Guest essay by Eric Worrall
Climate scientist David Lowe is horrified democratic governments like New Zealand are only charging double digit carbon prices – he thinks the true cost of carbon is around $1000 / ton, and should be imposed in a way which spans administrations.
Humans already have the tools to combat climate change but we lack leadership
In this extract, top atmospheric scientist Dave Lowe explains why despite political inaction he believes we can build a sustainable future
Dave Lowe
Mon 10 May 2021 06.00 AESTWhen it comes to the political will and leadership needed to drive the world towards a sustainable future, I’m a pessimist. Time and time again, I’ve heard rhetoric from politicians focusing on short-term goals at the expense of planning for the future. In 2021, the mainstream media promote responsible journalism and take a hard line with climate deniers. Many journalists hold governments to account over climate change goals. However, hard scientific data is often still manipulated and cherrypicked by politicians. I’ve spoken to many and liken the experience to walking through treacle.
Does their bland decision-making have to do with the structure of democracy itself, with its short electoral terms and lack of incentives for incumbent politicians to make hard and binding decisions for the decades ahead?
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Crucial to the urgent transition towards a low carbon future will be the skills and experience of engineers. Over the years I’ve spoken to many groups of engineers, including oil and gas engineers, about climate change. You’d think that a climate scientist talking to a gas engineer would lead to an argument, but that has not been my experience.
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Their skills are transferable to an economy making widescale use of “green hydrogen”, for example. Green hydrogen, produced by electrolysis of water using excess electricity derived from wind and other renewable energy sources, is already being used in steelmaking, energy storage and transport in Germany and a number of other countries.
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If you ask a chemist how, and how much it would cost, to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, they would probably throw up their hands in horror, come up with a figure of NZ$1,000 per tonne and a very complex apparatus. A climate scientist would reply to the question with another, like, “How much do you think the 2020 wildfires in Australia, California, Colorado, Siberia and the Arctic cost?” And a New Zealand economist would quote the current carbon price on the New Zealand emissions trading scheme site, which in early 2021 was about NZ$37 per tonne. To me that sounds ridiculously cheap, measuring in crude economic terms the cost of the damage by carbon emissions into our only atmosphere.
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Read more: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/10/humans-already-have-the-tools-to-combat-climate-change-but-we-lack-leadership
Here’s a thought Dave. Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is?
Instead of pontificating about how we should all be paying $1000 / ton, why don’t you lead by example, and start a project where climate believers can pay you $1000 to physically remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere?
Chemical extraction of CO2 from air is simple, not complicated, as you suggested. All you need to extract CO2 from air is to bubble air through a big tank of saturated lime water.
Calcium hydroxide (garden lime) is slightly soluble in water, but calcium carbonate (limestone) will precipitate and drop to the bottom of your tank. This process has been used for centuries to assay the CO2 content of a stream of gas, it is even taught in schools as a basic chemistry experiment – students blow into a tube, and watch clouds of calcium carbonate appear in the bottle they are blowing air into. Lime water is very good at grabbing CO2 out of the air, or out of people’s breath.
Of course, lime production is a very carbon intensive process, so you really need to recycle your calcium carbonate precipitate. Part of your CO2 recovery process should involve regenerating the lime from the precipitated calcium carbonate in a solar furnace, and disposing of the concentrated CO2 recovered from the regenerator. And you will need a rather large tank of lime water to absorb a ton of CO2 in a reasonable timeframe. But the chemistry is simple.
All the components of your plant should be manufactured using renewable energy, but hey lets be generous – since it is a pilot plant, I’ll give you a pass if you use solar panels and structural steel and plastic and copper and whatever else you need, all manufactured in the coal furnaces of China.
I doubt I will be one of your customers – but I assure you I will report on your progress, in winning customers for your $1000 / ton carbon disposal system. You never know, you might even make some money – there are plenty of rich celebrities dumb enough to pay $1000 to dispose of a ton of CO2. You could send customers a nice framed certificate thanking them for helping to save the Earth.
David Lowe is in dire need of some CO2 therapy … https://newtube.app/user/RAOB/aGqDEVt
Human respiration produces 2.3 – 2.4 pounds of CO2 daily so start sending him his $400 annual breathing CO2 production tax bill with a $20,000 back due Bill to his date of birth
Public recognition for an educated idiot. Job done!
“I’ve lived this horror for 50 years,” he says. “There’s so little time left and we’ve just been so bloody stupid.”
