissions as cost-effectively as possible.
To summarize, carbon pricing will always be a regressive tax. I also think that there are a number of practical reasons that carbon pricing will not work as theorized. Because a global program is impractical, leakage is always going to be a problem. All carbon pricing proposals need to address the problem that as carbon emissions go down revenues go down relative to the fact that reductions get more difficult and expensive as control efficiency increases. The academics who support carbon pricing seem to be blissfully unaware of the realities of the energy market that are at odds to their theories. Based on observed results I think that indirect market signals are going to lead to less cost-effective reductions in the time frame necessary for the aggressive reduction rules. To date, carbon pricing for the electric sector only considers generation costs which leads to cost shifting the additional costs to supply electricity when and where it is needed to be covered outside the carbon pricing framework. Finally, supporters under-estimate the very real problems of implementation logistics. My concerns about carbon pricing are supported by the RAP study.
Roger Caiazza blogs on New York energy and environmental issues at Pragmatic Environmentalist of New York. This represents his opinion and not the opinion of any of his previous employers or any other company he has been associated with.
Putting a fixed pricing on anything is by definition a tax because it a compulsory contribution to the cost of a good or service. The green/lefties always try to paint it as something as part of their deception. There can be good reasons for why a tax may exist, but if you can’t even call it what it is then you know they are lying from the outset.
The inability of the free-enterprise to deal with negative externalities has been recognized for nearly 100 years. Garret Hardin, a strong advocate of private property, calls for coercive taxes in his landmark essay “The Tragedy of the Commons”.
“The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us cannot readily be fenced, and so the tragedy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated. We have not progressed as far with the solution of this problem as we have with the first. Indeed, our particular concept of private property, which deters us from exhausting the positive resources of the earth, favors pollution. The owner of a factory on the bank of a stream–whose property extends to the middle of the stream, often has difficulty seeing why it is not his natural right to muddy the waters flowing past his door. The law, always behind the times, requires elaborate stitching and fitting to adapt it to this newly perceived aspect of the commons.”
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/162/3859/1243
Emit less CO2, pay less tax. Not a hard concept.
Negative externalities are the fundamental basis for carbon pricing. My problem with the emphasis on negative externalities is that proponents rarely acknowledge the positive externalities. If the topic of this essay were on carbon pricing theory then I would argue that weighing the positive and negative externalities boils down to personal value judgements. What I hoped to show here is that even if your values suggest that the negative externalities deserve a price, implementing that pricing “solution” is fraught with practical problems that I think make this approach unworkable.
Did you bother to check out the work of the Ecofiscal Commission of Canada?
https://ecofiscal.ca/carbon-pricing/
They create ridiculous costs for problems that either don’t exist or have nothing to do with CO.
They either radically minimize if not ignore all together the benefits of CO2.
Academic economists have a great theory they say. I say there are practical reasons why it won’t work.
The Ecofiscal Commission presents data to show that carbon pricing does work. Spend some time with it.
When stuff gets more expensive, people use less of it.
Stop the presses, economists for the last 200 years have been completely wrong.
For Jack’s sake, I’ll identify the above as sarcasm.
The
EcofiscalEcofascist Commission presents data to show that carbon pricing does work.Fixed for ya. And you’re alittle late for April Fool’s Day.
“Emit less CO2, pay less tax. Not a hard concept.”
I’ve beat taxes but not death by the looks as I’m freezing in the dark. Welcome to the concept of inelastic demand particularly after you’ve grabbed the low hanging fruit with it. Just give up the booze and smokes and you pay no excise too. OTOH belt coffee with excise and you’ll end up with a nation of tea drinkers. Do that with fossil fuel generators and you end up with an unreliable grid and massive FCAS problems. These are not hard concepts.
Carbon dioxides taxes put a price on the emission of waste by-products. No other industry is allowed to dump its waste by-products into the environment.
Plant food is a waste byproduct. Whoda thunk?
Jumping right over the question of whether or not CO2 should be considered pollution or “waste by-products”. Hint: you really don’t have a clue, Jack.
True only if it is a pollutant.
“No other industry is allowed to dump its waste by-products into the environment.”
More lies from Jack. Every industry is allowed to pump carbon dioxide into the environment. Every car, truck, ship and plane used by industry pumps CO2 into the environment. Good luck trying to run a business without using any transportation at all.
Give it up , Jack. Your lies are as transparent as gaseous carbon dioxide.
The problem with your idea jack is you first have to accept CO2 is a pollutant .. not a hard concept.
So do people who breathe less pay less tax?
Who pays the tax for natures emissions of CO2 which is massive (750Gt per year)?
I might rightfully demand since nature is the largest emitter it should come back in proportion of the human 30Gt. So natures proportion is 750 GT/780 Gt = 96% so it should come back 96 times whatever the human cuts are.
It’s a Climate Crisis but we don’t get to have a discussion about how to actually fix the problem the green blob and it’s idiots promote the most stupid solution ever conceived “Emission Control”.
What do you call the waste by-product of an industrial process?
Nature portion of emissions was balanced by natures absorption of the CO2. It is called the carbon cycles. Just like water flowing into a bucket can be balanced by water flowing out if the bucket.
So for 800,000 years at least the inflow and out flow results in an atmospheric CO2 level that fluctuated between 180 ppm and 300 ppm. In that atmosphere homo sapiens evolved and their plant crops were domesticated. The anthropogenic emission of CO2 from fossil fuel sources, which had been sequestered for millions of years, was small enough that the carbon cycle could accommodate it.
Then with the Industrial Revolution countries such as England switched from animal, water and wind power to fossil fuels. Since that time we added that 4% of anthropogenic CO2 that currently exits. That resulted in 1.5 trillion tonnes of CO2, a persistent, well-mixed, non-condensing greenhouse gas, being added to the atmosphere. That resulted in CO2 levels reaching those that had not been recorded in 3-5 million years. Carbon isotope analysis indicates that the nearly 50% increase in atmospheric CO2 can be directly attributed to the burning of fossil fuels.
The bucket started to overflow and continues to do so.
So, one of the waste by-products of burning fossil fuels is…water. Want to regulate that too? Again, you ASSume that CO2 is a waste. It’s plant food.
And the measured negative consequences have been?
And the actual negative consequences have been?
And the actual benefits are?
Plants growing bigger and healthier while using less water.
If the world does warm up by a degree or two.
Longer growing seasons.
Fewer excess deaths caused by climate.
Easier access to the resources arctic.
So you get the idea that there is a whole natural cycle .. we have a start.
So when we want to use more water, we don’t make our own do we, we take some from nature. When we want to get rid of water we clean it to make sure it has no pollutants and then we place it back. Historically we had a bad habit of leaving pollutants in but generally these days we know better.
So generally given that there is a CO2 cycle the same trick for CO2 would be to get nature to stop emitting 30GT of CO2 so we could emit 30GT because we want to fit into nature. Now a smart person might actually stop and think about that and how you could for minimum impact to nature get it to emit 30GT less. If you need a hint look at how much CO2 to O2 a plant produces and why.
The CO2 produced by plants at night and when they die and rot are part of a long term natural cycles. Using coal, petroleum and natural gas as energy sources is a new phenomenon that has overwhelmed the natural cycle.
Easy to stop it overhelming the natural cycle, much easier than emission control.
See the issue when you use the dumbest scientists (AKA climate scientists) rather than the smartest hard scientists to come up with a plan you predictably get a dumb plan.
It’s all irrelevant anyhow there is snowballs chance in hell emission control is ever goign to work or be implemented .. wait for the fun at COP26 next year.
Natural cycles would have us cooling.
