Guest essay by Eric Worrall
President Biden has raised the social cost of carbon from Trump’s $8 / ton to the Obama level of $51 / ton. But the real sting is the price tag to be applied to methane ($1500 / ton) and nitrous oxide from fertiliser ($18,000 / ton). And the price may rise – this price rise is seen as an interim measure.
Biden hikes cost of carbon, easing path for new climate rules
The social cost of carbon could have ripple effects throughout industry.
By LORRAINE WOELLERT and ZACK COLMAN
02/26/2021 04:57 PM ESTPresident Joe Biden on Friday restored an Obama-era calculation on the economic cost of greenhouse gases, a step that will make it easier for his agencies to approve aggressive actions to confront climate change.
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The interim figure — $51 for every ton of carbon released into the atmosphere — is well above the $8 cost used under former President Donald Trump, who declined to factor the global impacts of climate pollution into his calculation. It’s on par with a price based on analyses undertaken between 2010 and 2016 under former President Barack Obama, whose administration was first to calculate the figure known as the social cost of carbon.
The price point is temporary. A new Interagency Working Group on the Social Cost of Greenhouse Gases is required to issue a final number by January.
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The Interagency Working Group, led by the Council of Economic Advisers, Office of Management and Budget and Office of Science and Technology Policy, must issue recommendations on incorporating the cost into government decision-making and budgeting by September and deliver a final number by January.
The working group, in Friday’s notice, said it was “appropriate“ for federal agencies to revert to the Obama-era values, even though “new data and evidence strongly suggests that the discount rate regarded as appropriate for intergenerational analysis is lower.“
The group set a $1,500-per-ton cost for methane emissions and $18,000 for nitrous oxide.
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Read more: https://www.politico.com/news/2021/02/26/biden-carbon-price-climate-change-471787
Full details of the new prices are available on the White House website.
The social cost of carbon is not a carbon tax, it is used as a reference number to inform regulatory decisions about new pipelines, and may in time be used to “justify” a new carbon tax.
The Methane emission cost of $1500 / ton potentially paves the way for enormous fines next time a pipeline blows out, but we already knew Biden wants to kill off domestic fossil fuel production.
The $18,000 / ton on nitrous oxide could be a significant new cost for farmers.
We live in an age of food abundance because farmers apply 10s of kilograms of nitrate fertiliser to every acre of their land, every year. If increased costs or regulation pressure farmers into cutting back on nitrate fertiliser application, the result could be less abundance.
No doubt any resulting food or energy shortages will be blamed on climate change.
Update (EW): A few commenters have questioned the link between nitrate fertiliser and nitrous oxide. The link is, when you apply nitrate fertiliser to a field, a percentage of the fertiliser mass is converted by bacteria or other processes into gaseous nitrogen compounds, including ammonia and nitrous oxide. Most gaseous compounds of nitrogen are powerful greenhouse gasses.
Biden and his Democrats have demonstrated incredible stupidity in dealing with energy issues. They clearly support destruction of the developed nations energy and economies for the sole purpose of playing purely political games falsely claimed to be addressing the non existent climate emergency. They are handing the future economic power in the world to China and its developing nation allies.
What colossal idiocy.
Why do you think China pays them so well! The DemoKKKrats would probably implement a lot of their anti-American policies without the big bucks flowing from China because they despise the middle and working classes so virulently! But they never would have put a sock puppet like old Sleepy Joe in the White House without getting approval from Beijing!
They are playing Go and laughing while Zhou Bai-Den is playing with his checkers.
I doubt that China’s Joe has enough brain power left to play checkers; he’s probably happily playing and losing at tic-tac-toe!
“Playing with his checkers”!
Another salvo in the Demtards’ War on the Middle Class.
The social cost of carbon was $43 not $51. I bothered to read the original document.
It is based on RCP8.5, meaning essentially it is B.S.
The calculation avoids entirely the social benefits of “carbon” which greatly exceed the cost, even under ridiculous damage scenarios. The social net cost of carbon is negative.
Whoever is misleading this policy obviously wants the Western world to commit economic suicide. There is no other outcome possible. The insanity of shutting down natural gas, farming and electricity is unmatched. No country in history has ever done something that foolish. Even in Nero’s Rome they weren’t that stupid or drunk on power.
One of the many benefits is enabling life as we know it on this planet. How much is that worth?