I apologize to Greta for anything I said about uneducated angry know-nothings.
Poor Greta has people like this author talking in her ear. No wonder she is upset.
I see where the Chicoms are making fun of Greta again, calling her a “puppet” and telling her to stop skipping school.
They do so because Greta is telling the truth about the Chicoms and their carbon dioxide emissions and Chicoms don’t like it when the the truth is told about them because the truth about them is not pretty. So they lash out at poor Greta. She’s just trying to save the world.
IYI – a Lowe blow.
Excerpt from my latest paper – definition of IYI:
CLIMATE CHANGE, COVID-19, AND THE GREAT RESET
A CLIMATE, ENERGY AND COVID PRIMER FOR POLITICIANS AND MEDIA
By Allan M.R. MacRae, Published May 8, 2021 UPDATE 1e
Download the WORD file
https://thsresearch.files.wordpress.com/2021/05/climate-change-covid-19-and-the-great-reset-update-1e-readonly.docx
The Climate-and-Covid scares are false crises, concocted by wolves to stampede the sheep.
The tactics used by the global warming propagandists are straight out of Lenin’s playbook.
The Climategate emails provided further evidence of the warmists’ deceit – they don’t debate, they shout down dissent and seek to harm those who disagree with them – straight out of Lenin.
The purported “science” of global warming catastrophism has been disproved numerous ways over the decades. Every one of the warmists’ very-scary predictions, some 80 or so since 1970, have failed to happen. The most objective measure of scientific competence is the ability to correctly predict – and the climate fraudsters have been 100% wrong to date.
There is a powerful logic that says that no rational person can be this wrong, this deliberately obtuse, for this long – that they must have a covert agenda. I made this point circa 2009, and that agenda is now fully exposed – it is the Marxist totalitarian “Great Reset” – “You will own nothing, and you’ll be happy!”
The wolves, proponents of both the very-scary Global Warming / Climate Change scam and the Covid-19 Lockdown scam, know they are lying. Note also how many global “leaders” quickly linked the two scams, stating ”to solve Covid we have to solve Climate Change”- utter nonsense, not even plausible enough to be specious.
Regarding the sheep, especially those who inhabit our universities and governments:
The sheep are well-described by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, author of the landmark text “The Black Swan”, as “Intellectual-Yet-Idiot” or IYI – IYI’s hold the warmist views as absolute truths, without ever having spent sufficient effort to investigate them. The false warmist narrative fitted their negative worldview, and they never seriously questioned it by examining the contrary evidence.
He is conflating the industrial cost of CO2 extraction with the human costs associated with plants and coccolithophores using photosynthesis, which is zero.
Actually bacteria generally turns plant cellulose back into CO2….however Coccoliths are a problem. Over geological time spans, they slowly deplete atmospheric CO2 by turning it into limestone and chalk “cliffs of Dover“ with extinction of plant life being the likely outcome.
It’s ok, the world spirit evolved primates into lime-seeking missiles, turning lime back into co2 for the betterment of life on Earth, with a nice byproduct of concrete for the evolved primates to build artificial caves with miniature kidney shaped ponds in the back.
DMac,
I believe a closer analysis of the human cost of CO2 would be less than zero! They actually should be rewarding those of us who produce large amounts of the life giving, magical gas; CO2!!
I would prefer my payment in large denomination, non sequential bills; lots of zeroes, please!
Please don’t forget the lowly foraminifera! While they may have trouble deciding whether they want to be a plant or an animal, they heartily agree with the coccolithiphores that calcium carbonate makes a safe and sturdy home! If the alarmists have their way, these lowly little guys could be the death of us all, literally!
Judging by the shrill, alarmist, fear mongering, and over the top claims being made about CO2 I venture that the AGW narrative is losing its’ audience and believability. It’s about time.
Tax all the environmental groups..organizations…foundations etc. ….these groups seem to be endless….and tax Joey Biden and friends 100% regardless.
Make that tax 850%, and I completely agree with you.
If David is a ‘top atmospheric climate scientist’ we should get him to first set out the evidence that the burning of fossil fuels causes dangerous global warming.
Is David a “climate scientist”?
If he is, he is not a very good one. He is much too prone to absorbing climate change propaganda and not questioning it.
This scientist seems to know just how much we should be charged for CO2, so he ought to be able to tell us why we should do this.
What do you want to bet his only “evidence” for CO2 being a problem is a bogus, bastardized Hockey Stick global temperature chart? What else could it be? The alarmists have nothing else.
