Maybe we could talk about how women's suffrage has increased the size of government and is pretty much responsible for our (the USA's anyway" enormous debt? And it gives Tim another chance to take his stick to Lott and his questionable number crunching.
Hi, I would like to ask readers whether they know of any instances in which someone who frequents and posts comments on blogs about AGW has changed their 'mind' (in quotes because it has to be something obvious in their writing and sincere rather than just a claim). I'm somewhat interested in whether or not it's possible to turn a troll (oxymoron?), but I'm more interested in what specific future findings could change the mind of someone who currently argues about whether or not AGW is real and non-negligible.
I think it is, and if asked why, I would say it's because of the weight of evidence but particularly because of these three things: radiative properties of CO2; temperature increases which match old predictions; and cooling stratosphere. What would it take to change my mind?
For AGW-deniers, I generally assume that they don't actually believe the stuff they write; but I'm curious if any of them will admit a possibility that they could be convinced and then identify what evidence such a change would require. Thanks.
Ben, I recall Voxday making that argument a few years ago. Are you being a troll or something?
Steve L- that question has come up in cmobat with trolls, and indeed simple uninformed people, and I do not recall any definite answer. IN the trolls case, it is because they do not want to give on. In the case of the uninformed people, who are often knee-jerk anti-environmentalists, its simply because they do not know what it would take. They do not know enough about the topic to be able to say what would change their minds.
I love the way John Lott refers to 'academics', and when you follow the link it turns out he means himself. He really ought to get himself a sockpuppet. Has he no sense of decency?
Steve L: I know this is secondhand, but longtime poster cce discussed his own change of mind here, in his introduction (part 0). I don't have any examples from the blogosphere per se, though.
However, I do tend to point people here when I ask them similar questions. Towards the end of that (part 6), he provides criteria for AGW falsification similar enough to the one I'd accept, as an example to those who the video's trying to reach. (Be advised that this particular one is a bit of a hodgepodge if viewed on its own.)
Ben, I recall Voxday making that argument a few years ago. Are you being a troll or something?
Like,open thread mean anything to you? Last time I checked here, Tim likes to lambaste Lott. Seems fair, no?
Women's suffrage? I thought the force responsible for big government was Al Gore, or Bill Clinton, or FDR, or whatever the bogeyman _du jour_ happens to be.
In other news: ExxonMobil cuts funding of climate inactivists... again?
Women's suffrage? I thought the force responsible for big government was Al Gore, or Bill Clinton, or FDR, or whatever the bogeyman du jour happens to be.
Right. I'm not sure about FDR, but Bill wouldn't have been elected without women's suffrage. From the article, all the democrats to have won the presidency in the last few decades would have lost had women not had the vote.
> From the article, all the democrats to have won the presidency in the last few decades would have lost had women not had the vote.
The same can probably be said about the poor and about blacks and maybe even about Jews.
[Since we are into making idiotic factual statements with bigoted undercurrents, I just thought I might add my contribution.]
Steve L.
Interesting question. One of the frustrations of posting on-line is that the chance of actually changing someone's mind is remote (at best). I am an AGW skeptic and I believe that I am actually capable of changing my mind. When I first became aware of the Global Warming issue, I suspected that temperatures weren't really rising at all, that it was all UHI etc. What made me change my mind? People I respect changed their minds and the data became convincing.
First, I believe that the greenhouse effect exists, that the Earth is getting warmer and that man is contributing to the greenhouse effect via CO2 emissions. I believe that man's effect is small and that catastrophic warming is highly unlikely. (It's pointless to argue about these here, if Hansen, Mann, Amman et al haven't convinced me yet, neither will you). I use the term "believe" (for which I always get grief) because it would be unsuitable for me to claim that I "know" anything when experts and people with much bigger IQs than me are still arguing with each other.
What would it take for me to believe that AGW is likely to be catastrophic? I would have to be convinced that this has been the warmest period in a millennium. I would have to be convinced that UHI and land use changes have been properly accounted for in the surface record. I would have to see models that successfully predict results for a significant amount of time (10 years?). It would also be notable if developers stopped building in Miami due to GW concerns (or that insurance companies stopped insuring such projects).
On a non-scientific basis, things that dispose me to question catastrophic GW are: Attempts to say the debate is over, Ad hominem attacks on those that disagree, Claims that everyone would agree if only it wasn't for Exxon/Mobil, refusal of AGW supporters to ever admit that they might have gotten something wrong, the fact that AGW supporters never seem to "call-out" unreasonable claims of the effects of GW, my perception that AGW supporters are largely the same group of people with which I disagree on almost every other issue as well.
One thing about your post that I find most interesting/revealing/troubling is
For AGW-deniers, I generally assume that they don't actually believe the stuff they write;
The only way that I would go to the trouble of posting things I don't believe would be if I was a PR flack in the employ of Exxon (and we can't ALL be PR flacks working for Exxon). If I believe that we're all gonna die from GW and that the only way to avoid it is via a UN led World Government, I'd be on board with that, regardless of how much I might dislike the idea.
Steve L,
How generous of you to refer to those who do not subscribe to AGW catastophism as "deniers" and "trolls".
It is clear that you are the one that is closed to the evidence as demonstrated by your use of these inflammatory words to frame your "question".
No one is "denying" that CO2 has the property of absorbing and radiating certain wavelengths of infrared radiation. The question is to what extent is the "radiative balance" evinced by climate models representative of the actual dynamics of the Earth's climate system.
The second of your "three things" is the extent to which current temperatures "match old predictions". Well I guess it depends on which "old predictions" you are referring to. I don't believe any of the commonly used examples predicted ten years of statistically flat temps. So it would appear that you are "O" for two.
The issue of "stratospheric cooling" is complex and there is not unanimity as to the long term trend or the influence of ozone and water vapor on the thermal dynamics of the stratosphere, but to claim the recent data as solid evidence for AGW is dubious at best.
Those interested in further comments on the Lancet estimates of Iraqi mortality should see this. Basic summary: Most people think that IFHS and L2 estimates of violent mortality in Iraq (151,000 versus 601,000) differ by "only" a factor of 4. This is mistaken. Using the same assumptions for L2 and IFHS (no adjustments for underreporting or for clusters that could not be visited) generates estimates that differ by more than a factor of 8: 601,000 to 72,000.
I would be interested in the opinions of the Deltoid community on this topic before I write it up more formally.
Lance, don't get upset. Although I have a longer term interest, I bring up the question now because I am in a discussion with someone I call AGW-denier and he himself has used a sock-puppet named "troll". I am, as you note, on the other side (the one with all the data analysis). And the framing of the specific question has already been worked upon by me and this other person. My comment was intended to elicit responses regarding what it would take to change one's mind -- unsurprisingly, your response has not done so for me. But I think the important thing is that I can identify what would change my mind (I'm still trying to figure it out) and that you can identify what would change your mind. Let's see if we really are open minded.
Steve L,
Reasonable enough. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post but using insulting words like "AGW denier" doesn't intone an air of objectivity to your comments
Lance
Is there a good/desired target ppm of CO2 agreed to by the consensus to stop/reverse climate change?
Everyone seems to just say that we must reduce CO2 emissions, but without a target how will we know we are on the right track or if when we've been succesful?
If there is a target figure are there any papers explaining why it is the target?
there is not unanimity as to the long term trend
There isn't?
Those interested in further comments on the Lancet estimates of Iraqi mortality should see this. Basic summary: Most people think that IFHS and L2 estimates of violent mortality in Iraq (151,000 versus 601,000) differ by "only" a factor of 4. This is mistaken. Using the same assumptions for L2 and IFHS (no adjustments for underreporting or for clusters that could not be visited) generates estimates that differ by more than a factor of 8: 601,000 to 72,000.
David, i think your "analysis" is getting more absurd every time you post!
lots of people have asked you questions about the IFHS. i have NOT read a single critical word from you, about this study!
here are a couple of points to start with. (from an older post on my blog):
1. the numbers of the NJoM are in good agreement with the Lancet 1 numbers for the early period of the war.
2. while the paper finds a smaller increase in violent deaths than the Lancet 2 paper, it shows a massive increase in the rate of non-violent deaths (doubled deathrate, some calculations lead to an estimate of 400000 total excess deads, in comparison with a total of 650000 in the lancet 2)
3. the paper does not show an increase in deathrate after the Samarra bombing and in early 2006. this is extremely strange, as the increase in violence was even registered by the US military and lead to the surge.
4. the mortality results are a small part of a huge survey about health in iraq. the questions fill about 20 pages, the relevant part being on page 16.
It's not when I changed my mind, but when I lost patience with the, uh, unbelievers was when the satellite temperature records were straightened out. Before then there was some evidence (though not much) that warming wasn't happening or at least that the record was genuinely inconclusive. Since then there hasn't been any solid evidence that AGW was not happening (a few years of stable high temperatures under a La Nina is NOT a decline in long term temperature). An unbeliever of my acquaintance simply stopped referring to the satellite record (which he had previously based his argument upon) and started dragging out all sorts of illogical thermodynamics-denying crap, rather than admit that his evidence had been undercut, after which my respect for his arguments dropped exponentially.
Thanks to sod for the comments. Using your numbering:
1) I don't think that this is true, but haven't checked myself. This is only possibly true if you discard Falluja, which makes little sense to me if you are trying to compare the overall results/quality of L1 with IFHS. I think Mike Spagat is working more on this point, so stand by.
2) The paper only makes a claim about violent deaths. You (and others) use the raw data in the paper to make (not unreasonable) claims about what it implies about the rates of non-violent deaths. The good news is that we will not have to argue much more about whether or not the non-violent rates are different, at least in the view of the IFHS authors, since M. Ali is presenting a paper on this very topic at JSM. (I have not seen a draft so it could be that Ali et al will agree with you on this. (By the way, any Deltoid readers at JSM should drop me a line. Coffee is on me!)
3) True. But neither does IBC. This is one of the central contradictions between L2 and IBC/IFHS. Only one side of the debate can be correct.
4) True. Les Roberts likes to claim that any survey that is not only focussed on mortality (like L1 and L2) is doomed to mis/under-estimate mortality. I disagree, as do the IFHS authors and the NEJM editors.
"Is there a good/desired target ppm of CO2 agreed to by the consensus to stop/reverse climate change?"
Consensus? Not really... Absolutely, by 800 ppm of CO2 I think everyone predicts global disaster for human civilization. (Everyone sane, that is) In all probability, by 550 ppm (the EU target, the most restrictive official target currently). Looking more likely all the time, 450 ppm, but I don't know if that's reached more than 50% penetrance of the AGW-believers yet. James Hansen recently is on record as saying 350. Yes, we are above that already. The What-me-AGw folks publicly deride him enormously, which of course is an acknowledgement that his predictions have been correct longer than anybody else's, for 20 years now. And he was one of the authorities behind the original 450 ppm target; his new estimates based on further observations of positive feedback and "inertia" whereby the temp will continue to rise for a while even after CO2 drops now lead him to believe that if we stay at 450 ppm for a while, the ice caps will all eventually melt, with the aforementioned global disaster coming to pass; thus the 350.
on another note, this just in on BBC America news:
Remote Area Medical, kind of a small-scale Doctors Without Borders, founded more than 20 years ago to bring medical care to poor tribes in Guyana; now does 60% of its work bringing health care to the disadvantaged third world citizens of the United States. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7420744.stm
James,
The corrections to the satellite records played a key role in my acknowledging GW. Am I still an "Unbeliever"?
BillBodell:
> Am I still an "Unbeliever"?
Again, that's why I'm now using the term "inactivist".
z:
> Remote Area Medical, kind of a small-scale Doctors Without Borders, founded more than 20 years ago to bring medical care to poor tribes in Guyana; now does 60% of its work bringing health care to the disadvantaged third world citizens of the United States.
You just hate freedom. And Michael Moore is fat.
thus the 350
Good luck with that. At least the melted ice will only mostly take out the liberal coasts, leaving new beach-front property for us unwashed rednecks.
ben, will that also take out the women who have been using women's suffrage to vote for Bill Clinton?
Tim always seems to start his new Open Threads just when I am about to head away for a spot of field-work monitoring endangered beasties in the wilderness. This conveniently lets me alert those who might notice my absence that it is not because I am avoiding any challenges, and I hope that if Neil Craig responds to my last post answering him, someone might take up the baton on my behalf.
If it's worth the effort of course...
And following on from that aforementioned post, it seems that just about all of the 'Peak Oil' denialists have suddenly become very quiet, what with the recent increases in the price of oil. I am curious to know if there is still any significant group of people who disparage the foresight of M. King Hubbert, or those who followed after, such as Campbell and Heinburg.
I know that there were one or two conservatively-inclined folk here who have aspired recently to hummers or similar - how many are still all dewy-eyed about the possibility of knocking around in a guzzler? And if their complacency is still entrenched, what of next year, or the year after? I am very curious indeed.
Australians are suddenly being rudely awakened, and I have more than a few acquaintances who are regretting their bravado of even six months ago about Peak Oil being a complete myth.
The truly frustrating thing though is that those who can, aren't, and are instead fiddling whilst the smoke starts to billow over Rome.
FROM THE OREGON PETITION THREAD SINCE I HAVE BEEN WARNED OFF IT
I first posted #42 - #43 on have overwhelmingly been off topic because, as I pointed out, so many people on the eco-fascist side use the tactic of changing the subject when they are found out.
Strange, Tim, that you haven't noticed this before or deleted any of there posts. I assume posts 194,5 & 6 will be deleted after that warning, particularly since 196 is not only off topic but changing the subject to yet another off topic.
Or not as the case may be.
Anyway I will post this up on the new thread as well.
Sod I never said that I believed any of your 4 points which makes disputing the a "straw man" argument. I merely said that the current bio-fuels growth is because of the subsidy you assert doesn't exist. Your assertion is clearly untrue.
Jeff's remark about the letter inviting people to sign the Oregon Petition not being "peer reviewed" shows that he has absorbed all the Luddite buzz words without understanding what peer review is. A peer reviewed petition is about as sensible as a well written hat. Unfortunately such buzz words are regularly used as a substitute for thought.
His remarks about Ehrlich's amended bet proposal are not truthful & the implication that ehrlich having chickened out of repeating his original bet, Simon chickened out of a reasonable counter bet by Ehrlich merely represents the very highest standard of honesty of the eco-Nazi movement. You can read about it on http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/references.html#bet accessible from the previous McCarthy page I put up.
Suffice it to say that Ehrlich chose self serving objectives bearing little to do with overall scarcity or quality of life decline. For example he offered to bet that air quality in China would decline, a fairly safe bet bearing in mind China's industrialisation. Had he been concerned about Chinese quality of life he would have chosen some broader standard like how long they are living or even deaths from environmental factors including disease (some increase in smog & massive reduction in plague indicates the environment is getting much better overall). Alternately had he ben concerned about a general increase in pollution he would have gone for world air quality figures, which have improved. Ehrlich has quite a record of claiming world environmental catastrophes which has not discredited him in the slightest in Luddite eyes:-)
Cthulhu the basic problem with saying that petition signatures don't count if you aren't a "climate scientist" (i.e. computer modeller producing a warming model) has been explained by me before. Scientists can recognise scientific principles & can recognise when they are missing.
By your argument astrology can only be criticised by astrologers (who tend not to). Nor "creation science" by any but duly qualified "creation scientists". By the same argument the fact that Stephen McIntyre went through Mann's Hockey Stick & proved, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that it was mathematical mince was irrelevant because he was merely a mathematician. This clearly is the best argument against the petition (apart from the outright fraud of trying to get a fake name by them) that the eco-fascists can produce but it is obviously false.
Bill Bodell posts:
If I believe that we're all gonna die from GW and that the only way to avoid it is via a UN led World Government, I'd be on board with that, regardless of how much I might dislike the idea.
Straw man argument. No one is saying the cure for AGW is "a UN led World Government." That's a right-wing paranoid fantasy.
Sod I never said that I believed any of your 4 points which makes disputing the a "straw man" argument.
basic reading isn t among your top skills. of course you amnaged to ring up EACH of the four false claims that i took a look at in two posts of yours:
even after eco-Nazi action to force up food prices by diverting it to bio-fuel (this is why an increasing amount of it is going to support meat animals)
you claim that the current increase in food price is significantly caused by biofule production. that is false.
I merely said that the current bio-fuels growth is because of the subsidy you assert doesn't exist. Your assertion is clearly untrue.
and i did kindly ask you, to quote me on saying that there are no subsidies on biofuels. you failed to do that.
you made the claim that subsidies are the drivinfg factor behind the biofule increase. this is false. at the current price, biofuels do not need subsidies.
Neil Craig said in #29 above:
"Jeff's remark about the letter inviting people to sign the Oregon Petition not being "peer reviewed" shows that he has absorbed all the Luddite buzz words without understanding what peer review is."
As with several other recalcitrant trolls who pop up here, and true to the form he has established in denigrating Jody Aberdein's relevant expertise, Neil obviously has no clue who Jeff Harvey is, nor what Jeff's credentials are.
Neil, a reminder - know whom it is you are insulting before you start. Otherwise you are simply opening your mouth to change feet.
Again.
I'll say one thing for you Neil: you are nothing if not consistent (or perhaps merely persistent)...
Jeff is an internationally respected population biologist (with a long list of peer-reviewed papers linked on Deltoid, if you care to make the effort to find them), and I can say without hesitation that he has infinitely more of a clue about matters ecological than you have.
Are you deliberately trying to present yourself as an unredeemable prat?
Oh, and don't think that we haven't noticed your shuffling of the goal-posts with respect to the Erhlich/Simon wager, and the intent behind said wager. Ludd and Malthus need not be invoked either positively or negatively in this matter for the fundamental points of natural resource limitations to stand (although, interestingly, Malthus is very much misrepresented in the eco-deniers' use of his material).
You might as well let loose on me now - I won't be able to post again for over a week, so you should be able to vent quite a load of spleen in that time without my immediate replies.
I'm sure though that others here will baby-sit you for me, in the interim.
I'm sure though that others here will baby-sit you for me, in the interim.
No way.
I've spared myself the time-wasting, agonizing pain of accidentally receiving input when skimming comments from Neil and others like him.
I use [killfile].
Simple solution to simpleton gibberish.
Best,
D
BPL
Straw man argument. No one is saying the cure for AGW is "a UN led World Government." That's a right-wing paranoid fantasy.
No. It would be a straw man argument if I said that I was against acting on AGW because it would lead to a UN World Government.
I said that I would SUPPORT a UN World Government if I perceived AGW to be a significant enough threat and that was the best way to deal with it. I was trying to make the point that none of my personal political preferences are so important to me that I would let the planet fry, my great-grandchildren and hundreds of millions of humans perish.
bi,
"inactivist" is a better term. I will join you in trying to propagate it. But then, I was trying to push referring to the years 2001-2009 as "ought 1" etc. As eminently reasonable as that seemed (it worked 100 years ago), I failed.
Ahh, the entertainment never ends.
Neil says:
"Jeff's remark about the letter inviting people to sign the Oregon Petition not being "peer reviewed" shows that he has absorbed all the Luddite buzz words without understanding what peer review is. A peer reviewed petition is about as sensible as a well written hat. Unfortunately such buzz words are regularly used as a substitute for thought."
Which is as far as we know, correct. THe Oregon package included the form to sign up with, the letter from Seitz, and the review paper.
The review paper has not, to the best of my knowledge, been peer reviewed. Where was it published? Who reviewed it?
The answer appears to be nobody. Peer review is a specific process, which Jeff knows a great deal about, seeing as he was an Editor at Nature for a while....
Now, in order to advance whatever point you want to make, why don't you find out where the Oregon review was published, and whether or not it was properly peer reviewed.
For example, proper peer review involves being read by people who know the area of research. I would no more trust a cosmology paper that had been peer reviewed by a bunch of biologists, than I would a biology paper that had been reviewed by some cosmologists.
#22 z
.......by 550 ppm (the EU target, the most restrictive official target currently). Looking more likely all the time, 450 ppm, but I don't know if that's reached more than 50% penetrance of the AGW-believers yet. James Hansen recently is on record as saying 350. Yes, we are above that already.......
So the EU target is an upper limit.
I was looking for a lower bound as well, say a range 230ppm to 300ppm or something like that but it seems not.
I do understand the need to reduce pollution but in this case it would, for me at least, be useful to have a measurable target to aim for rather than just have people saying use less petrol or whatever the politicians and activist decide is bad for the hoi polloi to do that week.
Chris' Wills:
What's wrong with saving petrol? You don't get any benefits out of saving petrol? Like, monetary benefits? Does the Big Bad Wolf come out of bed to snatch away the money you saved from using less petrol?
Actually, Bill, I was using unbeliever in a slightly ironic effort to not cause too much offence and derail the thread; I usually use delusionist (Quiggin terminology: one who either believes or spreads delusions) or Adullamite.
But in answer to your question; your position seems reasonable to me, though I think the weight of evidence is against you in saying change will be minimal. But certainly the precise level of impact is harder to predict than that there will be an impact, and forms a legitimate area of disagreement. What gets my goat is people like the Laviosier institute claiming that the law of conservation of energy doesn't apply in the stratosphere.
Whether or not change is "catastrophic" is a complicated definitional question, since whether or not something is a catastrophe includes how well humanity (and the ecosystem) responds to the problem, eg an earthquake that in Japan would be serious but managable is a catastrophe in China. It would help the discussion if you would specify what you would consider catastrophic: an increase in sea level of X metres? rise in average temperature of Y degrees? Rise in extinction rates of Z%?
PS perhaps Bill's position qualifies him to be a Non-Placet rather than an Adullamite.
"Ahh, the entertainment never ends."
Indeed. Were I not familiar with this blog since back when, and had I only discovered the recent influx of new posters, I would suspect The Onion were involved somehow.
James,
It's not that I'm afraid to get into the gory details (well, I'll force myself to if enough people question my manhood). It's just that I'm not going to convince anyone here that I'm right. Also, it's rather pretentious to assume I have something to contribute when so many people with more knowledge and a higher I.Q. than I (and probably you) have devoted a significant portion of their lives to these questions and are still arguing with each other.
What interests me (and could actually accomplish something in a place such as this) are questions like: Do people arrive at their opinion about AGW because of their political affiliation? Or does the same worldview that led them to their politics lead them to their view on AGW? Are AGW proponents truly worshipers of Science? Or is it just because science happens to be on their side at the moment? (I had an analogy about the minimum wage that nearly brought a previous open thread to a halt until Tilo showed up and reinvigorated it). I'm also interested in seeing if I can convince some individual "alarmists" that a thoughtful, caring, rational person could actually hold a different opinion than theirs.
I'm also very interested in defining the arguments better. I read all the apostates (Singer, Lindzen, Micheals, Avery, Lonborg). I follow the CA, Climate Skeptic, Lucia, Niche Modeling and Pielke Jr blogs (along with Deltoid, Open Mind and RealClimate for balance). Everyone of those skeptics accepts that the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, that the greenhouse effect is real and that man is probably contributing to it's effect via CO2 emissions. Yet it seems that AGW proponents classify them all as "deniers". If there are blogs where idiots claim that the globe has not warmed (in the last 100 years) let me know where they are so that I can go over there and argue with them from time to time.
I'm tired of the arguments where one person says that the trend of the last 7 years has been negative and the other side says "Liar! The smoothed 15 year trends are positive". That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere. That's like me saying one baseball team has a great offense because of their high batting average and some one else says "Liar, they do not have a great offense because they don't score many runs". The proper argument is "what constitutes a great offense?", not yelling past each other by quoting different statistics as if everybody is in agreement on the basic question.
A strange thing just happened on bi's blog. Earlier in the day I followed his link here to his site, saw something interesting and posted a rather innocuous comment about "big business not truly being in favor of free markets".
Checking back a few minutes ago, I noticed he hadn't posted my comment but had posted his comment about my post (which he hadn't posted!) What's up with that?
> That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere.
The melting icecaps don't care about your "definition of terms".
I suppose your quibbling along the lines of Jennifer Marohasy shows just how "thoughtful, caring, rational" you are?
> Are AGW proponents truly worshipers of Science? Or is it just because science happens to be on their side at the moment?
We've already shown to you that there's _no consensus_ among economists on the minimum wage. But you just had to ignore the evidence.
> What's up with that?
You posted a rather "innocuous" talking point. At any rate, I reserve the right to be as blogfascist as I want, after all it's my own blog.
> The mysterious post-war ocean cooling is a glitch, a US-British team reports in a paper in this week's Nature. What most climate researchers were convinced was real is in fact "the result of uncorrected instrumental biases in the sea surface temperature record," they write. [...]
> How come? Almost all sea temperature measurements during the Second World War were from US ships. The US crews measured the temperature of the water before it was used to cool the ships engine. When the war was over, British ships resumed their own measurements, but unlike the Americans they measured the temperature of water collected with ordinary buckets. Wind blowing past the buckets as they were hauled on board slightly cooled the water samples. The 1945 temperature drop is nothing else than the result of the sudden but
uncorrected change from warm US measurements to cooler UK measurements, the team found.
Via Crooked Timber.
If Jeff does have the credentials mantioned then he knows perfectly well that what I said about peer review is correct. Peer review is a proces used ofr scientific papers. There are serious problems with peer review even there & it can be a method of preventing the publication of stuff that goes against the theories of those chosen to review. - instance the fact that Stephen McIntyre's criticsm of the Hockey stick as being mathematically rubbish, which is now accepted as mathematically entirely correct, could not get published & he had to put it out on the net. Peer reviewed criticisms of Lysenkoism were never published under Stalin which is not convincing proof that the theory was sound. In any csae per reviewed petitions, public opinion polls or suchlike are at best nonsensical & at worst an atack on freedom.
If Jeff really has the standing claimed then he knows this perfectly well & was not writing ignorantly but dishonestly, which is not better.
Sod your claim to have read the things you quoted me as having said merely, like your claim that bio-fuels receive absolutely zero government subsidy, represents the pinnacle of honesty to which the eco-fascist movement aspires - that is to say thit is a complete & deliberate lies.
Your claim that last year's production of bio-fuels would not have required subsidy on today's fuel prices & the subsidy therefore doesn't count is clearly dishonestly trying to justify the subsidies you are on record as saying odn't exist. It is the nature of the universe that cause precedes effect. It is probably also untrue (you give no evidence) since a number of experts have pointed out that since bio-fuel maize, like the rest of it, is grown using fertiliser made from oil, the effect of producing such fuels is not to significantly cut oil use & may be to increase it.
Dano's response to my points is at least honest - he doesn't read facts he doesn't like & therefore is secure in his position ;-)
James since you use pejorative terms I trust I have your word that you more than equally approve the use of the term eco-Nazi. More than because it is proven that the "environmentalist" movement have inded supported killings on a scale worse than Hitler wheras your term "delusionist" presupposes that those doubting the catastrophic warming claims are the ones labouring under the delusion. Do you really claim that McIntyre's mathematical dissection of Mann's Hockey Stick was using "delusional" mathematics while Mann's was entirely correct? If not perhaps (or indeed if so) you had better find an insult that does not apply to yourself.
#37 Posted by: bi -- IJI
Chris' Wills:
What's wrong with saving petrol? You don't get any benefits out of saving petrol? Like, monetary benefits?
Of course I do, I did mention that I was against pollution and for me being wasteful of resources is a pollution creator, that isn't the point.
Personal advantage is a good reason for not using more resouces than you require, though I haven't seen it argued for much. As so many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets I doubt that they'll argue for it, well they might suggest it for the masses but not for themselves (offsets are not a valid arguement for rich people and/or politicians to continue polluting asexcessively as they do).
Does the Big Bad Wolf come out of bed to snatch away the money you saved from using less petrol?
Well the big bad wolf, 1st Lord of the Treasury, will I'm sure find some way to punish me for being frugal.
He does often lie and claim that all his new taxes are green and for the good of the planet.
Oh yes, my original question was to find out if there was a target range for what is desirable (justification for what is desirable would also be a useful thing to know), otherwise when will we know we've achieved a viable solution.
Bill Bodell posts:
If there are blogs where idiots claim that the globe has not warmed (in the last 100 years) let me know where they are so that I can go over there and argue with them from time to time.
I'm tired of the arguments where one person says that the trend of the last 7 years has been negative and the other side says "Liar! The smoothed 15 year trends are positive". That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere. That's like me saying one baseball team has a great offense because of their high batting average and some one else says "Liar, they do not have a great offense because they don't score many runs". The proper argument is "what constitutes a great offense?", not yelling past each other by quoting different statistics as if everybody is in agreement on the basic question.
It's not a semantic argument, Bill. One side is right and the other is wrong. The trend is up. If you think it's down, it's not a question of you having a different view of things. It's a question of your not being able to do math. There aren't two valid opinions on whether 2 + 2 = 7 or not. One opinion is right and the other is wrong.
Neil posts:
it is proven that the "environmentalist" movement have inded supported killings on a scale worse than Hitler
Neil, are you some kind of outpatient? That idiotic idea is "proven" the way crashed aliens at Roswell is "proven."
"And following on from that aforementioned post, it seems that just about all of the 'Peak Oil' denialists have suddenly become very quiet, what with the recent increases in the price of oil."
To a very large extent this group overlapped with the "The Iraqis will greet us as liberators" camp and the "Al gore is fat therefore global warming is a One World Government UN Socialist conspiracy" group.
It's rather touching that having been proven spectacularly wrong twice, they still remain absolutely confident in their own infallibility on the third topic.
"Oh yes, my original question was to find out if there was a target range for what is desirable (justification for what is desirable would also be a useful thing to know), otherwise when will we know we've achieved a viable solution."
The objective here is to try and prevent rapid harmful climate change (yes climate change is a natural and unavoidable phenomena - so are floods and epidemics).
So basically in the long term we probably want to keep CO2 levels somewhere between the pre-industrial average of around 280 PPM and the danger level of 350 nominated by Hansen.
Fortunately, the long term for us is on the order of 50 or 60 years. By the end of that period, we will need to have virtually eliminated anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. This implies a reduction per year of around 2% of current emissions.
Taking into account the likelihood of continuing increases in the developing world for the next couple of decades and population growth, the developed world probably needs to make cuts on the order of 3-5% per year.
For the average Australian or American, that translates to roughly 600 kg to 1 tonne of Carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
The current price of a tonne of carbon dioxide reduction credits on the European market is around 26 Euroes -ca. US$43 - A$45.
Barti it has been proven that approx 70 million people have died of malaria subsequest to the environmentalist banning of it. You are taking advantage of the fact that debate has been prevented on that on the previous thread & that some here will not know of it.
I suggest anybody doubting that you are merely displaying the standard of honesty to be expected from eco-Nazis checks out www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
Ian peak oil has been predicted repeatedly since the 1850s so you are probably correct that most of the earlier "denialists" have been silenced by time. However I challenge you to name any prominent current "denialist" who now is silent. The peak, as it were, of peak oil scares was about 1970 when Professor Hibbert & the Limits to Growth people were saying it had arrived 7 we would be out of oil by about 1990. Since you are clearly proud not to be a "denialist" perhaps you could amuse us by telling what happened when the oil ran out in 1990.
The fact is that eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true. Despite bluster no eco-fascist has ever been able to produce a counter example.
Ian your 2nd post asserts that we "probably" want to keep CO2 levels down because it will prevent what you define as "climate change" but was traditionally known as "waether". Perhaps you would have the courtesy to show what evidence there is that traditional weather (as opposed to the catastrophic warming claims which you implicitly distance yourself from) will cease if we get CO2 down to what may be the levels at which we always had weather.
CO2 does have the beneficial effect of improving crop growth - before demanding we stop it you should, if being honest, at the very least, have firm proof of some harm to more than match its benefit. I could also point out that if your peak oil scare were true then it would be impossible for the catastrophic warming/climate change by 2100 caused by the burning of this disappeared oil to be true. However poking holes in a string vest is non-productive & it is obvious that mere facts are irrelevant to the true believers.
BPL,
Surely there is a recent tempurature trend (year, months) that is negative.
The arguement is actually about what length of time is required for a trend to contain useful data. Correct?
A basketball player may well score 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 14 points over a series of 8 games. Saying that the trend is positive for the last 2 games and negative for the last 8 are both true statements. The debate should be about why a 8 game trend is a better method of evaluating the player's performance than a two game trend. In this case, I'd obviously argue that the 8 game trend is a better measure. However, noting the 2 game trend, I'd feel better about the player's performance in the next game than if the data had been 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4.
bi,
At any rate, I reserve the right to be as blogfascist as I want, after all it's my own blog.
Very true.
However, I would have thought that one of the primary purposes of blogging would be to get people to visit one's site.
An interesting explanation of today's gas prices by a leading energy expert (and, no, it's not "Peak Oil")
> As so many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets I doubt that they'll argue for it
Oh, so because "many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets", therefore "saving petrol" is _merely_ something that the high and mighty want you to do. Someone's been working too much on the Cathedral of Hate...
> The arguement is actually about what length of time is required for a trend to contain useful data. Correct?
Yes, the kind of things that have some relation to melting icecaps, massive flooding and all that. It's not some time period which you just make up from thin air.
Neil,
You make a good point about previous claims that "we are running out of oil" being wrong and I particularly like
I could also point out that if your peak oil scare were true then it would be impossible for the catastrophic warming/climate change by 2100 caused by the burning of this disappeared oil to be true
But then you go and talk about "eco-nazis" killing 70 million people by banning DDT (which is provocative and you know everyone here will disagree with) and everyone can dismiss you as a troll (including me).
You need to be more selective.
My advice to everyone contributing to this blog: steer clear of Neils infantile remarks. This 'eco-Nazi' stuff he perpetually peddles is bad enough; its also clear that his sources of information are the crap dished out from corporate-funded lobbying groups, think tanks and the like. Neil, its clear you don't read primary information. You do not peruse scientific journals. Your posts are an affront to intelligent discourse. You make frankly stupid remarks such as "eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true".
Pure drivel. Garbage is too good of a word for it. This isn't science. Its comic level book analysis. There are many, many examples where local and widespread environmental destruction wrought by humans has has huge economic (and social) consequences. The expansion of deserts is one; aquifer depletion is another; wetland loss and (hyper) eutrophication is still another. Still more: upland forest destruction and serious floods (this has occurred in many places e.g. Nicaragua 1998, Hurricane Mitch; I could cite dozens of others). Forests play a key role in providing flood control services. Utter over-exploitation of coastal marine fisheries and concomitant economic and social collapse in fishing communities. Degradation of soil fertility and effects on crop production. Again, countless examples. Effects of invasive species on recipient ecosystems: costs on loss of terrestrial productivity estimated at many billions of dollars per year. Damage to nature's pest control services (through a reduction in trophic complexity) due to habitat loss, pesticide overuse etc. also estimated to cost society billions of dollar p.a. The list goes on and on and on. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are many examples where ecosystems and the services they freely provide have been seriously damaged or destroyed. Our civilization exists as it does because of an array of environmental subsidies that are being seriously degraded. The cost or losing these services is already staggering and is increasing. There are already millions of environmental refugees around the world and this is set to worsen as humans continue to simplify nature. Clearly you can't see the wood from the trees. Reading your appalling posts makes me realize just how limited many people's understanding of the current predicament is.
"Barti it has been proven that approx 70 million people have died of malaria subsequest to the environmentalist banning of it."
Yes and hundreds of millions have died of heart disease subsequent to the cancellation of the Howdy Doody show.
Correlation does not prove causation.
"I could also point out that if your peak oil scare were true then it would be impossible for the catastrophic warming/climate change by 2100 caused by the burning of this disappeared oil to be true."
You could,of course, in doing so you would be exposing yourself as a total ignoramus.
"Peak Oil" doesn't imply that oil will disappear tomorrow - it implies that oil production is likely to remain static before gradually declining.
You also appear to be unaware that there are other fossil fuels besides oil.
The most likely response to rising oil prices in the absence of environmental restraints would be to produce synthetic fuel from liquified coal. While there isn't as much commercially extractable coal as you probably think, there is enough to keep carbon dioixde levels rising for decades.
"PARIS (AP) -- A leading global energy monitor said Thursday it is worried that demand for oil will outstrip world supply and is preparing a landmark revision of its closely watched forecasts.
The International Energy Agency is studying depletion rates at about 400 oil fields in its first-ever study of world oil supply, said chief economist Fatih Birol.
"We are entering a new world energy order, " Birol told The Associated Press.
Market analysts call the Paris-based IEA the world's most reliable independent source of oil information, and its new forecasts are likely to further upset markets. Oil prices hit an all-time high Thursday above $135 a barrel before falling back.
Birol said the study, which will be released in November, was prompted by concern about the volatility of world oil markets and uncertainty about supply levels.
"The prices are very high, and demand did not respond in the last few years as much as one would have expected," Birol said. "The growth in terms of production was not great. We did not see enough investment." "
I'm not claiming this to be the "truth" (I only started exploring the issue yesterday), but it looked pretty convincing and the guy has a big reputation. I'll check out your link.
Ian,
What's the AGW proponent attitude towards high gas prices? It would seem that if they weren't already moving up on their own, you'd want to force them up to curtail demand and make alternative fuels more attractive. If you believe that we are running low on oil, then high futures prices are exactly what one would expect. This would discourage current consumption and spur investments in alternatives without even having governments involved. If I were convinced that AGW was a serious problem and that "Peak Oil" was a reality, this is what I'd want. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be painful, but it would be necessary.
#56 Posted by: bi -- IJI
Oh, so because "many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets", therefore "saving petrol" is merely something that the high and mighty want you to do. Someone's been working too much on the Cathedral of Hate...
Please advise which class in reading non-comprehension you attended? I'm guessing that you came out with at least a D.Phil in "Incomprehension of English and arrogant assumptions".
