BBO Discussion Forums: Climate change - BBO Discussion Forums

luke warm, on 2012-August-03, 06:46, said:

No, but it does teach us how to deal with inane hypotheticals and ridiculous strawmen.

WellSpyder, on 2012-August-02, 09:39, said:

One question: if you are looking to have people use less petroleum products and you want money to support R & D into alternative sources of energy, why not start by removing ALL subsidies to the oil and gas industry? The taxpayers would then not have to pay any new taxes and the money given to the oil companies (or not now collected in tax revenues) would then be available for other projects. The price of fuel would go up (the oil companies aren't going to give up their many millions of $ per year profit margins without a fight) so consumption would go down.

There are some who suggest that without the taxpayer subsidies to the oil industries, alternative energies would be far more cost competitive than they now seem to be.

evidently i haven't been taking agw as seriously as i should have... from john kerry:

Quote

so there you have it, now it's official - a nuclear iran and biochem weapons in syria (in hezbooah's hands?) are on a par with gw... i wonder if his use of the term "real crises" was a freudian slip of some sort? yes, this is a u.s. senator

phil_20686, on 2012-August-02, 04:07, said:

what do we do about the need for energy in the meantime? and do we trust the gov't or private industry to do whatever it is we're going to do? remember solyndra? (and many other such failures)

luke warm, on 2012-August-03, 12:13, said:

Carbon tax makes renewable energy cheaper than fossil fuels. From then on the private sector will do it. It has proved incredibly adept at profit maximisation, you just have to set up a market so that profit maximisation runs in the direction that is also good for the country.

luke warm, on 2012-August-02, 15:27, said:

If you hold the total tax rate constant, then carbon taxes are a good idea. The reality is that governments decide what they are going to spend money on, and then think about raising the money for them. Carbon tax is preferred to almost any form of wealth or income tax on the general grounds that consumption taxes are more economically efficient, and that in this case you are getting a positive benefit out of distorting the market in your favour.

onoway, on 2012-August-03, 07:07, said:

I think this would in general be good thing. Fuel is much roe expensive in Europe than in the US, entirely for tax reasons, and this has resulted in much less driving and much more fuel efficient cars. You should note of course, that fuel duty is a type of carbon tax, it just isn't dressed up that way.

hrothgar, on 2012-August-02, 08:38, said:

Its not clear to me that this is possible in theory. Well it is if you denote things in monetary value, but then NGDP is entirely determined by the central bank so that is almost a non-statement.

Consider the following scenario, an economy of 100 produces only energy and widgets, on fossil fuels you need 25 people to produce the energy, so you make 75 widgets per year. If you move to renewables, it takes more of your productive capacity (==is more expensive), and now 30 people work in energy and you only produce 70 widgets.

The reality is that you can never return to the original production of energy+widgets, you either have less of one or less of the other on the new utility curve.

phil_20686, on 2012-August-03, 17:16, said:

It has also been horribly distorting, fuel has historically been much more expensive in England than in France, so French hauliers fit vast fuel tanks in their lorries, fill up in France then bring a load across the channel and work in England for a while, undercutting the locals.

In general the US could do with higher fuel prices for the reasons you outline, but it would be political suicide to introduce them.

phil_20686, on 2012-August-03, 17:14, said:

while this may be true, i don't think that's what liberal politicians in this country have in mind... there's no way they'd add a carbon tax in such a way as to make overall taxation revenue neutral... remember hillary in pakistan a few years ago? she chided them on lack of taxation, saying words to the effect of "in america we tax everything that moves, and most things that don't"

Or you can listen to Dr. Muller himself. (He starts about 4 minutes into the show.)

Here is the abstract:

A cap is imposed on the carbon tax rate if the total tax revenue is not allowed to increase. Using recent data on the carbon-intensity of the economy and the overall tax take, I show that this cap constrains almost any climate policy in at least some countries. A larger number of countries, emitting a substantial share of global carbon dioxide, cannot fully participate if the carbon tax (or equivalent alternative regulation) is high enough to meet the 2ºC target. For that target, the carbon tax revenue in 2020 is greater than 10% of total tax revenue in every country.

from a discussion paper by Richard Tol.(Department of Economics, University of Sussex, Institute for Environmental Studies and Department of Spatial Economics, Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam)

Neutral or neutered?

Summer Heat Trends Linked to Climate Change

Quote

Hot summer here in Michigan's UP too. It's good that we've got plenty of water...

PassedOut,

While this summer has been rather hot and dry here in Michigan, it has been exceeded in the past records - see the following. Many Michigan cities have record highs from 1936 that still stand, including Detroit at 104, Saginaw at 111, and the highest ever recorded in the state in Mio at 112. In Detroit, the mercury topped 100 for an entire week - the only time it has ever happened (this year, we have had 3 days). Other cities: Grand Rapids - 108 (1942), Midland - 106 (1941), Ann Arbor - 105 (1941), Traverse City - 105 (1941), Battle Creek - 104 (1940), Holland - 102 (2012). All told, half the states have record highs dating to the 1930s, including five states which topped 120 (both Dakotas). South Carolina is the only state to break its all-time high this year (113), and the last state prior to break its all-time high was Arizona, back in 2007.

http://curryja.files...timony-2012.pdf

That said, I have difficulty with people who claim a particular weather event is caused by global warming. Every year, some place has a particularly hot summer (usually at the expense of someone's cold summer). This year, it is the US Midwest. Last year, it was Western Russia. Our warmth has come at the expense of Europe. Witness the summer olympic games in London, which some have already called a misnomer. July in England was 1.2C below average, and much wetter (13th wettest in the past century), which is really saying some for summer in England. Through the first half of 2012, temperatures globally are the 12th warmest in the past 15 years, surpassing 1999, 2008, and 2011. In fact, the past 18 months have been the coldest globally, since 2000-2001.