That’s not good enough.
A quick search suggests we humans emit about 1kg of CO2 per day. Can I therefore suggest all the world’s governments get together and immediately impose a mandatory $1 per day carbon tax on all humans.
That will generate about $2-3 trillion per year and will surely help to solve global warming 😉
Or some could volunteer to save the rest of us, and consign themselves to the deep, “capturing” their body carbon content, and preventing a kilo/day future emissions. They can each take a sack of CaCO3 rich concrete with them, and row themselves out. Leave the paddles in the canoe, we can use it for the next batch.
Exactly, self abort, cannibalize their profitable parts, and sequester their carbon pollutants is forward-looking policy. Planned Parent/hood is a new deal, a wicked solution. and a means to an end.
The born alive penalty. Choices matter. Plan (pun intended) accordingly.
Im sure something like that is in the works, and the tax will be administered by the good folks at the UN.
Tax?
There should be a dividend!
Yes, think of the bacteria, consuming, metabolizing oil, so that higher forms of life may be sustained. Be green. Emit.
The assumption (premise) in his appeal is that those forest fires did not occur before, and are soley the result of the last century’s rise in CO2 emissions. The faulty conclusion therefore is they will no longer occur if we paid a NZ$ 1,000 carbon tax.
No peer reviewed paper required, just a back of the envelope calculation based on actual data will suffice to justify the premise of your recommendation, Dave.
Considering just how many of the figures going into a “social cost of carbon” are arbitrary, as is the appropriate discount rate, and the scenarios involved are, using numbers he is metaphorically pulling from is nether regions, Lowe is not all that aberrant.
I wonder if anyone has taken the trouble to estimate the “social cost” of a CARBON TAX?
Especially one as high as Lowe proposed.
Yes, that’s what we need, a social cost of the carbon tax. This CO2 tax is what will do harm to the nation, not the CO2.
And the loss in food production if he manages to starve plants?
Perhaps not aberrant, but one wonders how he gets those numbers out when his head is in the way!
And where exactly is the excess renewable electricity?
The lack of thinking here is truly remarkable:
And when will the damage of renewables be fully priced?
Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/20/magazine/palm-oil-borneo-climate-catastrophe.html
And to whom does the fossil fuel damage money go?
My suggestion would be directly to the Earth. Collect the tax in one dollar bill denominations (that is a lot of carbon) and inter/sequester them permanently in a site like Yucca Mountain. So not only do you solve the climate crisis but also provide an environmental benefit of quantitative easing, where the Fed buys and buries the national debt. (lol)
Yucca Mountain should be useful, if not for its original purpose, then for something better. The aim is to make those dollars useless, anything that wrecks the system brings us closer to Marx. A happy Marxist is a dead or starving everybody else.
“And to whom does the fossil fuel damage money go”.
Indeed.
I volunteer to hold it all in trust for him, and humanity, until I can think of a deserving beneficiary.
One of the most amazing things about climatists is not just that they claim to have solved all those nasty insoluble Navier-Stokes equations in their computer models, but that they are also simultaneously experts in every other branch of physics, chemistry, biology, economics, and errr…everything else.
The ego of Zaphod Beeblebrox is tiny when compared to these people.
David Lowe is 195.0 ish grams of carbon per kilo body weight. Just sayin.’ Now if he’s serious…
Life expectancy has almost doubled in the past couple of centuries since we started using cahbahn. I notice that is never included in the so-called cost of carbon.
Not just the past couple of centuries. Humans have been using carbon storage devices to tenderize their food, for a while.
The only reason the British started using ancient carbon, is because they had already used up all the fresh hydrogen and carbon storage devices for ship building.
Burning 1 gallon of gasoline produces about 20 pounds of CO2. So 100 gallons would produce 1 ton of CO2. $1000 per ton would increase the cost of 100 gallons by $1000. That’s a $10 increase in the cost per gallon of gas. Right now gas costs about $3/ gal. So that would increase to $13/gal if the tax were added to the price of gasoline. I wonder how many people would be willing to pay that to solve a non-existent problem
We think U.S. gallons and pounds (unless you are on Imperial gallons, which makes me a quart low), and probably U.S. dollars, and he’s talking the NZed $1.32 ish to the $1, and metric tonnes.
But our outrage is his point, so what’s a little precision between enemies?
If you recall, this was the pre-election campaign Gore plan: Everyone would pay more so that Al and special Friends could get rich through exclusive government contract to do undefined stuff to save us all from something really bad. In fact, his doom and disaster were cribbed from a DOD “what if” scenario for post-cold-war military.