You really are being an arse, you assume that I pollute excessivelly even though I've written that I try not to be wasteful.
Even though petrol here is less than 11p (23UScents)/litre , and my company pays for it, I don't drive a fuel guzzler.
My secondary point, I did notice that you ignored my primary point about having a target to aim for, was that many who are espousing the need for reductions in pollution (Nota Bene: I don't disagree with reducing pollution) are themselves high level polluters and resource hogs and so are not likely to convince others of what they claim to hold true.
Do what I say not what I do, seems to be their rule.
It doesn't make what they say untrue, just that they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their consumption if they don't practice what they preach.
Oh yes, I do think that offsetting in't a useful tool in reducing pollution and that carbon trading is wrong.
#56 Posted by: bi -- IJI
The arguement is actually about what length of time is required for a trend to contain useful data. Correct?
Yes, the kind of things that have some relation to melting icecaps, massive flooding and all that. It's not some time period which you just make up from thin air.
Not sure who you are replying to here, nothing I said.
Chris' Wills:
> It doesn't make what they say untrue, just that they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their consumption if they don't practice what they preach.
Ah, so you're a concern troll. Obviously, we need advice on how to, well, improve our activist campaigns. As evidenced by the fact that one of the "high and mighty" who "use private jets" has been so, um, _unsuccessful_ that lots of people feel the need to sling mud at him, to the point that someone formulated a law parallel to Godwin's Law in his name, and now the phrase "none dare utter his name" apparently means that the named person is very unsuccessful and needs advice from a concern troll.
Actually, Frank, we should extend the GoreWins law analogy a little further.
Because some leaders aren't able to keep it in their pants, they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their philandering if they don't practice what they preach.
Because some leaders aren't able to keep weight off, they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their weight too if they don't practice what they preach.
Because some leaders aren't able to hire competent staff, they are unlikely to convince others to hire well if they don't practice what they preach.
See? Personal accountability and ownership society? Bah! Just phrases!
Pfffft.
Best,
D
Posted by: bi -- IJI
Ah, so you're a concern troll.
If that belief floats your boat go with it.
Obviously, we need advice on how to, well, improve our activist campaigns.
Perchance you don't, however you don't do anti-pollution causes any favours by being hypocritical in your actions.
Oh, who is this we you write of?
Does it only include those who agree with your method off addressing a problem?
As evidenced by the fact that one of the "high and mighty" who "use private jets" has been so, um, unsuccessful that lots of people feel the need to sling mud at him,
Which one of the high & mighty?
to the point that someone formulated a law parallel to Godwin's Law in his name, and now the phrase "none dare utter his name" apparently means that the named person is very unsuccessful and needs advice from a concern troll.
Utter whose name?
Just because someone has had limited success doesn't make it wrong to suggest that their actions belie their words.
Talking the Talk is easy.
It is interesting that you seem to accept and see nothing wrong with hypocritical actions in those who you think are part of your we.
#51 Posted by: Ian Gould
"Oh yes, my original question was to find out if there was a target range for what is desirable (justification for what is desirable would also be a useful thing to know), otherwise when will we know we've achieved a viable solution."
The objective here is to try and prevent rapid harmful climate change (yes climate change is a natural and unavoidable phenomena - so are floods and epidemics).
So basically in the long term we probably want to keep CO2 levels somewhere between the pre-industrial average of around 280 PPM and the danger level of 350 nominated by Hansen.
Thank you for giving an answer to my question.
Fortunately, the long term for us is on the order of 50 or 60 years. By the end of that period, we will need to have virtually eliminated anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. This implies a reduction per year of around 2% of current emissions.
Two further questions, if you don't mind.
1) Why is it called Anthropogenic rather than simply Human?
Yes I do know what anthropogenic means, just that human
seems more straightforward
2) How will we eliminate Human produced CO2?
Is the intention that we go full on fission or possibly
fusion for our energy needs.
We can hardly maintain our civilisation without a lot of energy and I don't see wave/wind/solar taking up the slack anytime soon also they have environmental consequences of their own.
We also, probably, need a liquid fuel of some sort and to date ethanol seems to have problems, unless we can produce it without diverting foodstuff or ripping up forests
Chris, the long and the short of it is that we can't make the necessary CO2 cuts unless we change our lifestyle over the next decade or two.
By changing commuting patters we can greatly reduce CO2 from it, as well as by encouraging more efficient vehicles. By using solar, wind, wave, etc, as well as some nuclear, we have every prospect of producing all the energy we need without using coal and oil and gas.
And yes, some sort of liquid fuel will be required in the medium term. Hopefully battery technology will continue to improve, although obviously it requires more research.
"What's the AGW proponent attitude towards high gas prices? It would seem that if they weren't already moving up on their own, you'd want to force them up to curtail demand and make alternative fuels more attractive. If you believe that we are running low on oil, then high futures prices are exactly what one would expect."
By pure coincidence Bill I've set out my position on that over at johnquiggin.com just recently:
The short version, flat production and surging demand have already pushed oil prices to the point where in the medium term we are likely to see significant reductions in oil use without the need for a carbon tax.
I'm talking here specifically in the Australian context, we pay around A$1.50-1.60 a litre which translates to around US$7 if I've done the math correctly. While the fuel excise (roughly equivalent to your gas tax) is a fixed amount GST (roughly equivalent to your sales tax) is also charged on the basis of 10% of the sale price so the tax on petrol here is going up right along with the retail price.
(Back when petrol was under $1 a litre and I was working for the Queensland government trying to kick-start the local fuel ethanol market I advocated a carbon tax on petrol of around 5-10 cents a litre to make ethanol more competitive.)
What I would like to see is governments using some of the revenue they're already getting fuel taxation to reduce demand and make it easier for people to cope with the high prices. That means expanding public transport (especially here in Australia in outer metropolitan low-income suburbs). It also means (in Australia) matching the sort of programs already in the US for tax breaks for hybrids and other highly efficient vehicles.
"Oh yes, I do think that offsetting in't a useful tool in reducing pollution and that carbon trading is wrong."
Thats nice.
I hope you realise that roughly 99% of professional economists disagree with you.
"1) Why is it called Anthropogenic rather than simply Human? Yes I do know what anthropogenic means, just that human seems more straightforward"
Answer 1: Because smartarses see "Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions" and start in with jokes about farting and making exhaling illegal.
Answer 2: Scientists and bureaucrats like to use big words to make themselves seem clever.
"2) How will we eliminate Human produced CO2? Is the intention that we go full on fission or possibly fusion for our energy needs."
At the risk of sounding like I'm passing the buck, my background is as an economist. My basic answer is that we include the full cost of environmental harm in the market price of goods and services and let the market find the cheapest way of minimising that harm.
There are multiple different technologies which are reduce emissions and I think we'll end up using a mix of them.
Nuclear is a lot more problematic than many people assume - not because of the environmental problems but because of supply constraints, construction times and proliferation concerns. (Hands up everyone who wants North Korea, Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe to get breeder reactor technology.) I don;t doubt that we'll be building more nuclear reactors I just don;t think we can build enough of them. (Plus as you mention we'll most likely need a liquid fuel, something which nuclear can't really provide.)
Fusion would be great - if we can ever get it to work. But even if we have the first fusion reactors twenty years for now, it'll take at least another 20-30 years before we've built enough of them to make a real difference. They're also likely to be huge and extremely expensive. If we present China and India with a choice between cheap dirty coal and very expensive clean fusion they'll likely go with coal.
So roughly speaking my preferred option (and again my real answer is give the market the correct price signals to solve the problem) is:
- conservation to reduce our demand wherever possible. Cuts of 20-30% are probably achievable.
- optimising the efficiency of fossil fuel use (there's a huge discrepancy between the efficiency of the best and worst fossil-powered power plants. We could probably cut emissions from the power sector by 90-95% while continuing to derive 20% or our power from fossil fuels.)
- more nukes where they make economic sense
- aggressively expanding the use of renewable energy. (Bearing in mind that a wind farm takes 18 months from the signing of contracts to first power delivery while a nuke plant takes 10 years plus. Also I'm a lot more comfortable with the thought of Robert Mugabe or Hugo Chavez running fuel ethanol plants rather than nuclear power plants.)
- expand the natural sinks for carbon dioxide. Something like 10% of global emissions of carbon dioxide are associated with tropic deforestation (and the peat fires that follow when wetlands in countries like Indonesia are clear-felled and drained).
- Sequestration and atmospheric removal. There are significant problems with current sequestration technologies but the technology continues to advance. Assuming we can find cheap ways to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, I'm not a big fan of underground storage. I'd rather use nuclear or renewable energy sources to convert the carbon dioxide into chemicals like ethylene or into polycarbonate plastic.
There are also several promising proposals for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (again using nuclear energy, renewables or waste process heat) and converting it into hydrocarbon fuels. I mention this last because I think it's the least developed approach at this point. We will probably solve the problem within the 50-60 year timeframe but we may not and we need to start ASAP.
Anyway here's a link to what I think is the most promising of these proposals:
Yeah Steve the Bolt trolls have no way to argue against rising CO2 levels and the radiative properties of CO2.
I had some a while back change from GW denier to AGW deniers. They now dispute the man made part of AGW as a natural CO2 cycle ... But they cannot dispute CO2 levels are rising.
Just keep linking in your posts to CO2 monitoring stations. Oh yeah NASA stats and satellite images gets up their noses too. They just turn abusive which means they have lost the argument and have nothing else to argue with. :-) Have fun.
For everybody who says I make some good points but should be more emollient & make a greater effort not to so thoroughly disagree we get somebody like Jeff #58 who comes along with:
"You make frankly stupid remarks such as "eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true".
That remark is demonstrably true.
Frankly all the "worldwide catastrophes" he then produces are not worlwide catastrophes, most of them have happened here & there from time to time back to at least the time of ancient Assyria, which pre-dates the formation of the Green Party. Even more tellingly most of them have been unmentioned or a the very end of the list of scare stories produced by the movement - not being scary enough & thus politically useful.
This is an indication that as a movement it is not interested in real environmentalism but in using scare propaganda to enforce Luddite views which cannot stand on their own.
#59 if you are relying on use of DDT being unrelated to levels of malaria good luck to you.
#73 says
"Nuclear is a lot more problematic than many people assume - not because of the environmental problems but because of supply constraints, construction times and proliferation concerns. (Hands up everyone who wants North Korea, Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe to get breeder reactor technology.) I don;t doubt that we'll be building more nuclear reactors I just don;t think we can build enough of them. (Plus as you mention we'll most likely need a liquid fuel, something which nuclear can't really provide.)
Fusion would be great - if we can ever get it to work."
Fusion would, obviously, have all these problems (we would probaly have to go to the Moon to get enough deuterium. Morevover they are not such problems with fission. Uranium is, as metals go, not particularly rare in the Earth's crust & thorium which we could also use is even more common. It has been calculated that merely by taking uranium from sea water it would be possible to keep our current nuclear power going till the sSun explodes. We do not do this because there are easier & more plentiful sources. Reactor building times, in western countries, are largely paperwork & regulation - they can & have been built in 3 1/2 years.
The real technical difference between fusion & fission & the reason the Luddites love the former is because fusion isn't a practical answer currently & will not be for decades. If presented with a working fusion system they would denounce it.
"If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.
- Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22
74 the fact that sceptics do not dispute that CO2 is rising merely proves that we have a far greater respect for the truth than those eco-fascists who find it possible to deny any link between preventing the use of DDT & malaria deaths. The observed fact is that supporters of this movement are capable of denying ANY fact & pushing almost any lie. This may be a strength in the same way the Goebbels willingness to tell a "big lie" was, but it is not admirable.
However proving CO2 is rising does not prove CO2 rise is harmful - in fact we know that, in terms of crop growth, it is beneficial.
Neil writes:
Barti it has been proven that approx 70 million people have died of malaria subsequest to the environmentalist banning of it.
And 200 million people died in the 20th century subsequent to Cavour's 1901 trip to the Moon. Plainly those deaths were caused by Cavourite.
Chris Wills writes:
We can hardly maintain our civilisation without a lot of energy and I don't see wave/wind/solar taking up the slack anytime soon also they have environmental consequences of their own.
That's like saying boxing gloves are just as dangerous as hydrogen bombs because both are weapons.
For everybody who says I make some good points but should be more emollient & make a greater effort not to so thoroughly disagree we get somebody like Jeff #58 who comes along with:
Neil, i do NOT want to disturb your dreams and fantasies, but you do NOT MAKE GOOD POINTS. NEVER EVER.
and if you have the feeling, that a significant number of responses here said you did, then i would ask you to REREAD them carefully!
#72 Posted by: Ian Gould:
#
"Oh yes, I do think that offsetting in't a useful tool in reducing pollution and that carbon trading is wrong."
Thats nice.
I hope you realise that roughly 99% of professional economists disagree with you.
So 99% of economists:
1) are happy that the rich can continue to waste resources whilst the poor will have to carry the burden.
2) pleased to see another way for banks/exchanges to make money trading in hot air.
Why am I not suprised.
There is also an ethical dimension to this; shafting the poor and middle classes may be OK for economists but if this reduction is for the good of all then all should share the burden.
#77
Posted by: Barton Paul Levenson
Chris Wills writes:
We can hardly maintain our civilisation without a lot of energy and I don't see wave/wind/solar taking up the slack anytime soon also they have environmental consequences of their own.
That's like saying boxing gloves are just as dangerous as hydrogen bombs because both are weapons.
Not quite.
The Severn Barrier wasn't built because it would have destroyed the mud flats that support wading birds both native and migratory.
Thankfully it was stopped because of the massive environmental damage it would have done.
In that case we (we meaning the RSPB and other wildlife society members) could show the outcome and so it failed to pass the public enquiry, even though it was backed by some self proclaimed eco-friendly people.
Today, who knows if it would be stopped. Just shout that it's green and will stop global warming and sod the wildlife.
We don't know what changes to weather patterns the use of large scale wind farms and tidal generators will have (they extract energy so either reduce the air/water temperature or reduce its speed) if we have enough to replace electricty from coal.
I know that large scale wind farms are a visual blight and the noise is annoying, so will most likely have to be built offshore unless we are willing to forgo the pleasure of visiting the countryside.
I do like the idea of tidal generators, though they tend to be more costly to build and the local effect on the sea isn't known.
Geo-thermal also appears fairly safe, could even use geo-thermal to create hydrogen and use this as a fuel. The Icelandic goverment was considering this.
Solar? How many acres will need to be covered up? What effect will shadowing large swathes of desert have? If built into houses then seems OK though not very practical if you live in a high rise.
Bio-fuels are, at present a poor joke. You do realise that rain forest in Indonesia has been destroyed so that palm oil can be produced to great bio-ethanol, very environmentally conscience. Food (i.e. maize) to fuel is a sick joke.
Now we should try a variety of things but to assume that they don't have downsides is silly.
"There is also an ethical dimension to this; shafting the poor and middle classes may be OK for economists but if this reduction is for the good of all then all should share the burden."
It has nothing to do with "shafting the poor and the middle class" and in fact has everything to with protecting them.
But since you're obviously content to revel in your ignorance I see no point in spoiling your fun.
#73 Ian Gould......Nuclear is a lot more problematic than many people assume - not because of the environmental problems but because of supply constraints, construction times
Then shouldn't we be building them now.
Especialy as the expertise to build them is growing old in the UK and USA, but the French could help.
and proliferation concerns.(Hands up everyone who wants North Korea, Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe to get breeder reactor technology.)
Why would that be a problem? :o)
Seriously, it does seem a little odd to say that it is OK for some and not for others. The concern about A-bombs and dirty bombs is another matter and perhaps they wouldn't use breeder reactors.
Fusion would be great - if we can ever get it to work. But even if we have the first fusion reactors twenty years for now, it'll take at least another 20-30 years before we've built enough of them to make a real difference. They're also likely to be huge and extremely expensive. If we present China and India with a choice between cheap dirty coal and very expensive clean fusion they'll likely go with coal.
Just because India and China won't play doesn't mean that we shouldn't.
I didn't copy and paste all the bit about price options, I just wonder if artificial pricing is appropriate as it is subject to political whims and fashions.
It does, also, tend to hit the poor more heavilly than the wealthy.
Oh yes, sequestration seems an excellent idea especially if we somehow use it to create liquid fuels; possibly by pumping it into sealed greenhouses and force growing soft plants that we can convert into fuel.
#81 Posted by: Ian Gould
It has nothing to do with "shafting the poor and the middle class" and in fact has everything to with protecting them.
But since you're obviously content to revel in your ignorance I see no point in spoiling your fun.
So please explain, I am interested in knowing how higher costs protects the poor.
No snark intended, just seems strange to me.
Thank you 76 & 78 . You demonstrate exactly how uninterested in any fact based discussion the eco-fascists are & how moderate my description of you is.
It is clear that you know perfectly well that your case cannot stand on or indeed against fact & choose the opposite tactic.
The problem with tidal is that like most "renewables" it is intermittent, though it is predictable whenn it will go off, which is an improvement on windmills.
Why is it called Anthropogenic rather than simply Human? Yes I do know what anthropogenic means, just that human seems more straightforward
Why do they call it philately instead of stamp-collecting? I don't know. Maybe you should ask your English teacher.
"Just because India and China won't play doesn't mean that we shouldn't."
Yes but we are dealing with a global problem and need global solutions.
If fusion is unaffordable for the 2.3 billion people living in India and China then by itself it can't solve the problem.
We could convert the west at great expense to fusion only to find that the continuing growth in fossil fuel use in India and China means GHG emissions continue to rise.
If the "environmentalists" honestly believed in catastrophic warming they would enthusiasticaly support fission which is CO2 free (at least as much as fusion would be & moreso than windmills).
This is a major test of whether they at least honestly believe the story or are Luddites deliberately lying. Most individuals & virtually all eco-fascist organisations fail it.
If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid. This could have been done years ago. The cruelty & pure evil of the eco-fascist movement in pointlessly depriving the world of such wealth must be seen to be believed.
True to his samurai code, Neil Craig continues to use "eco-Nazi" or "eco-fascist" in each and every one of his posts.
> If the "environmentalists" honestly believed in catastrophic warming they would enthusiasticaly support fission which is CO2 free
Yeah, let's just solve all our problems with this nu-cu-ler stuff. Don't like Saddam, nuke 'em; don't like insects, nuke 'em; don't like CO2, nuke 'em. Otherwise you're letting the terrorists win.
Ever wonder why libertarians keep saying that government is just "men with guns"? Because that's what they themselves think government should be like. Government equals nukes. All problems solved with nukes, nuclear energy, and nuclear waste.
"If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid. This could have been done years ago. The cruelty & pure evil of the eco-fascist movement in pointlessly depriving the world of such wealth must be seen to be believed."
Let's see - most of the nuclear reactors being built around the world are, in fact, being built in Chin, India and those other poor deprived victims of the dreaded eco-nazis in the developing world.
This is just another illustration (like his daft earlier equation of oil with the totality of fossil fuels) that Craig is quite genuinely and quite simply out of touch with reality.
If he can't be relied upon to know basic, undisputed publicly available facts, why on Earth would anyone rely upon his bizarre conspiracy claims about far more complex and disputed issues?
It's also worthwhile to note his reading comprehension skills, I wrote:
"If fusion is unaffordable for the 2.3 billion people living in India and China then by itself it can't solve the problem."
Not fission, Neil, FUSION do you understand the difference?
I'm also fascinated that the man ranting about Nazis and socialist believes that if global warming is real the solution isn't to be found through market economics but through massive foreign aid hand outs.
(I'm actually in favor of increasing foreign aid but I'm not the one posturing as the last defender of free enterprise against the eco-nazi hordes.)
"Maybe we could talk about how women's suffrage has increased the size of government and is pretty much responsible for our (the USA's anyway" enormous debt? And it gives Tim another chance to take his stick to Lott and his questionable number crunching."
Or maybe we could talk about how most of that enormous debt has been incurred by Republican administrations.
Waddaya say, Ben, are you willing to give up your vote for the sake of good fiscal management?
Sortition asked these questions about offsets and emissions some time ago on another thread and I've been lazy and never got back to him.
The issues involved overlap with Chris willis' question above so maybe it'll go some way towards answering Chris.
From the Earlier discussion:
Sortion posted:
>Ian: "we appear to be endelessly confusing offsets and emissions trading here. THe two concepts are actually quite distinct.
I responded:
>As far as I can tell, cap-and-trade is an offset scheme with central accounting and reliable monitoring. Is there a more fundamental difference?
Could you respond?
Secondly, you wrote
>grandfathering (issuing free permits to existing polluters) is not an innate element of an emissions trading scheme.
I responded:
>If there are no free permits for existing polluters, then what is there to trade? If there is no grandfathering then polluters have to buy pollution permits from the government pool of permits rather than from each other and no trade is going on. In that case, if a polluter reduces the amount of pollution it produces, then it simply buys less permits - it does not sell the reduction to someone else.
Simple definitions:
Emissions trading is a system where the regulator decides upfront what the maximum acceptable level of pollution is and issues (either freely or for a price) permits which make it legal to emit up to that level of pollution.
Offsets refers to a system where people are paid to reduce the amount of pollution being emitted or, in the case of carbon dioxide, to enhance processes which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
You can have offsets without emissions trading - see for example the various voluntary offset programs already under way. Governments also can and do fund offsets of various sorts - see for example the US government tax break for hybrids, the Australian government solar panel rebate or the Renewable Energy certificate programs in various countries.
Emissions trading can operate without offsets - if a company can reduce its own emissions for less than the price to it of an emission permit it will do so.
Since this answer is likely to be very long i'm goign to break it up into bits.
Here endeth the first lesson.
I tried using quotes on that last message and screwed it up - blog comments really are remarkably primitive compared with message boards.
Anyway, moving on:
Here are two examples of real-life emissions trading schemes. (Libertarians and socialists alike will of course dismiss this as a pack of lies since they already know that trading schemes actually involve either bloated capitalist exploiters or evil bureaucrats raping babies and eating puppies. Or is it vice versa?)
First we have the sulphur dioxide emission scheme in the US.
Emission permits were initially issued free to utilities - based on an estimate of what current best practice for their industry was.
The EPA kept back a reserve of permits and offered to buy or sell permits for a fixed price of $1500 per ton of SO2 emissions (adjusted annually for inflation). Companies that failed to surrender sufficient permits at the end of the year were fined $2000 (also inflation-adjusted per tonne).
This system meant companies that reduced their emissions knew they could get a minimum price of $1500 for each credit. In practice, the EPA stopped selling permits directly because the market price for permits was consistently below $1500 per tonne.
New plants were only allowed to enter the scheme if they demonstrated their emissions were lower than those permitted to equivalent existing plants AND they were required to buy permits to cover the emissions.
The results:
Emissions were cut by significantly more than the program's initial target. Emissiosn are now capped at just under nine million tons per year - 40% less than 1990 levels despite economic growth and growth in industrial output in the mean time. Acid rain in the eastern US and Canadian has been reduced by over 60%.
Industry claimed the program would cost tens of billions a year, the EPA said it would cost them $4-8 billion a year.
The EPA was wrong - the actual cost is $1-2 billion a year and the estimated benefits are over $3 billion a year. The program has also stimulated billions of dollars of investment in energy conservation and has led to significant reductions in other pollutants including mercury and greenhouse gases.
One reason for the success of the scheme in reduction pollution even more than expected is that thousands of smaller plants that were not originally required to take part joined voluntarily because they saw they could make a profit by reducing their emissions and selling the permits.
So much for the rightwingers' claims about how the massive compliance costs of emission trading would stifle business - businesses rushed to sign up voluntarily because they saw, correctly, that they could make a profit by doing so.
Industry also supported the extension of the scheme and the expansion of the scheme to include nitrous oxide -emissions of which are now falling rapidly as a result.
(The socialists will of course take the fact that emissions trading saves money and is supported by industry as proof that its evil.
To them I say: according to Marx the base determines the superstructure. Therefore changes in the superstructure can not alter the base. So go read your Little Red Book and wait for the mass consciousness of the workers and peasants to reach the point where they spontaneously rise up and overthrow the bourgeousie.
See, I understand Marxist theory better than most self-proclaimed Marxists. That's why I recognised its internal contradictions when I was about 16 and stopped being a Marxist. The experience was quite similar to the one I had at about age six when I stopped believing in God.
Coming up to the nd of the second bit -
Key points for Sortition - the penalty for noncompliance is set above the market price to promote trading; new entrants are forced to buy permits ensuring a source of demand; the opt-in provisions allows smaller firms to be involved where it is economic to do so.
Finally, if anyone wants to argue that the carbon dioxide market is fundamentally different to the sulphur dioxide feel free to do so. But "it's bigger!" is not a sufficient argument.
I was going to write about the EU carbon dioxide trading scheme but I think instead I'll write a little about marginalism in economic theory and call it a night. (That way the libertarians can stock up on crosses and garlic as they prepare to face the twin horrors of Europeans and emissions trading.)
For example, the market price of a product isn't determined by the average cost to make it or by what the average consumer is prepared ot pay for it. It's determined by the interaction between supply and demand where supply is determined by the cost of producing one more unit of the good (marginal cost) and demand is determined by the maximum amount any single individual is prepared to pay for an additional unit (marginal utility). In the simplest approximation, the market price is where marginal utility and margin cost meet - produce output further (assuming rising marginal cost of production which is the standard assumption and we're talking gross approximation here)and no-one will be prepared to buy that additional unit at a price profitable to the maker.
Now let's talk about the marginal cost of pollution abatement.
Different companies produce different amounts of pollution. It may come as a surprise to some in the audience that this isn't primarily due to the fact that some of them are virtuous and some wicked.
It has more to do with the fact they produce different products in different ways using different techniques and equipment.
All of which means their marginal cost of pollution mitigation is variable.
Efficient well-run plants with responsible management will tend to have lower pollution levels than other plants in the same industry.
But because they've already done most of the cheap, obvious things to reduce their emissions, further emission reductions can be expensive.
Perversely, plants which are not efficient not well-run and not run by responsible managers will often have lower marginal costs of pollution mitigation precisely because of those factors.
Now let's imagine we order two plants to cut their emissions by a fixed percentage - say 10%. The cost to the efficient plant because of its higher marginal cost of pollution mitigation (MCPM)will be higher. The inefficient etc. plant will actually gain a competitive advantage relative to the efficient plant because its MCPM is lower.
The total cost of the pollution reduction will be higher than necessary in this scenario.
Now imagine a fixed dollar carbon tax. Again the costs of the efficient plant will rise because it will cost less to pay the tax than to reduce its emissions further. The inefficient plant can reduce its emissions far more cheaply. In fact in this scenario, the inefficient plant can end taking market share away from the efficient plant resulting in an increase in total pollution levels.
In both these scenarios, the cost of pollution mitigation is higher than it would be if the pollution reduction were met entirely by the inefficient plant reducing its emissions.
Now imagine a cap and trade system, the inefficient plant will reduce its emissions until tits MCPM is lower than the permit price because it is profitable to do so. The efficient plant will purchase permits until the permit price reaches in MCPM.
Less pollution and lower costs.
At this point I'll call it a night.
By the morning I expect a bunch of posts from rightists calling me a commie and leftists calling me a Thatcherite.
In both cases, your disagreement isn't with me. It's with the entire field of economics and the empirical evidence of a couple of hundred years studying markets in general and 30-odd years studying emissions trading schemes.
How does the field of economics deal with the political reality of the way in which initial "free" carbon credits allocated to emitters?
If the inefficient plant has been spending its money on lobbyists instead of efficiency, then it may get allocated additional carbon credits by the government at a lower cost than the efficient plant. They can then hoard or speculate with those excess credits in order to manipulate the carbon market and decrease the efficiency of their competitors.
Economists pretty much assume fraud, deceit and political manipulation as the default sets for most economic activity.
This is why we call it the dismal science - and why I no longer work in the field. (Well that and the fact I found I could make much the same money in another field for much less work which pretty much proves me point.
Assume that ANY scheme to reduce carbon emissions will be subject to fraud and manipulation - certainly the carbon taxes that have been implemented to date have been riddled with so many exemptions and special deals they look like swiss cheese.
Essentially all we can do is seek to design the systems to minimise the capacity for such fraud.
In many ways, the fact that there are multiple regulators looking over each other's shoulders in the European trading system seems somewhat perversely to be one of its strengths.
Every time one national government tries to give a particular industry sector special treatment, the competing firms in other EU countries run crying to THEIR national governments about unfair competition and they in turn run crying to the European Commission.
Neil, you are still firing blanks. As long as you keep pontificating with this "Eco-Nazi" garbage, no one is going to take you seriously.
Moreover, your rants reveal a clear lack of understanding of the relationship between cause and effect, and of the time lags that usually characterize changes manifested on largely deterministic systems. When changes are inflicted on relatively small systems, the effects of these changes can be demostrated quite soon thereafter - as in the examples I cited in my last post. When we scale up local conditions to much larger scales, such as over biogeographical realms and even over the biosphere, the effects of these changes become temporally delayed. There is what is referred to as an ecological 'debt' that at some point realized. David Tilman and Robert May discussed this debt in their 1994 Nature paper, using what they referred to as the 'extinction debt', whereby the effects of the extirpation of genetically distinct populations and species that occurred as far back as several centuries ago are only now being manifested on the way that ecosystems function, and most importantly on the services that emerge from them that sustain human civilization.
Your simplisitic worldview appears to be based on the idea that if we destroy x amounts of nature today then there should be y amounts of effects on human society tomorrow. At least this appears to be what you are saying in your rather puerile attempt to smear the scientific community. What I am saying is that things do not work that way. Are humans on a collision course with nature? Most certainly. There's no question, as I have said before, that every important natural system is in decline. We should be relieved that natual systems exhibit quite some resilience - through functional redundancy - to have withstood the human assault thus far. However, there is no way of knowing how much farther we can continue to simplify natural systems before these systems begin more widespread breakdown, taking with them an array of critical services that sustain us. The regional collapses I alluded to yesterday are a sure sign that we are on the wrong path.
Have we passed the 'tipping point' yet? In some ways, most definitiely, but given the effects of current human practices will not be realized until decades from now, and perhaps even a generation or more, to continue on the current course is the sprint of folly. This is why I cringe when I read the kind of stuff you are writing.
Hi Ian,
Thanks for the explanation. I will collect your writings and read them later. Tax versus trading scheme is only relevent from a management point of view. The real issue is in the assumption that either or both will actually promote the disuse of fossil fuels. It does not matter what level of tax/ETS is put on carbon, if there is no alternative this will simply push the prices up and change the governments budget. In fact much of the comment to date has been talking about disbursing carbon dollars to alleviate the effects of the collection, and there are more hands than dollars it seems. Now ther is a money go round for you. It has taken a 6 fold increase in the price of oil to lubricate interest in biofuels. My guess is that all of the estimates for a carbon tax/credit level is no where near that degree of difference. The only feature that a tax/ETS has in its favour is that once set it is unlikely to go down in the short term, in the manner that the oil price might possibly do. And with low budget Pakistan discovering that they may have 20% of the world's coal reserves (quoting a blog) a price on local coal is going to have no effect what ever. In short emissions trading or carbon taxing is a pointless process standing on its own. Talk about carbon sequestration when it actually exists.
My particular dislike for emissions trading, actually emissions trading is an incorrect term as there is nothing to trade at this stage so it should be carbon emission rights, ....carbon emission rights can be seen in an exercise from my past. At one stage myself and a very clever electronics guy set ou to make coin parking meters for the Christchurch City Council (NZ). We put together a very impressive proposal only to have it stalled because someone had come up with the idea of parking coupons. These were to be a prepurchased printed strip from which chads were poked out to indicate a parking duration. When left in the window of a car they kept the parking police at bay for the chadded time. These strips were effectively parking futures certificates, redeemed at the time of use. The Council loved the idea because they got their parking money ahead of their budget schedule and this helped with their planning. But that was the core of the problem which caused the collapse of the scheme before it got underway. Simply put, people will avoid any cost until it is absolutely necessary. No one bought the coupons, they simply found other places to park where there were parking (tax) meters. Now the government can get around this problem of prepaying for carbon emissions be saying that a user need only pay over the value of the emissions at the time of their use. If that is what happens then that is a tax, so call it a tax.
Getting back to the real problem. The issue of promoting alternatives. I haven't seen any government anywhere (other than Sweden and Brazil) putting forward any believeable plan for ending their country's reliance on fossil fuels. And the most twisted of all is the Australian government's Clean Coal phobia.
That is my opinion, shared with you, rather than directed at you.
#88's post is about how nuclear is a bad thing because ... er umm well he didn't get round to that bit.
#90 says
"Let's see - most of the nuclear reactors being built around the world are, in fact, being built in Chin, India and those other poor deprived victims of the dreaded eco-nazis in the developing world."
Which is pretty much my point except that the dreaded eco-Nazis actually are largely of the "developed" not the "developing" world & LESS influential in China - hence the Cinese, Indian etc willingness to go nuclear.
Ian then say I shouldn't be willing to see any foreign aid (I never suggested any such thing but he clearly thinks in cliches & doesn't let mere facts interfere with his conclusions) & then attacks me for not fitting his stereotype. If I call him an eco-Nazi I may be accused of treating him as a stereotype but he does insist on acting like one.
93 - fair post. It is because of how the price system works that it is usually a much better idea to use it rather than bans & regulation to solve environmental problems. The way we went from leaded to lead-free petrol is a classic example.
Most "environmentalists" hate this because (A) they don't really want to solve problems they justv want to pose & bully people (B) almost everything they have proposed turns out to be merely tokenism when analysed (eg their enthusiasm for windmills & opposition to the only practical method of making CO2 free power alluded to above) (C) most of them hate the free market & virtually all of them hate progress
Jeff 96 says I have a "clear lack of understanding of the relationship between cause and effect" because I said that it is the nature of the universe that cause comes before effect. Jeff's will has clearly triumphed over the nature of the universe or even the possibility of rational thought.
Neil Craig said
However proving CO2 is rising does not prove CO2 rise is harmful - in fact we know that, in terms of crop growth, it is beneficial.
No, we do not know this. In terms of plant growth it can be beneficial, provided the plant has adequate amounts of water, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. However, when looking at crops (meaning a population of plants that is harvested for a specific product), except in intensely-managed greenhouse production there is little evidence that increasing the CO2 level increases production, probably because of the relative shortage of nutrients and effects on the longevity of individual leaves (I am speculating here). In addition, increasing temperatures that go along with higher CO2 change the incidence of weeds, diseases and other pests and can disrupt the pollination that is required for wheat, corn, rice and other crops.
It is simplistic and probably wrong to assume that increasing the level of CO2 will increase crop production.
BillBodell said:
I read all the apostates (Singer, Lindzen, Micheals, Avery, Lonborg). I follow the CA, Climate Skeptic, Lucia, Niche Modeling and Pielke Jr blogs (along with Deltoid, Open Mind and RealClimate for balance). Everyone of those skeptics accepts that the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, that the greenhouse effect is real and that man is probably contributing to it's effect via CO2 emissions.
I did not realize this. Surely this is different from the views they were expressing a couple of years ago, e.g. "Nor can we be sure that any long-term changes in our climate are due to mankind." (Lindzen, 2007).
"Whether or not human beings can produce a global climate change is an important question. This question is not at all settled. It can only be settled by actual measurements, data. And the data are ambiguous. For example, the data show that the climate warmed between 1900 and 1940, long before humanity used much energy. But then the climate cooled between 1940 and 1975. Then it warmed again for a very short period of time, for about five years. But since 1979, our best measurements show that the climate has been cooling just slightly. Certainly, it has not been warming." (Singer, 2000).
What persuaded them to change their minds?
To add to my last comment,
My purpose here is to show that this concern is misplaced, that human activities are not influencing the global climate in a perceptible way, and that, in any case, very little can be done about global climate change. It is unstoppable; we should not even try to influence it. Climate will continue to change, as it always has in the past, both warming and cooling on different time scales and for different reasons, completely unrelated to any human action.
This was two weeks ago (18 May). It seems that Bill's claim that "Everyone of those skeptics accepts that the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, that the greenhouse effect is real and that man is probably contributing to it's effect via CO2 emissions" is wrong.
"Which is pretty much my point except that the dreaded eco-Nazis actually are largely of the "developed" not the "developing" world & LESS influential in China - hence the Cinese, Indian etc willingness to go nuclear."
Here again we see the profound dishonesty and essentially delusional mindset of Mr Craig.
Having first confused fission and fusion (and error which he still hasn't been able to admit to, he went on to claim that the evil eco-nazis were preventing China et al from goign nuclear by failing to pay for them do so.
When it was pointed out to him that India and china are in fact at the forefront of nuclear development he switches gears yet again (and once again fails to admit his error) and claims that the comparatively rapid development of nuclear power in China and India (the very same countries he claimed were being viciously prevented from going nuclear due ot the evil eco-nazis) is due to the blessed lack of influence of the eco-nazis in those countries.
Lies one lies. Delusion on delusion.
Actaully I suppose by Craig's standards seeing as the west isn't providing unlimited unconditional funding for nuclear power in the developing world and some developing countries have dared (the temerity of it!) to choose not to use nuclear energy this proves that nuclear power like DDT is "banned".
One claim makes as much sense as the other I suppose.
Oh and since I like to deal in facts (unlike Craig) here's a link to wikipedia's list of nuclear power plants under construction, approved or proposed:
- if India and China aren't building nuke plants, it's proof that the eco-nazis are prevented them from doing so
- if India and China ARE building nuke plants, it's proof that the eco-nazis failed to prevent them from doing so.
Completely opposite situations but both support Craig's conpiracy theory, what a surprise.
Ian,
I think the EU figure may be a bit out of date.