You are either a complete idiot or didn’t read.
There is no point me telling you so do this little exercise yourself . Get a number for the amount of CO2 turnover by world food crops. Now increase that CO2 turnover by 5% because we are going to subsidize buying that seed to make it the cheapest seed available to the farmer. The seed is the cheapest point in the cycle which is why you want to do it there, so look up the cost of 1 ton of seed and how many tonnes of seed are used world wide for crops.
Now work out how much CO2 you took out of the atmosphere and now all you need to work out is the cost to develop the seed variation and its production cost you are going to have to subsidize.
There have already been studies to show you can do this trick without even having to develop new seed strains
https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/news/nr/farming-crops-with-rocks-global-food-security-1.764697
The issue is green groups aren’t interested in this sort of thing because it doesn’t involve the re-distribution of the worlds wealth which is their goal. CO2 emission control is just a means to an ends not the objective.
The use of coal and oil is just another part of the natural cycle. It’s just a longer cycle.
I see Jack is still proclaiming that he knows exactly what all the natural cycles are and exactly how they work.
OK Jack, since you are such an expert, what caused the Minoan, Roman and Medieval warm periods and the Little Ice Age. None of your sacred models can model them.
The tragedy of the commons is a morality tale about socialism, not capitalism. Under capitalism, all commons would be owned by somebody. Only under socialism do you suffer under the delusion that much of the world should be owned by government.
Air and water are by their nature “commons”. That is the point that Hardin makes. Read the portion of the essay I posted and read the rest as well.
Once again, Jack jumps in to demonstrate that all he knows is what his handlers tell him to know.
Look up riparian rights. If the word is too big for you to handle, perhaps your mummy will help.
Riparian rights are the rights to the stream bank, not to pollute the waters downstream.
And there is no equivalent for air.
It also covers rights to the water and what is in it. If someone pollutes your water, they have violated your raparian rights. The same applies for air.
Like all true socialists, Jack actually believes that the only solution to any problem is more government.
Mark W – My air is polluted.
So sue somebody. Or are you a typical liberal and demand that someone else do all the hard work.
PS, In order to win a suit, you are going to have to demonstrate harm.
“there is always a well-known solution to every human problem—neat, plausible, and wrong.”
H. L. Mencken
‘Carbon’ dioxide is NOT pollution. Stop lying.
It’s plant food.
N, P and K are also plant food. Over-fertilize your lawn and watch what happens.
N, P and K are not plant food. Nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium compounds are nutrients, essential compounds which the plant cannot make itself, or not in enough quantities. Food is what provides a living thing with a source of energy and the “stuff” with which to build its body. Carbon dioxide is plant food.
There is no “social cost of carbon”. Carbon dioxide produces a net benefit to life on earth, including mankind. There should be no tax on it.
This is one of the articles to which folks link when claiming CO2 is greening the planet. They never seem to get past the headline.
“While rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the air can be beneficial for plants, it is also the chief culprit of climate change. The gas, which traps heat in Earth’s atmosphere, has been increasing since the industrial age due to the burning of oil, gas, coal and wood for energy and is continuing to reach concentrations not seen in at least 500,000 years. The impacts of climate change include global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice as well as more severe weather events.
The beneficial impacts of carbon dioxide on plants may also be limited, said co-author Dr. Philippe Ciais, associate director of the Laboratory of Climate and Environmental Sciences, Gif-suv-Yvette, France. “Studies have shown that plants acclimatize, or adjust, to rising carbon dioxide concentration and the fertilization effect diminishes over time.””
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2016/carbon-dioxide-fertilization-greening-earth
Jack Dale: “carbon dioxide … is … the chief culprit of climate change.”
Bullsh*t! Water vapor is the dominant “greenhouse” gas. When I look at the sky, I see clouds of the stuff filling the sky almost every day. Plus, I can feel the difference it makes to daytime and nighttime temperatures. Unlike Greta, I can’t see any carbon dioxide and, at 4/100 ths of 1 percent of the atmosphere, that’s really no surprise. Increasing the concentration a few 100 ths of a percent will make about the same amount of difference to the climate – a few 100 ths of a percent.
” The impacts of climate change include global warming, rising sea levels, melting glaciers and sea ice as well as more severe weather events.”
True but, they also include global cooling, sinking sea levels, growing glaciers, more sea ice and less severe weather events. The climate has been changing for as long as it has existed and will continue to do so long after humans have departed the planet.
Here’s what should be the headline: Anyone who says a slightly increased concentration of carbon dioxide is “causing” climate change is lying. Like Chas said above – stop lying!
A chemistry lesson for you.
H2O is the dominant GHG; that is well recognized even by the IPCC.
“It’s true that water vapor is the largest contributor to the Earth’s greenhouse effect. On average, it probably accounts for about 60% of the warming effect. However, water vapor does not control the Earth’s temperature, but is instead controlled by the temperature. This is because the temperature of the surrounding atmosphere limits the maximum amount of water vapor the atmosphere can contain. ”
You need to learn the difference between condensing and non-condensing gases.
https://www.acs.org/content/acs/en/climatescience/climatesciencenarratives/its-water-vapor-not-the-co2.html
Jack, the field experiments which you refer to showed that if carbon dioxide were increased to twice the pre-industrial level then tree growth was enhanced by 23%. However, one of the experiments showed that the effect did not persist over time because of depletion of nitrogen. The local availability of nitrogen was the limiting factor on growth. It was nothing to do with the trees getting used to higher levels of carbon dioxide.
You also repeat (cut and paste from the NASA article) that carbon dioxide is the chief culprit of climate change. This is an assertion which has never been established. The “evidence” is all based on the output of computer models. The output of a computer simulation is not real data. Only observations and measurements in the real world are evidence. We know that the models are wrong, not just a little bit wrong but fundamentally wrong.
The models cannot explain the Little Ice Age, the Medieval Warm Period, the Roman Warm Period, the Minoan Warm Period and all of the other past warming and cooling episodes evident from multiple proxies. If it is carbon dioxide which drives the climate and natural climate change just produces minor variations about the trend line then these episodes would not have happened.
If the models were correct, the missing tropospheric hotspot wouldn’t be missing.
If the models were correct, then a pulse of warming would be immediately followed by a reduction in the outgoing longwave radiation. This is a necessary condition for the additional warming, the positive water vapor feedback, predicted by the models. In fact, the observations show an increase in the OLR, demonstrating negative feedback.
If the models were correct, then they wouldn’t have predicted 2-3 times as much warming as we have actually experienced.
Anyone who believes the models in the face of the evidence that they are fundamentally wrong is suffering from cognitive dissonance.
I guess you missed this.
“Researchers have published results in Environmental Research Letters confirming strong warming in the upper troposphere, known colloquially as the tropospheric hotspot. The hot (spot) has been long expected as part of global warming theory and appears in many global climate models.”
https://phys.org/news/2015-05-climate-scientists-elusive-tropospheric-hot.html
I would also suggest you spend some time on this site. Roger Olsen monitors climate model predictions.
https://www.quora.com/How-accurate-have-climate-change-predictions-been-in-the-past/answers/152375325?ch=10&share=d62a71ba&srid=u61p
Not only doesn’t Jack know jack about economics, he doesn’t know jack about climate science.
The 2015 “study” has not been cited since its initial media hype. It was a pile of ‘wind’ garbage disproved by actual satellite and radiosonde measurements. Read more.
The actual ‘greenhouse’ effect occurs in the atmosphere, not at the surface. Satellite and radiosonde atmospheric temperature trends run 2 to 3 times cooler than UN IPCC climate model trends. Read more.