No one ever called him on it, without getting smeared by the media, Gore, and a lot of out-of-work performers.
It has always been about profiteering, redistribution of wealth, and changing the economy to support the favored few.
From the movie Trading Places.
Billy Ray:
No thanks, guys, I already had breakfast this morning.
Mortimer:
This is not a meal, Valentine. We are here to try to explain to you what is we do here.
Randolph:
We are commodities brokers, William. Now, what are commodities? Commodities are agricultural products. Like coffee, that you had for breakfast, … wheat, which is used to make bread, … pork bellies, which is used to make bacon – which you might find in a bacon, lettuce, and tomato sandwich! [Billy Ray turns and gives a long look at the camera] And then there are other commodities, like frozen orange juice, … and gold. Though, of course, gold doesn’t grow on trees like oranges. [He chuckles] Clear so far?
Billy Ray:
[who isn’t but is nodding and smiling as though he understands, which he doesn’t] Yeah.
Randolph:
Good, William! Now, some of our clients are speculating that the price of gold will rise in the future. And we have other clients who are speculating that the price of gold will fall. They place their orders with us, and we buy, or sell, their gold for them.
Mortimer:
Tell him the good part.
Randolph:
The good part, William, is that, no matter whether our clients make money or lose money, Duke & Duke get the commissions.
Mortimer:
Well? What do you think, Valentine?
Billy Ray:
Sounds to me like you guys a couple of bookies!
Randolph:
[chuckling, patting Billy Ray on the back] I told you he’d understand.
The whole cap and trade thing is about the cut that the traders get, and of course, who gets to chose the traders.
The whole carbon tax thing is about the “rulers” having more money to spread round buying votes and helping their crony capitalist benefactors.
Excellent post, Drake.
Don’t allow him to charge even NZ $1,000 for extracting a tonne of carbon. It can be done much cheaper than that. Here’s a claim for US$100/ton
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/06/cost-plunges-capturing-carbon-dioxide-air
Much more worrying to my mind is the thinking adopted by the UK government since 2009, which simply defines the cost of carbon as whatever is necessary to hit any given political target at any point in time. The logic of that is they would shut down the economy, and perhaps even kill people more directly just to hit the target. They have sided with Attenborough.
When you have your ton of carbon in a lump, call Fedex and see how much they will charge to deliver it to the landfill….
I don’t know where the UK is going with this madness. When I lived there lots of people flouted clean air laws, burning wood or briquettes to try to stay warm. I never forget helping a pensioner, a neighbour who was about to risk his life hobbling out onto an ice covered street for supplies. Yet a majority of voters still keep voting for more climate action.
We didn’t vote for it. Princess Nut Nut told BOJO to do it.
So far, this Spring has been a real shocker for the warming group. Snow and cold are everywhere, including Mom’s day snows in northern NY and PA and May snows in parts of Germany (covering all those solar panels). The CET has been on the bottom of the graph. Colorado is next.
I would think watching temperatures fall after a few years of warmer ones would get reasonable people rethinking what’s going on, but evidently not. My guess there will be a mile high ice sheet on the outskirts of our northern cities and they still will be blaming CO2.
If I lived in Canada, I’d be packing my bags and applying for citizenship below the 35th parallel somewhere because we have only
1210 years before the coming cold does us all in. We’ve reached the tipping point and we can’t stop it now.I’m a few miles south of the 40th parallel in Colorado.
The trend between last spring and this spring is definitely cooling. Normally, I would have most of my garden in by now but I only have a few tomato plants out and I’ve had to cover them. Underneath I’ve placed an incandescent light bulb as it’s getting down to freezing tonight with snow.
Our daily climate propaganda portion preceding the weather forecast on TV recently told us that the cold we had since February is clearly caused by CO2 rearranging the polar vortex in such a way that it creates a stationary high over Iceland and a low east of us so that the air we get comes directly from the pole. So there is no contradiction: Global Warming caused it.
(/s)
Historians in the future will look back on our times and try to work out the moment we went peak stupid. We can’t be too far off now. Surely.
Like we do now when we look back at nazi Germany or the witch trials, or slavery.
If Republicans don’t pull out a victory or two in the next election, and gain some political control, then the Peak Stupid date will have been Nov. 3, 2020.
Apologies for bursting your bubble, but we’re nowhere near ‘peak stupid’. As one A. Einstein noted, “Only two things are infinite: the Universe, and human stupidity, and I am not certain of the former.”