It is now the position of the UK government to build replacement reactors for all those are being, or are due, to be decommissioned in the next decade or so. Brown recently indicated that he would like see an expansion on that program, to include more reactors than just the replacements ones.
Since the policy in only few months old, it may be that is why the proposals are not in the EU data.
Richard 99 that you accept that plants grow better in increased CO2 (something thoroughly proven) then if we acknowledge that crops are plants (equally difficult to deny except possibly for mushrooms) then it follows that crops will grow faster. You would need some spectacular actual evidence to to claim the contrary. Equally your claim that heat is harmful to plant growth fails to explain why the north of Siberia is unprepossesing taiga while plant growth in the Amazon rainforest is somewhat greater.
Nonetheless thanks for pointing out the willingness of Bill & other eco-fascists to merely invent their "evidence" whenever convenient. It is, unfortunately a common feature.
Talking of which Ian 102 yet again shows the very highest standard of honesty of which Nazis like him are capable by claiming I said I "went on to claim that the evil eco-nazis were preventing China et al from goign nuclear by failing to pay for them do so".
Come on Ian lets see you produce the evidence that it is & always has been impossible for China to be goign (or even going) nuclear without western payment. As racist lies go that must be one of the most obviously nonsensical ever.
I never made that statement, you know I never made that statement & nobody who was not wholly completely & totally dishonest & who knew he had no possible honest argument could ever have said I did. I challenge you to show exactly where I made that exact statement or admit that i am more than 10,000 times more trustwothy than a corrupt Nazi like you could ever be.
I would like all readers to know that merely because I am not paying Ian Gould to be a lying Nazi does not mean that I am preventing him from being one.
What I actually said was
"If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid."
I never said one word about preventing the Chinese building their own & Ian is wholly dishonest as every remotely honest person on this thread will acknowledge.
Ian,
I find your definition of "emissions trading" very odd: On the one hand it makes no reference to "trading". On the other hand, it is focused on having a pollution cap, which the term "emissions trading" makes no reference to. Better names to be associated with your definition are "a cap system" or "a centralized permit system".
(It is these unexpected properties of you definition that make "emissions trading" and "offsets" two different things - under a more reasonable definition, a system in which "people are paid to reduce the amount of pollution being emitted" would fall very naturally under "emissions trading".)
Now, accepting your definition - I have no problem with such a system. In fact, it is so broad that I am not sure there is any effective way to reduce pollution which would not fall within the scope of the definition. A tax system, for example, which does not have an explicit pre-defined cap, is still effectively the same since the level of tax would have to be set so as to have a certain cap on pollution not exceeded.
The definition being so broad, the real issue is which system among the wide variety of systems that could be used is actually being implemented.
Details on the EU Carbon Emissions Trading scheme. There are others, but this one is the largest.
To sum up the key points on "cap and trade" vs "carbon taxes
1. As sortition says, if they are designed properly, they will be very similar, since a tax can be set to reduce demand to the level that would be set under a cap.
2. If like bilb, you're convinced that demand is too inelastic to be affected by taxes, go for cap and trade which guarantees the quantity target
3. It's possible to give away free permits under a cap and trade scheme, but most economists who support such a scheme favor auctioning the permits (although there are some arguments for giving away a small proportion of the permits in the early stages of a scheme)
4. Compliance is a big problem whichever way you go. You can reduce compliance problems by reducing coverage to easy targets (electricity generation) but then the scheme will be less effective.
I point out that china is goign nuclear - and without signifcant western aid.
Craig responds: "Come on Ian lets see you produce the evidence that it is & always has been impossible for China to be goign (or even going) nuclear without western payment. As racist lies go that must be one of the most obviously nonsensical ever."
Tell me Craig is it also racist ot claim that Africans are incapable of running DDT spraying programs without western aid?
And let's note once again that Craig continues not to understand the difference between fission and fusion.
The fact that fission for power generation purposes was achieved in the 1950's and fusion for power generation purposes still hasn't been achieved in the early 21st century should say something about the relative difficulty of the two technologies - at least to someone less irrational and delusional than Mr. Craig.
"I find your definition of "emissions trading" very odd: On the one hand it makes no reference to "trading". On the other hand, it is focused on having a pollution cap, which the term "emissions trading" makes no reference to. Better names to be associated with your definition are "a cap system" or "a centralized permit system"." - Sortition
The term "cap and trade" makes it pretty clear that emissions trading schemes involve setting a cap on the pollution rights which can be traded.
"A tax system, for example, which does not have an explicit pre-defined cap, is still effectively the same since the level of tax would have to be set so as to have a certain cap on pollution not exceeded."
Yes, economists have been trying to tell people for a couple of decades that emissions trading and a carbon tax are identical in most of their effects.
The big difference is that emissions trading sets a pollution volume target and allows the price of carbon to fluctuate, a carbon tax fixes the price of carbon and allows the volume of emissions to fluctuate.
A carbon tax relies on the government setting the "correct" carbon price and risks a blow-out in emissions if the tax is set too low.
Choosing between cap and trade and a carbon tax is a false dichotomy since most economies will almost definitely end up with a mix of cap and trade for major emitters and carbon taxes for other sources. But even if it weren't, the choice between the two isn't the great moral crusade the anti-trading camp try to portray it's a technical question depending on issues like how important it is that the pollution target be met and the likely monitoring and enforcement costs.
John Q,
Having had a think about the elasticity of electricity and fuel demand, yes I do believe that these items are in fact relatively inelastic in the medium and long term. In the short term they will demonstrate elesticity, but that time frame is related to the time that it takes to adjust priorities. Flexibility of demand for these items is more likely to be fracturing rather than bending. E10 petrol is an example of how an alternative can put flexibility into the demand curve. It should be pointed out here that the availability of the ethanol to make the E10 possible has nothing at all to do with carbon taxing or emissions trading. It is principly a product of some simple legislation (government backbone loosing its flexibility and showing some stiffnessfinally) with leverage. Government in 2 states mandated 2% ethanol content, the industry went for 10%.
In your suggestion "go for cap and trade", as there is nothing to trade, all that is left is capping, ie rationing. I'd like to see how that is going to play out mid summer when the power stations have used up their carbon release allowances and have to shut down. It will be the health industry problems played out in the energy sector.
Global warming cannot be solved with economic instruments. Economics can assist but the heavy lifting must come through significant publicly stimulated reinvestment in a whole new energy industry. The technologists have done their bit, the world now holds its breath while the politicians, the executives of the public will, play power games and hold back.
Neil Craig says:
Richard 99 that you accept that plants grow better in increased CO2 (something thoroughly proven) then if we acknowledge that crops are plants (equally difficult to deny except possibly for mushrooms) then it follows that crops will grow faster. You would need some spectacular actual evidence to to claim the contrary.
First, mushrooms are most definitely not plants. Secondly, I have not been actively involved in the area for about 15 years so do not have references immediately to hand. However, a couple of minutes search found this study on soybeans:
As in previous studies, partitioning to seed dry mass decreased; however, net production during vegetative growth did not increase and crop maturation was delayed, not accelerated as previously reported. These results suggest that chamber studies may have over-estimated the stimulatory effect of rising [CO2], with important implications on global food supply forecasts.
Neil goes on to say:
Equally your claim that heat is harmful to plant growth fails to explain why the north of Siberia is unprepossesing taiga while plant growth in the Amazon rainforest is somewhat greater.
All plants have an optimum temperature range. Some annual crops can tolerate moderately low minimum temperatures (e.g. winter wheat) but even these can't survive the winters of much of the northern prairies. Other crops such as corn and rice are killed by frost. At the other extreme, most crops require pollination which is a very heat-sensitive process. That is why barley and wheat are limited in where they can be grown in the tropics. It has to be in places with a relatively cool growing season. Both corn and rice can also suffer from poor pollination as a result of high temperatures, especially if it coincides with a dry period. This is an increasing concern with corn in parts of the southern U.S. In places, rice (which tolerates temperatures a couple of degrees higher) could replace corn but that is dependent on there being land flat enough to flood and there being enough irrigation water.
Nonetheless thanks for pointing out the willingness of Bill & other eco-fascists to merely invent their "evidence" whenever convenient. It is, unfortunately a common feature.
I'm puzzled. I thought by 'eco-fascist' you meant someone who thinks AGW is a serious problem that needs to be tackled in a serious way, yet Bill considers human effects on climate to be small and AGW is unlikely to be a major problem. Doesn't he agree with you?
"The estimated cost of new nuclear power plants has tripled in the past few years, with projections now hitting $6 billion to $9 billion per reactor. Cost estimates are expected to continue escalating. Soaring costs make the prospect of new nuclear power even harder to sell to a public that will ultimately pay for new plants through rate increases." http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1048035.html
"The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics.
It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium - on which nuclear power relies - are on the rise.
Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract.
The findings appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. " http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7371645.stm
How is it that in the midst of the explosion of the cost of oil, it is possible for somebody to suggest with a straight face that the cost of a finite raw material source of energy will decrease due to "economies of scale"?
Perhaps I should clarify: the study I referred to in the previous comment used a crop growing in the field with added CO2. The chamber experiments they mention are the usual type of study done on plants growing in elevated CO2 conditions, with the plants in individual pots with a sterile medium and good mineral nutrition in a controlled environment chamber. Unfortunately results from plants grown in pots do not always translate very well to field conditions but they are often preferred for practical reasons.
I'd like to thank those who took the time to write something in response to my inquiry (#2). Brian D (#6) sent me to cce's youtube videos. I didn't look at them all, but (as a scientist) I hope I can do better than require the scientists to change their minds -- I'm thinking of actual findings. And I'm still thinking about it. To Bill Bodell (#12), you gave a fairly thorough and honest answer that I appreciate very much. You seem to use a bit of the appeal to authority that cce does, and I'd like to ask you how you felt about 10 year model predictions back in 1998, and I'd also like to challenge you about your requirements regarding past temperatures when loss of old glaciers is a part of the present and future problem. But that's for another day.
I haven't read each and every comment, but I see you've taken some flak for the non-scientific things you identified. I don't see why people attacked you for it. I feel exactly the same way, except the opposite. My opinion is probably influenced by the way most of the famous 'skeptics' seem to be tied to fossil fuel interests and free-market think tanks, the way 'skeptics' seem to cling to any shred of evidence that can be twisted to argue against AGW even if doing so contradicts other 'skeptical' interpretations that they support, and the way 'skeptics' identify me as a communist even though I'm a relatively libertarian Albertan. I'm not proud that the existence of Tim Ball affects my perception of everyone else (and their 'skepticism') who shares one or more opinions with him, but I suspect that it does.
"In your suggestion "go for cap and trade", as there is nothing to trade, all that is left is capping, ie rationing. I'd like to see how that is going to play out mid summer when the power stations have used up their carbon release allowances and have to shut down. It will be the health industry problems played out in the energy sector."
Bilb, won't happen.
Emissions trading systems work on an annual acquittal basis. At the end of the year you have a period (such as the sixty days in the US Acid Rain Program) if you can't surrender sufficient permits you're fined, if you can;t pay the fine you're pursued through the courts, if you still can't pay you're bankrupted. That process will probably take a coupel of years, not exactly the sort of thign that cuases overnight power outages.
You may recall that Enron went bankrupt and that it was a major owner of US powerplants. How many of those plants shut down as a result?
I suspect the answer is none.
Ultimately under Kyoto, member governments are responsible for reaching their national emission reduction targets. If they allow companies to exceed the national quota, they can buy credits on the market. Ultimately, they can be fiend with the money used to finance reduction projects. But as with the Acid Rain Program the objective is to make paying the fine substantially less attractive than buiying credits on the market.
Thanks for that Ian. I see what you are saying. I really do not know the mechanics of what is proposed. In principle there should be no credits available for sale on the market, certainly not sufficient to balance a power station's account in the aftermath of a stinker summer. The whole purpose of all of this is to force a reduction in fossil carbon releases. That would presume a declining supply of credits. Some governments were counting on carbon sequestration to bail their system out with new credits being available from sequesting companies. The only other method of "making" credits is through biological means. But as Europe found out, that path is full of fish hooks on the one hand, and the entire globes carbon absorbing capacity is already oversubscribed. So that doesn't work, full stop. You cannot create credits by producing biofuels either as they will be consumed in a very short time. The only thing that will work is a complete shift from fossil fuels to solar origin energy. And that is the one thing that there is what appears to be and endless army of critics arguing against. So if the critics had their way then power stations would simply pay the fines on mass, the cost of power would rise to a new level, everyone would adjust making some savings in the process and life would carry on. Just as it has with the rising petrol price, so far.
How does an economic system force a government to change its direction?
First of all, note how Neil did not (e.g. was unable) to respond to my last posting. This reveals to all here that he hasn't got a clue about biological systems. His response was the usual blather of a layman: "most of them [I guess he means the 'eco-Nazi's that he spouts on endlessly about] hate the free market & virtually all of them hate progress". Here he reveals hsi hand as a free market absolutist, an right wing populist. As if we needed to guess. Conclusion: Neil you are out of your depth. Go somnewhere else.
Furthermore, Neil, as usual, hahses up the science when he writes, "plants grow better in increased CO2 (something thoroughly proven)". NOT. Not even close (please enlighten me as to your research in this field, Neil HAHAHAHAHAHA etc.). Moreover, as Richard said, plants, like animals, possess thermoneutral zones above and below which their growth and survival is compromised. Further, carbon is not a limitjng resource for plants. Nitrogen is. It is even more limiting for insects, so as atmospheric CO 2 levels increase, nitrogen will be shunted from plant tissues and carbon levels will increase. We can expect insects to exhibit compensatory feeding to make up for the nitrogen deficit: expect insect outbreaks as a result. Lastly, increasing atmospheric CO 2 will alter the way in which ecological communities assemble and function, generating non-linear effects. Given (a) that out current understanding of the way in which ecosystems function over variable spatio-temporal scales, and (b) we know that these systems generate conditions (services) that permit humans to exist and persist, a continuation of the human assault on nature can be construed as a single, non replicatble experiment, with potentially catastrophic consequeces.
But like most of the contrarians, who don't understand basic biology, Neil dismisses it, with his usual smears and innuendoes. In 1992, a document was generated to coincide with the Rio Biodiversity summit. It was called the 'World Scientist's warning to humanity", and in part it said that "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in a manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about".
The document was signed by 1700 of the world's leading scientists (including 70% of the living Nobel Laureates at the time) and endorsed by virtually everty National Academy of Science in every country on Earth. By association, Neil must be suggesting all of these people are "eco-Nazi's". Is it any small wonder that I, speaking as a senior scientist, view his comments as inane and puerile?
"How does an economic system force a government to change its direction?"
Well under Kyoto, countries that fail to meet their targets can be fiend up to 1% of their GDP year with that money basically then being spent elsewhere to achieve the reductions they failed to deliver, that's a pretty powerful incentive.
But its unlikely to ever come to that, in the US for example, there are a number of power plants (typically old low-pressure coal-fired plants) where the net profit per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted is under $5.00.
If the cost of credits or a carbon tax exceeds $5.00 per tonne of carbon dioxide will close.
But it won't happen overnight, the major utilities which only those plants will take a couple of years to install new
generating capacity first - and whether those plants are high-efficiency coal plants, natural gas, nuclear or renewable energy, you can be certain that their emissions will be lower than those of the plants they replace, meaning emissions will be reduced.
In a grandfathered emissions trading system, the shut-downs will likely happen faster because the plant owners can sell their emission permits and take a profit.
One of the arguments for a combination of emissions trading for large entities and carbon taxes is that the revenues raised from a carbon tax can be used to fund the shut down of inefficient old plants and the construction of newer more efficient ones.
The revenue can also be used to subsidise the end price of energy from renewable sources, which obviously minimises the impact on consumers.
Chris Wills posts:
We don't know what changes to weather patterns the use of large scale wind farms and tidal generators will have (they extract energy so either reduce the air/water temperature or reduce its speed) if we have enough to replace electricty from coal.
Do the math, Chris. The amount of energy tied up in winds and tides every year is well known. Divide A by B.
Ian Gould 110 again declines to admit that I didn't say what he says I said but won't, because he can't, produce the quote he claims. This proves that his remarks represent the pinnacle of honersty of which, as a corrupt lying Nazi, he is capable but do not have any relationship whatsoever with truth.
He follows this up by inventing a new lie about what I said & alleging I don't know the difference between fission & fusion on the basis of a post which delineated exactly that.
Typical.
Richard 113 your attempt to say that CO2, while improving plant growth does not improve crop growth falls on several fronts. Firstly your link which you say proves it actually says, both in the headline & bottom line that there is an increase it is merely less than expected. Secondly such studies have to be replicated to be valid. Thirdly the study is only of soya beans rather than of all plants used for crops. There are bound to be be differences between species but it is obvious that if the generality of plants grow better with added CO2 then, unlesss crop plants had been selected in ancient times only from low CO2 toleratnt plants which would have been impossible prior to understanding its existence, then it is a statistical certainty that the same will apply to crop plants.
My remark about mushrooms was perhaps unnecessary nit picking - an example of going to great lengths to get even unimportant facts right, since mushrooms are not a significant part of world total crops. On the other hand your picking it up was clearly even more nit pickingish. It is an example of picking a nit to avoid answering the real point & happens regularly.
The fact is that plants generaly, including crops, grow better with more CO2 & warm areas generally have more, not less, plant growth. The fact that such obvious & uncontestable statements nonetheless get contested says much about the general contempt for reality of the eco-fascist movement.
Anybody who believes in faking quotations or making up "facts" doesn't agree with me.
114 you can quote all the eco-fascist sites "estimating" costs you want but the fact remains that it is possible to build nuclear plants for about £500 million each because Indonesia recently built 2.
Having read my post Z you know that the reason I said it would be possible to achieve "economies of scale" by building lots of reactors is because building lots of almost anything produces economies of scale (hence the name;-) )
That you can, with a straight face, claim that I said it had anything to do with mining costs (though there is no shortage of uranium) merely shows that, like a normal eco-fascist, you can lie with a straight face.
Jeff 119 says I did not respond to his post #96 which merely represents the very highest standard of which this Nazi is capable. See my post #98. I await his apology.
Then he denies plants grow better with increased CO2 & in the best Phantom of the Opera manner breaks out into spontaneous written laughter. How impressive.
I'm going to turn now to Chris Will's posts and explain, further, why a combination of emissions trading and a carbon tax is both more equitable and more economically efficient than a carbon tax by itself.
First up I'm going to explain the difference between progressive and regressive taxes and some of the implications.
apologies if I get a bit basic here but I once had an extended discussion with someone one line and only after days of backing-and-forthing did I realise that he didn't understand the technical mean of the terms and thought I was using progressive in the sense of "progressive politics".
A progressive tax is a tax designed to collect an increasing percent of income with rising incomes. The best example is progressive income tax. Wealth taxes such as capital gains and inheritance taxes and higher rates of sales tax on luxury goods (or conversely lower rates of sales tax on basic essentials) are generally progressive.
A regressive tax is a tax which collects a higher percentage of their income from people on low incomes and reduces in percentage terms as income increases. Fixed rate taxes - poll taxes, "user fees" like driver's licenses; excises on cigarettes and alcohol and most sales taxes and other consumption taxes such as GST or VAT are regressive.
That last point may require a bit of additional explanation - consumption grows less rapidly than income. to put it another way, the poor tend to spend most of their income on consumption. In many cases, such as private retirees living off their savings, the poor's consumption spending can exceed their income. In other words the rich save more than the poor. Take two individuals one on $50,000 who spends $45,000 a year on consumption goods and one on $100,000 a year who invests $20,000 a year and spends $80,000 on consumption. Add a 10% consumption tax. The guy on $50,000 a year pays $4,500 in tax or 9% of his income. The guy on $100,000 a year pays $8,000 or 8% of his income. (If those saving figures sound high you need to remember that in most countries mortgage payments aren't considered consumption for tax purposes.)
Progressive taxes are not necessarily good, regressive taxes are not necessarily bad. Most tax systems include both because, for example, sales tax is much harder to evade than income tax. (One of the main justifications for progressive income tax is it offsets some of the regressive impact of other taxes. In the US, when all taxes, state and Federal are taken into account, the total tax burden varies from being slightly progressive in some states being actually regressive in other states. In Texas for example, someone earning $15-20,000 will pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than will a millionaire. Remember that the next time Republicans try to tell you how unfairly the rich are treated by the Federal income tax system.)
Carbon taxes are almost definitely regressive. American per capita carbon emissions are around 24 tonnes per capita. Let's ignore exports of American goods and imports of goods and let's also assume that any carbon tax on industry is passed on in full to consumers.
Now lets assume someone on %50,000 a year produces slightly less than the average - for ease of calculation we'll say 20 tonnes. (We know that at least one major source of emissions - air travel - does increase with income so its not unreasonable to assume the average emissions of Americans earning over $50K are higher than the average emissions of Americans earning under $50K.)
Let's assume two very different levels of carbon tax - $5 per tonne and $50 per tonne. $50 per tonne is roughly equivalent to the current EU market price for carbon credits.
At $5 per tonne, our average American - we'll call him Chris pays $100 per year at $50 per tonne he pays %1,000. So we're talking between 0.2% and 2% of his income. (Oh and we're also assuming Chris is single and has no dependants.)
Now let's take an atypical American, we'll call him Al. Al's income is $500,000 per year. Let's work back from those figures of 0.2 -2% of income. If Al were paying the same percentage of his income in carbon tax as Chris he'd be paying $1,000 (at 5 dollars per tonne) or $10,000 (at $50 per tonne).
Either way, Al'd have to be producing 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year before he[s paying the same percentage of his income as Chris in carbon tax. Let's say Al's emissions from stuff like, say, heating and cooling his house are triple Chris' total emissions. That comes to 60 tonnes.
Per kilometre GHG emissions from a passenger aircraft are around 0.1 kilograms. So traveling 10,000 kilometres by air produces aroudn 1 tonne of GHGs.
In order for Al's air travel to boost his emissions to the point where he's paying the same percentage of his income in carbon tax he'd have to travel 1.4 million kilometres per year by air. That's roughly equivalent to 35 trips around the world.
So I'm fairly confident that carbon taxes are indeed regressive.
Neil Craig you wrote:
"If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid. This could have been done years ago. The cruelty & pure evil of the eco-fascist movement in pointlessly depriving the world of such wealth must be seen to be believed."
In other words, you assumed that China et al couldn't afford nuclear power and suggested giving them aid to allow them to do so.
That's the fact, everything else is your usual pointless jabber.
You misread my initial message which was about fusion power not fission.
You incorrectly assumed that china and India weren't building nuclear plants when in fact they are.
You've wasted enough of my time, you sad little man.
To return to Lott for a second.
Presumably if he thinks female suffrage was undesirable because it has led to more Democrats being elected he must feel even more strongly about blacks, Jews and Hispanics voting since proportionately they favor the Democrats even more than do women.
Neil, Nazi buster, I would like to know what your scientific credentials are. I can keep a straight face in saying that plants do not simply respond to enhanced atmospheric CO 2 by growing larger. How? because I am a scientist who works with plants in my research, that's how. Robin and I have pretty much demolished your other gross simplifications of plant ecophysiology. You ignore the C:N question, as well as competitive asymmetries generated between C3 and C4 plants in response to ambient change, and their effects on the structure and function of ecological communities and higher trophic levels. Your arguments are so simple they are actually funny. You appear to believe that nature is completely linear. That cause and effect relationships have R-squared values of close to 100%. Anyone making such a claims has no place in a scientific discussion forum.
You also suggest that the vast majority of the scientific community are 'eco-Nazi's', using your rather jaded definition of anyone who appears to oppose free market absolutism. Isn't this so? Your economic/political statements above that Ian responds to are hysterical in their simplicity. Your views are so inane I don't know why I even waste my breath. So I won't any more.
Ian sums it up for me too when he says: "You've wasted enough of my time, you sad little man". Amen.
Neil is indeed absurdly simplistic. As one example, I wonder if he is aware of the fact that rice has higher yields in temperate than in tropical climates, or the reasons why? Or that the modest increased yield due to CO2 fertilization that is predicted for rice, is offset (and more) by the decreased yield due to temperature increase?
Heres one good starting place:
"The temperature sensitivity experiments have shown that for a positive change in temperature up to 5 °C, there is a continuous decline in the yield. For every one degree increment the decline in yield is about 6%. Also, in another experiment it is observed that the physiological effect of ambient CO2 at 425 ppm concentration compensated for the yield losses due to increase in temperature up to 2 °C." http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1248810
And for the mechanisms of reduced yield at higher temps, one could google "rice night respiration temperature" for a starting point.
Neil also seems to assume that the only CO2/temp impacts that matter are those to crop yields. It is to laugh.
Neil Craig said: "warm areas generally have more, not less, plant growth".
Neil Craig once again shows his ignorance of the real world. Neil, have you ever been to the Pacific coast of British Columbia or to Arizona? Please tell me, based on the amount of biomass at each of these locations which, according to your reasoning, has the warmer temperature. Your ignorance is such that I wonder how you even manage to connect to the Internet.
No wonder you call yourselves the "9% party", it aptly describes your level of intelligence compared to the general population.
Richard Simon,
My bigger point was that most skeptics do not focus on denying warming over the last 100 years (a number I included to prevent people from using statements about recent warming/cooling), the greenhouse effect or human CO2 emissions enhancing the greenhouse effect.
We could nit-pick your examples (here's one, quoting Lindzen as "Nor can we be sure that any long-term changes in our climate are due to mankind." does not prove that he denies that human CO2 emissions enhance the greenhouse effect. He might well believe that greenhouse warming may be offset by cloud cooling, etc.).
The larger point remains that doubting basic science is not what the overwhelming number of skeptics are about. Pretending it is just hinders communication.
Ian,
I don't know why you are under the impression that Libertarians have a problem with economics. I am a "small L" libertarian (I agree with libertarian policies because I believe they work, not because of some philosophical belief in "owning one's self", etc) and my experience is that lots of people that believe in economics are libertarians (Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, John Stossel, etc.).
You've made me think (ouch!).
I am generally opposed to "cap & trade" scenarios due to their need for government management and the resulting exposure to corruption and bureaucratic bungling (which you, refreshingly, acknowledge).
Your argument about the "higher polluting producer" having an advantage over the "less polluting producer" under a carbon tax scheme is compelling. But, I wonder, what drove one competitor to pollute less than the other in the first place, especially if the former is less efficient? Why wouldn't there be an optimal cost minimizing behavior that they would both work towards? The only way I can see their incentives being different is if they were subject to different governmental bodies and regulations.
Cap and trade schemes also have the disadvantage of being "hidden". Some products would cost consumers more (or less) due to the plan being in place. I don't have a problem with this, I just think that consumers should be aware of what benefits are being gained at what cost and have a chance to support (or oppose) policies on that basis. If something appears (to the consumer) to be "free", of course everyone's in favor of it.
Carbon taxes would be regressive, but that's easy enough to rectify by rebating taxes to those determined to be "in need".
BillBodell:
> The larger point remains that doubting basic science is not what the overwhelming number of skeptics are about.
No, it is not. Doubting basic science is just a tool to encourage inaction.
> I am a "small L" libertarian (I agree with libertarian policies because I believe they work, not because of some philosophical belief in "owning one's self", etc)
Of course, that's what Rand, von Hayek, etc. also say. Libertarianism is supposedly "rational" where "rational" is defined by Rand's brain movements, or it's an expression of "catallaxy", a word which Hayek just made up.
> and my experience is that lots of people that believe in economics are libertarians (Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, John Stossel, etc.).
Where "economics" here refers to you libertarians' economic wet dreams. Remember the issue about the minimum wage? It's clear that there's no consensus among economists (if there ever was) on the impact of a minimum wage, but libertarians such as yourself still insist on pointing to some sort of mythical consensus that exists only in your heat-oppressed imaginations.
Steve L.,
I'd also like to challenge you about your requirements regarding past temperatures when loss of old glaciers is a part of the present and future problem. But that's for another day.
Looks like you picked today.
There is some evidence that many glaciers were smaller during earlier periods (the Alps in Roman times, Greenland during the MWP, etc.) than at present. Using the rules that we seem to have agreed to play by (which I believe are the right rules), I don't think you'll look at that and say ("Ah ha!, Bill was right all along!") but perhaps you'll consider that saying "glaciers are getting smaller" might not be quite the definative argument you seem to think it is.
Steve L.
I just realized that after your thoughtful and reasonable post, I picked out something to argue about (however nicely). Sorry about that. I think we could have a fine conversation if only the trolls on both sides would leave us alone.
Ian 124 you are a moron.
The quote of mine says which you use to buttress your claim that I said that the west, by not providing aid to build them, had prevented the Chinese building a few reactors says quite clearly that the Chinese COULD afford the hundreds of reactors I proposed. It was actually Indians & even the Bangladeshi's who would, I suspect, need a little aid to buy so mamny reactors (which is not remotely the same as needing aid to build a the comparatively few you mention). With that many reactors they would have power levels & hence a standard of living comparable to ours. I
t is obscenely cruel of you eco-Nazis to demand they stay poor.
If you insist on lying about what I say it would, at least, be sensible tactics to read the quotes before you put them up.
Jeff 126 the fact that you insist that increases in CO2 do not improve plant growth proves you no more a plant scientist than if you told us the Sun goes round the Earth you could be an astronomer. I have defined eco-fascist on the previous thread & your claim that I said the vast majority of scientists fit it is merely the absolute highest standard of honesty to which, as a coruupt lying eco-Nazi are capable of reaching - ie a total & deliberate lie. I challenge you to produce the quote where you allege I said it.
Lee 127 barely less moronic. If you read what I said it was that plants & crops GENERALLY grow better in warm climates than cold (having been earlier assured the reverse was true). This says nothing about whether different varieties of plants tend to have particular comfort zones - clearly they have. Overall the Amazon does have more jungle than northern Siberia - & pointing out that there are fewer polar bears in the amazon will no more change that than pointing out plant species differentiation.
~128 what you have not realised (or else what you are concealing out of malice & dishonesty) is that Arizona, being a desert, is short of water. Ergo it is almost bound to have less water consuming life than a place with lots of water. That is part of the reason why when I wrote "warm areas generally have more, not less, plant growth", as you have quoted I put in the word GENERALLY.
I repeat my advice to the moron above - it would, at least, be sensible tactics to read the quotes before you put them up.
Neil, that you don't know who Jeff Harvey is, is reasonably solid evidence that you are grossly ignorant of the field you are attempting to criticize and dismiss.
Here is more data on the effects of increased CO2 and/or Temp on yields for a couple major crops, showing that it isnt as simple as Neil claims:
Wheat:
"Though yield declined with increasing temperature in the TGTs in summer, there was a clear trend for an increasing response to CO2 at these higher temperatures, i.e. yield declined less."
"All yield responses reflected biomass responses as harvest index was unchanged by CO2"
IOW, for wheat, CO2 increased biomass at any given temperature, but did not make up for decreased yield at higher temperatures. CO2 fertilization did not increase actual grain harvest under any conditions. Lots of other examples - just look. In general, within wheat-growing regions and in the wheat varieties grown in those regions, yield is negatively correlated to temperature. IN general, CO2 fertilization increases biomass but has minimal impact on grain yield, and negatively impacts protein content of the grain.
Corn (maize):
Biomass, leaf area, leaf appearance rate, and photosynthesis measured at growth Ca were not changed in response to CO2 enrichment. Carboxylation efficiency and the activities of C4 enzymes were reduced with CO2 enrichment indicating possible photosynthetic acclimation of the C4 cycle. http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_1…
---
Yes,this is just a scratch at the surface - but it's enough to show that Neil's confident statements about the effects of CO2 and temperature are grossly ignorant.
Allow me to ask you this, Ian,
But it won't happen overnight, the major utilities which only those plants will take a couple of years to install new generating capacity first - and whether those plants are high-efficiency coal plants, natural gas, nuclear or renewable energy, you can be certain that their emissions will be lower than those of the plants they replace, meaning emissions will be reduced.
In a grandfathered emissions trading system, the shut-downs will likely happen faster because the plant owners can sell their emission permits and take a profit.
You have a fairly detailed perception of what is and could be
"But it won't happen overnight, the major utilities which only those plants will take a couple of years to install new generating capacity first - and whether those plants are high-efficiency coal plants, natural gas, nuclear or renewable energy, you can be certain that their emissions will be lower than those of the plants they replace, meaning emissions will be reduced."
where do you think that all of this is heading? What do you imagine is the likely 50 year outcome? What do you see as being the optimal energy structure to face global warming challenge?
"I don't know why you are under the impression that Libertarians have a problem with economics."
Bill, I'm afraid I've had too many self-described libertarians who subscribe to conspiratorial theories about how emissions trading is a statist plot to destroy freedom and oppress the poor.
"Your argument about the "higher polluting producer" having an advantage over the "less polluting producer" under a carbon tax scheme is compelling. But, I wonder, what drove one competitor to pollute less than the other in the first place, especially if the former is less efficient? Why wouldn't there be an optimal cost minimizing behavior that they would both work towards?"
Well for starters, corporations work to maximise efficiency in terms of financial returns, not necessarily in terms of resource use.
So, for example, the choice between natural gas and coal as a heating source isn't based solely on their relative greenhouse gas emissions. Other factors that come into it are availability of the relative fuels; sunk costs (if you've already got a coal bunker and a coal-powered furnace, it's probably cheaper to repair and upgrade them rather than
switch to natural gas) and the need for other trade-offs (coal is generally cheaper than natural gas at current market prices but natural gas capital costs are generally lower so companies with different costs of capital will make different choices.0
There's also and more fundamentally the point that much economic decision-making isn't based on "optimal cost minimizing behavior". Humans are innately risk adverse and value potential losses more highly than potential gains. (Offer people in a lab setting the choice between receiving $1 and guessing a coin-toss correctly and winning $3 and most will pick the dollar.)
Business managers base their decisions on the limited knowledge available to them and the limited time and resources they have to make the decision. Many of their decisions are based on irrational factors or on time-saving shortcuts. "We'll buy from A rather than B because A has always given us good service in the past."
Read up on cleaner production and quality management some time - virtually every business that goes through a systematic external process audit find that there are significant costs savings available within the business at zero capital cost. Why should energy use be any different?
Neil, your pointless rants reveal a lot about you. Again, I ask for your professional qualifications to be able to comment in a scientific endeavor. You do not respond to this. All I know about you is that you represent some fringe political party in the UK that advocates massive economic growth while ignoring the ecological consequences of this.
I argue that cause-and-effect relationships in ecology and ecophysiology are usually highly non-linear, and that the effects of increased atmospheric C02 will not simply produce a biosphere will become a greener, more produictive place. There will be all kinds of nasty surprises as communties and ecosystems reassemble themselves, or due to differential repsonses of C3's and C4's to enhanced C02.
Your hollow pontifications reveal your lack of any basic scientific understanding of complex adaptive systems. Frankly, its grade school stuff.
Given your apparent faith in unlimited free markets to solve everything, combined with a singular lack of basic scientific knowledge, its a bit rich of you to enter this thread throwing hyperbole and rhetoric at people as well as pointless smears (eco-Nazi's etc). You give me the impression of someone who would have fitted well into the McCarthyist period (the late 1940's through the mid 1950's) when there was a communist witch-hunt underway in the United States and the society was plagued by what we now know was completely unfounded paranoia promoted by the likes of Nitze, Forrestal etc.
Neil,
I also never accused you of calling most of the scientific community eco-Nazi's. Don't put words into my mouth. I am saying that you throw this term around loosely, and when you say this, "Jeff 119 says I did not respond to his post #96 which merely represents the very highest standard of which this Nazi is capable", I think you are stooping to the lowest depths.
My point was that the vast majority of the scientific community, in the "World Scientist's Warning to Humanity", argued that humans and the natural world are on a collision course which, if unchecked, is likely to have very serious repercussions for humanity. Clearly this contrasts with your rather one-sided worldview. So what is your opinion of scientists who foecefully argue this point? Are they, by your definition, 'eco-Nazi's' or not? What is your criteria for membership in what you interpret as a sordid group of people attacking civilization?
Bill: "where do you think that all of this is heading? What do you imagine is the likely 50 year outcome? What do you see as being the optimal energy structure to face global warming challenge?"
I sort of answered this at #73 above.
Fifty years from now its quite possible we'll have a radically different energy source such as solar power satellites or fusion power.
Failing that, we'll probably use less energy of all sorts.
We'll probably still use some fossil fuel but we'll use it far more efficiently than we do now. A modern gas-powered power plant converts around 50% of the chemical energy stored in the gas into electricity. A capstone microturbine or the domestic fuel cell stacks being deployed now in Japan is about the same efficient - and uses the waste heat to heat water or for room heating resulting in a overall efficiency of around 80%.
(The Capstone microturbine isn't some pipe-dream or a half-assed prototype. You can buy one today.
We'll use more nuclear power than we do now but I doubt the world will get anywhere near the level of its electricity from nuclear power France does today (80%).
We'll use a LOT more renewable energy. One of the keys to that will be efficient large scale energy storage. (That'll also contribute to more efficiency in the use of fossil fuels.)
Thin film solar, concentrating solar; geothermal; tidal power and wind power will probably all cost less in 60 years time than coal-fired power does today.
We'll probably use electric vehicles but if we still use chemical fuels, I'm expecting they'll come from algae or cellulosic agricultural wastes.
I'm not sure it'll pan out, but the Green Freedom project I linked to above could be the big solution we're all hoping for. Basically, its a technology for extracting carbon dioxide from fossil fuel waste streams or from the atmosphere and turning it into synthetic fuels or plastics etc. Power that from nuclear or renewables and we could not just stop carbon dioxide levels rising, we could actually start to lower them.