Dave Fair
You really need to do your homework before posting. Sherwood et al (2015) has 21 citations, 9 of them recent, and 18188 total downloads.
Yet the study is still crap, Jack. Read it and, especially, tell me what you think of the red-smear graph.
Sherwood et al 2015 –
“Interestingly, tropical warming appears steadier in the troposphere than at the surface, and did not slow after 1998 despite slower warming in the surface record.”
Interestingly the red peak in 1998 matches the red peak at about 2010. 😉
it seems to have come to a dead stop.
Jack Dale
Misdirection. CO2 is deficient in the atmosphere for plants. Plants would thrive on much higher levels.
We are nowhere near the the purported 150 ppm danger limit.
At 550 ppm the nutritional value of of food crops is compromised.
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41558-018-0253-3
“At 550 ppm the nutritional value of of food crops is compromised.”
Perhaps on a fraction of mass basis, but the mass per plant is so much greater, the total nutrient content per plant has increased. This claim is a red herring hidden behind a pay wall in order to prevent the proper due diligence.
Nutrients are limited by what’s in the ground, not what’s in the air. CO2 contributes to the plants carbohydrate content, not the nutrient content. Add sufficient nutrients to the soil and the shortfall goes away.
No it’s even more stupid than that CO2isNotEvil the paper assumes that we can’t switch to different strains of the crops that work better in those conditions. You know we managed to breed plants for drought tolerance, wider temperature range etc but oh an extra bit of CO2 is a game changer. It’s a typical study with unrealistic conditions by over educated idiots who need to get out of the university and get a real job.
Looks like Jack doesn’t actually bother to read the articles he links to.
Having nutritional values fall by a percent or two while total mass doubles, is not a problem.
“At 550 ppm the nutritional value of of food crops is compromised.”
That’s baloney. 100% agree with co2isnotevil and LdB and MarkW.
That is exactly the kind of misdirection climate research aims for. Confuse the results by omitting the obvious, emphasizing only the desired outcome . Lie by omission and succeed getting the lie planted in the media. This is all to make the benefit to plant life somehow look bad.
Couldn’t agree more Jack. I over fertilized my lawn last year and it grew like crazy.
Unless you want to spend your summer pushing a mower, don’t over fertilize your lawn. Just a heads up.
Why do I have trouble believing you?
“When you over fertilize, the salts build up in the soil and cause a drying effect, which can result in the grass turning yellow or brown and. This process is called “fertilizer burn.” Fertilizer burn isn’t always fatal, and it’s hard to predict whether or not your lawn will recover.”
https://todayshomeowner.com/help-for-fertilizer-burn-in-lawn/
“Why do I have trouble believing you?”
Because that’s what you are paid to do?
In order to have CO2 levels high enough to harm plants, CO2 levels would have to get up near 1,000,000ppm.
The greening of the planet is dangerous. It must be stopped at any price. There must a price put on agriculture.
As per Jack Dale, from his link:
“We analysed the impact of elevated CO2 concentrations on the sufficiency of dietary intake of iron, zinc and protein for the populations of 151 countries using a model of per-capita food availability….. We estimate that elevated CO2 could cause an additional 175 million people to be zinc deficient and an additional 122 million people to be protein deficient (assuming 2050 population and CO2 projections).” It is models all the way down.
Rule of thumb says that when people call carbon dioxide carbon, they are lying. All the above most interesting stuff is predicated on the premise that CO2 is harmful in some way, am I right? When it’s shown that it isn’t, won’t there be a lot of waste paper and recrimination?
I agree. My problem is that I live in New York where the premise that CO2 is harmful is gospel and driving energy policies. I fear that the economy of the state will have to be destroyed before the believers catch on that their cure is for a non-existent disease.
Hasn’t the economy of New York, City and State, been seriously compromised, or destroyed, in the last eight weeks? Would intentionally reducing atmospheric CO2 concentration back to the “goldilocks” level, have a similar effect? And would that be good?
The whole idea of a “carbon” tax is that there are viable substitutes for all current uses of fossil fuels. Unfortunately for the greenie controllers there is no general substitute. The only fossil fuel substitutes presently, and for the long term foreseeable future are nuclear power plants. There simply is NO other substitute that does not have significant CO2 emissions. Even solar and wind have substantial CO2 emissions if you consider life cycle costs of the CO2 production to build, operate and break down and recycle a windmill is at least as much as all the electricity produced over its 20 year lifespan.
You can only turn the furnace down in winter so far or it becomes totally useless.
The whole point of a CO2 tax to to encourage alternatives. As long as the fossil fuel industry can privatize their profits and socialize their costs alternative will be more expensive.
In Jack’s world there are no social benefits of fossil fuel consumption.
Nordhaus’ econometric model (cue giggles), using a ridiculously low discount rate, estimates a 100+ year reduction in a vastly increased world GDP of only about 3% or less compared to BAU. Its less than margin-of-error stuff.
Make your own estimate of how much the Chi Com virus, driving the Wu Flu, will wind up costing in a reduction of world GDP. And that’s today, not guesstimated out a 100+ years. Get a grip.
Jack, were you not paying attention to the article? In order to substantially decrease energy consumption or make wind and solar attractive sources, the CO2 tax would need to be $800/ton, far above the ludicrous SCC as is stands. No one pays $100,000/yr in car insurance to cover a Kia.
What costs? So far you and the rest of the climate catastrophe crowd haven’t been able to actually demonstrate any. All you got are broken models that proclaim that some time, in the far future, things are going to get bad.
Jack Dale – “As long as the fossil fuel industry can privatize their profits and socialize their costs alternative will be more expensive.”
But the fossil fuel industry DOES NOT socialize their costs. You make it sound like ExxonMobil burns the gasoline they produce. It is SOCIETY that SOCIALIZES THE COSTS, which is exactly how it should be. The Society in general gets both public and private benefits, while “socializing” THEIR costs. ExxonMobil’s costs are a pittance and show up in their Annual Statement. Our society’s “costs” show up in GDP.
And that is why consumers pay a CO2 tax. That might encourage consumers to look for alternatives.
“And that is why consumers pay a CO2 tax. That might encourage consumers to look for alternatives.”
In your mind. In the mind of most a tax must be worth something. The gasoline tax pays for roads, etc. A CO2 tax pays for nothing.
You’re concept of a CO2 tax is the same as a “sin tax”, like extra taxes on tobacco or alcohol products to inhibit use. But the use of fossil fuels for energy and the products of modern life is not similar in any way. There are few to no rational alternatives other than diminished standard of living. Society will not accept that, once it wakes up to what you are proposing.
Why should anyone look for alternatives. You have yet to demonstrate any actual harm from using fossil fuels.
On the other hand the benefits are well documented.
The very concept that Carbon tax is nett sum zero is utter nonsense – most such redestributive taxes get devoured by bureaucracy.
In many cases the bureaucracy consumes more than it collects and becomes a nett drain over and above the direct tax.
When people and vested interests clamour for government interventions, they would do well to remember just how damnably inefficient and expensive such interventions are.
All such taxes are regressive and have idiotically high social costs.
There are only two sources of tax: You or Me !
Government is the source of all dearth – please give me less.
All of my work evaluating New York’s carbon taxes and climate-driven energy policy confirm what you have said
“A new analysis by Parliament’s budget watchdog has found that most households in provinces where the federal carbon tax applies will receive more money back in rebates than they will pay through the scheme — just not as much as projected last year.
“Under the federal government’s current rebate structure, most households will still receive more than what they pay in fuel charges,” parliamentary budget officer Yves Giroux said Tuesday.”
https://globalnews.ca/news/6504187/canada-carbon-tax-rebate-pbo/
Jack doesn’t know jack about economics. Tell that to the household member losing his job to lower-cost foreign competitors.