The arbitrary “cost” of CO2 assigned by myopic alarmists: $1,000 a tonne
The benefit of CO2 to all life on earth: priceless
The Earth dies below 150 ppm.
He looks to be about 80 years old. If I remember correctly humans emit about 2 pounds of CO2 per day. That means he owes about $29,000. Pay up bud.
A the current concentration in the atmosphere, the true ‘cost of carbon’ is negative (a benefit).
I say it is $25/ton.
So, you it have backwards. We (each county’s leadership) need to issue a payment of around $5,800 to each 80 year old. Comes out to about $0.01 per hour.
Ask Mr. Lowe to imagine that logic … paying someone for their contribution rather than taxing them to make up for other peoples lack of contribution.
I just finished reading Wikipedia’s write-up on the John Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee, which took place in the summer of 1925. Although the trial was actually just a publicity stunt, it nonetheless featured two of the famous lawyers of the day–William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution against Clarence Darrow for the defense.
For the sake of the publicity, John Scopes agreed to be put on trail for teaching evolution in science class in the local Dayton high school — which was in violation of state law. Bryan, the hard-line fundamentalist Christian that he was, successfully prosecuted Scopes. He was played admirably by Frederick March in the 1960 movie Inherit The Wind. Spencer Tracy played Clarence Darrow.
For whatever it’s worth, David Lowe and other climate alarmist of his ilk remind me of Bryan and his fire-and-brimstone religious preaching. They all push their belief system on us with the fervor and fanaticism of Hitler. And through it all, the alarmists are demanding that we all pay the required tithes to the politicians for our carbon sins. Bryan would probably condemn you to Hell if you did not believe, and likewise the climate alarmists condemn us all to Climate Hell if we do not hear and obey…..and pay up.
Bryan had quite a few believers and followers in his day, and he unsuccessfully ran for president three times. Lowe and his ilk today have way too many believers for a scientific theory that is so fundamentally flawed. Bryan died five days after the Scopes trial, but I suspect it is going to take a lot longer for the CAGW theory to die out.
BTW, H.L. Mencken was at the Scopes Trail covering it for the Baltimore Sun. He was a strong supporter of Scopes and the defense, and he did not hide it in his writings.
In the movie, seemingly close to historically true, at the trial they were sweltering through an abnormally hot summer. Probably this was also true on the movie set under the lights. They all survived elevated temperatures, greater than the average human 98.6F, for extended periods of time and under physical and emotional stress.
See, no emergency here folks. Move along.
“In the movie, seemingly close to historically true, at the trial they were sweltering through an abnormally hot summer.”
Yup. Could not find any temperature data for Tennessee going back to July of 1925, but it must have been pretty hot because they moved the trial outside. At the sites I looked at, the temp data for Tennessee only went back to 1930.
Hiding the decline? Paging Tony Heller!
Seriously, the U.S. records and analysis that I’ve seen show that there was a steep warming trend in the 20’s followed by cooling from the late 40’s through 60’s. The preceding sentence is subject to my often poor recollection. Best data is IMO published by Tony Heller https://realclimatescience.com/hiding-the-decline-in-extreme-weather/.
One of my great grandfathers was involved in the Free Silver movement and he did some travelling with WJB, warming up the crowds for him. My great grandfather went on to run for congress but didn’t win and lost most of his wealth in the Great Depression. Bummer.
OT, sorry
Coldest recorded cloud temperature measured by satellite
A new paper led by Dr. Simon Proud, research fellow at the Department of Physics and the National Centre for Earth Observation, describes an unprecedentedly cold temperature measured atop a severe thunderstorm cloud in the Pacific by an Earth-orbiting satellite. This temperature of -111°C is more than 30°C colder than typical storm clouds and is the coldest known measurement of storm cloud temperature.
Previously reported here, but where would we be without ozone, CO2, and convection cooling?
“describes an unprecedentedly cold temperature measured atop a severe thunderstorm cloud in the Pacific by an Earth-orbiting satellite.”
Unprecedented for the satellite era maybe. The satellite era only covers a short period in history.
“ he thinks the true cost of carbon is around $1000 / ton,”
This says it all! Think of a number which is high enough to suit our purposes, regardless of what it actually is. No need for scientific studies and calculations!
And what about the benefits of CO2 such as significantly increased crop yields. Oh no, that’s nothing to do with our objectives!!!
Isn’t that what Claim it Scientists always do ?