#135 Lee - Jeff is someone who claims that CO2 does not generally increase plant growth. This is as simple a lie as saying the Sun orbits the Earth. Therefore who he is is somebody with absolutely no respect for scientific truth whatsoever, which is what matters. This would be true even if he had shared a podium with Gore.
Your link isn't working but, if it is the same one I saw on another discussion, it does not say that there was no increase in growth with more CO2, though it is writen to give the impression it does.
It says, to quote, "CO2 increased biomass at any given temperature". The get out is that by comparing increased CO2 & increased temperature the combined effect may not cause an increase. This is unscientific since it is actually testing 2 variables while appearing to be for one only. It is also meaningless in the debate on warming since no 2 warming enthusiasts agree on exactly how much warming will take place (indeed sometimes no 1 warming enthusiast agrees with himself - see Sir David King's claim that warming would be both sufficient to make Antarctica the habitable continent, say about 40 degrees & that it would be 3 degres). Thirdly it isn't even testing for crop crop growth decrease with temperature generally but for "wheat varieties grown in those regions" ie varieties of wheat bred for Canadian temperatures would not do so well in warmer temperature which is not remotely the same as saying that varieties bred for warmer temperatures won't. This is merely a repetition of the claim that the Amazon is inimical to life because polar bears don't survive there. Any farmer uses the most appropriate varieties for the area.
Jeff 139 you are lying again. You did not get into an abstruse discussion of non-linearity in CO2 related growth you said I wasn't telling the truth when I said CO2 generally improved growth. That this relieves you of any claim whatsoever to being truly scientific has been discussed above.
Jeff 140 says he "never accused you of calling most of the world's scientific community eco-Nazis" which we must all accept as representing the highest standard of honesty of which this Nazi is capable. In post 126 he said "You also suggest that the vast majority of the scientific community are 'eco-Nazi's' " which proves exactly how low his standard is.
In many ways the eco-Nazi willingness to maintain absolutely any lie, the bigger the better, as Goebbels pointed out, is a tactical strength. However it does mean when they are caught in the most basic & obvious lies they are temperamentally unable to refuse to defend even the most indefensible position - as has been demonstrated repeatedly here.
Ian it is possible you are right that we will use more nuclear in 50 years & more renewables. None of us, having crystal balls can know. What we can know is that it will be possible to be 80% nuclear because, as you point out, it is already being done now in France & that renewables, being a diffuse, labour intensive power source (what the Greens) like will, the laws of thermdynamics being what they are, still require massive subsidies.
This may be of interest on the question of whether carbon taxes are regresive:
"The poor already face energy costs as a much higher percentage of their income than wealthier Americans. While most Americans spend about 4% of their monthly budget on heating their homes or other energy needs, the poorest fifth of Americans spend 19%. A 2006 survey of Colorado homeless families with children found that high energy bills were cited as one of the two main reasons they became homeless." http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121244985951839615.html?mod=opinion_mai…
Neil, you must have a serious problem to write what you do and to perpetually smear people. For the UMPTEENTH time, enhanced C02 DOES NOT uniformly increase plant growth OR fitness. Your argument is pure unadulterated rubbish. Individual species respond differently to increased atmospheric C02, depending on their pathway (C3 or C4) and on their evolutionary history with respect to both ambient climate and nutrient levels. Few studies have even measured fitness in terms of seed set under enhanced C02. And as I have said time and again, but which doesn't get through your old, thick head, plants do not live independently in nature. They interact with other organisms (plants and animals) over several trophic levels. There will be winners and losers, that is for sure, under both enhanced C02 and temperature regimes. The consequences for nature are likely to mean unraveling food webs and the like, given that humans have already simplified nature in a mayriad of ways. But you never address this point. Your argument - if it can be called that - is like saying 'we all know that plants will benefit from increased C02 and thus all of nature benefits'. But what of the other non-linear effects? Out of compelte ignorance, you ignore these. I assume you plucked the garbage you spew out from the non-peer-reviewed paper that accompanied the Oregon petition. Where else would you have found it?
Moreover, carbon is often NOT a limiting nutrient for plants: nitrogen is. Ditto for animals. Your arguments are so thin and yet somehow you think you have the knowledge to take me on. Linear thinking. I see it all of the time from contrarians. Ecological systems are non-linear. Learn something, man, instead of parroting pseudo-scientific web sites from corporate lobbying groups.
As for warming, you write your kindergarten level analysis assuming that humans are exempt from the laws of nature. If the climate warmed up at such a rate as to make the Antararctic habitable, at least in the time frame I think you are referring to, our species would be facing extinction in the face. Why? Because complex adaptive systems have not evolved to respond to change in such a short time scale. This kind of rapid warming would exacerbate the extinction crisis already underway, which would further undermine the functioning of our global ecological life support systems.
Lastly, I challenge you: since my views on the relationship between abiotic and biotic processes and their effects on natural systems have enormous support amongst my peers in the scientific community, and I thus expect that 99.9% would not only disagree with your simplisitic linear assessment, how would you classify my peers? Moreover, I have asked you a dozen times and I will again: what is your scientific pedigree? This matters.
I wish I could debate you face to face on this 'cos I would wipe the floor with you. I am sick of your infantile smears in which people who disagree with you are called liars, eco-Nazi's etc. You are full of you-know-what.
To finish Neil off once and for all, here is a recent article in New Scientist that pretty well demolishes his claim that C02 will generally benefit plant growth.
Bottom line: its a myth, because of both ecophysiological constraints and non-linear effects I have alluded to in my posts.
"Neil, you must have a serious problem to write what you do and to perpetually smear people. For the UMPTEENTH time, enhanced C02 DOES NOT uniformly increase plant growth"
You are claiming I said "UNIFORMLY" whereas what I said UMPTEEN times was "GENERALLY" - for which statement you smeared me by saying I was lying. The diference betwen what happens generally ie most of the time & uniformly ie all the time, is obvious.
I note you are not trying to defend your lie that I called scientists generally "eco-Nazis" because you cannot. I am calling YOU an eco-Nazi.
So you obscene wholly corrupt lying Nazi I call on you to either produce the quote where I said "uniformly" or apolgise.
Wiping the floor seems to be about your level of expertise.
Before I forget I agree with you on one point:
"you write your kindergarten level analysis assuming that humans are exempt from the laws of nature. If the climate warmed up at such a rate as to make the Antararctic habitable, at least in the time frame I think you are referring to, our species would be facing extinction in the face"
I would not have been so impolite as to say that the statement about Antarctica being the only inhabitable continent within a century indicated the author capable of only "kindergarten analysis" but since you have done so I cannot dispute it & reserve the right to quote you. If you had actually read what was written you would have seen it was written by Sir David King the government's chief science advisor & a prominent alarmist.
Jeff 145 your article, despite a typical New Scientist headline, actually says:
"These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."
Which, though I didn't give an exact figure, is what I said & you denied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Harvey_(disambiguation)
Jeffrey A. Harvey, a physicist and string theorist at University of Chicago
Jeffrey A. Harvey, an ecologist
Jeff Hardy, a professional wrestler under the employ of World Wrestling Entertainment
I am confident you don't understand string theory
so Neil quotes back at me exactly what I freaking said, and acts as if this somehow disputes what I said.
"comparing increased CO2 & increased temperature the combined effect may not cause an increase. This is unscientific since it is actually testing 2 variables while appearing to be for one only."
Bwaaaahaaaa. Neil, thanks for the funny.
"Thirdly it isn't even testing for crop crop growth decrease with temperature generally but for "wheat varieties grown in those regions""
IOW, testing two variables (with an experimental design that tests the effects of the two singly and in combination) is unscientific, but adding a third variable would make it scientific? Got it.
Not to mention that ths thread has been Godwined for some time now.
Neil, you obviously like picking hairs. You can't see the wood from the trees (or do not want to). Let's go beyond the C02-plant growth crap you are dishing out for a second.
What is your point. Please tell me. What exactly is your point regarding C02 and plant growth. It must be this: "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."
But what about the rest of the article? What about the vast array of published studies showing that increased C02 effects on natural systems are mixed and in many cases decidely deleterious? On ecological processes, given that (as I said) there WILL BE BOTH WINNERS AND LOSERS under enhanced C02 regimes. And what of the effects of this on ecological systems and on multi-species interactions that underpin the resilience and stability of these systems? You expunge this in your petty desire to gain a pyrrhic victory.
You dismiss all of this. Why? Even if it were true, 13% increased yield to crops under controlled conditions doesn't mean squat in nature. What about weeds? How will they respond? Weeds aggressively compete with crops, and many are much better adapted to anthropogenic changes because they have not been directionally selected by man to accentuate certain traits (e.g. vegetative crop production) at the expense of others (e.g. direct defense). How about herbivorous insects, where N is limiting? They will feed compensatorily, wiping out any hypothetical gains of 13%. What about effects of enhanced C02 and temperature on rainfall patterns, soil salinity, soil organisms, pollinators, and other vital ecosystem services? What about intra- and interspecific competition amongst plants? We will see unravelling food webs, as I said, as the winners push out the losers.
I am sick of saying it, but your world is simple and linear. You don't debate me on the multitude of side-effects of global change because you can't. You stick to a simple linear process and put your head in the sand when it comes to the vast array of non-linear effects that result from anthropogenic change. I've debated the likes of you time and time again. A piece of cake.
The fact that you do not answer my one basic question: what are your scientific credentials - tells me everything. In my view you are one of those described by Charles Darwin in the Descent of Man: "Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge". I've authored or co-authored more than 70 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. What is your tally?
Neil, if anyone should apologise it's you to me. You've called me everything undet the sun - a liar, an Eco-Nazi, etc. What have I said? I never said you were lying. Those are your words. You appear to have intimnated them from what I said. I also don't agree with your word 'generally', either, as it applies to C02 effects. What is generally? A majority? How do you know this. Have you tallied up allof the peer-reviewed papers on the subject? OK, its not uniform, but you are picking hairs.
I also suggested that, by association, you'd label a huge number of scientists like me as 'eco-Nazi's' because they vehemently disagree with you simplisitc worldview. And they sure would disagree with it because they know things are much more complicated than you appear to believe. Compentent scientists realize that nature is non-linear, even if you don't. If this is how you behave in your political doings, then its no wonder that you party is on the far-right fringe.
Tim (Lambert), what do you think of this? Is my being repeatedly called a lying, Eco-Nazi by Neil Craig considered OK on this thread?
I think we need to draw up a petition to the Great Worldwide Illuminati (whatever that is) to resurrect Charles Keeling using the dark forces of the Necronomicon.
JH asks:
>Tim (Lambert), what do you think of this? Is my being repeatedly called a lying, Eco-Nazi by Neil Craig considered OK on this thread?
No it isn't. I stopped reading Craig's nonsense a while ago, so I hadn't noticed.
Neil Craig, if you want to continue to post here, you will apologize to Jeff Harvey and promise to be civil in future.
Tim I wholeheartedly agree that Neil Craig should apologize to Jeff Harvey. Jeff and I disagree from time to time and he can be snippy and condescending but he does not deserve the abuse that Neil has dished out. There is no place for name calling in a rational civil discussion.
Now the question is when are you going to apply this same standard to people like dhogaza who cannot make a post without calling some one a liar or an idiot?
Or does your sense of decorum only apply to people with whom you disagree?
Ian,
It seems to me that you are in fact inadvertently engaged in a bait-and-switch exercise. You lure us with a definition of a system that is so generic that it cannot seriously be criticized, and which (despite having the term "trading" in the title) does not mention trading at all:
> Emissions trading is a system where the regulator decides upfront what the maximum acceptable level of pollution is and issues (either freely or for a price) permits which make it legal to emit up to that level of pollution.
Then, you add the trading element, which appears to rule out some reasonable systems (e.g., non-transferable, personal use quotas or a system in which all pollution permits are bought directly from the government):
> emissions trading schemes involve setting a cap on the pollution rights which can be traded.
But it seems that throughout you are thinking of a much more specific system - namely one that is similar to the SO2 system. That is, one in which according to your description, and despite your assertion that grandfathering is not an inherent part of the system, existing polluters somehow retain the rights to pollute (if at somewhat reduced levels).
It is very detrimental to the discussion to have all those definitions mixed up. If you believe that an SO2-like system is a good one, let's discuss it, rather than deal with ambiguous abstractions.
Sortition, I used the SO2 program as an example because it is one of the longest-running and largest emissions trading scheme.
If you like I can go through the same process with the montreal Protocol and the phase-out of CFCs which led to a ban on virtually all developed world uses and didn;t involve grandfathering.
A question sortition, if emissions permit trading lowers the cost of compliance and improves environmental outcomes, why do you object to it?
Why do you assume that a market-maker system (i.e. a system with the government as the sole buyer and seller of permits) is preferable?
Thanks Tim and Lance. Lance, I know we disagree on some issues, but I appreciate your civil tone and I hope we can continue polite dialogue on these relevant issues. I know that I can be quite combative and vitriolic, but terms like "Eco-Nazi" have no place in any kind of discussion, even when it gets heated. Neil has used this appalling term many times, and that's what irked me in the first place. The discussion of the effects of C02 on plant growth is also highly debated, and I just disagree with Neil who clearly does not want to discuss issues associated with it e.g. effects beyond simple plant ecophysiology, such as ecological processes over larger scales. I will admit that I got the bit wrong when I accused him of saying 'uniform' over 'generally', (although I still disagree with the latter for the above and earlier described reasons). The situation is just too complicated in my opinion to attribute some simple postive benefits at the level of the individual or even the species (and there are plants that will benefit, that is for sure) against the more complex effects on multitrophic interactions, ecological communities and ecosystems, as well as on abiotic processes. This is where there is significant concern and doubt, and which is what I was questioning Neil on as a scientist should.
Anyway guys, many thanks for your posts.
Lee 147 quoting back large chuncks of what I said & adding sponateous screams is not convincing. If you have a specific factual criticism make it.
Jeff 148 asks "What is your point. Please tell me. What exactly is your point regarding C02 and plant growth"
Well the point, way back in post 52 was "CO2 does have the beneficial effect of improving crop growth - before demanding we stop it you should, if being honest, at the very least, have firm proof of some harm to more than match its benefit".
Since you & others have been constantly disputing that obvious fact since then it comes as no great surprise to find that you hadn't the remotest idea what you were disputing, merely that it was said by a "denier". While I accept that saying this was wrong represents the highest standard of honesty of which you are capable even you now accept what I said is true. Consequently you clearly owe me an apology.
The reason it is impossible to debate with you on secondary effects is that you have spent 100 posts falsely, as you now accept, denying what I said about the primary ones. If you have now accepted the primary effects it would be possible to discuss how they are affected by various secondary effects.
149 Therefore your apology, to both of us, is still due.
151 - Tim - May I point out that the term "denier" which deliberately & dishonestly links those with proper scientific scepticism to Nazi Holocaust deniers has been prominently used on both this & the previous thread & I assume others since long before I got here. If eco-Nazi is to be a censored term (& I have gone into detail as to exactly why it is correct) then you should first set your own house in order.
As Lance 152 points out your standard is hypocritical & effectively proves this site to be merely eco-fascist propaganda in which any lie may be used to attack sceptics. You are now clearly engaging in direct censorship to prevent the facts being put by me.
I have detailed on exactly what points Jeff has lied about what I said, he does not now (or at least on last posting) deny it & therefore he unambiguosly owes me an apology. I expect to be censored for saying so.
He also owes me one for saying I had called the world's scientists eco-Nazis.
As for saying that while you were wrong it is merely nit picking to notice a difference between 100% ("uniformly") & over 50% ("generally"). Clearly your "science" does not, like string theory, require understanding of maths, or even arithmetic, but merely of what politicians want.
As for your ludicrous "13% increased yield to crops under controlled conditions doesn't mean squat in nature" - that would be enough food to feed a billion people. If that is of no im portance whatsoever, in your view, my opinions about your political leanings are clearly correct.
Frankly I was only looking for some minor beneficial effect from CO2 to be set against the warming danger claim. Even a 1% increase would feed 80 million people.
Warminmg MAY have been as much as 0.6C over the century according to readings which were not in controled conditions & clearly, to some extent were distorted by the heat island effect. All, some or none of this efect may be due to CO2 & & all, some or none may be due to the warming that has been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age. It is well within warming experienced previously. Now that is an example of something that may well mean squat.
My scientific credentials are zero which must make you sick as a parrot since I have repeatedly proven you wrong.
Incidentally since we are talking about apologies you owe one to Sir David King for accusing him of being capable of only "kindergarten level analysis". While you may claim that would be a valid response to me, due to my lack of credentials, if I had been stupid enouigh to say it. you clearly must accept saying the same about the exactly same words from Sir D. was highly improper because his credentials are better than yours ;-)
Here's an utterly horrendous idea and a perfect example of what NOT to do:
"The idea of personal carbon trading is increasingly being promoted by environmentalists. In theory it could be used to cover all purchases - from petrol to food.
For the scheme to work, the Government would need to give out 45million carbon cards - each one linked to a personal carbon account. Every year, the account would be credited with a notional amount of CO2 in kilograms.
Every time someone makes a purchase of petrol, energy or airline tickets, they would use up credits. A return flight from London to Rome would, for instance, use up 900kg of CO2 credits, while 10 litres of petrol would use up 23kg."
> the term "denier" which deliberately & dishonestly links those with proper scientific scepticism to Nazi Holocaust deniers
The word "denier" existed in the 15th century, before there was even a Nazi Holocaust.
> eco-fascist propaganda in which any lie may be used to attack sceptics. You are now clearly engaging in direct censorship to prevent the facts being put by me.
Here's the thing: there's no "censorship" since you're still allowed to scribble whatever junk you want on your own blog. It's not "censorship" either because you aren't allowed to write your thoughts on Gordon Brown's forehead.
Anyway, thanks for giving Tim an excuse to ban you. You won't be missed.
Ian,
I have to agree. The idea of personal carbon trading is a horrendously bad one, and I hope the UK shows the good sense not to adopt it. Giving people another organizational hassle to worry about, in the midst of what are likely to be already sufficiently busy lives, is a terrible idea. I imagine it was thought up by muddle-headed people of good will, but it sure sounds like something thought up by AGW deniers to make warming mitigation look intrusive and oppressive.
So I temporarily unkilled Neil, and mon Dieu! pal, STFU and apologize like a man. Don't hide it in denialist gibberish, tapdancing and conspiracy theory nutjob jabbering,, STFU and apologize. Sack up. Grow a pair and be a man. Christ. Lance has shown you how to do it, now do it.
Jeff Harvey, save yourself the angst and use Firefox, get greasemonkey, and [killfile] these people who cause these reactions in you. Life's too short to have to expend energy thinking about what the self-marginalized fringe figures are yammering about today. Oh, and keep up the good work.
Best,
D
Neil Craig, you are now banned. See my previous comment for the reasons.
Lance, I've disemvowelled comments from dhogoza for being uncivil.
Barton, it' also monstrously inequitable even though that may not be obvious at first glance.
Essentially it involves giving everyone in the UK, regardless of their income or capacity to reduce their emissions, several hundred pounds worth of free emission permits.
The distributional effects would be appalling. For starters, people in the north of England and in Scotland use far more energy for heating. So people in areas which already have lower than average incomes would be forced to shell out money to the more prosperous south just to keep the lights on.
Incorporating the environmental cost of greenhouse emissions into the cost of goods and services through either emissions trading or a carbon tax and then compensating the poor through cuts in other consumption taxes and increased transfer payments would be far more equitable and avoid the enormous administrative costs of such a scheme.
Dano, care to show us the stuff you found out about the inactivist meme propagation network? Thanks!
Dano and Tim, thanks again for the support. As far as Neil goes, his latest lame response was to donwplay secondary effects of enhanced anthropogenic C02 levels because he claims that my first riposte was dishonest (e.g. my use of 'uniform' as opposed to his use of 'general'). But let us be honest here: that was not the real reason. The real reason, as most of those posting here know, was that he couldn't debate the more relevant, important and complex issues, so he had to stick to the thinnest excuse.
Lastly, I hate being misquoted. I have never on this site used terms like 'Eco-Nazi' and I never will. I only made an inference. The inference was based on the fact that I KNOW that most environmental scientists would agree with my argument that were there to be a small increase in productivity generated by enhanced atmospheric concentrations of C02 - which is based primarily on lab studies that exclude multitrophic interactions, competition with weeds, insect herbivory, changes in abiotic processes etc. - that this would be more than countered by associated changes in the structure and functioning of food webs upon which the productivity of crops (and wild plants) depends. Thus, if this smear applies to me, I expected that it would also apply to those scientists who agree with me. That was it. For that I was attacked vociferosuly by NC.
Finally, there is little evidence to back up any benefits of this in nature. The 13% figure, in my opinion, is therefore meaningless unless this process is studied in a natural ecosystem or at least semi-natural ecosystems where there are all kinds of mitigating factors and constraints. Again, field studies are urgently required, but they are costly and very difficult to monitor, particularly if this rerquires a multidisciplinary approach. Until then, like most scientists, and knowing how complex and non-linear natural systems are, I err on the side of caution.
Neil Craig,
Believe me when I say that I understand your frustration at being attacked from all sides by supporters of AGW here at Deltoid and I have on occasion lost my cool. I have made intemperate remarks that I later regretted and apologized for. There is no shame in that, indeed it only reinforces your credibility and demonstrates good will.
I agree that words like "denier" and the more clumsy "denialist" are ad homs that have no place in the discussion but that doesn't justify using names like "eco-Nazi" in response.
Jeff Harvey is a highly qualified scientist in his field and deserves the respect you would grant any professional (or human being for that matter). You should apologize for calling him any kind of "Nazi". Alas it appears you have been banned. Perhaps if you posted an apology the ban would be lifted.
I agree with much of what you are saying about climate change but you're not going to convince others of our shared point of view by calling them vile names.
Tim, I will take your word that you have disemvowelled obnoxious posts by AGW proponents like dhogaza. I don't mind a spirited debate or even contentious language but when it descends into personal insults there is little that can be accomplished.
Jeff, as I said above you are a highly qualified scientist and deserve to be treated as such. No one deserves to be called a "Nazi" unless of course they are a Nazi and then you had better be able to prove it.
I enjoy our discussions and appreciate your insights into the population biology of climate issues. As I have said on several occasions we share many of the same ecological concerns we just disagree about the extent to which anthropogenic CO2 will influence the climate system.
Speaking of which how can we make progress on water quality issues such as farm run-off? There is a huge area in the Gulf of Mexico that is basically a dead zone due to the effects of fertilizer and sediment deposited by the Mississippi river systems farm run-off.
I hear very little about these kinds of issues that aren't based on theoretical models but can be witnesses first hand and affect huge areas of the planet. Can't we find a way to bring more attention and possibly workable solutions to these indisputable ecological issues?
I note that Lance's outrage at Jeff Harvey being called a Nazi doesn;t also extend to me being called a "lying Nazi".
I note that the president of Kiribati has appealed for his entire country's population to be allowed to move to Aus because the islands are being swamped by rising sea levels. I look forward to the explanation of how/when/where/by who/how much the Global Warming Conspiracy paid him off. Specifics only please.
Since no one else has taken up Ian's challenge to post-marxist economics, I will do so.
Let me say at the outset that I think the Soviet and Maoist empires were evil. However, I don't see their evil as a logical necessity of marxist economic theory. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a political program which Lenin (and Marx, but chiefly Lenin) thought (or claimed to think) would solve the economic problems diagnosed by Marxism. They were badly wrong about that. A neoclassical analogy would be prescribing wage and price controls to deal with inflation. I apologise for this extended apologia.
The reason for this is obvious: business can't tell the demand for a product before it hits the market. If they have a prestige good like Nike shoes they can create demand with advertising (which is a supply cost); otherwise, they choose their profit margin and hope.
Nor are prices of other factors of production generally determined by marginal productivity, as has been known ever since the Cambridge Capital Controversy showed that "capital" couldn't be measured independently of the profit which was supposed to be its marginal price. Given that rates of profit are not in fact uniform (see Farjoun and Machover, "Laws of Chaos") there is no "transformation problem" and there is no technical, value-free justification for the wage/profit split of net returns on sales; they are determined by the relative power of classes, as Sraffa showed ("Production of Commodities by means of commodities").
Markets work not because of the creation of "utility" out of thin air but for Smithian and Austrian reasons: they allow specialisation and they are an efficient, decentred means of propogating information and for specialists to exchange goods. If you think Marx didn't appreciate that, you haven't read his repeated praise of the massive productive power unlocked by the bourgeoisie. If you can't tell the difference between a Maoist political program (Little Red Book) and a Marxist economic analysis then I don't think you know Marxism that well after all. Fortunately, your arguments for cap and trade apply just as well under this conception of markets.
Nor are Marxists hung up on base/superstructure dichotomies anymore, and haven't been since Althusser and Gramsci at the latest - I take this attack no more seriously than you would if I started lambasting you about Jevons and Walras' views on women.
To get some idea of where the marxist economic research program is at, check out what's being presented at this conference: www.probabilisticpoliticaleconomy.net
I'm hoping I can now be abused as an Eco-Commie rather than an Eco-Nazi.
Ian,
> If you like I can go through the same process with the montreal Protocol and the phase-out of CFCs which led to a ban on virtually all developed world uses and didn;t involve grandfathering.
What would be interesting for me and, I think, useful for this discussion is for you - as an expert - to describe a system which you consider effective and fair, so that you would favor using such a system for reducing GHG emissions. The SO2 system as you described it does not seem fair to me due to its reliance on granting free pollution permits to past polluters. It also seems unlikely that the SO2 model, i.e., a technological solution at the point of production, would be effective in the context of GHGs.
> A question sortition, if emissions permit trading lowers the cost of compliance and improves environmental outcomes, why do you object to it?
"Cost" is a very ambiguous concept. Something that costs some people a lot of money, may be a benefit for others. To take an extreme example, abolishing slavery was probably costly for plantation owners, yet it seems like it was the right thing to do.
If there is reason to think that a system, any system, is effective and fair, I would be for it.
> Why do you assume that a market-maker system (i.e. a system with the government as the sole buyer and seller of permits) is preferable?
I make no such assumption - I would like to examine all the possibilities and decide based on merits: effectiveness and fairness. In fact, as I wrote before, I think that a tax system, while preferable to the grandfathering scheme, is unfair - it limit pollution by the poor, but grants the rich virtually unlimited pollution rights.
If one thinks Deltoid gets plagued now and then by bad behavior, this P Z Myers' Pharyngula filter policy is worth reading, with some truly amazing examples. Delotid's trolls are wimps.
> Here's an utterly horrendous idea [...]
> The distributional effects would be appalling. For starters, people in the north of England and in Scotland use far more energy for heating. So people in areas which already have lower than average incomes would be forced to shell out money to the more prosperous south just to keep the lights on.
> [...] enormous administrative costs of such a scheme.
I hope you can provide more convincing arguments for your positions (about this proposed system and about other proposals) than these rather superficial assertions. A personal quota system certainly seems a-priori like the most fair system, and the objections that you raise - geographical determinants and administrative costs - are hardly the insurmountable barriers that you present them as.
Geographical adjustments to the quota should be quite easy to make, and while carrying a CO2-quota card around could be somewhat of a hassle for those who do not use a charge card anyway (so that whether quota cards should or shouldn't be required could be a matter of political discussion), surely imposing an air mileage quota is administratively simple.
The possibility that it is ideology rather than expertise that is at the root of your objections certainly suggests itself.
J. Haughton posts:
Prices are not determined by the intersection of supply and demand curves.
Take that, 100 years of microeconomics field work! Prices going up when there are shortages aren't caused by a shift in the supply curve! They're caused by, er, increased markup.
You know, the way rain is caused by people deciding to carry umbrellas.
"What would be interesting for me and, I think, useful for this discussion is for you - as an expert - to describe a system which you consider effective and fair, so that you would favor using such a system for reducing GHG emissions."
Sortition, I favor an initial free issue of permits covering about 90% of emissiosn from major emitters. The free permits would phase out over a 5-10 year period in favor of auctions and the total amount of permits available (both through auctions and grandfathering) would reduce roughly 5% per year leading to an effective elimination of net emissions within 20-30 years.
It's worth noting that this sort of scheme would probably cover less than 505 of total emissions.
At the same time, I'd introduce a carbon tax at a low initial rate with the tax progressively increasing over a similar 20-30 year period.
Revenue from the tax (and from the auction of permits) would be used for three things - cutting other regressive taxes; providing additional financial assistance to people on low incomes through cuts to the basic rate of income tax and increased welfare payments and to fudn programs to reduce net emissions wherever it was most cost-effective to do so.
For starters, that'd involve programs to stop deforestation in developing countries; programs to give the two billion people depend on kerosene or dung for lighting and heating access to cleaner safer fuels like natural gas or to solar lighting and programs to assist the poorest people in developed countries reduce their emissions and save money through measures like improved home insulation; solar hot water systems and expanded public transportation.
If Al Gore or anyone else wants to generate absurd amounts of carbon dioxide and they're prepared to pay the accompanying cost I'm delighted to let them do so - because through either a tradeable emissions rights program or a tax program they'll end up financing even larger reductions elsewhere.
Sortition, the British proposal is equivalent to imposing a carbon tax then handing every taxpayer a rebate check based on the expected average emissions.
The first problem with that is that people on higher incomes don't need the compensation (and in many cases will likely be overcompensated meaning there's a net transfer from the poor to the rich).
The second problem is that geographical variations in energy use are not the minor factors you seem to think they are. You may recall from the whole brouhaha over Al Gore's house that Tennesseans use on average something like 1.5-2 times the US average energy for heating and cooling because the Ohio valley has a combination of cold winters and hot humid summers almost unique in the US.
Personally I live in a semitropical city; use public transport and have only flown once in the last five years.
My GHG emissions are probably less than half the Australian average. What's to stop me either selling my theoretical excess ration or lending my mate who has a car my ration card to fill up?
In either scenario, the result is an increase rather than a decrease in emissions.
Ian,
Re: #174
As I mentioned before, I find the grandfathering scheme unfair. That said, if we are talking about a period of 5-10 years (BTW, why not 3-5 or 0?) this is not a major issue, so I will not belabor this matter.
There are however several essential problems with your suggested scheme. The first I already mentioned - it essentially gives the rich unlimited pollution rights. I find this unacceptable. The argument that emission taxes revenue from the rich would finance reductions elsewhere is not compelling: I see no reason why those reductions could not be financed without allowing Gore et al. to over-emit. If lack of funds is the problem, additional funds could be easily found by reducing the military budget, or by raising income taxes for the rich.
A second problem is that it is quite likely that some common products (such as electricity) cannot be produced at much lower emissions without increasing their price dramatically, and, on the other hand, consumption of those products would not be reduced significantly without dramatic price increases. This means that the prices of those products are going to go up by a large factor and the providers of those products are going to reap the rewards of those increased prices - even as their costs are changed little.
This is definitely true when grandfathering is in effect, but would likely remain true to some extent even afterwards, when some of the windfall profits would be diverted into buying permits.
Thirdly, experience shows that it is unlikely that any the proceeds of the emissions tax would be used to eliminate other regressive taxes or to reduce inequality in other ways. Tax cuts for the rich and various tax shelters and credits for the rich and the upper middle class are the much more likely product of any budget surplus.
Ian,
Re: #175
Rebating the tax up to a baseline (and more generally, tracking total consumption through central accounting) allows turning the emissions tax into a progressive tax, making it a much fairer system. The amount up to the baseline which is exempt from the emissions tax is equivalent to the lowest income tax bracket in which no tax is paid.
Regarding geographical variations: I don't claim that they are minor factors, only that they are easy to adjust for. BTW, I don't make following Gore's personal life into a habbit so I am not clear of the details, but I am under the impression that his household consumes 20x the national average rather than 1.5-2x. (And his argument for his excessive consumption was not that he is within the regional norm but that he can consume as much as he wants to because he buys offsets.)
Regarding selling rations: that may or may not be legal, based on the preference of the public, as far as I am concerned. Even if it is legal, and the low consumption people choose to do so, the quotas can easily be set so that even if everybody uses their entire quota (or sells it and it is used by others) total emissions are within the desired limit.
Barton;
No classical economist denies that there can be short-term fluctuations; on average, long term costs are driven by the costs of supply. If you'd looked at the link you would see that "Microeconomic fieldwork" has in fact found that fluctuations with demand accounts for about 11% of prices on average. 89% is supply costs.
As for prices going up when there are shortages; usually if there's a shortage it's because of an increase in the cost of raw materials. Supply cost again.
In general neoclassical economics has a shocking record when it comes to comparing their theory with empirical data (or as the CCC showed, with logic). Fieldwork (like that I linked to) is not on their side.
James,
Your arguments appear solid for high volume manufacturing where the per-unit price falls as volume increases. However, the supply and demand story seems to me like a pretty good fit to the situation in the real estate market. Labor on the house does not account for the location-dependent price differences, and prices are determined by an equilibrium between supply and demand.
What do you think?
Hi Sortition,
At this point you push the limits of my knowledge (didn't take long, did it?). There is a well established marxist theory of rent and real estate prices, but I don't know much about it. See this paper: http://cda.morris.umn.edu/~binac/English%20Articles/capital_and_class.p… which applies the theory of rent to the price of oil, two concerns close to the little aussie battler's, sorry, working family's heart at the moment.
We shouldn't confuse the "land" and the "house" aspect of real estate here. The cost of new buildings is I suspect highly dependent on the cost of builders' labour. The price of land can't be determined by supply costs as land is not manufactured (except to the extent of e.g. clearing trees). It therefore differs from most commodities. Supply of different "types" of land for real estate purposes (I exclude farming and mining) is largely dependent on government fiat (zoning laws, construction of roads nearby, etc), something notoriously insensitive to market demand. Once you rule out manufacturing and admit government as prime determiner of supply, I am happy to let supply and demand explain the residuum, as in the famous "economy of cigarettes in a POW camp" case: http://www.albany.edu/~mirer/eco110/pow.html but I don't think it's a good principle to apply to the rest of the economy.
In general, if there's a freeze in Florida and fewer marketable oranges are harvested, the price goes up. If there's a bumper crop, the price goes down. Looks like shifts in the supply curve to me.
Ian Gould,
"I note that Lance's outrage at Jeff Harvey being called a Nazi doesn't also extend to me being called a "lying Nazi".
I hadn't noticed that anyone called you a lying Nazi or I would have included you in my remarks. I may be more sensitive to slights against Jeff Harvey since he has earned my respect with well reasoned and considerate conversations. While we often disagree and that disagreement can be contentious he mostly avoids personal attacks and apologizes when he looses his cool.
This has had the effect of increasing his credibility with me and influencing my opinion on the topics we have discussed.
You on the other hand call me names like neo-fascist and denier at every opportunity. You usually reply to my remarks with offensive screeds that have only tangential connection to the points of my actual post. In fact I'm not even sure you even bother to read the entirety of most of the posts that have triggered your bile filled manifestos. You seem to prefer to rail against some right-wing bogeyman that I represent in your mind rather than making a cogent reply to my actual points.
Still even you don't deserve to be called a lying Nazi, an immoderate and ill-tempered ideologue yes, but lying Nazi, no.
this being an open thread and all
the upcoming death of cheap energy, particularly when we were promised unlimited free energy by now when we growing up, make me wonder; how essential was that in the development of our current degree of technological sophistication? more to the point; if the carboniferous era was a random anomaly limited to this planet; and if other planets which developed intelligent life were not treated to veins of coal and wells of petroleum, and had to work their way through the industrial revolution with the solar, wind, hydro, biomass etc. power of that era as we now face, would they have eventually gotten here, or would they be forever stuck in the fellahin stage described by Spengler et al? is that the answer to the Fermi paradox?
Snap z!
I was thinking about similar things when I was wrangling bitey beasties and cleaning traps in the wilderness last week. Throw in a bit of thermodynamics ('conservation of energy', and similar ideas, seem to mean different things to conservatives than they do to physicists) and there's a nice pot of stew for a philosophical evening...
I also thought that it might be vaguely informative to have a few threads kicking along where folk listed their opinions for must-read texts for the various scientific disciplines. As an example, for a biology thread on this theme, I would venture that no life scientist's education is really complete without having turned the pages of The Origin of Species.
To Barton @ 181;
Marx and the rest of the labour value theorists argue that weather, etc, may cause short term fluctuations around the cost of supply (hence that 11% variation), but over the course of the business cycle, prices are determined by supply cost + profit; it's the long term average.
James Haughton writes:
over the course of the business cycle, prices are determined by supply cost + profit
Wait a minute. If profit counts as something more than supply cost, aren't you deviating from the labor theory of value? Is profit exogenous? Didn't Marx argue that profits have to fall? Accounting for the "Marxist business cycle" (crises of overproduction and so on), that is.
In any case, you're talking about what prices are made up of, not about what prices are caused by. Do you understand the difference?
I don't think your theory has any predictive value. So it's not much use in a scientific sense, or a practical sense.
But don't take my word for it. Let's take a simple example -- how do you predict how much prices will rise using your theory? I.e., how do you predict what the supply costs and the profits will be?
Let's try a simple experiment. You predict what the inflation (CPI-U or GDP deflator at your choice) and unemployment (CLF-U or TLF-U, your choice) will be for each of the next five years, a year at a time -- that is, this year we'll predict inflation and unemployment in 2009, that year we'll predict it in 2010, etc. You use the labor theory of value or the alternative theory you've presented above, and I'll use things like the growth rate of the money supply, the effects of the tax structure on the real GDP growth rate, and external trade price shocks -- you know, stuff that the capitalist economists allege affect supply and demand. At the end of the period, the person with the smallest RMS error wins, and the loser pays him $100.00 (2008 value, as adjusted for CPI-U).