Jack doesn’t want to know about economics, he just wants to make sure his government check is on time.
Jack believes in the toothfairy and father xmas as well.
So Jack actually believes the government when it says that this time, it’s going to redistribute all of the money it receives from this tax.
Jack is either lying or so delusional that he needs to be institutionalized for his own protection.
Where does the extra payback come from?
Thousands of words, missing the point that renewables are not fit for purpose and can never supply the demand.
Stop calling them renewables.
Weather Dependent Energy is the term I use in all conversations and correspondence.
Carbon Pricing? Here’s my Green New Deal: keep your damn hands off my friends (the green plants of the world) food! No matter how artsy fartsy the left wants to doll up carbon pricing, it is nothing more than a redistribution of wealth scheme. OK, when atmospheric CO2 reaches 1,000 ppm we can talk. Stay sane and safe (and leave the greening earth to green up some more!).
If anyone does not wish to pay their carbon dioxide tax, I will pay it for you on the condition that you confine your fossil fuel emissions to your home(s) and vehicle(2). I just need a concrete plan on how you intend to do so, the results of an air quality test showing that the emissions are confined and a verification of any taxes paid.
Since I am paying your tax, I will also expect the rebate from those in countries such as Canada where there is such a rebate.
I will continue to willingly pay my carbon dioxide tax as I do currenly.
I will also continue to pay my own taxes.
I’ll believe you are sincere when you stop exhaling carbon dioxide, given that you are not paying any tax for that (yet).
I put that to him above and who is paying for natures massive emissions. I guess each country has to decide if nature is worth keeping and they want to pay it’s share. Brazil might be really happy with this idea they can wipe out even more areas.
Like most socialist, Jack is only concerned about sounding good.
When it comes time to actually do something, he can’t be found.
Gotta admire the chutzpah here, by Jack Dale! He’s proposing to leverage his overt Carbon tax fraud and morph it into his personal Ponzi scheme! A pure Con artist, this one! When he starts wearing a CO2 scrubber 24/7/365 and sequestering his ‘pollution’ in a secure carbon trap… or ceases exhaltions altogether, I’ll revisit my assessment of his con games.
“…policies that attack the main sources of carbon pollution …”
Roger, this is a superb article, the best I’ve seen on this deliberately foggy, generally academic subject. It’s clear you buy into the Catastrophic Anthropo Global Warming fears and this makes your clear critical thinking on ‘carbon taxing’ very trustworthy and selfless, given that it won’t make you popular among your big clients.
I note you see the dichotomy between academic theory and reality. I don’t think it would turn out to be a huge surprise to you that this dichotomy exists across the board in this beast from the academic ‘science’ that underpins the idea of demon carbon. You point out what happens when you wave a lot of cash in front of bureaucrats. Well, would it make sense to you that the same thing happens when bureaucrats and Champagne Soshulists wave a bunch of cash in front of academia?
I invite you to study up on the global warming thing itself. You don’t have to delve far to see issues and motivations that you are already familiar with. Start with the Climategate emails of scientists released by an insider at the U of East Anglia in UK – the epicenter of the CAGW adventure.
Thank you for your compliment. I do take exception to the accusation that I “buy into the Catastrophic Anthropo Global Warming fears”. I tried to show advocates who want to do something that this supposedly fantastic approach to solving the problem of CAGW won’t work because there are implementation fatal flaws. This was not the venue to explain that I believe that even if the carbon pricing implementation issues could be solved, their models show there would not be a measurable effect to global warming from the reductions they think they can get. Finally I am convinced that their models have not shown any skill so the possibility that there will be anything to fear from CAGW is virtually impossible. I believe carbon pricing won’t work, even if it could work it would not have any impact, and it is unlikely that there is a problem.
Jack Dale what is going to happen to the earth if governments stand aside and do nothing about CO2?
I have a follow up question.
Increased tropospheric warming, Increased ocean warming, decreased cryopsphere, increasing sea level rise, increased extreme weather,
Back in 1988 James Hansen promised all this and more by 2000 if we didn’t cut emissions.
It didn’t happen then, it’s not happening now, and it’s not going to happen in the future.
Too bad for Jack, none of those things are actually happening in the real world.
To paraphrase the climate con man Jack Dale, I just need concrete evidence irrefutably proving CO2 will cause his baseless assertions, all of which are naturally demonstrated during periods of natural interglacial warming.
I had experience with a precursor to RGGI, the Massachusetts 7.29 CO2 program. It was a Massachusetts only program, talk about leakage! The power station I was supporting ended up paying $2 million for CO2 credits. Later on that year I saw on accounting of how that money was spent. $1 million went to provide solar heating for public swimming pools. Nothing is so unimportant that you can’t spend someone else’s money on it.
I question the tactical value of the statement that “the over-riding problem with carbon pricing is that it is a regressive tax.”
As to my corner of the audience, that isn’t much of an argument; all basic goods take a higher percentage of low-income folks’ income than of higher-income folks’. If you want to help poor people, give them money; don’t distort the price signal in an attempt to make the tax progressive. (Here I’m averting my eyes from the fact that in practice a carbon tax itself would distort the price signal because I’m sure it would be priced incorrectly.)
Meanwhile your audience from the other side of the spectrum would argue that using the tax proceeds to give everyone a per-capita dividend would end up benefiting the poor because on an absolute basis the wealthier pay more of the carbon tax than the poor do. That argument has its problems, but it’s the one they make.
Vermont also tried a single payer health care system reform based on the (political) theory of health cost efficiencies in that switch. They quickly backed away from it before it collapsed their state government and went back to where they were. Some things sound good in theory but have a sizable cost (politically) when they explode in your face in practice.
Carbon pricing is a slower moving public policy train wreck that sounds good in theory and mathematically (Coase Theorem). But with no global relevance it is nothing more than a local tax for political grandstanding. That’s not even getting to the substitution effect of carbon intensive imports displacing carbon tax-impacted local production or imports of nearby hydroelectric power from Canada to keep the local political game in play.
BTW, how is that alt-currency, community barter system project going in Vermont?
Isn’t Bernie “Medicare for All” Sanders from Vermont? So his state tried a single-payer system, and it didn’t work out? Where is that failure documented?
Would the national “Medicare for All ” come under “this time it will be different”?
Here are a few links…
https://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/single-payer-vermont-113711
http://www.cornellpolicyreview.com/rise-fall-vermonts-single-payer-plan/
There is a simple solution to this problem, in that all we need to do is convince Joe Voter that CO2 is not the control knob for the climate, and vote this carbon tax to the curb. Concentrate on fixing real pollution, which has both tangible harmful effect, and a beneficial effect when it is minimized. We need the cleanest air and water possible, which is what President Trump has suggested. Who could argue with that? This is a PR battle, and one that has up until now been lost to those that are much better at convincing gullible people that CO2 is a pollutant. We need an improvement in communicating the PR of real science with this subject.
The average intelligent person understands this, and if CO2 were indeed a problem, surely we would have seen some evidence of that by now. We haven’t seen any evidence that this is a problem and no one can supply any proof that it does control the climate, other than lies and deceit. How long will people put up with this nonsense and Greta recommending we all panic because of CO2? That seems like ancient history already. In any event, the climate has rarely been so benign in the long term scheme of things.