😉
“In 2021, the mainstream media promote responsible journalism and take a hard line with climate deniers”
Could’ve fooled me.
Skeptics take a hard line with the leftwing propagandists masquerading as journalists by calling them out on their climate change lies.
The only hard line the propagandists take is to call skeptics names because they have no evidence to throw in the face of skeptics.
Of course, these propagandists would not dare to debate the subject with skeptics. That’s right. You have nothing, and you and we know it. So you call us names and run away.
“ So you call us names and run away.”
Tom, your comment not part of the real world. Count how many times the term “alarmist” is used on this site then come back and tell me your team doesn’t call others names.
Calling a climate alarmist an alarmist is just using a good description of reality.
Calling a skeptic a denier, is what name-calling is.
And just below you will find this……”F**king leftarded c&nts.”
I’d say that is name calling wouldn’t you? Then take a look at the name calling Fred resorts to when he is challenged. “Dumb” is his favourite word.
I didn’t say there wasn’t *any* name calling from the skeptic side. I said alarmists call names and then run away. When the skeptics call alarmists names, the skeptics don’t run away, they are fully prepared to make their arguments but the alarmists don’t want to debate because they lose every time. So they run away. I’m just describing reality.
I don’t run away. And I don’t lose (often).
And …Nick Stokes doesn’t run away and he rarely loses.
You can not dissuade someone of a belief that cannot positively be proven wrong or right. Evidence, observations, and data mean nothing.
He likely flys all over the world to climate conferences.
Don’t blame me – he’s no relative of mine! Even I, as an old mechanical engineer, know that we need much MORE CO2 in the atmosphere rather than less!
Idiotic red herring argument. A gas engineer is as likely to brainwashed on climate as anyone else, plus a “climate scientist” will always spin things in favor of climate ideology in ways people are apt to agree, even if so as not to appear disagreeable. A good opening gambit would be the old “the weather is worse now, and getting worser” lie. Amazing how many so-called “intelligent” people fall for that one.
Try proving that one wrong, or right. It is a belief of many that I know.
Where does this fool think the energy to produce those “Green Hydrogen” wind and solar systems comes from?
I challenge him, or anyone, to demonstrate a single producer of wind turbines or solar panels who uses only the output of their systems in their manufacture.
I’ll wait.
“….start a project where climate believers can pay you $1000 to physically remove a ton of carbon from the atmosphere?”
Not bad money to remove CO2 with forests. Maybe 3-4 acres in New England will remove that much in a year. There are people working on this but their solutions are heavy on the bureaucracy.
I think there are some kind of carbon credits in California involving forest land but a group in San Francisco has complained that it is not working as it should…maybe some profiteering going on?…$39 billion involved. CO2 is not a problem but scams involving CO2 are a problem.
Cool! Lets us slap his tax on him, first, at a rate of 100%. F**king leftarded c&nts.
“F**king leftarded c&nts.” Classy comment. WUWT standards certainly has plummeted lately.
Well, I think the true “cost of carbon” should be around $10,000 USD per ton . . . so there!
Expect my check in the mail.
Whatever the cost of wildfires may be, where is the proof that taking CO2 out of the atmosphere would reduce them? Wouldn’t it be cheaper to better prosecute arsonists?
How about the upper levels of forest mismanagement?
Gruesome Newsome and his crew in Commifornia should be held to account for the mess they’ve made of the forests of the Sierras and Coastal Ranges! Maybe an investigation of his handling of the ChiCom virus should take precedence, but he needs to answer hard questions about the wildfires and blackouts, too!
We should just tax stupidity and this dimwit’s contribution alone should be enough to build a couple of nuclear power stations.
So, the greening of the planet is a negative according to him. He has no clue that no gas at any concentration in the atmosphere can warm the climate. It’s that simple.
It is disappointing how many supposedly highly educated people do not use their brains and their academic training, regarding how to investigate and learn new things, and drink the climate Kool Aid.
This makes them complete idiots—people who really have no idea what is going on around them. They live in their emotional and virtuous minds and not in reality.
For that matter, I question what a climate scientist is? In what areas do they have expertise? I have to say I am a biochemist and marine biologist, but in the course of this I covered everything that affects the oceans, which includes climate, micro biology, invertebrate biology, atmosphere. and cosmology. So many climate scientists are simply products of a very biased education. At one college I taught at years ago, the Physics department did not requite students to take any biology or chemistry as the main researcher of the department was in glass physics and did not think any of that was relevant. How about simply educating well-rounded scientists who are no tunnel-minded and myopic?