According to the WEF, life without people would be so much better.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2021/02/27/great-reset-architects-celebrate-the-orderly-quiet-of-covid-lockdown-cities/
Without a doubt, Joe Biden is proving to be the dumbest resident of the WH in history.
That true does that leave Oblama second or third. Out of the last four Dimms President, we have the three dumbest.
The fact that he is a democrat should have given voters pause about his intellectual ability. However, it appears that he is the victim of premature senile dementia. The MSM will bear responsibility for enabling his election, when his poor decisions and disruption of executive continuity harms the country.
“$1,500-per-ton cost for methane emissions”
Are they going after termites individually, or as a collective? Who do they bank with?
Co2 is 0.042% of the atmosphere and methane is 0.00019% of the atmosphere; it is impossible for trace gases to impact the climate due their scarcity. The UN/IPCC has never produced experimental evidence quantifying co2 climate sensitivity.
Dr. Ross McKitrick values co2 quite differently than Biden:
Based on these updates alone, we showed that, even using a low discount rate, the social cost of carbon as of 2020 drops from US$32 per tonne to about 60 cents, and there’s a 50/50 chance it’s below zero. It does grow over time but not by much. By 2050 it’s still under $3 per tonne and has a 46 per cent chance of being less than zero.
https://financialpost.com/opinion/ross-mckitrick-believing-the-science-on-climate-change-doesnt-mean-any-policy-goes
https://blog.friendsofscience.org/2017/09/29/calculating-the-social-cost-of-co2-emissions-using-fund/
The gas in our atmosphere with the highest climate sensitivity is N2 but no one is doing anything to reduce levels of N2 in our atmosphere. N2 is the gas that is primarily responsible for the atmosphere’s insulating effects. N2 is much more of a heat trapping gas than any of the so called greenhouse gases because N2 is such a poor radiator to space. More heat energy is held by N2 in our atmosphere than any other gas.
“One of the penalties for refusing to participate in politics is that you end up being governed by your inferiors!” Plato, 427-347 BC
One of the factors that Plato and other great leaders and philosophers over looked is the propensity for sociopathic and psychopathic personalities to rise to the top of ruling elites if there is no accountability! We are seeing this occurring in realtime now in the US with the imposition of the Zhao Bai Den regime over the will of the American people!
As this collection of crooks and crazies implements their Progressive social justice system on the population, we will witness greater and greater leaps beyond the bounds of sanity. Right now young people in the US are self identifying as LGBQT… at a rate that is four or five times ALL previous reporting thanks to the indoctrination of our social media and schools! Children as young as kindergarteners are being encouraged to transition by taking powerful drugs like puberty blockers and steroids, and undergoing genital mutilation at the hands of willing doctors! The Equality Act just passed by Congress not only makes this legal; it requires it!
The implementation of a carbon tax is just a drop in the bucket, although it will have far reaching effects as the US struggles under the weight of our cancerous national debt and it will make producing our way back to prosperity virtually impossible!
There has never been an administration that is so virulently anti-American! They lockdown our schools, the people and our Capitol; while opening the borders to immigrants without any idea of what diseases or drugs are being brought along!
“There has never been an administration that is so virulently anti-American!”
Well, Americans are going to fight back. I posted this the other day but I’ll post it again now.
“The States are going to fight back. Here’s a headline from an Oklahoma paper:
“State House to discuss legislation to ignore federal government”
And then there is this headline:
“Senators approve vote on bill to allow citizens to sue social media for censorship”
The Red States are not sitting on their hands while the Democrats attempt their socialist takeover.”
And I will add to that with this: The Oklahoma legislature is putting forth a bill to make Oklahoma a Sanctuary State for the Second Amendment.
Oklahoma already allows any citizen over 21 years of age who has not been convicted of a felony, to carry a weapon without a license. So now those crooks who might have attacked that little old lady for her purse will have to think twice about whether that little old lady is packing heat.
Believe it or not, Washington is also an open carry state, I don’t think there is any licensing either. And the Seattle progressives can’t stand it.
+42! (that is 42-factorial)
Beware the Friday rule releases and and the late night Pelosi votes.
BTW this is how you pay for “infrastructure” and “the children” and “Medicare for all”. Climate will be about 5 percent of the spending story–suckers.
The senate parliamentarian has ruled that the Democrats can’t use reconciliation to pass a minimum wage hike.