Every year, someone experiences a heat wave, and every year, someone links it to global warming. Temperatures did rise from 1980-2000, but most of the rise was an increase in the coldest temperatures; low temperatures and winter temperatures.

Just because certain records have not been surpassed does not mean that this year's weather (and last year's weather) does not show a continuing trend towards extremes. I know that here, in New Jersey, the summers lately have been hotter, summer and winter storms have been more severe, and the winters more extreme over the past few years than in any in my recollection.

Of course, there was a period in my youth between 1960-1975 which was noted for mild winters in this area. Not so anymore.

ArtK78, on 2012-August-07, 11:29, said:

nor does it necessarily mean that they are caused by gw, much less agw

Daniel1960, on 2012-August-07, 10:17, said:

And, of course, no one makes such a claim -- certainly not the paper I referenced -- so you can relax a bit on that score.

No one disputes that mankind spews billions of extra tons of heat-trapping CO2 into the air each year. Over time, that is bound to produce extra heat unless some other factor counteracts the effect. Scientists have looked at possible ways that the heat increase might be mitigated (heavier cloud cover shielding the earth, for example), but those possiblities have been studied and simply won't do the job. So it's no wonder that the overwhelming majority of scientists accept the fact that humanity is causing global warming.

As a conservative, I'm not willing to risk the futures of my kids nor of the generations to follow on the hope that some hitherto unknown mechanism will step in to save the day. Also, like most conservatives, I favor a carbon tax because taking that step will stimulate the marketplace to develop solutions to the problem.

I do understand that those who have vested interests -- financial and/or political -- in the status quo will resist both the facts and the solution. A similar thing happened with the cigarette companies decades ago. With cigarette smoking, however, folks were harming themselves directly. With global warming, the bulk of the harm will be borne by future generations, which makes it more difficult to motivate folks to take action now.

PassOut,
"the intense heat wave afflicting the U.S. Midwest this year, very likely are the consequence of global warming, according to lead author James Hansen" - I took this statement to mean just that, but if you are saying that the paper does not makes this claim, then OK.

Very few (if any) scientists dispute the heat trapping capability of CO2. The area of largest diagreement is how that translates to changes in the planet's temperature. There are some scientists who feel that the Earth should have warmed more than observed, based on climate models. Other contend that natural forces have combined with CO2 to force the observed warming. While the overwhelming majority accept the warming in general, very few agree on the magnitude.

I am not sold on a carbon tax right now, mostly for the government issues mentioned by others previously. I wish I had an alternative, but I do not, so we may be saddled with one. Altermatives for carbon-based fuels are still decades away from wide-spread use, so business-as-usual will continue for some time yet. Care must be taken to avoid European cap-and-trade issues, or the disasterous Spanish green economy. A vibrant economy will generate revenue to pursue alternatives.

Those with vested interests will always fight that which will affect them negatively. Conversely, those with vested interests in particular approaches to the problem will also fight for them vigorously. I just hope we can arrive at a universally, reasonoble solution.

PassedOut, on 2012-August-07, 16:24, said:

You're funny

Daniel1960, on 2012-August-08, 06:40, said:

There are no scientists, nor even skeptics as far as I know, that dismiss that CO2 is a greenhouse gas. Indeed, the heat trapping capability of Co2 can be measured in the lab. It is remarkably small except for very low concentrations. The more CO2 there is in the atmosphere, the less heat trapping effect there is. This is where the disputes start. The actual warming effect of CO2 is actually different from what is shown in the lab. This is because of what the scientists call feedbacks. The general consensus is that the feedbacks for CO2 warming are positive. That is, that CO2 warms the planet more in practise than the lab results show. Some skeptics dispute this; a few even claim an overall negative feedback.

Feedback modelling is quite interesting in that there are quite a lot of models around now and they all use slightly different coefficients for these. Amazingly, even wildly different feedback values, providing they are set to match the known data, tend to result in similar predictions. This is often cited by supporters of the models as evidence that they are robust, even with the exact coefficients still unknown. The biggest unknown in feedback modelling is currently clouds. These can be either a positive or a negative feedback depending on the type of clouds that are produced. This is an area where research is ongoing - PO's claim that this has been studied and rejected is overly simplistic.

Another claim that is patently fasle and has been dealt with already in this thread is of "the hope that some hitherto unknown mechanism will step in to save the day." Sorry, but there are several known mechanisms that can "step in to save the day" right now. The issue is largely one of cost - who is going to foot the bill and by how much? - although some of the schemes also have unfortunate side-effects which make them controversial.

Finally, on the wording for specific weather events that may have been the result of GW. The proper way of writing this is that there is an increased chance of the extreme weather event taking place due to GW. In other words, you do not say that a specific weather event is caused by GW but rather that there is a chance that it might not have occurred without it. Naturally, such subtleties are generally lost on the public/media and it tends to get reported in the more straightforward (albeit incorrect) way.

July average tops U.S. temperature record

Quote

Aleady looking forward to winter in the UP...