Highly educated, complete idiots!
Daniel Flynn wrote a book about these types in 2004 titled ‘Intellectual Morons!’ I think he describes Mr. Lowe to a tee!
I am pretty well rounded ( I love beer) but that does not make me a scientist. But then I would not consider climate science a legitimate calling. Nobody is likely to live long enough to earn a significant understanding of all the sciences involved.
He says “If you ask a chemist how, and how much it would cost, to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, they would probably throw up their hands in horror…A climate scientist would reply to the question with another, like, “How much do you think the 2020 wildfires in Australia, California, Colorado, Siberia and the Arctic cost?”
An actual scientist would first be able to prove a connection between atmospheric CO2 and the referenced wildfires. No one has.
I would think the connection would be… (thinking cap on)…
… enough CO2 would put the fires out.
We need more CO2!
“Climate scientist David Lowe is horrified democratic governments like New Zealand are only charging double digit carbon prices – he thinks the true cost of carbon is around $1000 / ton, and should be imposed in a way which spans administrations.”
The climate scientists have all been wrong, they should required to return 1/2 of what they have been paid by the tax payers.
We live in world with a cold ocean, and more than 90% of “all global warming” has been warming this too cold ocean.
The ocean has been getting cold for over 34 million years, long before humans existed.
There is no evidence of Humans warming the ocean, maybe Humans should try to warm these cold waters {if it doesn’t cost money to tax payers}.
We live in an Ice Age. An Ice Age is a cold ocean. A build up of ice, and more desert regions.
The largest desert region are in the polar regions. Then the next largest is the Sahara desert.
Whenever interglacial period gets warmer, the Sahara desert, becomes less of a deserts- getting grass lands and forests.
The last time sahara desert was glass lands, was over 5000 years ago, during the Holocene Optimal:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holocene_climatic_optimum
“West African sediments additionally record the African humid period, an interval, between 16,000 and 6,000 years ago, when Africa was much wetter. This was caused by a strengthening of the African monsoon by changes in summer radiation, resulting from long-term variations in the Earth’s orbit around the Sun. The “Green Sahara” was dotted with numerous lakes, containing typical African lake crocodile and hippopotamus fauna. A curious discovery from the marine sediments is that the transitions into and out of the wet period occurred within decades, not the previously-thought extended periods. It is hypothesized that humans played a role in altering the vegetation structure of North Africa at some point after 8,000 years ago, when they introduced domesticated animals. This introduction contributed to the rapid transition to the arid conditions found in many locations in the Sahara.”
The “It is hypothesized that humans played a role..” is wrong, every time it’s been warmer the Sahara desert has been greener. And there are “theories” that cattle could be used to make the Sahara desert greener {though I suppose they would need to be “woke” herders}. And the myth of humans causing the Sahara desert is quite old and long debunked, and was stupid as the pseudo science of “the greenhouse effect theory”.
Quote from “climate scientist” David Lowe in the above article:
“If you ask a chemist how, and how much it would cost, to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, they would probably throw up their hands in horror, come up with a figure of NZ$1,000 per tonne and a very complex apparatus. A climate scientist would reply to the question with another, like, “How much do you think the 2020 wildfires in Australia, California, Colorado, Siberia and the Arctic cost?” And a New Zealand economist would quote the current carbon price on the New Zealand emissions trading scheme site, which in early 2021 was about NZ$37 per tonne.”
However, if you asked the same question to a practicing biologist or naturalist, he would likely say it would cost less than US$100 to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere in one year . . . from a single person planting seeds or seedlings of fast growing trees (maybe even bamboo) a rate of about 250 plantings per hour at a labor rate of US$50 per hour, more than twice average minimum wage in the US.
Those 500 young trees could easily remove a tonne of CO2 in growing over one year, based on the fact that a single mature tree absorbs carbon dioxide at a rate of 48 pounds per year (ref: http://www.tenmilliontrees.org/trees/#:~:text=A%20mature%20tree%20absorbs%20carbon,the%20average%20car's%20annual%20mileage. )
Conversion rate is about US$1 = NZ$1.37, so say about NZ$150 to remove a tonne of CO2 the easiest, most benign, most natural way . . . if you actually think about the most practical solution. BTW, no yearly maintenance required!
I don’t think I read that he would be willing to pay $1,000 per tonne of CO2 he was personally responsible in his lifetime.