The progressive Democrats are mad as heck, demanding that the parliamentarian be fired and replaced with one who will agree with them.
Just to show how out-of-control Nancy Pelosi is, she ignored the Parliamentarian’s ruling and put the $15 wage increase in the bill anyway.
It will now go to the U.S. Senate where the Senate Parliamintarian has already said it cannot be in the bill, so the Senate will take it out and pass the rest of the bill and send it back to Pelosi.
Two Democrats voted against the bill along with all of the Republicans, in the House.
If the bill comes back to the House without the $15 wage increase in it, then more Democrats may refuse to vote for the bill, and then Nancy is going to have a problem.
People need to stop saying “Biden did this” or “Biden did that”. He’s doing nothing of the sort. It’s unlikely that they even show him what they’re doing.
Most people who know the truth of the current situation understand that “Biden” as a name is merely a shorthand label for the cabal of Obama staffers which actuallly calls the shots in the White House.
There must be a deep sense of embarrassment among the few honest Democrats who still exist. The whole world knows what’s going on and won’t miss this opportunity to screw the US with impunity. As an embarrassed Canadian (the burden of Trudeau) it will be hard to watch.
And now you will see the paid online message managers come forward in mass to defend the policy proposal. That paid component was a matter-of-course part of marketing contracts for Obamacare promotion and it will manifest again.
The social cost of concocted support for Party over reach agenda is $50,000 per ton of BS.
“The price” … should read “the tax on carbon”, carbon tax added to the cost of living and the cost of operating businesses.
Yes, the issue is carbon and carbon-based things. There is a “Plan” for that.. him… her… it… whatever.
Like Chuck Yeager said about what won WW2, “the least bad planning wins.” I’m afraid we’re going to see big, expensive policy fails on this Crusade and we will be on the losing end this time. And re-name the new dollar as the Bolivar.
It’s not a crusade, it’s an adventure! Inhaling from Puff the Hallucinating Dragon as he… it flies over the Rainbow, helps.
But they are not saying anything about the cost of DHMO. Molecule per molecule, DHMO is a stronger IR absorber than is CO2 and there is so much of it that you cannot get rid of it in our atmosphere. DHMO is a product of combustion that no one is talking about. In addition to being the primary greenhouse gas, DHMO is a major component of acid rain. Many extreme weather events are at least in part caused by DHMO in our atmosphere. The plants that farmers grow cause HMO to be added to our atmosphere. Farmers also make use of DHMO to enhance plant growth and their practices cause DHMO to be added to the atmosphere. In the town where I live there are times when the level of DHMO in our atmosphere gets so great that DHMO gas condenses out as a liquid and falls to the ground. To handle all of this liquid DHMO falling from the sky, the city has installed a network of underground pipes to channel the liquid DHMO away. All the city does is dump the DHMO outside of the city resulting in a pool of liquid DHMO that can be seen for miles and is even visible from space. The pool of DHMO is allowed to evaporate back into the atmosphere. The EPA needs to force the city to properly dispose of the huge pool of DHMO that they have created,
Since more CO2 in our atmosphere causes plants to grow better, maybe farmers should be paying people for the CO2 that they add to the atmosphere. The reality is that, despite the hype, there is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. The AGW conjecture depends upon the existence of a radiant greenhouse effect in the Earth’s atmosphere caused by trace gases with LWIR absorption bands. The problem is that such a radiant greenhouse effect has not been detected on Earth or anywhere else in the solar system for that matter. So in terms of climate change, the cost of all of the so called greenhouse gases is zero. If we define climate sensitivity as the amount of global warming the doubling of the amount already in the atmosphere will cause then the atmospheric gas with the highest climate sensitivity has got to be N2 because of the amount of pressure that exerts on the Earth’s surface. N2 is much more apt to trap heat energy than is any of the so called greenhouse gases because N2 is such a poor LWIR radiator to space. So far no effort is underway to reduce the amount of heat trapping N2 in our atmosphere. Second to N2 in terms of climate sensitivity is O2. Actually the burning of fossil fuels helps to lower the level of heat trapping and pressure causing O2 in our atmosphere.
Remember to convert to $2.00 per gallon gas right before the mid term elections.
Looking at the social ‘cost’ without considering the social ‘benefits’ reminds me of a boss I once had who wanted to know why my department’s costs were higher than budget.
He had come from a marketing section, one with costs only as they never produced any income, therefore he was used to questioning costs.