After all this expense caused by the Wuhan Coronavirus, there will be little monies left to deal with this non problem anyway, and if 50% +1 just vote the people people out of office that recommend this war on CO2, then the problem of people thinking that CO2 is a problem will slowly fade away, just like the snow on a warm spring day. Nothing substantial is going to be done anyway, because for the mean time we can’t until we adopt advanced nuclear energy to supply our long term energy requirements. Until the majority of people understand this, it is just all barking at the wind. Electricity is the permanent long term solution, and spend these monies on creating a permanent robust electrical infrastructure to improve that, as there is probably nothing better coming down the pipeline than electricity.
I’ll accept a tax on CO2 once there is hard evidence that CO2 is causing catastrophic climate change i.e. real-world, empirical evidence showing the rise in temperature is directly caused by the rise in CO2.
Sorry I am not even willing to pay it them unless someone is paying for natures share.
Using this logic, since more CO2 in the air is a net benefit for the planet and for mankind, the carbon pricing should be negative. IE, they should be paying us to burn the stuff.
Yeah that is what I said above, essentially Brazil could have a field day getting rid of all that CO2 causing nature.
Yep. Look at the sequence of glacial and interglacial periods over the past 2.5 million years. The establishment scientists tell us that we have broken this sequence by putting so much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and that the Holocene will not end like the previous interglacials with a rapid decline into widespread glaciation. If that were true then alleluia, because a return to a “true ice age” would make a couple of degrees of global warming seem as scary as a vicar’s garden party. So, by burning fossil fuels we’re enhancing plant growth which is at the base of the food chain and we’re stalling the next ice age. But the idiots want to levy a tax in order to stop us from creating these massive benefits.
Nice analysis, although the underlying assumption, that we must “fight against climate change,” is wrongheaded (although understandable in light of the author’s social milieu in the State of New York). Mr. Caiazza also makes the weak assumption that the means to achieve carbon (really CO2) emission reductions is “renewable energy” as defined by the greens. There is not a single mention of the only viable ways to substantially reduce CO2 emissions (as if I care) aside from efficiency or reduced demand — switching to natural gas and eventually nuclear power. In this vein, it is ironic that Vermont was chosen for study, because the green blob recently shut down the one nuclear power plant in the state without first having any available, effective alternatives, thus vastly increasing the state’s CO2 emissions.
It also concerns me that his work relies in part on the obviously biased Energy Futures Group who proudly splash their website with images of wind turbines and solar panels. They are predictably one of those private sector “consultants” who have hitched their wagon to the climate gravy train. I avoid contractors/consultants who shamelessly use such images to suggest or imply that these are viable solutions.
I do very much like Mr. Caiazza‘s idea to force so-called renewables to fully pay their own way. Here is his money quote: “The simplest solution would be to require all electric power sold to the grid to be dispatchable. In other words, require wind and solar to only sell power through their own dedicated energy storage systems. That won’t be popular for those resources because it effectively doubles their cost but the fact is that someone, somewhere will have to pay for those services so why not them.” Add to that the environmental harm (negative externalities) caused by invasive, widespread installation of bird choppers and fryers.
Finally, I appreciate Roger’s retort to Jack Dale’s lame references to externalities and link to the debunked and culturally irrelevant “The Tragedy of the Commons” (Hardin, Garrett, 1968).
Thank you for the compliment. As you noted my bias is New York State. You know the State that has the most aggressive climate policies in the country and is shutting down a viable nuclear reactor at the end of this month. I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.
I would still like to know why hydroelectric is not a renewable “green energy” source?
Because there will be droughts and Megadroughts, so no water.
(It was reported on the radio two days ago that Southern California was no longer in a drought because we had so much “extra” rain in March and early April.)
“Hydroelectric dams produce significant amounts of carbon dioxide and methane, and in some cases produce more of these greenhouse gases than power plants running on fossil fuels. Carbon emissions vary from dam to dam, says Philip Fearnside from Brazil’s National Institute for Research in the Amazon in Manaus. “But we do know that there are enough emissions to worry about.”
Read more: https://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7046-hydroelectric-powers-dirty-secret-revealed/#ixzz6KGozR5q6“
How many millions of hectares of additional greening from CO2 have there been over the last 30 years? The ‘study’ of reservoir surface areas is nonsensical.
If it’s the rotting vegetation, it was going to rot anyway. That’s what plants do when they die.
If it was the concrete in dam, wind towers use much more concrete per unit of power than do dams.
“Emit less CO2, pay less tax. Not a hard concept.”
Hmm, CO2 and global warming: A solution in search of a problem.
A problem not disputed by any scientific institution in any country on the entire planet.
And if you want to figure why all these institutions don’t dispute the “problem” of humanity’s 4% contribution to the total atmospheric content of CO2, just –
“FOLLOW THE MONEY”
(h/t Deep Throat)
Insinuation is not evidence. Please show that these institutions and their scientists have been bought off.
You do know that skeptics are also government funded, as well as being funded by the fossil fuel industry.
Jack, why would the handlers of these 2,330 institutes & other NGOs not sign on to the AGW boondoggle when they can get all expenses paid trips to exotic IPCC / UNFCCC conferences?
https://unfccc.int/process/parties-non-party-stakeholders/non-party-stakeholders/admitted-igos/list-of-admitted-igos
(Full disclosure – in my past life as a corporate wallah, there was not an enticing conference venue I would not engineer my attendance at, and give glowing reports about the value of such involvements. Just so I got invited again next year. 🙂
Ascribing your questionable motivations to others really is not evidence of anything other than your motivations.
So you believe all the insto delegates to the UNFCC / IPCC jollies paid their own way Jack?
(Or would still have turned up if their travel, accom, meals, drinks, entertainment tabs weren’t being picked up for them by their instos?)
Man I wish I had run into you when I was selling the Sydney Harbour Bridge for a song!
Why did you buy a bridge? That is a really stupid thing to do.
Here’s the catch Jack – it wasn’t my bridge to sell.
But rubes abound who think if that if a government program produced it, it must be good, and there must be a government subsidy for anyone who wants to get onboard.
(I was not for a moment suggesting that you would use YOUR money to buy into this Jack – that would seem to be totally at odds with your world view about certain entitlements in a structured society)
If it is not your bridge to sell, you are being dishonest in offering it for sale. Says a lot about you.
Back at ya Jack –
If it is not your atmosphere to “save”, you are being dishonest in offering it for “saving”. Says a lot about you
It is our atmosphere to save. That includes you.
Thanks Jack, but I don’t reckon there’s anything wrong with my atmosphere.
Nor yours.
So it doesn’t need “saving”.
What the world DOES need saving from though, is self appointed do-gooders.
There’s a plague of you at the moment.
You currently have an atmosphere that has not been the norm for homo sapiens. When you become one you might be concerned.
Looks like Jack really can’t see a joke, even when the mackerel hits him across the face.
The atmosphere doesn’t need saving, but it looks like your sense of humor does.
[stop it – mod]
I loved the Dales in England when I was there but you are just polluting the comments here. Give up. Your comment to Gregory Woods just shows me how indoctrinated you are and that you really haven’t a clue as to what you are talking/typing about.
By the way Roger a very good article which helps to solidify my beliefs.
So what if the atmosphere has more CO2 in it since the advent of homo sapiens.
The world has more computers in it than at any time since the advent of homo sapiens.
The world has more airplanes than at any time since the advent of homo sapiens.
Being different is not be definition bad. You have to actually demonstrate harm, something you and the rest of the alarmists have been very bad at doing.
Jack, if you’re not a ‘Consensus Scientist’ you don’t have a say. Most work published by leftist ‘scientists’ these days is passed by the ‘buddy’ review. They are given a political motive, then asked to model a solution that will sell that motive. Follow the money, there’s big money in wind and solar renewables, and batteries. The power they seek has nothing to do with electricity.