I’d like to see a “carbon” tax implemented, and then see these people get a back dated bill. Might change their thinking.
No fool like an old fool
The new “Great green wall of Africa” will receive a significant boost – likely un-acknowledged of course – from CO2.
A green belt across the Sahara.
Here’s a link
https://youtu.be/7y77B1Y05SU
These fools think that taxing CO2 emissions in their particular fiefdom will reduce World-wide production. They do not understand that the only result will be the relocation of the industries to other countries not participating in the economic suicide, like China and India. Their thinking involves A to B and ignores the subsequent C & D.
Lowe wants to add an addition $10 to a gallon of gasoline. A fifteen gallon fill for your SUV would be around $180.
Ouch!
David Lowe is from the University of Waikato in New Zealand, a well known hot bed of climate extremism. You can read more about him at http://earth.waikato.ac.nz/staff/lowe/ from which you will see his lifetime professional career has had almost nothing to do with climate. In this field he is no more than a vociferous amatuer. The basic chemistry of his proposed solutions will work but he has given no thought to their mass flows, energy requirements or their source. He is likely to have been quoted only because he was a Professor of something or other at the local university.
Dave. Why don’t you put your money where your mouth is? – giggle snort!!!!
Yeah, Dave, as much CO2 as you personally produce with your GI tract contributions, never mind flapping your silly lips, you’re a bigger contributor to the problem than the rest of us. If you won’t follow your own ideas, then do the rest of us a favor: STFU.
And wear a big glass globe helmet with rebreather equipment included.
The irony is that all this fuss about CO2 is a huge mistake. Curtailing it will have no effect on climate and will stop the improvement that its increase has had on food production (plant growth).
The only greenhouse gas that has a significant effect on climate is water vapor (WV). Global WV trend has been increasing about 1.5% per decade which is faster than is possible from temperature increase (feedback). Global Climate Models calculate WV increase. The calculated result is that WV increases with temperature at approximately constant relative humidity. This is wrong. The actual average global WV increase trend, measured by NASA/RSS using satellite instrumentation, is about 43% greater than calculated in the GCMs.
An analysis with optimum combination of only three factors closely matches measured average global temperature for as long as it has been accurately measured worldwide. The match has been 96+% 1895 to 2020. CO2 is not one of the factors.
How can this bloke be called a ‘scientist’ when he obviously has not bothered to analyse the climate/CO2 data freely available on the Internet? It clearly shows that temperature has determined the rate of generation of CO2. There is no indication that CO2 has caused any global temperature effect. This is what has actually happened while “climate scientists” have been dreaming up all manner of catastrophes in order to justify their salaries.
“If you ask a chemist how, and how much it would cost, to remove a tonne of CO2 from the atmosphere, they would probably throw up their hands in horror, come up with a figure of NZ$1,000 per tonne and a very complex apparatus”
On the other hand, if you ask someone who is not a chemist they will tell you that trees do it for $0 and want more CO2 to grow faster
8 billion humans produce 8 billon tonnes remove this guy and we are on the way
only need all these climate nuts to become lemmings and jump off the cliff in the name of the planet
Mann, and Attenborough should flow
Poor old fellow, tres embarrassment
There wierd people everywhere, in NZ they believe they are the well balanced ones and to prove it they have a chip on both shoulders.
How can econazis be so hyper sensitive about wildfires, drought, coral bleaching, everything green yet still advocate policies that are ridiculously expensive and yet do nothing to fix the problem? Lament about wildfires but won’t allow cleating of all the dry brush, etc., that’s just waiting to ignite, and pretend that co2 reductions will help even though they know co2 is going to increase for decades.
“Humans already have the tools to combat climate change but we lack leadership…”
That leadership is a tax? Right!
Only a trillion dollars to remove a gigaton then. Sounds like a bargain.
Humans already have the tools to combat climate change…
So he’s found a way to change the weather. Hmmm.
Grow some cohones like Greta and get up the Chinese perfessor-
Greta Thunberg and China bump heads over emissions (msn.com)
I wonder what the cost is for extreme stupidity?
How are we going to deal with the billions of tons of gas released daily by human flatulence? Maybe force everyone put a cork up their wazzu?
If it saves just one polar bear it will be worth it.
hmm well NASA has been quite emphatic for decades now that carbon emissions have staved off not just any potential reglaciation in our time but also the next several reglaciations to boot
for the non-collapse of human agriculture and perhaps civilization itself, I calculate a net benefit of $1000 per ton
let the subsidies flow!