As a service manager, I had incomes and costs. We were spending more because we were exceeding our income budget – it costs more to make more – and our profit levels were also higher than budget.
Regardless of the extra bottom line profit, he concentrated on our costs meeting budget.
A one-sided, blinkered view of the real world, much the same as the greentards who cannot see the increased fertilisation of the world due to carbon ‘pollution’.
Nitrate fertilizer…. Cow urine and hog urine and dried feces from both go into producing fertilizer. There’s also “green” fertilizer in the form of alfalfa and soybeans, both of which fix nitrogen in the soil.
Is it too obvious to point out that plants need nitrogen in order to grow properly, just as much as they need CO2 and water? And if so, why is that so hard for these marones to understand?
Oh, that’s right – they think food comes from the store, and there’s no reason to do real farming any more.
My grandmas never told me that some day we’d be living with nutballs who don’t have the common sense God gave a goose, or the basic intelligence of a field of clover or alfalfa. I guess this is my punishment for growing up in farm country, where things made sense (and still do), instead of in the city, where nothing makes sense any more.
Our grandmas could never have imagined a world where idiots and incompetents would be allowed to run the media, much less our country! They probably figured that common sense folks would never let it happen; they couldn’t foresee our schools banning common sense along with facts, data and history!
“they couldn’t foresee our schools banning common sense along with facts, data and history!”
I think that’s what has happened. The schools are leading in the destruction of society and freedom with their brainwashing of the children.
“Those who can’t do, become teachers. Those who can’t teach, teach teachers.” It does not bode well for society when the least competent are doing the most important job.
Perhaps instead of encouraging young people to join the military (or drafting them as we used to do), perhaps all members of society should have to perform public service similar to the Peace Corps. The best and brightest should serve a couple of years teaching.
“… food comes from the store”
And chocolate milk comes from brown cows.
“Social cost” of carbon calculated by Trump: $8 a ton
“Social cost” of carbon calculated by Biden: $51 a ton
Benefit of CO2 to all living things: priceless
Nitrogen Dioxide | American Lung Association
No mention of fertilizer.
Bacterial action on nitrate fertiliser causes the emission of nitrogen compounds including nitrous oxide.
Nitrous oxide is N2O, not NO2.
Who cares about the farmers. We all know food comes from stores! <sarc>
And the food is delivered to stores by fossil fuel burning trucks.
Wait a second……. WWF has an ad on right now about how ocean water rains on banana plantations and the people who work there harvest those bananas and put them on ships and stuff…. and you’re tell me that WWF IS BLOWING ITS OWN COVER?????????
Look for that ad, PLEASE. The hypocrisy is palpable.
The UK government adopted a different approach as long ago as 2009. They defined the cost of carbon used for policy evaluation to be whatever is necessary to hit their artificial emissions goals from time to time. There is of course no guarantee whatever that policies are considered and implemented in order of increasing cost. So they have a self-justification for any scheme they dream up. Expect the US system to transition to that.
There will be a few Dodge Rams going cheap! I wonder if they make an electric conversion? Maybe they could just fit a wind turbine on top:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-PbboHJl85o&t=38
Just need a bigger turbine than these!
It gets scary when you entertain the notion that your government is out to kill you.
I was in a discussion with a poster at the Sydney Morning Herald here in Australia who claimed CO2 is *CAUSING* up to 80% of climate change. As usual, not one shred of evidence was supplied to support that statement. With people like this in the world is it any wonder Biden can get away with applying a US$51/ton tax on the trace gas?
Fact-free and 2% fact milkers think that they are the cream of milkers.
There’s no such thing as a greenhouse gas, that is, an insulating / heat trapping gas, otherwise we would use greenhouse gasses instead of vacuum in vacuum flasks. Please stop saying things like “powerful greenhouse gas”, it’s bullshit. Try replacing the vacuum in a vacuum flask with a “powerful greenhouse gas”, you’ll find the temperature of the flasks contents will drop much faster. Gasses that absorb radiation in the infrared spectrum wavelength also emit infrared radiation at the same frequencies. Heat transfer is an irreversible process, greenhouse gas theory fails the second law of thermodynamics. Heat always travels from hot to cold, the greenhouse gas theorists would have us believe that greenhouse gasses can radiate from cold to hot, it’s bullshit, you need a heat pump like an air conditioner or refrigerator has to do that.