Each of us will have to present his theory openly and in mathematical form beforehand, with no ad hoc adjustments for individual years and no changes of the theory or the definition of the terms in mid-stream. Data will be annual figures, and autocorrelation terms are allowed, just so we can jack up the R^2 a bit. What do you think?
Barton,
Aren't you changing the topic here a bit? Weren't we discussing micro-economic theory? Shouldn't you be suggesting predicting the prices of certain products? It seems to me that neither theory provides any micro scale predictive power.
engineers is republicans:
Hey, what happened to my response to Barton?
Dear Barton,
I will have to decline your bet, as I lack the technical analysis skills, access to data-sets, and time to a) learn the skills and b) perform the analysis. Acquiring better analytical skills is somewhere on my list of things to do, after finishing my PhD (Anthropology) and being a good father to my 6 month old. At present I only have a general knowledge of the theory, which I find more compelling than standard neo-classical theory and more useful for my purposes (analyzing transitions between subsistence, peasant and market economies).
I am also inclined to believe that short-term economic outcomes vs long-term trends are much like the weather vs the climate: the first has so much noise and chaotic dynamics that prediction is not very accurate no matter how good your model is. Taking that into account, I think meteorology is a good example of a science which lacks significant predictive potential but is still scientific and useful for all that.
Someone with more knowledge than I who might be inclined to take up your challenge might be Robert Vienneau, who has a blog about the problems with neo-classical economics derived from the Marxian and Sraffan critiques here: http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/
Maybe we could talk about how women's suffrage has increased the size of government and is pretty much responsible for our (the USA's anyway" enormous debt? And it gives Tim another chance to take his stick to Lott and his questionable number crunching.
Hi, I would like to ask readers whether they know of any instances in which someone who frequents and posts comments on blogs about AGW has changed their 'mind' (in quotes because it has to be something obvious in their writing and sincere rather than just a claim). I'm somewhat interested in whether or not it's possible to turn a troll (oxymoron?), but I'm more interested in what specific future findings could change the mind of someone who currently argues about whether or not AGW is real and non-negligible.
I think it is, and if asked why, I would say it's because of the weight of evidence but particularly because of these three things: radiative properties of CO2; temperature increases which match old predictions; and cooling stratosphere. What would it take to change my mind?
For AGW-deniers, I generally assume that they don't actually believe the stuff they write; but I'm curious if any of them will admit a possibility that they could be convinced and then identify what evidence such a change would require. Thanks.
Ben, I recall Voxday making that argument a few years ago. Are you being a troll or something?
Steve L- that question has come up in cmobat with trolls, and indeed simple uninformed people, and I do not recall any definite answer. IN the trolls case, it is because they do not want to give on. In the case of the uninformed people, who are often knee-jerk anti-environmentalists, its simply because they do not know what it would take. They do not know enough about the topic to be able to say what would change their minds.
I love the way John Lott refers to 'academics', and when you follow the link it turns out he means himself. He really ought to get himself a sockpuppet. Has he no sense of decency?
Vagueofgodalming: Lott is very familiar with sock puppets. It's kind of sad.
Steve L: I know this is secondhand, but longtime poster cce discussed his own change of mind here, in his introduction (part 0). I don't have any examples from the blogosphere per se, though.
However, I do tend to point people here when I ask them similar questions. Towards the end of that (part 6), he provides criteria for AGW falsification similar enough to the one I'd accept, as an example to those who the video's trying to reach. (Be advised that this particular one is a bit of a hodgepodge if viewed on its own.)
Like,open thread mean anything to you? Last time I checked here, Tim likes to lambaste Lott. Seems fair, no?
Women's suffrage? I thought the force responsible for big government was Al Gore, or Bill Clinton, or FDR, or whatever the bogeyman _du jour_ happens to be.
In other news: ExxonMobil cuts funding of climate inactivists... again?
Right. I'm not sure about FDR, but Bill wouldn't have been elected without women's suffrage. From the article, all the democrats to have won the presidency in the last few decades would have lost had women not had the vote.
> From the article, all the democrats to have won the presidency in the last few decades would have lost had women not had the vote.
The same can probably be said about the poor and about blacks and maybe even about Jews.
[Since we are into making idiotic factual statements with bigoted undercurrents, I just thought I might add my contribution.]
Steve L.
Interesting question. One of the frustrations of posting on-line is that the chance of actually changing someone's mind is remote (at best). I am an AGW skeptic and I believe that I am actually capable of changing my mind. When I first became aware of the Global Warming issue, I suspected that temperatures weren't really rising at all, that it was all UHI etc. What made me change my mind? People I respect changed their minds and the data became convincing.
First, I believe that the greenhouse effect exists, that the Earth is getting warmer and that man is contributing to the greenhouse effect via CO2 emissions. I believe that man's effect is small and that catastrophic warming is highly unlikely. (It's pointless to argue about these here, if Hansen, Mann, Amman et al haven't convinced me yet, neither will you). I use the term "believe" (for which I always get grief) because it would be unsuitable for me to claim that I "know" anything when experts and people with much bigger IQs than me are still arguing with each other.
What would it take for me to believe that AGW is likely to be catastrophic? I would have to be convinced that this has been the warmest period in a millennium. I would have to be convinced that UHI and land use changes have been properly accounted for in the surface record. I would have to see models that successfully predict results for a significant amount of time (10 years?). It would also be notable if developers stopped building in Miami due to GW concerns (or that insurance companies stopped insuring such projects).
On a non-scientific basis, things that dispose me to question catastrophic GW are: Attempts to say the debate is over, Ad hominem attacks on those that disagree, Claims that everyone would agree if only it wasn't for Exxon/Mobil, refusal of AGW supporters to ever admit that they might have gotten something wrong, the fact that AGW supporters never seem to "call-out" unreasonable claims of the effects of GW, my perception that AGW supporters are largely the same group of people with which I disagree on almost every other issue as well.
One thing about your post that I find most interesting/revealing/troubling is
The only way that I would go to the trouble of posting things I don't believe would be if I was a PR flack in the employ of Exxon (and we can't ALL be PR flacks working for Exxon). If I believe that we're all gonna die from GW and that the only way to avoid it is via a UN led World Government, I'd be on board with that, regardless of how much I might dislike the idea.
Steve L,
How generous of you to refer to those who do not subscribe to AGW catastophism as "deniers" and "trolls".
It is clear that you are the one that is closed to the evidence as demonstrated by your use of these inflammatory words to frame your "question".
No one is "denying" that CO2 has the property of absorbing and radiating certain wavelengths of infrared radiation. The question is to what extent is the "radiative balance" evinced by climate models representative of the actual dynamics of the Earth's climate system.
The second of your "three things" is the extent to which current temperatures "match old predictions". Well I guess it depends on which "old predictions" you are referring to. I don't believe any of the commonly used examples predicted ten years of statistically flat temps. So it would appear that you are "O" for two.
The issue of "stratospheric cooling" is complex and there is not unanimity as to the long term trend or the influence of ozone and water vapor on the thermal dynamics of the stratosphere, but to claim the recent data as solid evidence for AGW is dubious at best.
Those interested in further comments on the Lancet estimates of Iraqi mortality should see this. Basic summary: Most people think that IFHS and L2 estimates of violent mortality in Iraq (151,000 versus 601,000) differ by "only" a factor of 4. This is mistaken. Using the same assumptions for L2 and IFHS (no adjustments for underreporting or for clusters that could not be visited) generates estimates that differ by more than a factor of 8: 601,000 to 72,000.
I would be interested in the opinions of the Deltoid community on this topic before I write it up more formally.
Lance, don't get upset. Although I have a longer term interest, I bring up the question now because I am in a discussion with someone I call AGW-denier and he himself has used a sock-puppet named "troll". I am, as you note, on the other side (the one with all the data analysis). And the framing of the specific question has already been worked upon by me and this other person. My comment was intended to elicit responses regarding what it would take to change one's mind -- unsurprisingly, your response has not done so for me. But I think the important thing is that I can identify what would change my mind (I'm still trying to figure it out) and that you can identify what would change your mind. Let's see if we really are open minded.
Steve L,
Reasonable enough. Sorry if I misinterpreted your post but using insulting words like "AGW denier" doesn't intone an air of objectivity to your comments
Lance
Is there a good/desired target ppm of CO2 agreed to by the consensus to stop/reverse climate change?
Everyone seems to just say that we must reduce CO2 emissions, but without a target how will we know we are on the right track or if when we've been succesful?
If there is a target figure are there any papers explaining why it is the target?
There isn't?
Those interested in further comments on the Lancet estimates of Iraqi mortality should see this. Basic summary: Most people think that IFHS and L2 estimates of violent mortality in Iraq (151,000 versus 601,000) differ by "only" a factor of 4. This is mistaken. Using the same assumptions for L2 and IFHS (no adjustments for underreporting or for clusters that could not be visited) generates estimates that differ by more than a factor of 8: 601,000 to 72,000.
David, i think your "analysis" is getting more absurd every time you post!
lots of people have asked you questions about the IFHS. i have NOT read a single critical word from you, about this study!
here are a couple of points to start with. (from an older post on my blog):
1. the numbers of the NJoM are in good agreement with the Lancet 1 numbers for the early period of the war.
2. while the paper finds a smaller increase in violent deaths than the Lancet 2 paper, it shows a massive increase in the rate of non-violent deaths (doubled deathrate, some calculations lead to an estimate of 400000 total excess deads, in comparison with a total of 650000 in the lancet 2)
3. the paper does not show an increase in deathrate after the Samarra bombing and in early 2006. this is extremely strange, as the increase in violence was even registered by the US military and lead to the surge.
4. the mortality results are a small part of a huge survey about health in iraq. the questions fill about 20 pages, the relevant part being on page 16.
It's not when I changed my mind, but when I lost patience with the, uh, unbelievers was when the satellite temperature records were straightened out. Before then there was some evidence (though not much) that warming wasn't happening or at least that the record was genuinely inconclusive. Since then there hasn't been any solid evidence that AGW was not happening (a few years of stable high temperatures under a La Nina is NOT a decline in long term temperature). An unbeliever of my acquaintance simply stopped referring to the satellite record (which he had previously based his argument upon) and started dragging out all sorts of illogical thermodynamics-denying crap, rather than admit that his evidence had been undercut, after which my respect for his arguments dropped exponentially.
Thanks to sod for the comments. Using your numbering:
1) I don't think that this is true, but haven't checked myself. This is only possibly true if you discard Falluja, which makes little sense to me if you are trying to compare the overall results/quality of L1 with IFHS. I think Mike Spagat is working more on this point, so stand by.
2) The paper only makes a claim about violent deaths. You (and others) use the raw data in the paper to make (not unreasonable) claims about what it implies about the rates of non-violent deaths. The good news is that we will not have to argue much more about whether or not the non-violent rates are different, at least in the view of the IFHS authors, since M. Ali is presenting a paper on this very topic at JSM. (I have not seen a draft so it could be that Ali et al will agree with you on this. (By the way, any Deltoid readers at JSM should drop me a line. Coffee is on me!)
3) True. But neither does IBC. This is one of the central contradictions between L2 and IBC/IFHS. Only one side of the debate can be correct.
4) True. Les Roberts likes to claim that any survey that is not only focussed on mortality (like L1 and L2) is doomed to mis/under-estimate mortality. I disagree, as do the IFHS authors and the NEJM editors.
"Is there a good/desired target ppm of CO2 agreed to by the consensus to stop/reverse climate change?"
Consensus? Not really... Absolutely, by 800 ppm of CO2 I think everyone predicts global disaster for human civilization. (Everyone sane, that is) In all probability, by 550 ppm (the EU target, the most restrictive official target currently). Looking more likely all the time, 450 ppm, but I don't know if that's reached more than 50% penetrance of the AGW-believers yet. James Hansen recently is on record as saying 350. Yes, we are above that already. The What-me-AGw folks publicly deride him enormously, which of course is an acknowledgement that his predictions have been correct longer than anybody else's, for 20 years now. And he was one of the authorities behind the original 450 ppm target; his new estimates based on further observations of positive feedback and "inertia" whereby the temp will continue to rise for a while even after CO2 drops now lead him to believe that if we stay at 450 ppm for a while, the ice caps will all eventually melt, with the aforementioned global disaster coming to pass; thus the 350.
on another note, this just in on BBC America news:
Remote Area Medical, kind of a small-scale Doctors Without Borders, founded more than 20 years ago to bring medical care to poor tribes in Guyana; now does 60% of its work bringing health care to the disadvantaged third world citizens of the United States.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7420744.stm
James,
The corrections to the satellite records played a key role in my acknowledging GW. Am I still an "Unbeliever"?
BillBodell:
> Am I still an "Unbeliever"?
Again, that's why I'm now using the term "inactivist".
z:
> Remote Area Medical, kind of a small-scale Doctors Without Borders, founded more than 20 years ago to bring medical care to poor tribes in Guyana; now does 60% of its work bringing health care to the disadvantaged third world citizens of the United States.
You just hate freedom. And Michael Moore is fat.
Good luck with that. At least the melted ice will only mostly take out the liberal coasts, leaving new beach-front property for us unwashed rednecks.
ben, will that also take out the women who have been using women's suffrage to vote for Bill Clinton?
Tim always seems to start his new Open Threads just when I am about to head away for a spot of field-work monitoring endangered beasties in the wilderness. This conveniently lets me alert those who might notice my absence that it is not because I am avoiding any challenges, and I hope that if Neil Craig responds to my last post answering him, someone might take up the baton on my behalf.
If it's worth the effort of course...
And following on from that aforementioned post, it seems that just about all of the 'Peak Oil' denialists have suddenly become very quiet, what with the recent increases in the price of oil. I am curious to know if there is still any significant group of people who disparage the foresight of M. King Hubbert, or those who followed after, such as Campbell and Heinburg.
I know that there were one or two conservatively-inclined folk here who have aspired recently to hummers or similar - how many are still all dewy-eyed about the possibility of knocking around in a guzzler? And if their complacency is still entrenched, what of next year, or the year after? I am very curious indeed.
Australians are suddenly being rudely awakened, and I have more than a few acquaintances who are regretting their bravado of even six months ago about Peak Oil being a complete myth.
The truly frustrating thing though is that those who can, aren't, and are instead fiddling whilst the smoke starts to billow over Rome.
FROM THE OREGON PETITION THREAD SINCE I HAVE BEEN WARNED OFF IT
I first posted #42 - #43 on have overwhelmingly been off topic because, as I pointed out, so many people on the eco-fascist side use the tactic of changing the subject when they are found out.
Strange, Tim, that you haven't noticed this before or deleted any of there posts. I assume posts 194,5 & 6 will be deleted after that warning, particularly since 196 is not only off topic but changing the subject to yet another off topic.
Or not as the case may be.
Anyway I will post this up on the new thread as well.
Sod I never said that I believed any of your 4 points which makes disputing the a "straw man" argument. I merely said that the current bio-fuels growth is because of the subsidy you assert doesn't exist. Your assertion is clearly untrue.
Jeff's remark about the letter inviting people to sign the Oregon Petition not being "peer reviewed" shows that he has absorbed all the Luddite buzz words without understanding what peer review is. A peer reviewed petition is about as sensible as a well written hat. Unfortunately such buzz words are regularly used as a substitute for thought.
His remarks about Ehrlich's amended bet proposal are not truthful & the implication that ehrlich having chickened out of repeating his original bet, Simon chickened out of a reasonable counter bet by Ehrlich merely represents the very highest standard of honesty of the eco-Nazi movement. You can read about it on http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/references.html#bet accessible from the previous McCarthy page I put up.
Suffice it to say that Ehrlich chose self serving objectives bearing little to do with overall scarcity or quality of life decline. For example he offered to bet that air quality in China would decline, a fairly safe bet bearing in mind China's industrialisation. Had he been concerned about Chinese quality of life he would have chosen some broader standard like how long they are living or even deaths from environmental factors including disease (some increase in smog & massive reduction in plague indicates the environment is getting much better overall). Alternately had he ben concerned about a general increase in pollution he would have gone for world air quality figures, which have improved. Ehrlich has quite a record of claiming world environmental catastrophes which has not discredited him in the slightest in Luddite eyes:-)
Cthulhu the basic problem with saying that petition signatures don't count if you aren't a "climate scientist" (i.e. computer modeller producing a warming model) has been explained by me before. Scientists can recognise scientific principles & can recognise when they are missing.
By your argument astrology can only be criticised by astrologers (who tend not to). Nor "creation science" by any but duly qualified "creation scientists". By the same argument the fact that Stephen McIntyre went through Mann's Hockey Stick & proved, beyond any doubt whatsoever, that it was mathematical mince was irrelevant because he was merely a mathematician. This clearly is the best argument against the petition (apart from the outright fraud of trying to get a fake name by them) that the eco-fascists can produce but it is obviously false.
Bill Bodell posts:
Straw man argument. No one is saying the cure for AGW is "a UN led World Government." That's a right-wing paranoid fantasy.
Sod I never said that I believed any of your 4 points which makes disputing the a "straw man" argument.
basic reading isn t among your top skills. of course you amnaged to ring up EACH of the four false claims that i took a look at in two posts of yours:
even after eco-Nazi action to force up food prices by diverting it to bio-fuel (this is why an increasing amount of it is going to support meat animals)
you claim that the current increase in food price is significantly caused by biofule production. that is false.
I merely said that the current bio-fuels growth is because of the subsidy you assert doesn't exist. Your assertion is clearly untrue.
and i did kindly ask you, to quote me on saying that there are no subsidies on biofuels. you failed to do that.
you made the claim that subsidies are the drivinfg factor behind the biofule increase. this is false. at the current price, biofuels do not need subsidies.
Neil Craig said in #29 above:
As with several other recalcitrant trolls who pop up here, and true to the form he has established in denigrating Jody Aberdein's relevant expertise, Neil obviously has no clue who Jeff Harvey is, nor what Jeff's credentials are.
Neil, a reminder - know whom it is you are insulting before you start. Otherwise you are simply opening your mouth to change feet.
Again.
I'll say one thing for you Neil: you are nothing if not consistent (or perhaps merely persistent)...
Jeff is an internationally respected population biologist (with a long list of peer-reviewed papers linked on Deltoid, if you care to make the effort to find them), and I can say without hesitation that he has infinitely more of a clue about matters ecological than you have.
Are you deliberately trying to present yourself as an unredeemable prat?
Oh, and don't think that we haven't noticed your shuffling of the goal-posts with respect to the Erhlich/Simon wager, and the intent behind said wager. Ludd and Malthus need not be invoked either positively or negatively in this matter for the fundamental points of natural resource limitations to stand (although, interestingly, Malthus is very much misrepresented in the eco-deniers' use of his material).
You might as well let loose on me now - I won't be able to post again for over a week, so you should be able to vent quite a load of spleen in that time without my immediate replies.
I'm sure though that others here will baby-sit you for me, in the interim.
I'm sure though that others here will baby-sit you for me, in the interim.
No way.
I've spared myself the time-wasting, agonizing pain of accidentally receiving input when skimming comments from Neil and others like him.
I use [killfile].
Simple solution to simpleton gibberish.
Best,
D
BPL
No. It would be a straw man argument if I said that I was against acting on AGW because it would lead to a UN World Government.
I said that I would SUPPORT a UN World Government if I perceived AGW to be a significant enough threat and that was the best way to deal with it. I was trying to make the point that none of my personal political preferences are so important to me that I would let the planet fry, my great-grandchildren and hundreds of millions of humans perish.
bi,
"inactivist" is a better term. I will join you in trying to propagate it. But then, I was trying to push referring to the years 2001-2009 as "ought 1" etc. As eminently reasonable as that seemed (it worked 100 years ago), I failed.
Ahh, the entertainment never ends.
Neil says:
"Jeff's remark about the letter inviting people to sign the Oregon Petition not being "peer reviewed" shows that he has absorbed all the Luddite buzz words without understanding what peer review is. A peer reviewed petition is about as sensible as a well written hat. Unfortunately such buzz words are regularly used as a substitute for thought."
Which is as far as we know, correct. THe Oregon package included the form to sign up with, the letter from Seitz, and the review paper.
The review paper has not, to the best of my knowledge, been peer reviewed. Where was it published? Who reviewed it?
The answer appears to be nobody. Peer review is a specific process, which Jeff knows a great deal about, seeing as he was an Editor at Nature for a while....
Now, in order to advance whatever point you want to make, why don't you find out where the Oregon review was published, and whether or not it was properly peer reviewed.
For example, proper peer review involves being read by people who know the area of research. I would no more trust a cosmology paper that had been peer reviewed by a bunch of biologists, than I would a biology paper that had been reviewed by some cosmologists.
So the EU target is an upper limit.
I was looking for a lower bound as well, say a range 230ppm to 300ppm or something like that but it seems not.
I do understand the need to reduce pollution but in this case it would, for me at least, be useful to have a measurable target to aim for rather than just have people saying use less petrol or whatever the politicians and activist decide is bad for the hoi polloi to do that week.
Chris' Wills:
What's wrong with saving petrol? You don't get any benefits out of saving petrol? Like, monetary benefits? Does the Big Bad Wolf come out of bed to snatch away the money you saved from using less petrol?
...and guess what... I just got blog-mined! Wheee!!!
Actually, Bill, I was using unbeliever in a slightly ironic effort to not cause too much offence and derail the thread; I usually use delusionist (Quiggin terminology: one who either believes or spreads delusions) or Adullamite.
But in answer to your question; your position seems reasonable to me, though I think the weight of evidence is against you in saying change will be minimal. But certainly the precise level of impact is harder to predict than that there will be an impact, and forms a legitimate area of disagreement. What gets my goat is people like the Laviosier institute claiming that the law of conservation of energy doesn't apply in the stratosphere.
Whether or not change is "catastrophic" is a complicated definitional question, since whether or not something is a catastrophe includes how well humanity (and the ecosystem) responds to the problem, eg an earthquake that in Japan would be serious but managable is a catastrophe in China. It would help the discussion if you would specify what you would consider catastrophic: an increase in sea level of X metres? rise in average temperature of Y degrees? Rise in extinction rates of Z%?
PS perhaps Bill's position qualifies him to be a Non-Placet rather than an Adullamite.
"Ahh, the entertainment never ends."
Indeed. Were I not familiar with this blog since back when, and had I only discovered the recent influx of new posters, I would suspect The Onion were involved somehow.
James,
It's not that I'm afraid to get into the gory details (well, I'll force myself to if enough people question my manhood). It's just that I'm not going to convince anyone here that I'm right. Also, it's rather pretentious to assume I have something to contribute when so many people with more knowledge and a higher I.Q. than I (and probably you) have devoted a significant portion of their lives to these questions and are still arguing with each other.
What interests me (and could actually accomplish something in a place such as this) are questions like: Do people arrive at their opinion about AGW because of their political affiliation? Or does the same worldview that led them to their politics lead them to their view on AGW? Are AGW proponents truly worshipers of Science? Or is it just because science happens to be on their side at the moment? (I had an analogy about the minimum wage that nearly brought a previous open thread to a halt until Tilo showed up and reinvigorated it). I'm also interested in seeing if I can convince some individual "alarmists" that a thoughtful, caring, rational person could actually hold a different opinion than theirs.
I'm also very interested in defining the arguments better. I read all the apostates (Singer, Lindzen, Micheals, Avery, Lonborg). I follow the CA, Climate Skeptic, Lucia, Niche Modeling and Pielke Jr blogs (along with Deltoid, Open Mind and RealClimate for balance). Everyone of those skeptics accepts that the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, that the greenhouse effect is real and that man is probably contributing to it's effect via CO2 emissions. Yet it seems that AGW proponents classify them all as "deniers". If there are blogs where idiots claim that the globe has not warmed (in the last 100 years) let me know where they are so that I can go over there and argue with them from time to time.
I'm tired of the arguments where one person says that the trend of the last 7 years has been negative and the other side says "Liar! The smoothed 15 year trends are positive". That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere. That's like me saying one baseball team has a great offense because of their high batting average and some one else says "Liar, they do not have a great offense because they don't score many runs". The proper argument is "what constitutes a great offense?", not yelling past each other by quoting different statistics as if everybody is in agreement on the basic question.
A strange thing just happened on bi's blog. Earlier in the day I followed his link here to his site, saw something interesting and posted a rather innocuous comment about "big business not truly being in favor of free markets".
Checking back a few minutes ago, I noticed he hadn't posted my comment but had posted his comment about my post (which he hadn't posted!) What's up with that?
> That's semantics and definition of terms and it doesn't get us anywhere.
The melting icecaps don't care about your "definition of terms".
I suppose your quibbling along the lines of Jennifer Marohasy shows just how "thoughtful, caring, rational" you are?
> Are AGW proponents truly worshipers of Science? Or is it just because science happens to be on their side at the moment?
We've already shown to you that there's _no consensus_ among economists on the minimum wage. But you just had to ignore the evidence.
> What's up with that?
You posted a rather "innocuous" talking point. At any rate, I reserve the right to be as blogfascist as I want, after all it's my own blog.
Wha...
> The mysterious post-war ocean cooling is a glitch, a US-British team reports in a paper in this week's Nature. What most climate researchers were convinced was real is in fact "the result of uncorrected instrumental biases in the sea surface temperature record," they write. [...]
> How come? Almost all sea temperature measurements during the Second World War were from US ships. The US crews measured the temperature of the water before it was used to cool the ships engine. When the war was over, British ships resumed their own measurements, but unlike the Americans they measured the temperature of water collected with ordinary buckets. Wind blowing past the buckets as they were hauled on board slightly cooled the water samples. The 1945 temperature drop is nothing else than the result of the sudden but
uncorrected change from warm US measurements to cooler UK measurements, the team found.
Via Crooked Timber.
If Jeff does have the credentials mantioned then he knows perfectly well that what I said about peer review is correct. Peer review is a proces used ofr scientific papers. There are serious problems with peer review even there & it can be a method of preventing the publication of stuff that goes against the theories of those chosen to review. - instance the fact that Stephen McIntyre's criticsm of the Hockey stick as being mathematically rubbish, which is now accepted as mathematically entirely correct, could not get published & he had to put it out on the net. Peer reviewed criticisms of Lysenkoism were never published under Stalin which is not convincing proof that the theory was sound. In any csae per reviewed petitions, public opinion polls or suchlike are at best nonsensical & at worst an atack on freedom.
If Jeff really has the standing claimed then he knows this perfectly well & was not writing ignorantly but dishonestly, which is not better.
Sod your claim to have read the things you quoted me as having said merely, like your claim that bio-fuels receive absolutely zero government subsidy, represents the pinnacle of honesty to which the eco-fascist movement aspires - that is to say thit is a complete & deliberate lies.
Your claim that last year's production of bio-fuels would not have required subsidy on today's fuel prices & the subsidy therefore doesn't count is clearly dishonestly trying to justify the subsidies you are on record as saying odn't exist. It is the nature of the universe that cause precedes effect. It is probably also untrue (you give no evidence) since a number of experts have pointed out that since bio-fuel maize, like the rest of it, is grown using fertiliser made from oil, the effect of producing such fuels is not to significantly cut oil use & may be to increase it.
Dano's response to my points is at least honest - he doesn't read facts he doesn't like & therefore is secure in his position ;-)
James since you use pejorative terms I trust I have your word that you more than equally approve the use of the term eco-Nazi. More than because it is proven that the "environmentalist" movement have inded supported killings on a scale worse than Hitler wheras your term "delusionist" presupposes that those doubting the catastrophic warming claims are the ones labouring under the delusion. Do you really claim that McIntyre's mathematical dissection of Mann's Hockey Stick was using "delusional" mathematics while Mann's was entirely correct? If not perhaps (or indeed if so) you had better find an insult that does not apply to yourself.
Of course I do, I did mention that I was against pollution and for me being wasteful of resources is a pollution creator, that isn't the point.
Personal advantage is a good reason for not using more resouces than you require, though I haven't seen it argued for much. As so many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets I doubt that they'll argue for it, well they might suggest it for the masses but not for themselves (offsets are not a valid arguement for rich people and/or politicians to continue polluting asexcessively as they do).
Well the big bad wolf, 1st Lord of the Treasury, will I'm sure find some way to punish me for being frugal.
He does often lie and claim that all his new taxes are green and for the good of the planet.
Oh yes, my original question was to find out if there was a target range for what is desirable (justification for what is desirable would also be a useful thing to know), otherwise when will we know we've achieved a viable solution.
Bill Bodell posts:
Try http://www.climatebrains.com. There are a lot of them over there.
It's not a semantic argument, Bill. One side is right and the other is wrong. The trend is up. If you think it's down, it's not a question of you having a different view of things. It's a question of your not being able to do math. There aren't two valid opinions on whether 2 + 2 = 7 or not. One opinion is right and the other is wrong.
Neil posts:
Neil, are you some kind of outpatient? That idiotic idea is "proven" the way crashed aliens at Roswell is "proven."
"And following on from that aforementioned post, it seems that just about all of the 'Peak Oil' denialists have suddenly become very quiet, what with the recent increases in the price of oil."
To a very large extent this group overlapped with the "The Iraqis will greet us as liberators" camp and the "Al gore is fat therefore global warming is a One World Government UN Socialist conspiracy" group.
It's rather touching that having been proven spectacularly wrong twice, they still remain absolutely confident in their own infallibility on the third topic.
"Oh yes, my original question was to find out if there was a target range for what is desirable (justification for what is desirable would also be a useful thing to know), otherwise when will we know we've achieved a viable solution."
The objective here is to try and prevent rapid harmful climate change (yes climate change is a natural and unavoidable phenomena - so are floods and epidemics).
So basically in the long term we probably want to keep CO2 levels somewhere between the pre-industrial average of around 280 PPM and the danger level of 350 nominated by Hansen.
Fortunately, the long term for us is on the order of 50 or 60 years. By the end of that period, we will need to have virtually eliminated anthropogenic emissions of carbon dioxide. This implies a reduction per year of around 2% of current emissions.
Taking into account the likelihood of continuing increases in the developing world for the next couple of decades and population growth, the developed world probably needs to make cuts on the order of 3-5% per year.
For the average Australian or American, that translates to roughly 600 kg to 1 tonne of Carbon dioxide equivalent per year.
The current price of a tonne of carbon dioxide reduction credits on the European market is around 26 Euroes -ca. US$43 - A$45.
Barti it has been proven that approx 70 million people have died of malaria subsequest to the environmentalist banning of it. You are taking advantage of the fact that debate has been prevented on that on the previous thread & that some here will not know of it.
I suggest anybody doubting that you are merely displaying the standard of honesty to be expected from eco-Nazis checks out www.junkscience.com/ddtfaq.html
Ian peak oil has been predicted repeatedly since the 1850s so you are probably correct that most of the earlier "denialists" have been silenced by time. However I challenge you to name any prominent current "denialist" who now is silent. The peak, as it were, of peak oil scares was about 1970 when Professor Hibbert & the Limits to Growth people were saying it had arrived 7 we would be out of oil by about 1990. Since you are clearly proud not to be a "denialist" perhaps you could amuse us by telling what happened when the oil ran out in 1990.
The fact is that eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true. Despite bluster no eco-fascist has ever been able to produce a counter example.
Ian your 2nd post asserts that we "probably" want to keep CO2 levels down because it will prevent what you define as "climate change" but was traditionally known as "waether". Perhaps you would have the courtesy to show what evidence there is that traditional weather (as opposed to the catastrophic warming claims which you implicitly distance yourself from) will cease if we get CO2 down to what may be the levels at which we always had weather.
CO2 does have the beneficial effect of improving crop growth - before demanding we stop it you should, if being honest, at the very least, have firm proof of some harm to more than match its benefit. I could also point out that if your peak oil scare were true then it would be impossible for the catastrophic warming/climate change by 2100 caused by the burning of this disappeared oil to be true. However poking holes in a string vest is non-productive & it is obvious that mere facts are irrelevant to the true believers.
BPL,
Surely there is a recent tempurature trend (year, months) that is negative.
The arguement is actually about what length of time is required for a trend to contain useful data. Correct?
A basketball player may well score 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 14 points over a series of 8 games. Saying that the trend is positive for the last 2 games and negative for the last 8 are both true statements. The debate should be about why a 8 game trend is a better method of evaluating the player's performance than a two game trend. In this case, I'd obviously argue that the 8 game trend is a better measure. However, noting the 2 game trend, I'd feel better about the player's performance in the next game than if the data had been 18, 16, 14, 12, 10, 8, 6, 4.
bi,
Very true.
However, I would have thought that one of the primary purposes of blogging would be to get people to visit one's site.
An interesting explanation of today's gas prices by a leading energy expert (and, no, it's not "Peak Oil")
http://www.pkverlegerllc.com/PKV%20December%20Senate%20Testimony.pdf,
Chris' Wills:
> As so many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets I doubt that they'll argue for it
Oh, so because "many high profile proponents of reducing CO2 fly 1st class or use private jets", therefore "saving petrol" is _merely_ something that the high and mighty want you to do. Someone's been working too much on the Cathedral of Hate...
> The arguement is actually about what length of time is required for a trend to contain useful data. Correct?
Yes, the kind of things that have some relation to melting icecaps, massive flooding and all that. It's not some time period which you just make up from thin air.
Neil,
You make a good point about previous claims that "we are running out of oil" being wrong and I particularly like
But then you go and talk about "eco-nazis" killing 70 million people by banning DDT (which is provocative and you know everyone here will disagree with) and everyone can dismiss you as a troll (including me).
You need to be more selective.
My advice to everyone contributing to this blog: steer clear of Neils infantile remarks. This 'eco-Nazi' stuff he perpetually peddles is bad enough; its also clear that his sources of information are the crap dished out from corporate-funded lobbying groups, think tanks and the like. Neil, its clear you don't read primary information. You do not peruse scientific journals. Your posts are an affront to intelligent discourse. You make frankly stupid remarks such as "eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true".
Pure drivel. Garbage is too good of a word for it. This isn't science. Its comic level book analysis. There are many, many examples where local and widespread environmental destruction wrought by humans has has huge economic (and social) consequences. The expansion of deserts is one; aquifer depletion is another; wetland loss and (hyper) eutrophication is still another. Still more: upland forest destruction and serious floods (this has occurred in many places e.g. Nicaragua 1998, Hurricane Mitch; I could cite dozens of others). Forests play a key role in providing flood control services. Utter over-exploitation of coastal marine fisheries and concomitant economic and social collapse in fishing communities. Degradation of soil fertility and effects on crop production. Again, countless examples. Effects of invasive species on recipient ecosystems: costs on loss of terrestrial productivity estimated at many billions of dollars per year. Damage to nature's pest control services (through a reduction in trophic complexity) due to habitat loss, pesticide overuse etc. also estimated to cost society billions of dollar p.a. The list goes on and on and on. This is just the tip of the iceberg.
There are many examples where ecosystems and the services they freely provide have been seriously damaged or destroyed. Our civilization exists as it does because of an array of environmental subsidies that are being seriously degraded. The cost or losing these services is already staggering and is increasing. There are already millions of environmental refugees around the world and this is set to worsen as humans continue to simplify nature. Clearly you can't see the wood from the trees. Reading your appalling posts makes me realize just how limited many people's understanding of the current predicament is.
"Barti it has been proven that approx 70 million people have died of malaria subsequest to the environmentalist banning of it."
Yes and hundreds of millions have died of heart disease subsequent to the cancellation of the Howdy Doody show.
Correlation does not prove causation.
"I could also point out that if your peak oil scare were true then it would be impossible for the catastrophic warming/climate change by 2100 caused by the burning of this disappeared oil to be true."
You could,of course, in doing so you would be exposing yourself as a total ignoramus.
"Peak Oil" doesn't imply that oil will disappear tomorrow - it implies that oil production is likely to remain static before gradually declining.
You also appear to be unaware that there are other fossil fuels besides oil.
The most likely response to rising oil prices in the absence of environmental restraints would be to produce synthetic fuel from liquified coal. While there isn't as much commercially extractable coal as you probably think, there is enough to keep carbon dioixde levels rising for decades.
Bill, your link doesn't seem to be working.
Try this one: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5j7iBsihdN-5m9SKFDTluCOnTAlHQD90QR5GG6
"PARIS (AP) -- A leading global energy monitor said Thursday it is worried that demand for oil will outstrip world supply and is preparing a landmark revision of its closely watched forecasts.
The International Energy Agency is studying depletion rates at about 400 oil fields in its first-ever study of world oil supply, said chief economist Fatih Birol.
"We are entering a new world energy order, " Birol told The Associated Press.
Market analysts call the Paris-based IEA the world's most reliable independent source of oil information, and its new forecasts are likely to further upset markets. Oil prices hit an all-time high Thursday above $135 a barrel before falling back.
Birol said the study, which will be released in November, was prompted by concern about the volatility of world oil markets and uncertainty about supply levels.
"The prices are very high, and demand did not respond in the last few years as much as one would have expected," Birol said. "The growth in terms of production was not great. We did not see enough investment." "
Drat,
Where'd that comma at the end come from?
One more try
http://www.pkverlegerllc.com/PKV%20December%20Senate%20Testimony.pdf
I'm not claiming this to be the "truth" (I only started exploring the issue yesterday), but it looked pretty convincing and the guy has a big reputation. I'll check out your link.
Ian,
What's the AGW proponent attitude towards high gas prices? It would seem that if they weren't already moving up on their own, you'd want to force them up to curtail demand and make alternative fuels more attractive. If you believe that we are running low on oil, then high futures prices are exactly what one would expect. This would discourage current consumption and spur investments in alternatives without even having governments involved. If I were convinced that AGW was a serious problem and that "Peak Oil" was a reality, this is what I'd want. That doesn't mean that it wouldn't be painful, but it would be necessary.
Please advise which class in reading non-comprehension you attended? I'm guessing that you came out with at least a D.Phil in "Incomprehension of English and arrogant assumptions".