I just quoted a paper by Nicola Scafetta published in 2019.
If it’s in a paper that you agree with, it must be true.
I think the biggest issue with carbon indulgences, if you actually believe CO2 is causing CAGW, is that the third world hellhole that’s getting the money is doing anything at all to abate CO2. Just like CAGW can only be seen at the poles, and other inaccessible places (for the general public), the carbon abatement supposedly going on would be far from civilization, in places where practically nobody can see it. Does anybody really think China (already on the international schneide), as a “developing country” Would really be growing trees to make up for some power plant in Iowa burning coal, or do you figure they lie, and spend the money some other way?
Roger – if you are interested in discussion the impact of the Paris Agreement on the calculation of carbon offsets involving the fNRB value, email me. I have just completed a major investigation on that subject (since May). It explains why Brazil among others refused to agree at COP25, and all the meetings beforehand, since the Agreement was created. Article 6.2 and 6.4 are the root of the dispute.
If carbon trading is not dead for fossil fuels, it certainly is for biomass-related offsets.
I would be interested roger dot caiazza at gmail
“A problem not disputed by any scientific institution in any country on the entire planet.”
Which planet, Venus?
Jack Dale = Troll
Have a nice day.
I keep hearing that “alarmists” are afraid to debate. So debate me. Start by naming one scientific institution that disputes the conclusions of the IPCC. Please a quote and a link.
Jack, what are the conclusions of the UN IPCC as to the social cost of carbon? Does it approach the approximately $900+ per ton of CO2 experienced with some abatement schemes?
What is the conclusions of the UN IPCC as to any historical increases in extreme weather events?
JAQing off is not a very good debate strategy.
https://www.reddit.com/r/unpopularopinion/comments/9w5w4v/jaqing_off_is_an_incredibly_useful_term_we_should/
If you have a point, make it.
Well, Jack, the point is the Jack-Offs never tell us exactly what it is the UN IPCC’s various report’s science sections actually say about the observed climate. Having read some of the reports, I can tell you that they say, other than some minor warming, nothing much is happening climate-wise. Certainly nothing severe enough to justify another Chi Com virus Wu Flu-like economic hit.
But the big money is in climate hysteria so all the big boys are riding that horse.
Jack Dale says: “So debate me. Start by naming one scientific institutions that disputes the conclusions of the IPCC.”
Your opening argument is a combination of logical fallacies: appeal to authority, bandwagon, and red herring. How many scientific institutions believe in CatastrophicAGW-by-CO2 is irrelevant because the validity of a scientific hypothesis isn’t determined by who, what organization, or how many people believe it. It’s determined by empirical data that shows the hypothesis is true.
The null climate hypothesis is that the primary cause of global warming is natural variability. This hypothesis is supported by the entire history of the planet. The way science works is if you have a new alternative climate hypothesis which you believe replaces the null climate hypothesis, you first must empirically falsify the null climate hypothesis. This has never been done.
Then you must empirically validate your new alternative climate hypothesis that human CO2 is now the primary cause of recent global warming. This also has never been done.
So start by:
1) cite any peer reviewed science that empirically falsifies the null climate hypothesis that natural variability was the primary cause of recent global warming.
2) cite any peer reviewed papers that empirically shows that anthropogenic CO2 was the primary cause of any recent global warming.
Let us start by you telling me what you would accept as empirical evidence. That way we both know the rules.
Would you accept this?
“Empirical evidence is information acquired by observation or experimentation.”
“what you would accept as empirical eviedence.”
You answered your own question: “Empirical evidence acquired by observation or experimentation.” of causation of recent global warming. That rules out anything based on climate models, because that is merely outputting what is programmed into them. ‘
No need to dodge further. Just proceed with your best shot at 1) & 2).
In science, mechanism + correlation = evidence of a causal relationship.
BEST has established a 240 correlation between CO2 and temperature .
http://berkeleyearth.org/papers/
The mechanism of CO2 as GHG has been known for 2 centuries.
https://history.aip.org/history/climate/index.htm#contents
QED
Real world data that hasn’t been cooked, homogenized or contaminated beyond recognition.
MarkW, please don’t refer to temp values that get used in climate models as “data”
They are “constructs” based on what the “keepers” thought the instruments OUGHT to say.
(Citations & examples = too numerous to post here. Would take a dedicated website)
Jack Dale says: “TSI decline …”
You ignore my previous point “Over the 70 yr period since 1950 (when the IPCC claims that ~all the warming is due to human CO2), the mean level of TSI has been the highest 70 yr period in the last 400 years, so any small decrease over the most recent few decades is irrelevant.”
Again, you fail to provide any empirical evidence that falsifies the null climate hypothesis of natural climate variability as the primary cause of recent global warming, and you fail to provide any empirical evidence that anthropogenic CO2 was the primary cause of recent global warming.
Try Lean 2018. Looks like a decline to me.
“The mechanism of CO2 as GHG has been known for 2 centuries.”
The IPCC still does not know how much additional warmth a doubling of CO2 would add to the Earth’s atmosphere. The IPCC guess is anywhere from 1.5C to 4.5C. And of course, there are numerous other independent estimates that come in lower than 1.5C. So the science of CO2 is certainly not settled, contrary to the implication..
And Tom, the AGW “scientists” have had one job over these past 40 years, and limitless $$$s expended on them, to deliver the “answer” to the whole AGW conjecture –
the ECS value.
They haven’t been able to move it from 1.5 – 4.5C for ~ 40 years of trying now.
That has to be the most epic fail in modern human scientific endeavor.
That more CO2 will cause the temperatures to rise has never been in doubt.
The controversy has always been over how much.
That you have to resort to that classic subterfuge is just more evidence that you have realized that you can’t defend the positions you are taking, but don’t have the intelligence to know when to quit.
Let us start with your null hypothesis.
Natural cycles cannot explain the recent long term warming:
– Malinkovitch cycles, really long range, would have us in a cooling phase.
– solar cycles (11 year periods) would have us in a cooling phase.
– the CLOUD experiment at CERN has shown that GCR have little effect on climate.
– astrophysicists have shown that the GSM will have few global climate effects.
So Jack has just proven that climate over the last 10K years has never varied by even a smidgen.
I believe this one is called an appeal to ignorance. IE, I can’t think of anything else that might have caused it, therefore it must have been CO2.
If you work hard enough Jack, you may manage to use every known logical fallacy before the day is out.
You are the one appealing to ignorance.
BTW – your stalking increasing creepy.
So Jack, let’s just work through all the variables that can affect the planet’s climate(s) behaviors.
What – we don’t know what ALL the variables are, let alone which ones might be significant, and which not?
Say it isn’t so, Jack!
We do know that natural variables would have us cooling,
“Natural cycles cannot explain the recent long term warming:
– solar cycles (11 year periods) would have us in a cooling phase”
Wrong.
1) Over the 70 yr period since 1950 (when the IPCC claims that ~all the warming is due to human CO2), the mean level of TSI has been the highest 70 yr period in the last 400 years, so any small decrease over the most recent few decades is irrelevant.
2) During the late 20th century warming, the increase in surface solar radiation was 3 W/m^2 to 7 W/m^2 (Hatzianastassiou(2005) ‘Global distribution of Earth’s surface shortwave radiation budget’, Pinker(2005) ‘Do satellites detect trends in surface solar radiation’, Goode(2007) ‘Shortwave forcing of the earth’s climate -…’, Herman(2013) ‘A net decrease in the Earth’s cloud, aerosol, and surface 340 nm reflectivity during the past 33 yr (1979-2011)’, McLean(2014) ‘Late 20th Century Warming and Variations in Cloud Cover’). This increase in natural climate forcing was ~10 times greater than the alleged increase in surface CO2 forcing (natural+anthropogenic), so natural causes have not been ruled out. The IPCC, NCA reports and other reports ignore this empirical data and have the fatal flaw of only considering TSI @ TOA when they rule out solar radiation as the primary cause of recent global warming.