You really are being an arse, you assume that I pollute excessivelly even though I've written that I try not to be wasteful.
Even though petrol here is less than 11p (23UScents)/litre , and my company pays for it, I don't drive a fuel guzzler.
My secondary point, I did notice that you ignored my primary point about having a target to aim for, was that many who are espousing the need for reductions in pollution (Nota Bene: I don't disagree with reducing pollution) are themselves high level polluters and resource hogs and so are not likely to convince others of what they claim to hold true.
Do what I say not what I do, seems to be their rule.
It doesn't make what they say untrue, just that they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their consumption if they don't practice what they preach.
Oh yes, I do think that offsetting in't a useful tool in reducing pollution and that carbon trading is wrong.
Not sure who you are replying to here, nothing I said.
Chris' Wills:
> It doesn't make what they say untrue, just that they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their consumption if they don't practice what they preach.
Ah, so you're a concern troll. Obviously, we need advice on how to, well, improve our activist campaigns. As evidenced by the fact that one of the "high and mighty" who "use private jets" has been so, um, _unsuccessful_ that lots of people feel the need to sling mud at him, to the point that someone formulated a law parallel to Godwin's Law in his name, and now the phrase "none dare utter his name" apparently means that the named person is very unsuccessful and needs advice from a concern troll.
Actually, Frank, we should extend the GoreWins law analogy a little further.
Because some leaders aren't able to keep it in their pants, they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their philandering if they don't practice what they preach.
Because some leaders aren't able to keep weight off, they are unlikely to convince others to reduce their weight too if they don't practice what they preach.
Because some leaders aren't able to hire competent staff, they are unlikely to convince others to hire well if they don't practice what they preach.
See? Personal accountability and ownership society? Bah! Just phrases!
Pfffft.
Best,
D
If that belief floats your boat go with it.
Perchance you don't, however you don't do anti-pollution causes any favours by being hypocritical in your actions.
Oh, who is this we you write of?
Does it only include those who agree with your method off addressing a problem?
Which one of the high & mighty?
Utter whose name?
Just because someone has had limited success doesn't make it wrong to suggest that their actions belie their words.
Talking the Talk is easy.
It is interesting that you seem to accept and see nothing wrong with hypocritical actions in those who you think are part of your we.
Thank you for giving an answer to my question.
Two further questions, if you don't mind.
1) Why is it called Anthropogenic rather than simply Human?
Yes I do know what anthropogenic means, just that human
seems more straightforward
2) How will we eliminate Human produced CO2?
Is the intention that we go full on fission or possibly
fusion for our energy needs.
We can hardly maintain our civilisation without a lot of energy and I don't see wave/wind/solar taking up the slack anytime soon also they have environmental consequences of their own.
We also, probably, need a liquid fuel of some sort and to date ethanol seems to have problems, unless we can produce it without diverting foodstuff or ripping up forests
Chris, the long and the short of it is that we can't make the necessary CO2 cuts unless we change our lifestyle over the next decade or two.
By changing commuting patters we can greatly reduce CO2 from it, as well as by encouraging more efficient vehicles. By using solar, wind, wave, etc, as well as some nuclear, we have every prospect of producing all the energy we need without using coal and oil and gas.
For example, in the USA, this looks rather promising:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan&page=1
And yes, some sort of liquid fuel will be required in the medium term. Hopefully battery technology will continue to improve, although obviously it requires more research.
"What's the AGW proponent attitude towards high gas prices? It would seem that if they weren't already moving up on their own, you'd want to force them up to curtail demand and make alternative fuels more attractive. If you believe that we are running low on oil, then high futures prices are exactly what one would expect."
By pure coincidence Bill I've set out my position on that over at johnquiggin.com just recently:
http://johnquiggin.com/index.php/archives/2008/05/29/carbon-taxes-and-f…
The short version, flat production and surging demand have already pushed oil prices to the point where in the medium term we are likely to see significant reductions in oil use without the need for a carbon tax.
I'm talking here specifically in the Australian context, we pay around A$1.50-1.60 a litre which translates to around US$7 if I've done the math correctly. While the fuel excise (roughly equivalent to your gas tax) is a fixed amount GST (roughly equivalent to your sales tax) is also charged on the basis of 10% of the sale price so the tax on petrol here is going up right along with the retail price.
(Back when petrol was under $1 a litre and I was working for the Queensland government trying to kick-start the local fuel ethanol market I advocated a carbon tax on petrol of around 5-10 cents a litre to make ethanol more competitive.)
What I would like to see is governments using some of the revenue they're already getting fuel taxation to reduce demand and make it easier for people to cope with the high prices. That means expanding public transport (especially here in Australia in outer metropolitan low-income suburbs). It also means (in Australia) matching the sort of programs already in the US for tax breaks for hybrids and other highly efficient vehicles.
"Oh yes, I do think that offsetting in't a useful tool in reducing pollution and that carbon trading is wrong."
Thats nice.
I hope you realise that roughly 99% of professional economists disagree with you.
"1) Why is it called Anthropogenic rather than simply Human? Yes I do know what anthropogenic means, just that human seems more straightforward"
Answer 1: Because smartarses see "Human-caused carbon dioxide emissions" and start in with jokes about farting and making exhaling illegal.
Answer 2: Scientists and bureaucrats like to use big words to make themselves seem clever.
"2) How will we eliminate Human produced CO2? Is the intention that we go full on fission or possibly fusion for our energy needs."
At the risk of sounding like I'm passing the buck, my background is as an economist. My basic answer is that we include the full cost of environmental harm in the market price of goods and services and let the market find the cheapest way of minimising that harm.
There are multiple different technologies which are reduce emissions and I think we'll end up using a mix of them.
Nuclear is a lot more problematic than many people assume - not because of the environmental problems but because of supply constraints, construction times and proliferation concerns. (Hands up everyone who wants North Korea, Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe to get breeder reactor technology.) I don;t doubt that we'll be building more nuclear reactors I just don;t think we can build enough of them. (Plus as you mention we'll most likely need a liquid fuel, something which nuclear can't really provide.)
Fusion would be great - if we can ever get it to work. But even if we have the first fusion reactors twenty years for now, it'll take at least another 20-30 years before we've built enough of them to make a real difference. They're also likely to be huge and extremely expensive. If we present China and India with a choice between cheap dirty coal and very expensive clean fusion they'll likely go with coal.
So roughly speaking my preferred option (and again my real answer is give the market the correct price signals to solve the problem) is:
- conservation to reduce our demand wherever possible. Cuts of 20-30% are probably achievable.
- optimising the efficiency of fossil fuel use (there's a huge discrepancy between the efficiency of the best and worst fossil-powered power plants. We could probably cut emissions from the power sector by 90-95% while continuing to derive 20% or our power from fossil fuels.)
- more nukes where they make economic sense
- aggressively expanding the use of renewable energy. (Bearing in mind that a wind farm takes 18 months from the signing of contracts to first power delivery while a nuke plant takes 10 years plus. Also I'm a lot more comfortable with the thought of Robert Mugabe or Hugo Chavez running fuel ethanol plants rather than nuclear power plants.)
- expand the natural sinks for carbon dioxide. Something like 10% of global emissions of carbon dioxide are associated with tropic deforestation (and the peat fires that follow when wetlands in countries like Indonesia are clear-felled and drained).
- Sequestration and atmospheric removal. There are significant problems with current sequestration technologies but the technology continues to advance. Assuming we can find cheap ways to capture carbon dioxide from smokestacks, I'm not a big fan of underground storage. I'd rather use nuclear or renewable energy sources to convert the carbon dioxide into chemicals like ethylene or into polycarbonate plastic.
There are also several promising proposals for capturing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere (again using nuclear energy, renewables or waste process heat) and converting it into hydrocarbon fuels. I mention this last because I think it's the least developed approach at this point. We will probably solve the problem within the 50-60 year timeframe but we may not and we need to start ASAP.
Anyway here's a link to what I think is the most promising of these proposals:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080307191300.htm
RE: Steve L. turning a troll
Yeah Steve the Bolt trolls have no way to argue against rising CO2 levels and the radiative properties of CO2.
I had some a while back change from GW denier to AGW deniers. They now dispute the man made part of AGW as a natural CO2 cycle ... But they cannot dispute CO2 levels are rising.
Just keep linking in your posts to CO2 monitoring stations. Oh yeah NASA stats and satellite images gets up their noses too. They just turn abusive which means they have lost the argument and have nothing else to argue with. :-) Have fun.
For everybody who says I make some good points but should be more emollient & make a greater effort not to so thoroughly disagree we get somebody like Jeff #58 who comes along with:
"You make frankly stupid remarks such as "eco-fascism depends on pushing scare stories & that not one of the hundreds of worldwide catastrophe stories they have ever produced have come true".
That remark is demonstrably true.
Frankly all the "worldwide catastrophes" he then produces are not worlwide catastrophes, most of them have happened here & there from time to time back to at least the time of ancient Assyria, which pre-dates the formation of the Green Party. Even more tellingly most of them have been unmentioned or a the very end of the list of scare stories produced by the movement - not being scary enough & thus politically useful.
This is an indication that as a movement it is not interested in real environmentalism but in using scare propaganda to enforce Luddite views which cannot stand on their own.
#59 if you are relying on use of DDT being unrelated to levels of malaria good luck to you.
#73 says
"Nuclear is a lot more problematic than many people assume - not because of the environmental problems but because of supply constraints, construction times and proliferation concerns. (Hands up everyone who wants North Korea, Iran, Burma and Zimbabwe to get breeder reactor technology.) I don;t doubt that we'll be building more nuclear reactors I just don;t think we can build enough of them. (Plus as you mention we'll most likely need a liquid fuel, something which nuclear can't really provide.)
Fusion would be great - if we can ever get it to work."
Fusion would, obviously, have all these problems (we would probaly have to go to the Moon to get enough deuterium. Morevover they are not such problems with fission. Uranium is, as metals go, not particularly rare in the Earth's crust & thorium which we could also use is even more common. It has been calculated that merely by taking uranium from sea water it would be possible to keep our current nuclear power going till the sSun explodes. We do not do this because there are easier & more plentiful sources. Reactor building times, in western countries, are largely paperwork & regulation - they can & have been built in 3 1/2 years.
The real technical difference between fusion & fission & the reason the Luddites love the former is because fusion isn't a practical answer currently & will not be for decades. If presented with a working fusion system they would denounce it.
"If you ask me, it'd be a little short of disastrous for us to discover a source of clean, cheap, abundant energy because of what we would do with it. We ought to be looking for energy sources that are adequate for our needs, but that won't give us the excesses of concentrated energy with which we could do mischief to the earth or to each other.
- Amory Lovins in The Mother Earth - Plowboy Interview, Nov/Dec 1977, p. 22
74 the fact that sceptics do not dispute that CO2 is rising merely proves that we have a far greater respect for the truth than those eco-fascists who find it possible to deny any link between preventing the use of DDT & malaria deaths. The observed fact is that supporters of this movement are capable of denying ANY fact & pushing almost any lie. This may be a strength in the same way the Goebbels willingness to tell a "big lie" was, but it is not admirable.
However proving CO2 is rising does not prove CO2 rise is harmful - in fact we know that, in terms of crop growth, it is beneficial.
Neil writes:
And 200 million people died in the 20th century subsequent to Cavour's 1901 trip to the Moon. Plainly those deaths were caused by Cavourite.
Chris Wills writes:
That's like saying boxing gloves are just as dangerous as hydrogen bombs because both are weapons.
For everybody who says I make some good points but should be more emollient & make a greater effort not to so thoroughly disagree we get somebody like Jeff #58 who comes along with:
Neil, i do NOT want to disturb your dreams and fantasies, but you do NOT MAKE GOOD POINTS. NEVER EVER.
and if you have the feeling, that a significant number of responses here said you did, then i would ask you to REREAD them carefully!
So 99% of economists:
1) are happy that the rich can continue to waste resources whilst the poor will have to carry the burden.
2) pleased to see another way for banks/exchanges to make money trading in hot air.
Why am I not suprised.
There is also an ethical dimension to this; shafting the poor and middle classes may be OK for economists but if this reduction is for the good of all then all should share the burden.
Not quite.
The Severn Barrier wasn't built because it would have destroyed the mud flats that support wading birds both native and migratory.
Thankfully it was stopped because of the massive environmental damage it would have done.
In that case we (we meaning the RSPB and other wildlife society members) could show the outcome and so it failed to pass the public enquiry, even though it was backed by some self proclaimed eco-friendly people.
Today, who knows if it would be stopped. Just shout that it's green and will stop global warming and sod the wildlife.
We don't know what changes to weather patterns the use of large scale wind farms and tidal generators will have (they extract energy so either reduce the air/water temperature or reduce its speed) if we have enough to replace electricty from coal.
I know that large scale wind farms are a visual blight and the noise is annoying, so will most likely have to be built offshore unless we are willing to forgo the pleasure of visiting the countryside.
I do like the idea of tidal generators, though they tend to be more costly to build and the local effect on the sea isn't known.
Geo-thermal also appears fairly safe, could even use geo-thermal to create hydrogen and use this as a fuel. The Icelandic goverment was considering this.
Solar? How many acres will need to be covered up? What effect will shadowing large swathes of desert have? If built into houses then seems OK though not very practical if you live in a high rise.
Bio-fuels are, at present a poor joke. You do realise that rain forest in Indonesia has been destroyed so that palm oil can be produced to great bio-ethanol, very environmentally conscience. Food (i.e. maize) to fuel is a sick joke.
Now we should try a variety of things but to assume that they don't have downsides is silly.
"There is also an ethical dimension to this; shafting the poor and middle classes may be OK for economists but if this reduction is for the good of all then all should share the burden."
It has nothing to do with "shafting the poor and the middle class" and in fact has everything to with protecting them.
But since you're obviously content to revel in your ignorance I see no point in spoiling your fun.
Then shouldn't we be building them now.
Especialy as the expertise to build them is growing old in the UK and USA, but the French could help.
Why would that be a problem? :o)
Seriously, it does seem a little odd to say that it is OK for some and not for others. The concern about A-bombs and dirty bombs is another matter and perhaps they wouldn't use breeder reactors.
Just because India and China won't play doesn't mean that we shouldn't.
I didn't copy and paste all the bit about price options, I just wonder if artificial pricing is appropriate as it is subject to political whims and fashions.
It does, also, tend to hit the poor more heavilly than the wealthy.
Oh yes, sequestration seems an excellent idea especially if we somehow use it to create liquid fuels; possibly by pumping it into sealed greenhouses and force growing soft plants that we can convert into fuel.
So please explain, I am interested in knowing how higher costs protects the poor.
No snark intended, just seems strange to me.
Thank you 76 & 78 . You demonstrate exactly how uninterested in any fact based discussion the eco-fascists are & how moderate my description of you is.
It is clear that you know perfectly well that your case cannot stand on or indeed against fact & choose the opposite tactic.
The problem with tidal is that like most "renewables" it is intermittent, though it is predictable whenn it will go off, which is an improvement on windmills.
Geothermal actually may have some potential - unfortunately it seems possible it also cause earthquakes which is a bit of a bummer.
http://alfin2100.blogspot.com/2008/05/hot-rocks-geothermal-google-looks…
http://a-place-to-stand.blogspot.com/
Chris' Wills:
Why do they call it philately instead of stamp-collecting? I don't know. Maybe you should ask your English teacher.
"Just because India and China won't play doesn't mean that we shouldn't."
Yes but we are dealing with a global problem and need global solutions.
If fusion is unaffordable for the 2.3 billion people living in India and China then by itself it can't solve the problem.
We could convert the west at great expense to fusion only to find that the continuing growth in fossil fuel use in India and China means GHG emissions continue to rise.
If the "environmentalists" honestly believed in catastrophic warming they would enthusiasticaly support fission which is CO2 free (at least as much as fusion would be & moreso than windmills).
This is a major test of whether they at least honestly believe the story or are Luddites deliberately lying. Most individuals & virtually all eco-fascist organisations fail it.
If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid. This could have been done years ago. The cruelty & pure evil of the eco-fascist movement in pointlessly depriving the world of such wealth must be seen to be believed.
True to his samurai code, Neil Craig continues to use "eco-Nazi" or "eco-fascist" in each and every one of his posts.
> If the "environmentalists" honestly believed in catastrophic warming they would enthusiasticaly support fission which is CO2 free
Yeah, let's just solve all our problems with this nu-cu-ler stuff. Don't like Saddam, nuke 'em; don't like insects, nuke 'em; don't like CO2, nuke 'em. Otherwise you're letting the terrorists win.
Ever wonder why libertarians keep saying that government is just "men with guns"? Because that's what they themselves think government should be like. Government equals nukes. All problems solved with nukes, nuclear energy, and nuclear waste.
"If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid. This could have been done years ago. The cruelty & pure evil of the eco-fascist movement in pointlessly depriving the world of such wealth must be seen to be believed."
Let's see - most of the nuclear reactors being built around the world are, in fact, being built in Chin, India and those other poor deprived victims of the dreaded eco-nazis in the developing world.
This is just another illustration (like his daft earlier equation of oil with the totality of fossil fuels) that Craig is quite genuinely and quite simply out of touch with reality.
If he can't be relied upon to know basic, undisputed publicly available facts, why on Earth would anyone rely upon his bizarre conspiracy claims about far more complex and disputed issues?
It's also worthwhile to note his reading comprehension skills, I wrote:
"If fusion is unaffordable for the 2.3 billion people living in India and China then by itself it can't solve the problem."
Not fission, Neil, FUSION do you understand the difference?
I'm also fascinated that the man ranting about Nazis and socialist believes that if global warming is real the solution isn't to be found through market economics but through massive foreign aid hand outs.
(I'm actually in favor of increasing foreign aid but I'm not the one posturing as the last defender of free enterprise against the eco-nazi hordes.)
"Maybe we could talk about how women's suffrage has increased the size of government and is pretty much responsible for our (the USA's anyway" enormous debt? And it gives Tim another chance to take his stick to Lott and his questionable number crunching."
Or maybe we could talk about how most of that enormous debt has been incurred by Republican administrations.
Waddaya say, Ben, are you willing to give up your vote for the sake of good fiscal management?
Sortition asked these questions about offsets and emissions some time ago on another thread and I've been lazy and never got back to him.
The issues involved overlap with Chris willis' question above so maybe it'll go some way towards answering Chris.
From the Earlier discussion:
Sortion posted:
>Ian: "we appear to be endelessly confusing offsets and emissions trading here. THe two concepts are actually quite distinct.
I responded:
>As far as I can tell, cap-and-trade is an offset scheme with central accounting and reliable monitoring. Is there a more fundamental difference?
Could you respond?
Secondly, you wrote
>grandfathering (issuing free permits to existing polluters) is not an innate element of an emissions trading scheme.
I responded:
>If there are no free permits for existing polluters, then what is there to trade? If there is no grandfathering then polluters have to buy pollution permits from the government pool of permits rather than from each other and no trade is going on. In that case, if a polluter reduces the amount of pollution it produces, then it simply buys less permits - it does not sell the reduction to someone else.
Simple definitions:
Emissions trading is a system where the regulator decides upfront what the maximum acceptable level of pollution is and issues (either freely or for a price) permits which make it legal to emit up to that level of pollution.
Offsets refers to a system where people are paid to reduce the amount of pollution being emitted or, in the case of carbon dioxide, to enhance processes which remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.
You can have offsets without emissions trading - see for example the various voluntary offset programs already under way. Governments also can and do fund offsets of various sorts - see for example the US government tax break for hybrids, the Australian government solar panel rebate or the Renewable Energy certificate programs in various countries.
Emissions trading can operate without offsets - if a company can reduce its own emissions for less than the price to it of an emission permit it will do so.
Since this answer is likely to be very long i'm goign to break it up into bits.
Here endeth the first lesson.
I tried using quotes on that last message and screwed it up - blog comments really are remarkably primitive compared with message boards.
Anyway, moving on:
Here are two examples of real-life emissions trading schemes. (Libertarians and socialists alike will of course dismiss this as a pack of lies since they already know that trading schemes actually involve either bloated capitalist exploiters or evil bureaucrats raping babies and eating puppies. Or is it vice versa?)
First we have the sulphur dioxide emission scheme in the US.
http://www.epa.gov/airmarkets/progsregs/arp/basic.html#trading
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_Rain_Program
Emission permits were initially issued free to utilities - based on an estimate of what current best practice for their industry was.
The EPA kept back a reserve of permits and offered to buy or sell permits for a fixed price of $1500 per ton of SO2 emissions (adjusted annually for inflation). Companies that failed to surrender sufficient permits at the end of the year were fined $2000 (also inflation-adjusted per tonne).
This system meant companies that reduced their emissions knew they could get a minimum price of $1500 for each credit. In practice, the EPA stopped selling permits directly because the market price for permits was consistently below $1500 per tonne.
New plants were only allowed to enter the scheme if they demonstrated their emissions were lower than those permitted to equivalent existing plants AND they were required to buy permits to cover the emissions.
The results:
Emissions were cut by significantly more than the program's initial target. Emissiosn are now capped at just under nine million tons per year - 40% less than 1990 levels despite economic growth and growth in industrial output in the mean time. Acid rain in the eastern US and Canadian has been reduced by over 60%.
Industry claimed the program would cost tens of billions a year, the EPA said it would cost them $4-8 billion a year.
The EPA was wrong - the actual cost is $1-2 billion a year and the estimated benefits are over $3 billion a year. The program has also stimulated billions of dollars of investment in energy conservation and has led to significant reductions in other pollutants including mercury and greenhouse gases.
One reason for the success of the scheme in reduction pollution even more than expected is that thousands of smaller plants that were not originally required to take part joined voluntarily because they saw they could make a profit by reducing their emissions and selling the permits.
So much for the rightwingers' claims about how the massive compliance costs of emission trading would stifle business - businesses rushed to sign up voluntarily because they saw, correctly, that they could make a profit by doing so.
Industry also supported the extension of the scheme and the expansion of the scheme to include nitrous oxide -emissions of which are now falling rapidly as a result.
(The socialists will of course take the fact that emissions trading saves money and is supported by industry as proof that its evil.
To them I say: according to Marx the base determines the superstructure. Therefore changes in the superstructure can not alter the base. So go read your Little Red Book and wait for the mass consciousness of the workers and peasants to reach the point where they spontaneously rise up and overthrow the bourgeousie.
See, I understand Marxist theory better than most self-proclaimed Marxists. That's why I recognised its internal contradictions when I was about 16 and stopped being a Marxist. The experience was quite similar to the one I had at about age six when I stopped believing in God.
Coming up to the nd of the second bit -
Key points for Sortition - the penalty for noncompliance is set above the market price to promote trading; new entrants are forced to buy permits ensuring a source of demand; the opt-in provisions allows smaller firms to be involved where it is economic to do so.
Finally, if anyone wants to argue that the carbon dioxide market is fundamentally different to the sulphur dioxide feel free to do so. But "it's bigger!" is not a sufficient argument.
I was going to write about the EU carbon dioxide trading scheme but I think instead I'll write a little about marginalism in economic theory and call it a night. (That way the libertarians can stock up on crosses and garlic as they prepare to face the twin horrors of Europeans and emissions trading.)
For anyone who wants a fuller discussion: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism.
Economists think about margins a lot.
For example, the market price of a product isn't determined by the average cost to make it or by what the average consumer is prepared ot pay for it. It's determined by the interaction between supply and demand where supply is determined by the cost of producing one more unit of the good (marginal cost) and demand is determined by the maximum amount any single individual is prepared to pay for an additional unit (marginal utility). In the simplest approximation, the market price is where marginal utility and margin cost meet - produce output further (assuming rising marginal cost of production which is the standard assumption and we're talking gross approximation here)and no-one will be prepared to buy that additional unit at a price profitable to the maker.
Now let's talk about the marginal cost of pollution abatement.
Different companies produce different amounts of pollution. It may come as a surprise to some in the audience that this isn't primarily due to the fact that some of them are virtuous and some wicked.
It has more to do with the fact they produce different products in different ways using different techniques and equipment.
All of which means their marginal cost of pollution mitigation is variable.
Efficient well-run plants with responsible management will tend to have lower pollution levels than other plants in the same industry.
But because they've already done most of the cheap, obvious things to reduce their emissions, further emission reductions can be expensive.
Perversely, plants which are not efficient not well-run and not run by responsible managers will often have lower marginal costs of pollution mitigation precisely because of those factors.
Now let's imagine we order two plants to cut their emissions by a fixed percentage - say 10%. The cost to the efficient plant because of its higher marginal cost of pollution mitigation (MCPM)will be higher. The inefficient etc. plant will actually gain a competitive advantage relative to the efficient plant because its MCPM is lower.
The total cost of the pollution reduction will be higher than necessary in this scenario.
Now imagine a fixed dollar carbon tax. Again the costs of the efficient plant will rise because it will cost less to pay the tax than to reduce its emissions further. The inefficient plant can reduce its emissions far more cheaply. In fact in this scenario, the inefficient plant can end taking market share away from the efficient plant resulting in an increase in total pollution levels.
In both these scenarios, the cost of pollution mitigation is higher than it would be if the pollution reduction were met entirely by the inefficient plant reducing its emissions.
Now imagine a cap and trade system, the inefficient plant will reduce its emissions until tits MCPM is lower than the permit price because it is profitable to do so. The efficient plant will purchase permits until the permit price reaches in MCPM.
Less pollution and lower costs.
At this point I'll call it a night.
By the morning I expect a bunch of posts from rightists calling me a commie and leftists calling me a Thatcherite.
In both cases, your disagreement isn't with me. It's with the entire field of economics and the empirical evidence of a couple of hundred years studying markets in general and 30-odd years studying emissions trading schemes.
How does the field of economics deal with the political reality of the way in which initial "free" carbon credits allocated to emitters?
If the inefficient plant has been spending its money on lobbyists instead of efficiency, then it may get allocated additional carbon credits by the government at a lower cost than the efficient plant. They can then hoard or speculate with those excess credits in order to manipulate the carbon market and decrease the efficiency of their competitors.
Economists pretty much assume fraud, deceit and political manipulation as the default sets for most economic activity.
This is why we call it the dismal science - and why I no longer work in the field. (Well that and the fact I found I could make much the same money in another field for much less work which pretty much proves me point.
Assume that ANY scheme to reduce carbon emissions will be subject to fraud and manipulation - certainly the carbon taxes that have been implemented to date have been riddled with so many exemptions and special deals they look like swiss cheese.
Essentially all we can do is seek to design the systems to minimise the capacity for such fraud.
In many ways, the fact that there are multiple regulators looking over each other's shoulders in the European trading system seems somewhat perversely to be one of its strengths.
Every time one national government tries to give a particular industry sector special treatment, the competing firms in other EU countries run crying to THEIR national governments about unfair competition and they in turn run crying to the European Commission.
Neil, you are still firing blanks. As long as you keep pontificating with this "Eco-Nazi" garbage, no one is going to take you seriously.
Moreover, your rants reveal a clear lack of understanding of the relationship between cause and effect, and of the time lags that usually characterize changes manifested on largely deterministic systems. When changes are inflicted on relatively small systems, the effects of these changes can be demostrated quite soon thereafter - as in the examples I cited in my last post. When we scale up local conditions to much larger scales, such as over biogeographical realms and even over the biosphere, the effects of these changes become temporally delayed. There is what is referred to as an ecological 'debt' that at some point realized. David Tilman and Robert May discussed this debt in their 1994 Nature paper, using what they referred to as the 'extinction debt', whereby the effects of the extirpation of genetically distinct populations and species that occurred as far back as several centuries ago are only now being manifested on the way that ecosystems function, and most importantly on the services that emerge from them that sustain human civilization.
Your simplisitic worldview appears to be based on the idea that if we destroy x amounts of nature today then there should be y amounts of effects on human society tomorrow. At least this appears to be what you are saying in your rather puerile attempt to smear the scientific community. What I am saying is that things do not work that way. Are humans on a collision course with nature? Most certainly. There's no question, as I have said before, that every important natural system is in decline. We should be relieved that natual systems exhibit quite some resilience - through functional redundancy - to have withstood the human assault thus far. However, there is no way of knowing how much farther we can continue to simplify natural systems before these systems begin more widespread breakdown, taking with them an array of critical services that sustain us. The regional collapses I alluded to yesterday are a sure sign that we are on the wrong path.
Have we passed the 'tipping point' yet? In some ways, most definitiely, but given the effects of current human practices will not be realized until decades from now, and perhaps even a generation or more, to continue on the current course is the sprint of folly. This is why I cringe when I read the kind of stuff you are writing.
Hi Ian,
Thanks for the explanation. I will collect your writings and read them later. Tax versus trading scheme is only relevent from a management point of view. The real issue is in the assumption that either or both will actually promote the disuse of fossil fuels. It does not matter what level of tax/ETS is put on carbon, if there is no alternative this will simply push the prices up and change the governments budget. In fact much of the comment to date has been talking about disbursing carbon dollars to alleviate the effects of the collection, and there are more hands than dollars it seems. Now ther is a money go round for you. It has taken a 6 fold increase in the price of oil to lubricate interest in biofuels. My guess is that all of the estimates for a carbon tax/credit level is no where near that degree of difference. The only feature that a tax/ETS has in its favour is that once set it is unlikely to go down in the short term, in the manner that the oil price might possibly do. And with low budget Pakistan discovering that they may have 20% of the world's coal reserves (quoting a blog) a price on local coal is going to have no effect what ever. In short emissions trading or carbon taxing is a pointless process standing on its own. Talk about carbon sequestration when it actually exists.
My particular dislike for emissions trading, actually emissions trading is an incorrect term as there is nothing to trade at this stage so it should be carbon emission rights, ....carbon emission rights can be seen in an exercise from my past. At one stage myself and a very clever electronics guy set ou to make coin parking meters for the Christchurch City Council (NZ). We put together a very impressive proposal only to have it stalled because someone had come up with the idea of parking coupons. These were to be a prepurchased printed strip from which chads were poked out to indicate a parking duration. When left in the window of a car they kept the parking police at bay for the chadded time. These strips were effectively parking futures certificates, redeemed at the time of use. The Council loved the idea because they got their parking money ahead of their budget schedule and this helped with their planning. But that was the core of the problem which caused the collapse of the scheme before it got underway. Simply put, people will avoid any cost until it is absolutely necessary. No one bought the coupons, they simply found other places to park where there were parking (tax) meters. Now the government can get around this problem of prepaying for carbon emissions be saying that a user need only pay over the value of the emissions at the time of their use. If that is what happens then that is a tax, so call it a tax.
Getting back to the real problem. The issue of promoting alternatives. I haven't seen any government anywhere (other than Sweden and Brazil) putting forward any believeable plan for ending their country's reliance on fossil fuels. And the most twisted of all is the Australian government's Clean Coal phobia.
That is my opinion, shared with you, rather than directed at you.
#88's post is about how nuclear is a bad thing because ... er umm well he didn't get round to that bit.
#90 says
"Let's see - most of the nuclear reactors being built around the world are, in fact, being built in Chin, India and those other poor deprived victims of the dreaded eco-nazis in the developing world."
Which is pretty much my point except that the dreaded eco-Nazis actually are largely of the "developed" not the "developing" world & LESS influential in China - hence the Cinese, Indian etc willingness to go nuclear.
Ian then say I shouldn't be willing to see any foreign aid (I never suggested any such thing but he clearly thinks in cliches & doesn't let mere facts interfere with his conclusions) & then attacks me for not fitting his stereotype. If I call him an eco-Nazi I may be accused of treating him as a stereotype but he does insist on acting like one.
93 - fair post. It is because of how the price system works that it is usually a much better idea to use it rather than bans & regulation to solve environmental problems. The way we went from leaded to lead-free petrol is a classic example.
Most "environmentalists" hate this because (A) they don't really want to solve problems they justv want to pose & bully people (B) almost everything they have proposed turns out to be merely tokenism when analysed (eg their enthusiasm for windmills & opposition to the only practical method of making CO2 free power alluded to above) (C) most of them hate the free market & virtually all of them hate progress
Jeff 96 says I have a "clear lack of understanding of the relationship between cause and effect" because I said that it is the nature of the universe that cause comes before effect. Jeff's will has clearly triumphed over the nature of the universe or even the possibility of rational thought.
Neil Craig said
No, we do not know this. In terms of plant growth it can be beneficial, provided the plant has adequate amounts of water, nitrogen, phosphorus and other nutrients. However, when looking at crops (meaning a population of plants that is harvested for a specific product), except in intensely-managed greenhouse production there is little evidence that increasing the CO2 level increases production, probably because of the relative shortage of nutrients and effects on the longevity of individual leaves (I am speculating here). In addition, increasing temperatures that go along with higher CO2 change the incidence of weeds, diseases and other pests and can disrupt the pollination that is required for wheat, corn, rice and other crops.
It is simplistic and probably wrong to assume that increasing the level of CO2 will increase crop production.
BillBodell said:
I did not realize this. Surely this is different from the views they were expressing a couple of years ago, e.g. "Nor can we be sure that any long-term changes in our climate are due to mankind." (Lindzen, 2007).
"Whether or not human beings can produce a global climate change is an important question. This question is not at all settled. It can only be settled by actual measurements, data. And the data are ambiguous. For example, the data show that the climate warmed between 1900 and 1940, long before humanity used much energy. But then the climate cooled between 1940 and 1975. Then it warmed again for a very short period of time, for about five years. But since 1979, our best measurements show that the climate has been cooling just slightly. Certainly, it has not been warming." (Singer, 2000).
What persuaded them to change their minds?
To add to my last comment,
Singer, 2008.
This was two weeks ago (18 May). It seems that Bill's claim that "Everyone of those skeptics accepts that the Earth has warmed over the last 100 years, that the greenhouse effect is real and that man is probably contributing to it's effect via CO2 emissions" is wrong.
"Which is pretty much my point except that the dreaded eco-Nazis actually are largely of the "developed" not the "developing" world & LESS influential in China - hence the Cinese, Indian etc willingness to go nuclear."
Here again we see the profound dishonesty and essentially delusional mindset of Mr Craig.
Having first confused fission and fusion (and error which he still hasn't been able to admit to, he went on to claim that the evil eco-nazis were preventing China et al from goign nuclear by failing to pay for them do so.
When it was pointed out to him that India and china are in fact at the forefront of nuclear development he switches gears yet again (and once again fails to admit his error) and claims that the comparatively rapid development of nuclear power in China and India (the very same countries he claimed were being viciously prevented from going nuclear due ot the evil eco-nazis) is due to the blessed lack of influence of the eco-nazis in those countries.
Lies one lies. Delusion on delusion.
Actaully I suppose by Craig's standards seeing as the west isn't providing unlimited unconditional funding for nuclear power in the developing world and some developing countries have dared (the temerity of it!) to choose not to use nuclear energy this proves that nuclear power like DDT is "banned".
One claim makes as much sense as the other I suppose.
Oh and since I like to deal in facts (unlike Craig) here's a link to wikipedia's list of nuclear power plants under construction, approved or proposed:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_power_by_country
EU - 7
US 25
China - 29
India - 31
But remember:
- if India and China aren't building nuke plants, it's proof that the eco-nazis are prevented them from doing so
- if India and China ARE building nuke plants, it's proof that the eco-nazis failed to prevent them from doing so.
Completely opposite situations but both support Craig's conpiracy theory, what a surprise.
Ian,
I think the EU figure may be a bit out of date.
It is now the position of the UK government to build replacement reactors for all those are being, or are due, to be decommissioned in the next decade or so. Brown recently indicated that he would like see an expansion on that program, to include more reactors than just the replacements ones.
Since the policy in only few months old, it may be that is why the proposals are not in the EU data.
Richard 99 that you accept that plants grow better in increased CO2 (something thoroughly proven) then if we acknowledge that crops are plants (equally difficult to deny except possibly for mushrooms) then it follows that crops will grow faster. You would need some spectacular actual evidence to to claim the contrary. Equally your claim that heat is harmful to plant growth fails to explain why the north of Siberia is unprepossesing taiga while plant growth in the Amazon rainforest is somewhat greater.
Nonetheless thanks for pointing out the willingness of Bill & other eco-fascists to merely invent their "evidence" whenever convenient. It is, unfortunately a common feature.
Talking of which Ian 102 yet again shows the very highest standard of honesty of which Nazis like him are capable by claiming I said I "went on to claim that the evil eco-nazis were preventing China et al from goign nuclear by failing to pay for them do so".
Come on Ian lets see you produce the evidence that it is & always has been impossible for China to be goign (or even going) nuclear without western payment. As racist lies go that must be one of the most obviously nonsensical ever.
I never made that statement, you know I never made that statement & nobody who was not wholly completely & totally dishonest & who knew he had no possible honest argument could ever have said I did. I challenge you to show exactly where I made that exact statement or admit that i am more than 10,000 times more trustwothy than a corrupt Nazi like you could ever be.
I would like all readers to know that merely because I am not paying Ian Gould to be a lying Nazi does not mean that I am preventing him from being one.
What I actually said was
"If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid."
I never said one word about preventing the Chinese building their own & Ian is wholly dishonest as every remotely honest person on this thread will acknowledge.
Ian,
I find your definition of "emissions trading" very odd: On the one hand it makes no reference to "trading". On the other hand, it is focused on having a pollution cap, which the term "emissions trading" makes no reference to. Better names to be associated with your definition are "a cap system" or "a centralized permit system".
(It is these unexpected properties of you definition that make "emissions trading" and "offsets" two different things - under a more reasonable definition, a system in which "people are paid to reduce the amount of pollution being emitted" would fall very naturally under "emissions trading".)