Thus the null climate hypothesis has not been empirically falsified and there is no reason for a new alternative climate hypothesis.
TSI decline
Jack Dale says: “In science, mechanism + correlation = causation”
No, correlation does not mean causation even with a proposed mechanism.
There are only two possible causes of recent global warming: a) increased thermal energy input to the earth or b) reduced thermal energy output from the earth.
My other comment shows that p-r science confirms that the increased thermal energy input from surface solar radiation was ~10 times greater than the alleged reduced thermal energy output (from alleged CO2 forcing).
So your temperature vs. CO2 correlation is not evidence for causation.
. That’s a reverse correlation, thus providing empirical evidence that CO2 is an insignificant factor in causing global warming.
Plus, from 1940-1970s, humans added ~350 billion tons of CO2 to the atmosphere, which was ~twice as much as had been added to the atmosphere in the entire previous history of the planet, and global temperature decreased by several tenths of a degree C,
Then we have the empirical evidence that falsifies your claim that more CO2 in the atmosphere ‘traps heat’ and reduces the heat leaving the earth. The CERES data shows that while CO2 has steadily increased, UWLWIR has increased, not decreased:
.
.
The CERES data also falsifies your CO2 hypothesis that more CO2 in the atmosphere causes more DWIR. As CO2 has steadily increased, DWIR has decreased, not increased:
Note also that the CERES data also confirms that surface solar radiation has been increasing.
Solar output is in a decline. https://climate.nasa.gov/faq/14/is-the-sun-causing-global-warming/
TSI varies 0.1% which is insufficient to affect climate change.
Jack Dale says: “Solar output is in a decline … TSI varies 0.1% which is insignificant to affect climate change.”
Jack, you are behaving just like a troll, and ignoring two points that I made which makes your comment moot, and just repeating your debunked talking points.
a) The slight decrease over the past few decades is irrelevant considering that the mean level of TSI over that period is still the highest in the last ~400 years:
b) The TSI at TOA is not the important solar factor. How much solar radiation actually enters the climate system and reaches the surface is what causes warming. And as the 5 p-r papers I cited show, surface solar radiation increased by 3 W/m^2 to 7 W/m^2 during the late 20th century. That was ~10 times greater than the alleged increase in surface CO2 forcing(natural + human).
Jack Dale says: “Try Lean 2018 …”
Yet again you are acting just like an ideologically blinded troll, mindlessly repeating a failed argument that I have debunked 3 or 4 times.
Again, you make the same fatal flaw that all climate alarmists make when attempting to rule out solar radiation as the primary cause of the late 20th century warming of considering only the TSI @ TOA, and ignoring the scientific fact that surface solar radiation increased by 3W/m^2 to 7W/m^2 during the late 20th century warming, which was ~10 times larger than the alleged increase in surface CO2 forcing.
Please try behaving like a rational person.
Can you please provide direct quotes that support this contention?
“surface solar radiation increased by 3 W/m^2 to 7 W/m^2 during the late 20th century. “
Translation: You’ve backed me into a corner so I’ll start attacking you.
BTW, answering your questions is stalking? Really, that’s how far you have sunk?
Jack, some natural variables would have us cooling. Of course you haven’t counted for thermal lag, or any of the unknown natural variables.
You know, like the ones that caused the Minoan, Roman and Medeval warm period, not to mention the 10,000 year Holocene optimum all of which were warmer to as much as 3 to 5C warmer than today. Then let’s not forget the Little Ice Age. Nobody knows what caused any of them.
Jack Dale wrote: “Can you please provide direct quotes that support this contention?
“surface solar radiation increased by 3 W/m^2 to 7 W/m^2 during the late 20th century. “ “
Of course I can or I wouldn’t have said it.
Nothing you posted supports this assertion: ““surface solar radiation increased by 3 W/m^2 to 7 W/m^2 during the late 20th century. “ ”
Hint:
The surface solar radiation is 161 W/m2, not 7 W/m2. A 3W/m2 increase is a 0.018% increase.
For an explanation see: https://www.azimuthproject.org/azimuth/show/Solar%20radiation
In response to my comment which directly quotes from Hatzianastassiou(2005), Pinker(2005), Goode(2007), Herman(2013), McLean(2014), Jack Dale says:
Everyone can see that you are behaving like an ideologically blinded troll again, denying the reality of the direct quotes from peer reviewed science that I posted which explicitly stated that surface solar radiation increased> by 3W/m^2 to 7W/m^2.
Jack Dale goes on to embarrass himself when he says:
Wow, you have totally lost it and demonstrate a severe case of reading comprehension disability. I never said surface solar radiation is 7W/m^2. Your ideological blindness obviously caused you to miss that the papers stated:
– “equal to 4.1 and 3.7Wm⁻² … increasing” surface solar radiative heating” &
“additional global shortwave forcing of 6.8W/m²” &
– “an overall increase in S from 1983 to 2001 at a rate of 0.16W per square meter” &
– “an increase of 2.7Wm⁻² of solar energy reaching the Earth’s surface” &
– “an increased average solar forcing at the Earth’s surface of 5 Wm⁻²”
Then you further humiliate yourself when you demonstrate a lack of simple mathematics that a 13 year old would find simple when you say:
Uh, no that would be a 1.9% increase in surface solar radiative forcing. And a 7W/m^2 increase would be a 4.3% increase in surface solar radiative forcing during the late 20th century warming.
Now consider that the IPCC ghg forcing formula (exaggerated by nonexistent positive water vapor feedback) shows only a 0.4 W/m² increase in surface CO2 forcing over the 1984-2000 timeframe of Hatzianastassiou(2005). (5.35 x ln (370/345) = 0.4) : Source for radiative forcing equation: IPCC TAR, WG1, Table 6.2, p.358
Now some simple math to calculate the percentage increase in surface CO2 forcing during the late 20th century warming: 0.4W/m^2/333W/m^2=0.12%. That’s using your link’s “333W/m^2” energy budget diagram.
Now Jack Dale, a simple question for you: which is larger? 1.8% to 4.3% increase in natural surface solar radiative forcing or 0.12% increase in surface CO2 forcing?
This debate is over. You’ve:
a) cited no p-r science that empirically falsifies the null climate hypothesis of natural variability being the primary cause of recent global warming, and
b) cited no p-r science that empirically shows that anthropogenic CO2 was the primary cause of recent global warming.
c) repeatedly ignored the empirical science that I posted which proves you wrong and proves me correct
d) denied explicit statements from p-r science that proves you wrong and proves me correct
e) demonstrated that you are unable to do simple mathematics such as division
You are just trolling to repeat your climate alarmism propaganda talking points.
You contradict yourself all over the place.
“that I posted which explicitly stated that surface solar radiation increased> by 3W/m^2 to 7W/m^2.”
““additional global shortwave forcing of 6.8W/m²” ”
“I never said surface solar radiation is 7W/m^2. ”
I will concede tat this is misplaced decal: “Jack Dale: “A 3W/m2 increase is 0.018% increase.””
Data is only data when it agrees with what Jack wants to believe.
“The null climate hypothesis is that the primary cause of global warming is natural variability. This hypothesis is supported by the entire history of the planet. The way science works is if you have a new alternative climate hypothesis which you believe replaces the null climate hypothesis, you first must empirically falsify the null climate hypothesis. This has never been done.
Then you must empirically validate your new alternative climate hypothesis that human CO2 is now the primary cause of recent global warming. This also has never been done.”
I think that sums it up nicely. There is no evidence humans are causing the climate to do anything it hasn’t done in the past through natural variation (Mother Nature). The Earth is not experiencing unprecedented weather extremes as the alarmists claim. CO2 appears to be a minor player in the Earth’s climate. There is certainly no evidence it is a major player..
Jack seems to believe that if he can name a couple of natural variables that didn’t cause the warming, then he has actually proven that it must have been CO2.
“Although current global warming may have a large anthropogenic component, its quantification relies primarily on complex General Circulation Models (GCM’s) assumptions and codes; it is desirable to complement this with empirically based methodologies. Previous attempts to use the recent climate record have concentrated on “fingerprinting” or otherwise comparing the record with GCM outputs. By using CO2 radiative forcings as a linear surrogate for all anthropogenic effects we estimate the total anthropogenic warming and (effective) climate sensitivity finding: ΔT anth = 0.87 ± 0.11 K, λ2xCO2,eff=3.08±0.58K. These are close the IPPC AR5 values ΔT anth = 0.85 ± 0.20 K and λ2xCO2=1.5−4.5K (equilibrium) climate sensitivity and are independent of GCM models, radiative transfer calculations and emission histories. We statistically formulate the hypothesis of warming through natural variability by using centennial scale probabilities of natural fluctuations estimated using scaling, fluctuation analysis on multiproxy data. We take into account two nonclassical statistical features—long range statistical dependencies and “fat tailed” probability distributions (both of which greatly amplify the probability of extremes). Even in the most unfavourable cases, we may reject the natural variability hypothesis at confidence levels >99 %.”
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-014-2128-2
Looks like Jack still doesn’t bother reading what he posts.
He’s still saying that since they can’t think of anything else, it must be CO2.
None of these models are able to replicated any of the past warmings or coolings, yet you actually want to believe that since the can’t replicate modern warming without CO2, you have proven that it must be CO2.
That’s not science.
Scaling fluctuation analysis and statistical hypothesis testing of anthropogenic warming
S. Lovejoy
Climate Dynamics volume 42, pages2339–2351(2014)Cite this article
2597 Accesses
27 Citations
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Metricsdetails
Abstract
Although current global warming may have a large anthropogenic component, its quantification relies primarily on complex General Circulation Models (GCM’s) assumptions and codes; it is desirable to complement this with empirically based methodologies. Previous attempts to use the recent climate record have concentrated on “fingerprinting” or otherwise comparing the record with GCM outputs. By using CO2 radiative forcings as a linear surrogate for all anthropogenic effects we estimate the total anthropogenic warming and (effective) climate sensitivity finding: ΔT anth = 0.87 ± 0.11 K, λ2xCO2,eff=3.08±0.58K. These are close the IPPC AR5 values ΔT anth = 0.85 ± 0.20 K and λ2xCO2=1.5−4.5K (equilibrium) climate sensitivity and are independent of GCM models, radiative transfer calculations and emission histories. We statistically formulate the hypothesis of warming through natural variability by using centennial scale probabilities of natural fluctuations estimated using scaling, fluctuation analysis on multiproxy data. We take into account two nonclassical statistical features—long range statistical dependencies and “fat tailed” probability distributions (both of which greatly amplify the probability of extremes). Even in the most unfavourable cases, we may reject the natural variability hypothesis at confidence levels >99 %.
“https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00382-014-2128-2”
Just because you repeat the same nonsense in multiple places, doesn’t make come any closer to reality.
BTW Scafetta shows a decline in TSI from 2000 to the present.
https://static-01.hindawi.com/articles/aa/volume-2019/1214896/figures/1214896.fig.007a.svgz
https://www.hindawi.com/journals/aa/2019/1214896/
Meanwhile UAH shows a temperature increase over the same period.
https://www.nsstc.uah.edu/data/msu/v6.0/tlt/uahncdc_lt_6.0.txt
Jack wants to use political institutions to prove that the political answer is the right one.
How typical of a troll.
MarkW says: “Jack wants to use political institutions to prove that the political answer is the right one. How typical of a troll”
Yes, in his attempted “debate”, he also demonstrates the troll behavior of ignoring when his arguments have been debunked, and repeatedly re-posting his debunked climate alarmism talking points, demonstrating that he doesn’t understand science and can’t conduct a rational discussion.
Please read Andy May’s devastating critique of the IPCC science and all the political pressure put on the scientists to come up with a human caused problem in his post on April 20 titled IPCC Politics and Solar Variability. The institutions have sold out for the money in my opinion
Roger, shirley you’re not suggesting that all 26,706 delegates from the 2,330 institutions who attended the Paris CoP were enticed by an all expenses paid jolly?
My faith in the world of pro bono climate concern and research would be shattered if this were the case.
At the end of the day a tax is a tax. No matter how much it is dressed up and how much make up and lip stick is applied, it’s still a big, fat, pig. Of course politicians and the Gov class find that ugly pig extremely attractive, because they get to impose yet another tax while virtue signalling at the same time. Politicians love regressive taxation too. Make no mistake. The tax base is so much larger. Don’t count on your conservative senator or Rep either. That revenue stream and the power that comes with controlling who gets it and who gets it in their rear end, is just too alluring.
The very idea of manipulating markets with carbon pricing should be avoided as one would a swine plague or a very dangerous and additive drug.
“Of course politicians and the Gov class find that ugly pig extremely attractive”
More money for Ice Cream Freezers after they ‘filter’ the revenue stream through their back channels.
From the article: “I am prompted to prepare this summary of my concerns because a coalition has asked the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission to hold a technical conference or workshop on carbon pricing.”
Well, if it is a “technical” conference then they ought to refer to the substance they are discussing by its correct name: Carbon Dioxide.
Why start a technical conference off with a distortion of the facts? That kind of defeats the purpose, doesn’t it?
Carbon. What a bunch of maroons! The techinical conference is not starting off well.
From the article: Proponents have convinced themselves that somehow this is different than a tax but, in my experience working with affected sources, it is treated just like a tax. As a result, the over-riding problem with carbon pricing is that it is a regressive tax.”
That’s right, it is just another tax. An especially onerous tax, as it raises the price of gasoline which then causes prices to rise all across the economy, in every area, and this hits the poor the hardest, because they spend a large portion of their income on gasoline, plus everything else they buy will increase in price, so they lose even if they do get a rebate from the government because the rebate will only cover the cost of gasoline, not the cost of everything else that went up in price.
A carbon dioxide tax is one of the worst ideas evah! It takes money out of your pocket and puts it in a politician’s pocket and no telling what happens to it after that. That’s the last you will see of it.
No, we don’t want to add taxes to our burden, we want to eliminate taxes, so people will be able to keep more of their own money, and they know how to spend their money much better, and more efficiently than a politician.
Carbon already has a price as coal, graphite or diamonds.
Even carbon dioxide has a price as bubbles in a soft drink.
A carbon tax will have a price too. It will cost us our standard of living and deliver us nothing in terms of environmental benefit.
“Even carbon dioxide has a price as bubbles in a soft drink.”
Yes, we have somewhat of a minor crisis because we are running short of CO2! Imagine that.
It seems that most CO2 that goes into things like carbonating Dr. Pepper (soft drink) is in short supply because the production of biofuels is down because of the Wuhan virus and this creates a shortage of CO2.
They better get this straightened out soon because Dr. Pepper is a vital necessity in this current Wuhan virus crisis! 🙂