Now, accepting your definition - I have no problem with such a system. In fact, it is so broad that I am not sure there is any effective way to reduce pollution which would not fall within the scope of the definition. A tax system, for example, which does not have an explicit pre-defined cap, is still effectively the same since the level of tax would have to be set so as to have a certain cap on pollution not exceeded.
The definition being so broad, the real issue is which system among the wide variety of systems that could be used is actually being implemented.
Details on the EU Carbon Emissions Trading scheme. There are others, but this one is the largest.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union_Emission_Trading_Scheme
To sum up the key points on "cap and trade" vs "carbon taxes
1. As sortition says, if they are designed properly, they will be very similar, since a tax can be set to reduce demand to the level that would be set under a cap.
2. If like bilb, you're convinced that demand is too inelastic to be affected by taxes, go for cap and trade which guarantees the quantity target
3. It's possible to give away free permits under a cap and trade scheme, but most economists who support such a scheme favor auctioning the permits (although there are some arguments for giving away a small proportion of the permits in the early stages of a scheme)
4. Compliance is a big problem whichever way you go. You can reduce compliance problems by reducing coverage to easy targets (electricity generation) but then the scheme will be less effective.
I point out that china is goign nuclear - and without signifcant western aid.
Craig responds: "Come on Ian lets see you produce the evidence that it is & always has been impossible for China to be goign (or even going) nuclear without western payment. As racist lies go that must be one of the most obviously nonsensical ever."
Tell me Craig is it also racist ot claim that Africans are incapable of running DDT spraying programs without western aid?
And let's note once again that Craig continues not to understand the difference between fission and fusion.
The fact that fission for power generation purposes was achieved in the 1950's and fusion for power generation purposes still hasn't been achieved in the early 21st century should say something about the relative difficulty of the two technologies - at least to someone less irrational and delusional than Mr. Craig.
"I find your definition of "emissions trading" very odd: On the one hand it makes no reference to "trading". On the other hand, it is focused on having a pollution cap, which the term "emissions trading" makes no reference to. Better names to be associated with your definition are "a cap system" or "a centralized permit system"." - Sortition
The term "cap and trade" makes it pretty clear that emissions trading schemes involve setting a cap on the pollution rights which can be traded.
"A tax system, for example, which does not have an explicit pre-defined cap, is still effectively the same since the level of tax would have to be set so as to have a certain cap on pollution not exceeded."
Yes, economists have been trying to tell people for a couple of decades that emissions trading and a carbon tax are identical in most of their effects.
The big difference is that emissions trading sets a pollution volume target and allows the price of carbon to fluctuate, a carbon tax fixes the price of carbon and allows the volume of emissions to fluctuate.
A carbon tax relies on the government setting the "correct" carbon price and risks a blow-out in emissions if the tax is set too low.
Choosing between cap and trade and a carbon tax is a false dichotomy since most economies will almost definitely end up with a mix of cap and trade for major emitters and carbon taxes for other sources. But even if it weren't, the choice between the two isn't the great moral crusade the anti-trading camp try to portray it's a technical question depending on issues like how important it is that the pollution target be met and the likely monitoring and enforcement costs.
John Q,
Having had a think about the elasticity of electricity and fuel demand, yes I do believe that these items are in fact relatively inelastic in the medium and long term. In the short term they will demonstrate elesticity, but that time frame is related to the time that it takes to adjust priorities. Flexibility of demand for these items is more likely to be fracturing rather than bending. E10 petrol is an example of how an alternative can put flexibility into the demand curve. It should be pointed out here that the availability of the ethanol to make the E10 possible has nothing at all to do with carbon taxing or emissions trading. It is principly a product of some simple legislation (government backbone loosing its flexibility and showing some stiffnessfinally) with leverage. Government in 2 states mandated 2% ethanol content, the industry went for 10%.
In your suggestion "go for cap and trade", as there is nothing to trade, all that is left is capping, ie rationing. I'd like to see how that is going to play out mid summer when the power stations have used up their carbon release allowances and have to shut down. It will be the health industry problems played out in the energy sector.
Global warming cannot be solved with economic instruments. Economics can assist but the heavy lifting must come through significant publicly stimulated reinvestment in a whole new energy industry. The technologists have done their bit, the world now holds its breath while the politicians, the executives of the public will, play power games and hold back.
Neil Craig says:
First, mushrooms are most definitely not plants. Secondly, I have not been actively involved in the area for about 15 years so do not have references immediately to hand. However, a couple of minutes search found this study on soybeans:
Neil goes on to say:
All plants have an optimum temperature range. Some annual crops can tolerate moderately low minimum temperatures (e.g. winter wheat) but even these can't survive the winters of much of the northern prairies. Other crops such as corn and rice are killed by frost. At the other extreme, most crops require pollination which is a very heat-sensitive process. That is why barley and wheat are limited in where they can be grown in the tropics. It has to be in places with a relatively cool growing season. Both corn and rice can also suffer from poor pollination as a result of high temperatures, especially if it coincides with a dry period. This is an increasing concern with corn in parts of the southern U.S. In places, rice (which tolerates temperatures a couple of degrees higher) could replace corn but that is dependent on there being land flat enough to flood and there being enough irrigation water.
I'm puzzled. I thought by 'eco-fascist' you meant someone who thinks AGW is a serious problem that needs to be tackled in a serious way, yet Bill considers human effects on climate to be small and AGW is unlikely to be a major problem. Doesn't he agree with you?
"The estimated cost of new nuclear power plants has tripled in the past few years, with projections now hitting $6 billion to $9 billion per reactor. Cost estimates are expected to continue escalating. Soaring costs make the prospect of new nuclear power even harder to sell to a public that will ultimately pay for new plants through rate increases."
http://www.newsobserver.com/business/story/1048035.html
"The case for nuclear power as a low carbon energy source to replace fossil fuels has been challenged in a new report by Australian academics.
It suggests greenhouse emissions from the mining of uranium - on which nuclear power relies - are on the rise.
Availability of high-grade uranium ore is set to decline with time, it says, making the fuel less environmentally friendly and more costly to extract.
The findings appear in the journal Environmental Science & Technology. "
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7371645.stm
How is it that in the midst of the explosion of the cost of oil, it is possible for somebody to suggest with a straight face that the cost of a finite raw material source of energy will decrease due to "economies of scale"?
Perhaps I should clarify: the study I referred to in the previous comment used a crop growing in the field with added CO2. The chamber experiments they mention are the usual type of study done on plants growing in elevated CO2 conditions, with the plants in individual pots with a sterile medium and good mineral nutrition in a controlled environment chamber. Unfortunately results from plants grown in pots do not always translate very well to field conditions but they are often preferred for practical reasons.
I'd like to thank those who took the time to write something in response to my inquiry (#2). Brian D (#6) sent me to cce's youtube videos. I didn't look at them all, but (as a scientist) I hope I can do better than require the scientists to change their minds -- I'm thinking of actual findings. And I'm still thinking about it. To Bill Bodell (#12), you gave a fairly thorough and honest answer that I appreciate very much. You seem to use a bit of the appeal to authority that cce does, and I'd like to ask you how you felt about 10 year model predictions back in 1998, and I'd also like to challenge you about your requirements regarding past temperatures when loss of old glaciers is a part of the present and future problem. But that's for another day.
I haven't read each and every comment, but I see you've taken some flak for the non-scientific things you identified. I don't see why people attacked you for it. I feel exactly the same way, except the opposite. My opinion is probably influenced by the way most of the famous 'skeptics' seem to be tied to fossil fuel interests and free-market think tanks, the way 'skeptics' seem to cling to any shred of evidence that can be twisted to argue against AGW even if doing so contradicts other 'skeptical' interpretations that they support, and the way 'skeptics' identify me as a communist even though I'm a relatively libertarian Albertan. I'm not proud that the existence of Tim Ball affects my perception of everyone else (and their 'skepticism') who shares one or more opinions with him, but I suspect that it does.
"In your suggestion "go for cap and trade", as there is nothing to trade, all that is left is capping, ie rationing. I'd like to see how that is going to play out mid summer when the power stations have used up their carbon release allowances and have to shut down. It will be the health industry problems played out in the energy sector."
Bilb, won't happen.
Emissions trading systems work on an annual acquittal basis. At the end of the year you have a period (such as the sixty days in the US Acid Rain Program) if you can't surrender sufficient permits you're fined, if you can;t pay the fine you're pursued through the courts, if you still can't pay you're bankrupted. That process will probably take a coupel of years, not exactly the sort of thign that cuases overnight power outages.
You may recall that Enron went bankrupt and that it was a major owner of US powerplants. How many of those plants shut down as a result?
I suspect the answer is none.
Ultimately under Kyoto, member governments are responsible for reaching their national emission reduction targets. If they allow companies to exceed the national quota, they can buy credits on the market. Ultimately, they can be fiend with the money used to finance reduction projects. But as with the Acid Rain Program the objective is to make paying the fine substantially less attractive than buiying credits on the market.
Thanks for that Ian. I see what you are saying. I really do not know the mechanics of what is proposed. In principle there should be no credits available for sale on the market, certainly not sufficient to balance a power station's account in the aftermath of a stinker summer. The whole purpose of all of this is to force a reduction in fossil carbon releases. That would presume a declining supply of credits. Some governments were counting on carbon sequestration to bail their system out with new credits being available from sequesting companies. The only other method of "making" credits is through biological means. But as Europe found out, that path is full of fish hooks on the one hand, and the entire globes carbon absorbing capacity is already oversubscribed. So that doesn't work, full stop. You cannot create credits by producing biofuels either as they will be consumed in a very short time. The only thing that will work is a complete shift from fossil fuels to solar origin energy. And that is the one thing that there is what appears to be and endless army of critics arguing against. So if the critics had their way then power stations would simply pay the fines on mass, the cost of power would rise to a new level, everyone would adjust making some savings in the process and life would carry on. Just as it has with the rising petrol price, so far.
How does an economic system force a government to change its direction?
First of all, note how Neil did not (e.g. was unable) to respond to my last posting. This reveals to all here that he hasn't got a clue about biological systems. His response was the usual blather of a layman: "most of them [I guess he means the 'eco-Nazi's that he spouts on endlessly about] hate the free market & virtually all of them hate progress". Here he reveals hsi hand as a free market absolutist, an right wing populist. As if we needed to guess. Conclusion: Neil you are out of your depth. Go somnewhere else.
Furthermore, Neil, as usual, hahses up the science when he writes, "plants grow better in increased CO2 (something thoroughly proven)". NOT. Not even close (please enlighten me as to your research in this field, Neil HAHAHAHAHAHA etc.). Moreover, as Richard said, plants, like animals, possess thermoneutral zones above and below which their growth and survival is compromised. Further, carbon is not a limitjng resource for plants. Nitrogen is. It is even more limiting for insects, so as atmospheric CO 2 levels increase, nitrogen will be shunted from plant tissues and carbon levels will increase. We can expect insects to exhibit compensatory feeding to make up for the nitrogen deficit: expect insect outbreaks as a result. Lastly, increasing atmospheric CO 2 will alter the way in which ecological communities assemble and function, generating non-linear effects. Given (a) that out current understanding of the way in which ecosystems function over variable spatio-temporal scales, and (b) we know that these systems generate conditions (services) that permit humans to exist and persist, a continuation of the human assault on nature can be construed as a single, non replicatble experiment, with potentially catastrophic consequeces.
But like most of the contrarians, who don't understand basic biology, Neil dismisses it, with his usual smears and innuendoes. In 1992, a document was generated to coincide with the Rio Biodiversity summit. It was called the 'World Scientist's warning to humanity", and in part it said that "Human beings and the natural world are on a collision course. Human activities inflict harsh and often irreversible damage on critical resources. If not checked, many of our current practices put at serious risk the future we wish for human society and the plant and animal kingdoms, and may so alter the living world that it will be unable to sustain life in a manner that we know. Fundamental changes are urgent if we are to avoid the collision our present course will bring about".
The document was signed by 1700 of the world's leading scientists (including 70% of the living Nobel Laureates at the time) and endorsed by virtually everty National Academy of Science in every country on Earth. By association, Neil must be suggesting all of these people are "eco-Nazi's". Is it any small wonder that I, speaking as a senior scientist, view his comments as inane and puerile?
"How does an economic system force a government to change its direction?"
Well under Kyoto, countries that fail to meet their targets can be fiend up to 1% of their GDP year with that money basically then being spent elsewhere to achieve the reductions they failed to deliver, that's a pretty powerful incentive.
But its unlikely to ever come to that, in the US for example, there are a number of power plants (typically old low-pressure coal-fired plants) where the net profit per tonne of carbon dioxide emitted is under $5.00.
If the cost of credits or a carbon tax exceeds $5.00 per tonne of carbon dioxide will close.
But it won't happen overnight, the major utilities which only those plants will take a couple of years to install new
generating capacity first - and whether those plants are high-efficiency coal plants, natural gas, nuclear or renewable energy, you can be certain that their emissions will be lower than those of the plants they replace, meaning emissions will be reduced.
In a grandfathered emissions trading system, the shut-downs will likely happen faster because the plant owners can sell their emission permits and take a profit.
One of the arguments for a combination of emissions trading for large entities and carbon taxes is that the revenues raised from a carbon tax can be used to fund the shut down of inefficient old plants and the construction of newer more efficient ones.
The revenue can also be used to subsidise the end price of energy from renewable sources, which obviously minimises the impact on consumers.
Chris Wills posts:
Do the math, Chris. The amount of energy tied up in winds and tides every year is well known. Divide A by B.
Ian Gould 110 again declines to admit that I didn't say what he says I said but won't, because he can't, produce the quote he claims. This proves that his remarks represent the pinnacle of honersty of which, as a corrupt lying Nazi, he is capable but do not have any relationship whatsoever with truth.
He follows this up by inventing a new lie about what I said & alleging I don't know the difference between fission & fusion on the basis of a post which delineated exactly that.
Typical.
Richard 113 your attempt to say that CO2, while improving plant growth does not improve crop growth falls on several fronts. Firstly your link which you say proves it actually says, both in the headline & bottom line that there is an increase it is merely less than expected. Secondly such studies have to be replicated to be valid. Thirdly the study is only of soya beans rather than of all plants used for crops. There are bound to be be differences between species but it is obvious that if the generality of plants grow better with added CO2 then, unlesss crop plants had been selected in ancient times only from low CO2 toleratnt plants which would have been impossible prior to understanding its existence, then it is a statistical certainty that the same will apply to crop plants.
My remark about mushrooms was perhaps unnecessary nit picking - an example of going to great lengths to get even unimportant facts right, since mushrooms are not a significant part of world total crops. On the other hand your picking it up was clearly even more nit pickingish. It is an example of picking a nit to avoid answering the real point & happens regularly.
The fact is that plants generaly, including crops, grow better with more CO2 & warm areas generally have more, not less, plant growth. The fact that such obvious & uncontestable statements nonetheless get contested says much about the general contempt for reality of the eco-fascist movement.
Anybody who believes in faking quotations or making up "facts" doesn't agree with me.
114 you can quote all the eco-fascist sites "estimating" costs you want but the fact remains that it is possible to build nuclear plants for about £500 million each because Indonesia recently built 2.
Having read my post Z you know that the reason I said it would be possible to achieve "economies of scale" by building lots of reactors is because building lots of almost anything produces economies of scale (hence the name;-) )
That you can, with a straight face, claim that I said it had anything to do with mining costs (though there is no shortage of uranium) merely shows that, like a normal eco-fascist, you can lie with a straight face.
Jeff 119 says I did not respond to his post #96 which merely represents the very highest standard of which this Nazi is capable. See my post #98. I await his apology.
Then he denies plants grow better with increased CO2 & in the best Phantom of the Opera manner breaks out into spontaneous written laughter. How impressive.
I'm going to turn now to Chris Will's posts and explain, further, why a combination of emissions trading and a carbon tax is both more equitable and more economically efficient than a carbon tax by itself.
First up I'm going to explain the difference between progressive and regressive taxes and some of the implications.
apologies if I get a bit basic here but I once had an extended discussion with someone one line and only after days of backing-and-forthing did I realise that he didn't understand the technical mean of the terms and thought I was using progressive in the sense of "progressive politics".
A progressive tax is a tax designed to collect an increasing percent of income with rising incomes. The best example is progressive income tax. Wealth taxes such as capital gains and inheritance taxes and higher rates of sales tax on luxury goods (or conversely lower rates of sales tax on basic essentials) are generally progressive.
A regressive tax is a tax which collects a higher percentage of their income from people on low incomes and reduces in percentage terms as income increases. Fixed rate taxes - poll taxes, "user fees" like driver's licenses; excises on cigarettes and alcohol and most sales taxes and other consumption taxes such as GST or VAT are regressive.
That last point may require a bit of additional explanation - consumption grows less rapidly than income. to put it another way, the poor tend to spend most of their income on consumption. In many cases, such as private retirees living off their savings, the poor's consumption spending can exceed their income. In other words the rich save more than the poor. Take two individuals one on $50,000 who spends $45,000 a year on consumption goods and one on $100,000 a year who invests $20,000 a year and spends $80,000 on consumption. Add a 10% consumption tax. The guy on $50,000 a year pays $4,500 in tax or 9% of his income. The guy on $100,000 a year pays $8,000 or 8% of his income. (If those saving figures sound high you need to remember that in most countries mortgage payments aren't considered consumption for tax purposes.)
Progressive taxes are not necessarily good, regressive taxes are not necessarily bad. Most tax systems include both because, for example, sales tax is much harder to evade than income tax. (One of the main justifications for progressive income tax is it offsets some of the regressive impact of other taxes. In the US, when all taxes, state and Federal are taken into account, the total tax burden varies from being slightly progressive in some states being actually regressive in other states. In Texas for example, someone earning $15-20,000 will pay a higher percentage of their income in taxes than will a millionaire. Remember that the next time Republicans try to tell you how unfairly the rich are treated by the Federal income tax system.)
Carbon taxes are almost definitely regressive. American per capita carbon emissions are around 24 tonnes per capita. Let's ignore exports of American goods and imports of goods and let's also assume that any carbon tax on industry is passed on in full to consumers.
Now lets assume someone on %50,000 a year produces slightly less than the average - for ease of calculation we'll say 20 tonnes. (We know that at least one major source of emissions - air travel - does increase with income so its not unreasonable to assume the average emissions of Americans earning over $50K are higher than the average emissions of Americans earning under $50K.)
Let's assume two very different levels of carbon tax - $5 per tonne and $50 per tonne. $50 per tonne is roughly equivalent to the current EU market price for carbon credits.
At $5 per tonne, our average American - we'll call him Chris pays $100 per year at $50 per tonne he pays %1,000. So we're talking between 0.2% and 2% of his income. (Oh and we're also assuming Chris is single and has no dependants.)
Now let's take an atypical American, we'll call him Al. Al's income is $500,000 per year. Let's work back from those figures of 0.2 -2% of income. If Al were paying the same percentage of his income in carbon tax as Chris he'd be paying $1,000 (at 5 dollars per tonne) or $10,000 (at $50 per tonne).
Either way, Al'd have to be producing 200 tonnes of carbon dioxide per year before he[s paying the same percentage of his income as Chris in carbon tax. Let's say Al's emissions from stuff like, say, heating and cooling his house are triple Chris' total emissions. That comes to 60 tonnes.
Per kilometre GHG emissions from a passenger aircraft are around 0.1 kilograms. So traveling 10,000 kilometres by air produces aroudn 1 tonne of GHGs.
In order for Al's air travel to boost his emissions to the point where he's paying the same percentage of his income in carbon tax he'd have to travel 1.4 million kilometres per year by air. That's roughly equivalent to 35 trips around the world.
So I'm fairly confident that carbon taxes are indeed regressive.
Neil Craig you wrote:
"If we were building vast numbers of reactors they could be mass produced & the economies of scale would make them cheap enough for the Chinese to buy enough & for the Indians & even Bangladeshis to buy them with a little western aid. This could have been done years ago. The cruelty & pure evil of the eco-fascist movement in pointlessly depriving the world of such wealth must be seen to be believed."
In other words, you assumed that China et al couldn't afford nuclear power and suggested giving them aid to allow them to do so.
That's the fact, everything else is your usual pointless jabber.
You misread my initial message which was about fusion power not fission.
You incorrectly assumed that china and India weren't building nuclear plants when in fact they are.
You've wasted enough of my time, you sad little man.
To return to Lott for a second.
Presumably if he thinks female suffrage was undesirable because it has led to more Democrats being elected he must feel even more strongly about blacks, Jews and Hispanics voting since proportionately they favor the Democrats even more than do women.
Neil, Nazi buster, I would like to know what your scientific credentials are. I can keep a straight face in saying that plants do not simply respond to enhanced atmospheric CO 2 by growing larger. How? because I am a scientist who works with plants in my research, that's how. Robin and I have pretty much demolished your other gross simplifications of plant ecophysiology. You ignore the C:N question, as well as competitive asymmetries generated between C3 and C4 plants in response to ambient change, and their effects on the structure and function of ecological communities and higher trophic levels. Your arguments are so simple they are actually funny. You appear to believe that nature is completely linear. That cause and effect relationships have R-squared values of close to 100%. Anyone making such a claims has no place in a scientific discussion forum.
You also suggest that the vast majority of the scientific community are 'eco-Nazi's', using your rather jaded definition of anyone who appears to oppose free market absolutism. Isn't this so? Your economic/political statements above that Ian responds to are hysterical in their simplicity. Your views are so inane I don't know why I even waste my breath. So I won't any more.
Ian sums it up for me too when he says: "You've wasted enough of my time, you sad little man". Amen.
Neil is indeed absurdly simplistic. As one example, I wonder if he is aware of the fact that rice has higher yields in temperate than in tropical climates, or the reasons why? Or that the modest increased yield due to CO2 fertilization that is predicted for rice, is offset (and more) by the decreased yield due to temperature increase?
Heres one good starting place:
"The temperature sensitivity experiments have shown that for a positive change in temperature up to 5 °C, there is a continuous decline in the yield. For every one degree increment the decline in yield is about 6%. Also, in another experiment it is observed that the physiological effect of ambient CO2 at 425 ppm concentration compensated for the yield losses due to increase in temperature up to 2 °C."
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1248810
And for the mechanisms of reduced yield at higher temps, one could google "rice night respiration temperature" for a starting point.
Neil also seems to assume that the only CO2/temp impacts that matter are those to crop yields. It is to laugh.
Neil Craig said: "warm areas generally have more, not less, plant growth".
Neil Craig once again shows his ignorance of the real world. Neil, have you ever been to the Pacific coast of British Columbia or to Arizona? Please tell me, based on the amount of biomass at each of these locations which, according to your reasoning, has the warmer temperature. Your ignorance is such that I wonder how you even manage to connect to the Internet.
No wonder you call yourselves the "9% party", it aptly describes your level of intelligence compared to the general population.
Richard Simon,
My bigger point was that most skeptics do not focus on denying warming over the last 100 years (a number I included to prevent people from using statements about recent warming/cooling), the greenhouse effect or human CO2 emissions enhancing the greenhouse effect.
We could nit-pick your examples (here's one, quoting Lindzen as "Nor can we be sure that any long-term changes in our climate are due to mankind." does not prove that he denies that human CO2 emissions enhance the greenhouse effect. He might well believe that greenhouse warming may be offset by cloud cooling, etc.).
The larger point remains that doubting basic science is not what the overwhelming number of skeptics are about. Pretending it is just hinders communication.
Ian,
I don't know why you are under the impression that Libertarians have a problem with economics. I am a "small L" libertarian (I agree with libertarian policies because I believe they work, not because of some philosophical belief in "owning one's self", etc) and my experience is that lots of people that believe in economics are libertarians (Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, John Stossel, etc.).
You've made me think (ouch!).
I am generally opposed to "cap & trade" scenarios due to their need for government management and the resulting exposure to corruption and bureaucratic bungling (which you, refreshingly, acknowledge).
Your argument about the "higher polluting producer" having an advantage over the "less polluting producer" under a carbon tax scheme is compelling. But, I wonder, what drove one competitor to pollute less than the other in the first place, especially if the former is less efficient? Why wouldn't there be an optimal cost minimizing behavior that they would both work towards? The only way I can see their incentives being different is if they were subject to different governmental bodies and regulations.
Cap and trade schemes also have the disadvantage of being "hidden". Some products would cost consumers more (or less) due to the plan being in place. I don't have a problem with this, I just think that consumers should be aware of what benefits are being gained at what cost and have a chance to support (or oppose) policies on that basis. If something appears (to the consumer) to be "free", of course everyone's in favor of it.
Carbon taxes would be regressive, but that's easy enough to rectify by rebating taxes to those determined to be "in need".
BillBodell:
> The larger point remains that doubting basic science is not what the overwhelming number of skeptics are about.
No, it is not. Doubting basic science is just a tool to encourage inaction.
> I am a "small L" libertarian (I agree with libertarian policies because I believe they work, not because of some philosophical belief in "owning one's self", etc)
Of course, that's what Rand, von Hayek, etc. also say. Libertarianism is supposedly "rational" where "rational" is defined by Rand's brain movements, or it's an expression of "catallaxy", a word which Hayek just made up.
> and my experience is that lots of people that believe in economics are libertarians (Milton Friedman, Walter Williams, John Stossel, etc.).
Where "economics" here refers to you libertarians' economic wet dreams. Remember the issue about the minimum wage? It's clear that there's no consensus among economists (if there ever was) on the impact of a minimum wage, but libertarians such as yourself still insist on pointing to some sort of mythical consensus that exists only in your heat-oppressed imaginations.
Steve L.,
Looks like you picked today.
There is some evidence that many glaciers were smaller during earlier periods (the Alps in Roman times, Greenland during the MWP, etc.) than at present. Using the rules that we seem to have agreed to play by (which I believe are the right rules), I don't think you'll look at that and say ("Ah ha!, Bill was right all along!") but perhaps you'll consider that saying "glaciers are getting smaller" might not be quite the definative argument you seem to think it is.
Steve L.
I just realized that after your thoughtful and reasonable post, I picked out something to argue about (however nicely). Sorry about that. I think we could have a fine conversation if only the trolls on both sides would leave us alone.
Ian 124 you are a moron.
The quote of mine says which you use to buttress your claim that I said that the west, by not providing aid to build them, had prevented the Chinese building a few reactors says quite clearly that the Chinese COULD afford the hundreds of reactors I proposed. It was actually Indians & even the Bangladeshi's who would, I suspect, need a little aid to buy so mamny reactors (which is not remotely the same as needing aid to build a the comparatively few you mention). With that many reactors they would have power levels & hence a standard of living comparable to ours. I
t is obscenely cruel of you eco-Nazis to demand they stay poor.
If you insist on lying about what I say it would, at least, be sensible tactics to read the quotes before you put them up.
Jeff 126 the fact that you insist that increases in CO2 do not improve plant growth proves you no more a plant scientist than if you told us the Sun goes round the Earth you could be an astronomer. I have defined eco-fascist on the previous thread & your claim that I said the vast majority of scientists fit it is merely the absolute highest standard of honesty to which, as a coruupt lying eco-Nazi are capable of reaching - ie a total & deliberate lie. I challenge you to produce the quote where you allege I said it.
Lee 127 barely less moronic. If you read what I said it was that plants & crops GENERALLY grow better in warm climates than cold (having been earlier assured the reverse was true). This says nothing about whether different varieties of plants tend to have particular comfort zones - clearly they have. Overall the Amazon does have more jungle than northern Siberia - & pointing out that there are fewer polar bears in the amazon will no more change that than pointing out plant species differentiation.
~128 what you have not realised (or else what you are concealing out of malice & dishonesty) is that Arizona, being a desert, is short of water. Ergo it is almost bound to have less water consuming life than a place with lots of water. That is part of the reason why when I wrote "warm areas generally have more, not less, plant growth", as you have quoted I put in the word GENERALLY.
I repeat my advice to the moron above - it would, at least, be sensible tactics to read the quotes before you put them up.
Neil, that you don't know who Jeff Harvey is, is reasonably solid evidence that you are grossly ignorant of the field you are attempting to criticize and dismiss.
Here is more data on the effects of increased CO2 and/or Temp on yields for a couple major crops, showing that it isnt as simple as Neil claims:
Wheat:
"Though yield declined with increasing temperature in the TGTs in summer, there was a clear trend for an increasing response to CO2 at these higher temperatures, i.e. yield declined less."
"All yield responses reflected biomass responses as harvest index was unchanged by CO2"
IOW, for wheat, CO2 increased biomass at any given temperature, but did not make up for decreased yield at higher temperatures. CO2 fertilization did not increase actual grain harvest under any conditions. Lots of other examples - just look. In general, within wheat-growing regions and in the wheat varieties grown in those regions, yield is negatively correlated to temperature. IN general, CO2 fertilization increases biomass but has minimal impact on grain yield, and negatively impacts protein content of the grain.
Corn (maize):
Biomass, leaf area, leaf appearance rate, and photosynthesis measured at growth Ca were not changed in response to CO2 enrichment. Carboxylation efficiency and the activities of C4 enzymes were reduced with CO2 enrichment indicating possible photosynthetic acclimation of the C4 cycle.
http://www.ars.usda.gov/research/publications/publications.htm?SEQ_NO_1…
---
Yes,this is just a scratch at the surface - but it's enough to show that Neil's confident statements about the effects of CO2 and temperature are grossly ignorant.
Allow me to ask you this, Ian,
But it won't happen overnight, the major utilities which only those plants will take a couple of years to install new generating capacity first - and whether those plants are high-efficiency coal plants, natural gas, nuclear or renewable energy, you can be certain that their emissions will be lower than those of the plants they replace, meaning emissions will be reduced.
In a grandfathered emissions trading system, the shut-downs will likely happen faster because the plant owners can sell their emission permits and take a profit.
You have a fairly detailed perception of what is and could be
"But it won't happen overnight, the major utilities which only those plants will take a couple of years to install new generating capacity first - and whether those plants are high-efficiency coal plants, natural gas, nuclear or renewable energy, you can be certain that their emissions will be lower than those of the plants they replace, meaning emissions will be reduced."
where do you think that all of this is heading? What do you imagine is the likely 50 year outcome? What do you see as being the optimal energy structure to face global warming challenge?
"I don't know why you are under the impression that Libertarians have a problem with economics."
Bill, I'm afraid I've had too many self-described libertarians who subscribe to conspiratorial theories about how emissions trading is a statist plot to destroy freedom and oppress the poor.
"Your argument about the "higher polluting producer" having an advantage over the "less polluting producer" under a carbon tax scheme is compelling. But, I wonder, what drove one competitor to pollute less than the other in the first place, especially if the former is less efficient? Why wouldn't there be an optimal cost minimizing behavior that they would both work towards?"
Well for starters, corporations work to maximise efficiency in terms of financial returns, not necessarily in terms of resource use.
So, for example, the choice between natural gas and coal as a heating source isn't based solely on their relative greenhouse gas emissions. Other factors that come into it are availability of the relative fuels; sunk costs (if you've already got a coal bunker and a coal-powered furnace, it's probably cheaper to repair and upgrade them rather than
switch to natural gas) and the need for other trade-offs (coal is generally cheaper than natural gas at current market prices but natural gas capital costs are generally lower so companies with different costs of capital will make different choices.0
There's also and more fundamentally the point that much economic decision-making isn't based on "optimal cost minimizing behavior". Humans are innately risk adverse and value potential losses more highly than potential gains. (Offer people in a lab setting the choice between receiving $1 and guessing a coin-toss correctly and winning $3 and most will pick the dollar.)
Business managers base their decisions on the limited knowledge available to them and the limited time and resources they have to make the decision. Many of their decisions are based on irrational factors or on time-saving shortcuts. "We'll buy from A rather than B because A has always given us good service in the past."
Read up on cleaner production and quality management some time - virtually every business that goes through a systematic external process audit find that there are significant costs savings available within the business at zero capital cost. Why should energy use be any different?
Neil, your pointless rants reveal a lot about you. Again, I ask for your professional qualifications to be able to comment in a scientific endeavor. You do not respond to this. All I know about you is that you represent some fringe political party in the UK that advocates massive economic growth while ignoring the ecological consequences of this.
I argue that cause-and-effect relationships in ecology and ecophysiology are usually highly non-linear, and that the effects of increased atmospheric C02 will not simply produce a biosphere will become a greener, more produictive place. There will be all kinds of nasty surprises as communties and ecosystems reassemble themselves, or due to differential repsonses of C3's and C4's to enhanced C02.
Your hollow pontifications reveal your lack of any basic scientific understanding of complex adaptive systems. Frankly, its grade school stuff.
Given your apparent faith in unlimited free markets to solve everything, combined with a singular lack of basic scientific knowledge, its a bit rich of you to enter this thread throwing hyperbole and rhetoric at people as well as pointless smears (eco-Nazi's etc). You give me the impression of someone who would have fitted well into the McCarthyist period (the late 1940's through the mid 1950's) when there was a communist witch-hunt underway in the United States and the society was plagued by what we now know was completely unfounded paranoia promoted by the likes of Nitze, Forrestal etc.
Neil,
I also never accused you of calling most of the scientific community eco-Nazi's. Don't put words into my mouth. I am saying that you throw this term around loosely, and when you say this, "Jeff 119 says I did not respond to his post #96 which merely represents the very highest standard of which this Nazi is capable", I think you are stooping to the lowest depths.
My point was that the vast majority of the scientific community, in the "World Scientist's Warning to Humanity", argued that humans and the natural world are on a collision course which, if unchecked, is likely to have very serious repercussions for humanity. Clearly this contrasts with your rather one-sided worldview. So what is your opinion of scientists who foecefully argue this point? Are they, by your definition, 'eco-Nazi's' or not? What is your criteria for membership in what you interpret as a sordid group of people attacking civilization?
Bill: "where do you think that all of this is heading? What do you imagine is the likely 50 year outcome? What do you see as being the optimal energy structure to face global warming challenge?"
I sort of answered this at #73 above.
Fifty years from now its quite possible we'll have a radically different energy source such as solar power satellites or fusion power.
Failing that, we'll probably use less energy of all sorts.
We'll probably still use some fossil fuel but we'll use it far more efficiently than we do now. A modern gas-powered power plant converts around 50% of the chemical energy stored in the gas into electricity. A capstone microturbine or the domestic fuel cell stacks being deployed now in Japan is about the same efficient - and uses the waste heat to heat water or for room heating resulting in a overall efficiency of around 80%.
(The Capstone microturbine isn't some pipe-dream or a half-assed prototype. You can buy one today.
http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2008/06/02/ap5069727.html)
We'll use more nuclear power than we do now but I doubt the world will get anywhere near the level of its electricity from nuclear power France does today (80%).
We'll use a LOT more renewable energy. One of the keys to that will be efficient large scale energy storage. (That'll also contribute to more efficiency in the use of fossil fuels.)
Thin film solar, concentrating solar; geothermal; tidal power and wind power will probably all cost less in 60 years time than coal-fired power does today.
We'll probably use electric vehicles but if we still use chemical fuels, I'm expecting they'll come from algae or cellulosic agricultural wastes.
I'm not sure it'll pan out, but the Green Freedom project I linked to above could be the big solution we're all hoping for. Basically, its a technology for extracting carbon dioxide from fossil fuel waste streams or from the atmosphere and turning it into synthetic fuels or plastics etc. Power that from nuclear or renewables and we could not just stop carbon dioxide levels rising, we could actually start to lower them.
Here's the link again:
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080307191300.htm
#135 Lee - Jeff is someone who claims that CO2 does not generally increase plant growth. This is as simple a lie as saying the Sun orbits the Earth. Therefore who he is is somebody with absolutely no respect for scientific truth whatsoever, which is what matters. This would be true even if he had shared a podium with Gore.
Your link isn't working but, if it is the same one I saw on another discussion, it does not say that there was no increase in growth with more CO2, though it is writen to give the impression it does.
It says, to quote, "CO2 increased biomass at any given temperature". The get out is that by comparing increased CO2 & increased temperature the combined effect may not cause an increase. This is unscientific since it is actually testing 2 variables while appearing to be for one only. It is also meaningless in the debate on warming since no 2 warming enthusiasts agree on exactly how much warming will take place (indeed sometimes no 1 warming enthusiast agrees with himself - see Sir David King's claim that warming would be both sufficient to make Antarctica the habitable continent, say about 40 degrees & that it would be 3 degres). Thirdly it isn't even testing for crop crop growth decrease with temperature generally but for "wheat varieties grown in those regions" ie varieties of wheat bred for Canadian temperatures would not do so well in warmer temperature which is not remotely the same as saying that varieties bred for warmer temperatures won't. This is merely a repetition of the claim that the Amazon is inimical to life because polar bears don't survive there. Any farmer uses the most appropriate varieties for the area.
Jeff 139 you are lying again. You did not get into an abstruse discussion of non-linearity in CO2 related growth you said I wasn't telling the truth when I said CO2 generally improved growth. That this relieves you of any claim whatsoever to being truly scientific has been discussed above.
Jeff 140 says he "never accused you of calling most of the world's scientific community eco-Nazis" which we must all accept as representing the highest standard of honesty of which this Nazi is capable. In post 126 he said "You also suggest that the vast majority of the scientific community are 'eco-Nazi's' " which proves exactly how low his standard is.
In many ways the eco-Nazi willingness to maintain absolutely any lie, the bigger the better, as Goebbels pointed out, is a tactical strength. However it does mean when they are caught in the most basic & obvious lies they are temperamentally unable to refuse to defend even the most indefensible position - as has been demonstrated repeatedly here.
Ian it is possible you are right that we will use more nuclear in 50 years & more renewables. None of us, having crystal balls can know. What we can know is that it will be possible to be 80% nuclear because, as you point out, it is already being done now in France & that renewables, being a diffuse, labour intensive power source (what the Greens) like will, the laws of thermdynamics being what they are, still require massive subsidies.
This may be of interest on the question of whether carbon taxes are regresive:
"The poor already face energy costs as a much higher percentage of their income than wealthier Americans. While most Americans spend about 4% of their monthly budget on heating their homes or other energy needs, the poorest fifth of Americans spend 19%. A 2006 survey of Colorado homeless families with children found that high energy bills were cited as one of the two main reasons they became homeless."
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121244985951839615.html?mod=opinion_mai…
Neil, you must have a serious problem to write what you do and to perpetually smear people. For the UMPTEENTH time, enhanced C02 DOES NOT uniformly increase plant growth OR fitness. Your argument is pure unadulterated rubbish. Individual species respond differently to increased atmospheric C02, depending on their pathway (C3 or C4) and on their evolutionary history with respect to both ambient climate and nutrient levels. Few studies have even measured fitness in terms of seed set under enhanced C02. And as I have said time and again, but which doesn't get through your old, thick head, plants do not live independently in nature. They interact with other organisms (plants and animals) over several trophic levels. There will be winners and losers, that is for sure, under both enhanced C02 and temperature regimes. The consequences for nature are likely to mean unraveling food webs and the like, given that humans have already simplified nature in a mayriad of ways. But you never address this point. Your argument - if it can be called that - is like saying 'we all know that plants will benefit from increased C02 and thus all of nature benefits'. But what of the other non-linear effects? Out of compelte ignorance, you ignore these. I assume you plucked the garbage you spew out from the non-peer-reviewed paper that accompanied the Oregon petition. Where else would you have found it?
Moreover, carbon is often NOT a limiting nutrient for plants: nitrogen is. Ditto for animals. Your arguments are so thin and yet somehow you think you have the knowledge to take me on. Linear thinking. I see it all of the time from contrarians. Ecological systems are non-linear. Learn something, man, instead of parroting pseudo-scientific web sites from corporate lobbying groups.
As for warming, you write your kindergarten level analysis assuming that humans are exempt from the laws of nature. If the climate warmed up at such a rate as to make the Antararctic habitable, at least in the time frame I think you are referring to, our species would be facing extinction in the face. Why? Because complex adaptive systems have not evolved to respond to change in such a short time scale. This kind of rapid warming would exacerbate the extinction crisis already underway, which would further undermine the functioning of our global ecological life support systems.
Lastly, I challenge you: since my views on the relationship between abiotic and biotic processes and their effects on natural systems have enormous support amongst my peers in the scientific community, and I thus expect that 99.9% would not only disagree with your simplisitic linear assessment, how would you classify my peers? Moreover, I have asked you a dozen times and I will again: what is your scientific pedigree? This matters.
I wish I could debate you face to face on this 'cos I would wipe the floor with you. I am sick of your infantile smears in which people who disagree with you are called liars, eco-Nazi's etc. You are full of you-know-what.
To finish Neil off once and for all, here is a recent article in New Scientist that pretty well demolishes his claim that C02 will generally benefit plant growth.
Bottom line: its a myth, because of both ecophysiological constraints and non-linear effects I have alluded to in my posts.
http://environment.newscientist.com/channel/earth/climate-change/dn11655
Jeff 144 you are lying again.
"Neil, you must have a serious problem to write what you do and to perpetually smear people. For the UMPTEENTH time, enhanced C02 DOES NOT uniformly increase plant growth"
You are claiming I said "UNIFORMLY" whereas what I said UMPTEEN times was "GENERALLY" - for which statement you smeared me by saying I was lying. The diference betwen what happens generally ie most of the time & uniformly ie all the time, is obvious.
I note you are not trying to defend your lie that I called scientists generally "eco-Nazis" because you cannot. I am calling YOU an eco-Nazi.
So you obscene wholly corrupt lying Nazi I call on you to either produce the quote where I said "uniformly" or apolgise.
Wiping the floor seems to be about your level of expertise.
Before I forget I agree with you on one point:
"you write your kindergarten level analysis assuming that humans are exempt from the laws of nature. If the climate warmed up at such a rate as to make the Antararctic habitable, at least in the time frame I think you are referring to, our species would be facing extinction in the face"
I would not have been so impolite as to say that the statement about Antarctica being the only inhabitable continent within a century indicated the author capable of only "kindergarten analysis" but since you have done so I cannot dispute it & reserve the right to quote you. If you had actually read what was written you would have seen it was written by Sir David King the government's chief science advisor & a prominent alarmist.
Jeff 145 your article, despite a typical New Scientist headline, actually says:
"These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."
Which, though I didn't give an exact figure, is what I said & you denied.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Harvey_(disambiguation)
Jeffrey A. Harvey, a physicist and string theorist at University of Chicago
Jeffrey A. Harvey, an ecologist
Jeff Hardy, a professional wrestler under the employ of World Wrestling Entertainment
I am confident you don't understand string theory
so Neil quotes back at me exactly what I freaking said, and acts as if this somehow disputes what I said.
"comparing increased CO2 & increased temperature the combined effect may not cause an increase. This is unscientific since it is actually testing 2 variables while appearing to be for one only."
Bwaaaahaaaa. Neil, thanks for the funny.
"Thirdly it isn't even testing for crop crop growth decrease with temperature generally but for "wheat varieties grown in those regions""
IOW, testing two variables (with an experimental design that tests the effects of the two singly and in combination) is unscientific, but adding a third variable would make it scientific? Got it.
Not to mention that ths thread has been Godwined for some time now.
Neil, you obviously like picking hairs. You can't see the wood from the trees (or do not want to). Let's go beyond the C02-plant growth crap you are dishing out for a second.
What is your point. Please tell me. What exactly is your point regarding C02 and plant growth. It must be this: "These experiments suggest that higher CO2 levels could boost the yields of non-C4 crops by around 13 per cent."
But what about the rest of the article? What about the vast array of published studies showing that increased C02 effects on natural systems are mixed and in many cases decidely deleterious? On ecological processes, given that (as I said) there WILL BE BOTH WINNERS AND LOSERS under enhanced C02 regimes. And what of the effects of this on ecological systems and on multi-species interactions that underpin the resilience and stability of these systems? You expunge this in your petty desire to gain a pyrrhic victory.
You dismiss all of this. Why? Even if it were true, 13% increased yield to crops under controlled conditions doesn't mean squat in nature. What about weeds? How will they respond? Weeds aggressively compete with crops, and many are much better adapted to anthropogenic changes because they have not been directionally selected by man to accentuate certain traits (e.g. vegetative crop production) at the expense of others (e.g. direct defense). How about herbivorous insects, where N is limiting? They will feed compensatorily, wiping out any hypothetical gains of 13%. What about effects of enhanced C02 and temperature on rainfall patterns, soil salinity, soil organisms, pollinators, and other vital ecosystem services? What about intra- and interspecific competition amongst plants? We will see unravelling food webs, as I said, as the winners push out the losers.
I am sick of saying it, but your world is simple and linear. You don't debate me on the multitude of side-effects of global change because you can't. You stick to a simple linear process and put your head in the sand when it comes to the vast array of non-linear effects that result from anthropogenic change. I've debated the likes of you time and time again. A piece of cake.
The fact that you do not answer my one basic question: what are your scientific credentials - tells me everything. In my view you are one of those described by Charles Darwin in the Descent of Man: "Ignorance begets confidence more often than knowledge". I've authored or co-authored more than 70 publications in peer-reviewed scientific journals. What is your tally?
Neil, if anyone should apologise it's you to me. You've called me everything undet the sun - a liar, an Eco-Nazi, etc. What have I said? I never said you were lying. Those are your words. You appear to have intimnated them from what I said. I also don't agree with your word 'generally', either, as it applies to C02 effects. What is generally? A majority? How do you know this. Have you tallied up allof the peer-reviewed papers on the subject? OK, its not uniform, but you are picking hairs.
I also suggested that, by association, you'd label a huge number of scientists like me as 'eco-Nazi's' because they vehemently disagree with you simplisitc worldview. And they sure would disagree with it because they know things are much more complicated than you appear to believe. Compentent scientists realize that nature is non-linear, even if you don't. If this is how you behave in your political doings, then its no wonder that you party is on the far-right fringe.
Tim (Lambert), what do you think of this? Is my being repeatedly called a lying, Eco-Nazi by Neil Craig considered OK on this thread?
Now, for some less (or more) depressing news:
Alan Caruba of CNSNews has just decided that the Heartland Institute's list of 500 unwilling scientists is now a "petition".
No, really, you have to read it to believe it.
Really.
I think we need to draw up a petition to the Great Worldwide Illuminati (whatever that is) to resurrect Charles Keeling using the dark forces of the Necronomicon.
JH asks:
>Tim (Lambert), what do you think of this? Is my being repeatedly called a lying, Eco-Nazi by Neil Craig considered OK on this thread?
No it isn't. I stopped reading Craig's nonsense a while ago, so I hadn't noticed.
Neil Craig, if you want to continue to post here, you will apologize to Jeff Harvey and promise to be civil in future.
Tim I wholeheartedly agree that Neil Craig should apologize to Jeff Harvey. Jeff and I disagree from time to time and he can be snippy and condescending but he does not deserve the abuse that Neil has dished out. There is no place for name calling in a rational civil discussion.
Now the question is when are you going to apply this same standard to people like dhogaza who cannot make a post without calling some one a liar or an idiot?
Or does your sense of decorum only apply to people with whom you disagree?
Ian,
It seems to me that you are in fact inadvertently engaged in a bait-and-switch exercise. You lure us with a definition of a system that is so generic that it cannot seriously be criticized, and which (despite having the term "trading" in the title) does not mention trading at all:
> Emissions trading is a system where the regulator decides upfront what the maximum acceptable level of pollution is and issues (either freely or for a price) permits which make it legal to emit up to that level of pollution.
Then, you add the trading element, which appears to rule out some reasonable systems (e.g., non-transferable, personal use quotas or a system in which all pollution permits are bought directly from the government):
> emissions trading schemes involve setting a cap on the pollution rights which can be traded.
But it seems that throughout you are thinking of a much more specific system - namely one that is similar to the SO2 system. That is, one in which according to your description, and despite your assertion that grandfathering is not an inherent part of the system, existing polluters somehow retain the rights to pollute (if at somewhat reduced levels).
It is very detrimental to the discussion to have all those definitions mixed up. If you believe that an SO2-like system is a good one, let's discuss it, rather than deal with ambiguous abstractions.
Sortition, I used the SO2 program as an example because it is one of the longest-running and largest emissions trading scheme.
If you like I can go through the same process with the montreal Protocol and the phase-out of CFCs which led to a ban on virtually all developed world uses and didn;t involve grandfathering.
A question sortition, if emissions permit trading lowers the cost of compliance and improves environmental outcomes, why do you object to it?
Why do you assume that a market-maker system (i.e. a system with the government as the sole buyer and seller of permits) is preferable?
Thanks Tim and Lance. Lance, I know we disagree on some issues, but I appreciate your civil tone and I hope we can continue polite dialogue on these relevant issues. I know that I can be quite combative and vitriolic, but terms like "Eco-Nazi" have no place in any kind of discussion, even when it gets heated. Neil has used this appalling term many times, and that's what irked me in the first place. The discussion of the effects of C02 on plant growth is also highly debated, and I just disagree with Neil who clearly does not want to discuss issues associated with it e.g. effects beyond simple plant ecophysiology, such as ecological processes over larger scales. I will admit that I got the bit wrong when I accused him of saying 'uniform' over 'generally', (although I still disagree with the latter for the above and earlier described reasons). The situation is just too complicated in my opinion to attribute some simple postive benefits at the level of the individual or even the species (and there are plants that will benefit, that is for sure) against the more complex effects on multitrophic interactions, ecological communities and ecosystems, as well as on abiotic processes. This is where there is significant concern and doubt, and which is what I was questioning Neil on as a scientist should.
Anyway guys, many thanks for your posts.
Lee 147 quoting back large chuncks of what I said & adding sponateous screams is not convincing. If you have a specific factual criticism make it.
Jeff 148 asks "What is your point. Please tell me. What exactly is your point regarding C02 and plant growth"
Well the point, way back in post 52 was "CO2 does have the beneficial effect of improving crop growth - before demanding we stop it you should, if being honest, at the very least, have firm proof of some harm to more than match its benefit".
Since you & others have been constantly disputing that obvious fact since then it comes as no great surprise to find that you hadn't the remotest idea what you were disputing, merely that it was said by a "denier". While I accept that saying this was wrong represents the highest standard of honesty of which you are capable even you now accept what I said is true. Consequently you clearly owe me an apology.
The reason it is impossible to debate with you on secondary effects is that you have spent 100 posts falsely, as you now accept, denying what I said about the primary ones. If you have now accepted the primary effects it would be possible to discuss how they are affected by various secondary effects.
149 Therefore your apology, to both of us, is still due.
151 - Tim - May I point out that the term "denier" which deliberately & dishonestly links those with proper scientific scepticism to Nazi Holocaust deniers has been prominently used on both this & the previous thread & I assume others since long before I got here. If eco-Nazi is to be a censored term (& I have gone into detail as to exactly why it is correct) then you should first set your own house in order.
As Lance 152 points out your standard is hypocritical & effectively proves this site to be merely eco-fascist propaganda in which any lie may be used to attack sceptics. You are now clearly engaging in direct censorship to prevent the facts being put by me.
I have detailed on exactly what points Jeff has lied about what I said, he does not now (or at least on last posting) deny it & therefore he unambiguosly owes me an apology. I expect to be censored for saying so.
He also owes me one for saying I had called the world's scientists eco-Nazis.
As for saying that while you were wrong it is merely nit picking to notice a difference between 100% ("uniformly") & over 50% ("generally"). Clearly your "science" does not, like string theory, require understanding of maths, or even arithmetic, but merely of what politicians want.
As for your ludicrous "13% increased yield to crops under controlled conditions doesn't mean squat in nature" - that would be enough food to feed a billion people. If that is of no im portance whatsoever, in your view, my opinions about your political leanings are clearly correct.
Frankly I was only looking for some minor beneficial effect from CO2 to be set against the warming danger claim. Even a 1% increase would feed 80 million people.
Warminmg MAY have been as much as 0.6C over the century according to readings which were not in controled conditions & clearly, to some extent were distorted by the heat island effect. All, some or none of this efect may be due to CO2 & & all, some or none may be due to the warming that has been going on since the end of the Little Ice Age. It is well within warming experienced previously. Now that is an example of something that may well mean squat.
My scientific credentials are zero which must make you sick as a parrot since I have repeatedly proven you wrong.
Incidentally since we are talking about apologies you owe one to Sir David King for accusing him of being capable of only "kindergarten level analysis". While you may claim that would be a valid response to me, due to my lack of credentials, if I had been stupid enouigh to say it. you clearly must accept saying the same about the exactly same words from Sir D. was highly improper because his credentials are better than yours ;-)
Here's an utterly horrendous idea and a perfect example of what NOT to do:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1021983/Every-adult-Britain-for…
"The idea of personal carbon trading is increasingly being promoted by environmentalists. In theory it could be used to cover all purchases - from petrol to food.
For the scheme to work, the Government would need to give out 45million carbon cards - each one linked to a personal carbon account. Every year, the account would be credited with a notional amount of CO2 in kilograms.
Every time someone makes a purchase of petrol, energy or airline tickets, they would use up credits. A return flight from London to Rome would, for instance, use up 900kg of CO2 credits, while 10 litres of petrol would use up 23kg."
> the term "denier" which deliberately & dishonestly links those with proper scientific scepticism to Nazi Holocaust deniers
The word "denier" existed in the 15th century, before there was even a Nazi Holocaust.
> eco-fascist propaganda in which any lie may be used to attack sceptics. You are now clearly engaging in direct censorship to prevent the facts being put by me.
Here's the thing: there's no "censorship" since you're still allowed to scribble whatever junk you want on your own blog. It's not "censorship" either because you aren't allowed to write your thoughts on Gordon Brown's forehead.
Anyway, thanks for giving Tim an excuse to ban you. You won't be missed.
Ian,
I have to agree. The idea of personal carbon trading is a horrendously bad one, and I hope the UK shows the good sense not to adopt it. Giving people another organizational hassle to worry about, in the midst of what are likely to be already sufficiently busy lives, is a terrible idea. I imagine it was thought up by muddle-headed people of good will, but it sure sounds like something thought up by AGW deniers to make warming mitigation look intrusive and oppressive.
So I temporarily unkilled Neil, and mon Dieu! pal, STFU and apologize like a man. Don't hide it in denialist gibberish, tapdancing and conspiracy theory nutjob jabbering,, STFU and apologize. Sack up. Grow a pair and be a man. Christ. Lance has shown you how to do it, now do it.
Jeff Harvey, save yourself the angst and use Firefox, get greasemonkey, and [killfile] these people who cause these reactions in you. Life's too short to have to expend energy thinking about what the self-marginalized fringe figures are yammering about today. Oh, and keep up the good work.
Best,
D
Neil Craig, you are now banned. See my previous comment for the reasons.
Lance, I've disemvowelled comments from dhogoza for being uncivil.
Barton, it' also monstrously inequitable even though that may not be obvious at first glance.
Essentially it involves giving everyone in the UK, regardless of their income or capacity to reduce their emissions, several hundred pounds worth of free emission permits.
The distributional effects would be appalling. For starters, people in the north of England and in Scotland use far more energy for heating. So people in areas which already have lower than average incomes would be forced to shell out money to the more prosperous south just to keep the lights on.
Incorporating the environmental cost of greenhouse emissions into the cost of goods and services through either emissions trading or a carbon tax and then compensating the poor through cuts in other consumption taxes and increased transfer payments would be far more equitable and avoid the enormous administrative costs of such a scheme.
Dano, care to show us the stuff you found out about the inactivist meme propagation network? Thanks!
Dano and Tim, thanks again for the support. As far as Neil goes, his latest lame response was to donwplay secondary effects of enhanced anthropogenic C02 levels because he claims that my first riposte was dishonest (e.g. my use of 'uniform' as opposed to his use of 'general'). But let us be honest here: that was not the real reason. The real reason, as most of those posting here know, was that he couldn't debate the more relevant, important and complex issues, so he had to stick to the thinnest excuse.
Lastly, I hate being misquoted. I have never on this site used terms like 'Eco-Nazi' and I never will. I only made an inference. The inference was based on the fact that I KNOW that most environmental scientists would agree with my argument that were there to be a small increase in productivity generated by enhanced atmospheric concentrations of C02 - which is based primarily on lab studies that exclude multitrophic interactions, competition with weeds, insect herbivory, changes in abiotic processes etc. - that this would be more than countered by associated changes in the structure and functioning of food webs upon which the productivity of crops (and wild plants) depends. Thus, if this smear applies to me, I expected that it would also apply to those scientists who agree with me. That was it. For that I was attacked vociferosuly by NC.
Finally, there is little evidence to back up any benefits of this in nature. The 13% figure, in my opinion, is therefore meaningless unless this process is studied in a natural ecosystem or at least semi-natural ecosystems where there are all kinds of mitigating factors and constraints. Again, field studies are urgently required, but they are costly and very difficult to monitor, particularly if this rerquires a multidisciplinary approach. Until then, like most scientists, and knowing how complex and non-linear natural systems are, I err on the side of caution.
Neil Craig,
Believe me when I say that I understand your frustration at being attacked from all sides by supporters of AGW here at Deltoid and I have on occasion lost my cool. I have made intemperate remarks that I later regretted and apologized for. There is no shame in that, indeed it only reinforces your credibility and demonstrates good will.
I agree that words like "denier" and the more clumsy "denialist" are ad homs that have no place in the discussion but that doesn't justify using names like "eco-Nazi" in response.
Jeff Harvey is a highly qualified scientist in his field and deserves the respect you would grant any professional (or human being for that matter). You should apologize for calling him any kind of "Nazi". Alas it appears you have been banned. Perhaps if you posted an apology the ban would be lifted.
I agree with much of what you are saying about climate change but you're not going to convince others of our shared point of view by calling them vile names.
Tim, I will take your word that you have disemvowelled obnoxious posts by AGW proponents like dhogaza. I don't mind a spirited debate or even contentious language but when it descends into personal insults there is little that can be accomplished.
Jeff, as I said above you are a highly qualified scientist and deserve to be treated as such. No one deserves to be called a "Nazi" unless of course they are a Nazi and then you had better be able to prove it.
I enjoy our discussions and appreciate your insights into the population biology of climate issues. As I have said on several occasions we share many of the same ecological concerns we just disagree about the extent to which anthropogenic CO2 will influence the climate system.
Speaking of which how can we make progress on water quality issues such as farm run-off? There is a huge area in the Gulf of Mexico that is basically a dead zone due to the effects of fertilizer and sediment deposited by the Mississippi river systems farm run-off.
I hear very little about these kinds of issues that aren't based on theoretical models but can be witnesses first hand and affect huge areas of the planet. Can't we find a way to bring more attention and possibly workable solutions to these indisputable ecological issues?
I note that Lance's outrage at Jeff Harvey being called a Nazi doesn;t also extend to me being called a "lying Nazi".
I note that the president of Kiribati has appealed for his entire country's population to be allowed to move to Aus because the islands are being swamped by rising sea levels. I look forward to the explanation of how/when/where/by who/how much the Global Warming Conspiracy paid him off. Specifics only please.
Since no one else has taken up Ian's challenge to post-marxist economics, I will do so.
Let me say at the outset that I think the Soviet and Maoist empires were evil. However, I don't see their evil as a logical necessity of marxist economic theory. The "dictatorship of the proletariat" was a political program which Lenin (and Marx, but chiefly Lenin) thought (or claimed to think) would solve the economic problems diagnosed by Marxism. They were badly wrong about that. A neoclassical analogy would be prescribing wage and price controls to deal with inflation. I apologise for this extended apologia.
In any case, to address Ian's specific points:
Prices are not determined by the intersection of supply and demand curves. They are determined by a markup on cost of supply; see Blinder's "Asking about prices":http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0871541211/sr=8-1/qid=1144109966/ref=s…
The reason for this is obvious: business can't tell the demand for a product before it hits the market. If they have a prestige good like Nike shoes they can create demand with advertising (which is a supply cost); otherwise, they choose their profit margin and hope.
Given that the costs of supply are very much labour dependent, prices are effectively determined by labour content, just as Marx said they were: see this paper: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/oup/cameco/2005/00000029/00000002… or this one: http://homepage.newschool.edu/~AShaikh/labthvalue.pdf
Nor are prices of other factors of production generally determined by marginal productivity, as has been known ever since the Cambridge Capital Controversy showed that "capital" couldn't be measured independently of the profit which was supposed to be its marginal price. Given that rates of profit are not in fact uniform (see Farjoun and Machover, "Laws of Chaos") there is no "transformation problem" and there is no technical, value-free justification for the wage/profit split of net returns on sales; they are determined by the relative power of classes, as Sraffa showed ("Production of Commodities by means of commodities").
Markets work not because of the creation of "utility" out of thin air but for Smithian and Austrian reasons: they allow specialisation and they are an efficient, decentred means of propogating information and for specialists to exchange goods. If you think Marx didn't appreciate that, you haven't read his repeated praise of the massive productive power unlocked by the bourgeoisie. If you can't tell the difference between a Maoist political program (Little Red Book) and a Marxist economic analysis then I don't think you know Marxism that well after all. Fortunately, your arguments for cap and trade apply just as well under this conception of markets.
Nor are Marxists hung up on base/superstructure dichotomies anymore, and haven't been since Althusser and Gramsci at the latest - I take this attack no more seriously than you would if I started lambasting you about Jevons and Walras' views on women.
To get some idea of where the marxist economic research program is at, check out what's being presented at this conference: www.probabilisticpoliticaleconomy.net
I'm hoping I can now be abused as an Eco-Commie rather than an Eco-Nazi.
Ian,
> If you like I can go through the same process with the montreal Protocol and the phase-out of CFCs which led to a ban on virtually all developed world uses and didn;t involve grandfathering.
What would be interesting for me and, I think, useful for this discussion is for you - as an expert - to describe a system which you consider effective and fair, so that you would favor using such a system for reducing GHG emissions. The SO2 system as you described it does not seem fair to me due to its reliance on granting free pollution permits to past polluters. It also seems unlikely that the SO2 model, i.e., a technological solution at the point of production, would be effective in the context of GHGs.
> A question sortition, if emissions permit trading lowers the cost of compliance and improves environmental outcomes, why do you object to it?
"Cost" is a very ambiguous concept. Something that costs some people a lot of money, may be a benefit for others. To take an extreme example, abolishing slavery was probably costly for plantation owners, yet it seems like it was the right thing to do.
If there is reason to think that a system, any system, is effective and fair, I would be for it.
> Why do you assume that a market-maker system (i.e. a system with the government as the sole buyer and seller of permits) is preferable?
I make no such assumption - I would like to examine all the possibilities and decide based on merits: effectiveness and fairness. In fact, as I wrote before, I think that a tax system, while preferable to the grandfathering scheme, is unfair - it limit pollution by the poor, but grants the rich virtually unlimited pollution rights.
If one thinks Deltoid gets plagued now and then by bad behavior, this P Z Myers' Pharyngula filter policy is worth reading, with some truly amazing examples. Delotid's trolls are wimps.
> Here's an utterly horrendous idea [...]
> The distributional effects would be appalling. For starters, people in the north of England and in Scotland use far more energy for heating. So people in areas which already have lower than average incomes would be forced to shell out money to the more prosperous south just to keep the lights on.
> [...] enormous administrative costs of such a scheme.
I hope you can provide more convincing arguments for your positions (about this proposed system and about other proposals) than these rather superficial assertions. A personal quota system certainly seems a-priori like the most fair system, and the objections that you raise - geographical determinants and administrative costs - are hardly the insurmountable barriers that you present them as.
Geographical adjustments to the quota should be quite easy to make, and while carrying a CO2-quota card around could be somewhat of a hassle for those who do not use a charge card anyway (so that whether quota cards should or shouldn't be required could be a matter of political discussion), surely imposing an air mileage quota is administratively simple.
The possibility that it is ideology rather than expertise that is at the root of your objections certainly suggests itself.
J. Haughton posts:
Take that, 100 years of microeconomics field work! Prices going up when there are shortages aren't caused by a shift in the supply curve! They're caused by, er, increased markup.
You know, the way rain is caused by people deciding to carry umbrellas.
"What would be interesting for me and, I think, useful for this discussion is for you - as an expert - to describe a system which you consider effective and fair, so that you would favor using such a system for reducing GHG emissions."
Sortition, I favor an initial free issue of permits covering about 90% of emissiosn from major emitters. The free permits would phase out over a 5-10 year period in favor of auctions and the total amount of permits available (both through auctions and grandfathering) would reduce roughly 5% per year leading to an effective elimination of net emissions within 20-30 years.
It's worth noting that this sort of scheme would probably cover less than 505 of total emissions.
At the same time, I'd introduce a carbon tax at a low initial rate with the tax progressively increasing over a similar 20-30 year period.
Revenue from the tax (and from the auction of permits) would be used for three things - cutting other regressive taxes; providing additional financial assistance to people on low incomes through cuts to the basic rate of income tax and increased welfare payments and to fudn programs to reduce net emissions wherever it was most cost-effective to do so.
For starters, that'd involve programs to stop deforestation in developing countries; programs to give the two billion people depend on kerosene or dung for lighting and heating access to cleaner safer fuels like natural gas or to solar lighting and programs to assist the poorest people in developed countries reduce their emissions and save money through measures like improved home insulation; solar hot water systems and expanded public transportation.
If Al Gore or anyone else wants to generate absurd amounts of carbon dioxide and they're prepared to pay the accompanying cost I'm delighted to let them do so - because through either a tradeable emissions rights program or a tax program they'll end up financing even larger reductions elsewhere.
Sortition, the British proposal is equivalent to imposing a carbon tax then handing every taxpayer a rebate check based on the expected average emissions.
The first problem with that is that people on higher incomes don't need the compensation (and in many cases will likely be overcompensated meaning there's a net transfer from the poor to the rich).
The second problem is that geographical variations in energy use are not the minor factors you seem to think they are. You may recall from the whole brouhaha over Al Gore's house that Tennesseans use on average something like 1.5-2 times the US average energy for heating and cooling because the Ohio valley has a combination of cold winters and hot humid summers almost unique in the US.
Personally I live in a semitropical city; use public transport and have only flown once in the last five years.
My GHG emissions are probably less than half the Australian average. What's to stop me either selling my theoretical excess ration or lending my mate who has a car my ration card to fill up?
In either scenario, the result is an increase rather than a decrease in emissions.
Ian,
Re: #174
As I mentioned before, I find the grandfathering scheme unfair. That said, if we are talking about a period of 5-10 years (BTW, why not 3-5 or 0?) this is not a major issue, so I will not belabor this matter.
There are however several essential problems with your suggested scheme. The first I already mentioned - it essentially gives the rich unlimited pollution rights. I find this unacceptable. The argument that emission taxes revenue from the rich would finance reductions elsewhere is not compelling: I see no reason why those reductions could not be financed without allowing Gore et al. to over-emit. If lack of funds is the problem, additional funds could be easily found by reducing the military budget, or by raising income taxes for the rich.
A second problem is that it is quite likely that some common products (such as electricity) cannot be produced at much lower emissions without increasing their price dramatically, and, on the other hand, consumption of those products would not be reduced significantly without dramatic price increases. This means that the prices of those products are going to go up by a large factor and the providers of those products are going to reap the rewards of those increased prices - even as their costs are changed little.
This is definitely true when grandfathering is in effect, but would likely remain true to some extent even afterwards, when some of the windfall profits would be diverted into buying permits.
Thirdly, experience shows that it is unlikely that any the proceeds of the emissions tax would be used to eliminate other regressive taxes or to reduce inequality in other ways. Tax cuts for the rich and various tax shelters and credits for the rich and the upper middle class are the much more likely product of any budget surplus.
Ian,
Re: #175
Rebating the tax up to a baseline (and more generally, tracking total consumption through central accounting) allows turning the emissions tax into a progressive tax, making it a much fairer system. The amount up to the baseline which is exempt from the emissions tax is equivalent to the lowest income tax bracket in which no tax is paid.
Regarding geographical variations: I don't claim that they are minor factors, only that they are easy to adjust for. BTW, I don't make following Gore's personal life into a habbit so I am not clear of the details, but I am under the impression that his household consumes 20x the national average rather than 1.5-2x. (And his argument for his excessive consumption was not that he is within the regional norm but that he can consume as much as he wants to because he buys offsets.)
Regarding selling rations: that may or may not be legal, based on the preference of the public, as far as I am concerned. Even if it is legal, and the low consumption people choose to do so, the quotas can easily be set so that even if everybody uses their entire quota (or sells it and it is used by others) total emissions are within the desired limit.
Barton;
No classical economist denies that there can be short-term fluctuations; on average, long term costs are driven by the costs of supply. If you'd looked at the link you would see that "Microeconomic fieldwork" has in fact found that fluctuations with demand accounts for about 11% of prices on average. 89% is supply costs.
As for prices going up when there are shortages; usually if there's a shortage it's because of an increase in the cost of raw materials. Supply cost again.
In general neoclassical economics has a shocking record when it comes to comparing their theory with empirical data (or as the CCC showed, with logic). Fieldwork (like that I linked to) is not on their side.
James,
Your arguments appear solid for high volume manufacturing where the per-unit price falls as volume increases. However, the supply and demand story seems to me like a pretty good fit to the situation in the real estate market. Labor on the house does not account for the location-dependent price differences, and prices are determined by an equilibrium between supply and demand.
What do you think?
Hi Sortition,
At this point you push the limits of my knowledge (didn't take long, did it?). There is a well established marxist theory of rent and real estate prices, but I don't know much about it. See this paper: http://cda.morris.umn.edu/~binac/English%20Articles/capital_and_class.p… which applies the theory of rent to the price of oil, two concerns close to the little aussie battler's, sorry, working family's heart at the moment.
We shouldn't confuse the "land" and the "house" aspect of real estate here. The cost of new buildings is I suspect highly dependent on the cost of builders' labour. The price of land can't be determined by supply costs as land is not manufactured (except to the extent of e.g. clearing trees). It therefore differs from most commodities. Supply of different "types" of land for real estate purposes (I exclude farming and mining) is largely dependent on government fiat (zoning laws, construction of roads nearby, etc), something notoriously insensitive to market demand. Once you rule out manufacturing and admit government as prime determiner of supply, I am happy to let supply and demand explain the residuum, as in the famous "economy of cigarettes in a POW camp" case: http://www.albany.edu/~mirer/eco110/pow.html but I don't think it's a good principle to apply to the rest of the economy.
In general, if there's a freeze in Florida and fewer marketable oranges are harvested, the price goes up. If there's a bumper crop, the price goes down. Looks like shifts in the supply curve to me.
Ian Gould,
"I note that Lance's outrage at Jeff Harvey being called a Nazi doesn't also extend to me being called a "lying Nazi".
I hadn't noticed that anyone called you a lying Nazi or I would have included you in my remarks. I may be more sensitive to slights against Jeff Harvey since he has earned my respect with well reasoned and considerate conversations. While we often disagree and that disagreement can be contentious he mostly avoids personal attacks and apologizes when he looses his cool.
This has had the effect of increasing his credibility with me and influencing my opinion on the topics we have discussed.
You on the other hand call me names like neo-fascist and denier at every opportunity. You usually reply to my remarks with offensive screeds that have only tangential connection to the points of my actual post. In fact I'm not even sure you even bother to read the entirety of most of the posts that have triggered your bile filled manifestos. You seem to prefer to rail against some right-wing bogeyman that I represent in your mind rather than making a cogent reply to my actual points.
Still even you don't deserve to be called a lying Nazi, an immoderate and ill-tempered ideologue yes, but lying Nazi, no.
this being an open thread and all
the upcoming death of cheap energy, particularly when we were promised unlimited free energy by now when we growing up, make me wonder; how essential was that in the development of our current degree of technological sophistication? more to the point; if the carboniferous era was a random anomaly limited to this planet; and if other planets which developed intelligent life were not treated to veins of coal and wells of petroleum, and had to work their way through the industrial revolution with the solar, wind, hydro, biomass etc. power of that era as we now face, would they have eventually gotten here, or would they be forever stuck in the fellahin stage described by Spengler et al? is that the answer to the Fermi paradox?
Snap z!
I was thinking about similar things when I was wrangling bitey beasties and cleaning traps in the wilderness last week. Throw in a bit of thermodynamics ('conservation of energy', and similar ideas, seem to mean different things to conservatives than they do to physicists) and there's a nice pot of stew for a philosophical evening...
I also thought that it might be vaguely informative to have a few threads kicking along where folk listed their opinions for must-read texts for the various scientific disciplines. As an example, for a biology thread on this theme, I would venture that no life scientist's education is really complete without having turned the pages of The Origin of Species.
To Barton @ 181;
Marx and the rest of the labour value theorists argue that weather, etc, may cause short term fluctuations around the cost of supply (hence that 11% variation), but over the course of the business cycle, prices are determined by supply cost + profit; it's the long term average.
James Haughton writes:
Wait a minute. If profit counts as something more than supply cost, aren't you deviating from the labor theory of value? Is profit exogenous? Didn't Marx argue that profits have to fall? Accounting for the "Marxist business cycle" (crises of overproduction and so on), that is.
In any case, you're talking about what prices are made up of, not about what prices are caused by. Do you understand the difference?
I don't think your theory has any predictive value. So it's not much use in a scientific sense, or a practical sense.
But don't take my word for it. Let's take a simple example -- how do you predict how much prices will rise using your theory? I.e., how do you predict what the supply costs and the profits will be?
Let's try a simple experiment. You predict what the inflation (CPI-U or GDP deflator at your choice) and unemployment (CLF-U or TLF-U, your choice) will be for each of the next five years, a year at a time -- that is, this year we'll predict inflation and unemployment in 2009, that year we'll predict it in 2010, etc. You use the labor theory of value or the alternative theory you've presented above, and I'll use things like the growth rate of the money supply, the effects of the tax structure on the real GDP growth rate, and external trade price shocks -- you know, stuff that the capitalist economists allege affect supply and demand. At the end of the period, the person with the smallest RMS error wins, and the loser pays him $100.00 (2008 value, as adjusted for CPI-U).
Each of us will have to present his theory openly and in mathematical form beforehand, with no ad hoc adjustments for individual years and no changes of the theory or the definition of the terms in mid-stream. Data will be annual figures, and autocorrelation terms are allowed, just so we can jack up the R^2 a bit. What do you think?
Barton,
Aren't you changing the topic here a bit? Weren't we discussing micro-economic theory? Shouldn't you be suggesting predicting the prices of certain products? It seems to me that neither theory provides any micro scale predictive power.
engineers is republicans:
Hey, what happened to my response to Barton?
Dear Barton,
I will have to decline your bet, as I lack the technical analysis skills, access to data-sets, and time to a) learn the skills and b) perform the analysis. Acquiring better analytical skills is somewhere on my list of things to do, after finishing my PhD (Anthropology) and being a good father to my 6 month old. At present I only have a general knowledge of the theory, which I find more compelling than standard neo-classical theory and more useful for my purposes (analyzing transitions between subsistence, peasant and market economies).
I am also inclined to believe that short-term economic outcomes vs long-term trends are much like the weather vs the climate: the first has so much noise and chaotic dynamics that prediction is not very accurate no matter how good your model is. Taking that into account, I think meteorology is a good example of a science which lacks significant predictive potential but is still scientific and useful for all that.
Someone with more knowledge than I who might be inclined to take up your challenge might be Robert Vienneau, who has a blog about the problems with neo-classical economics derived from the Marxian and Sraffan critiques here: http://robertvienneau.blogspot.com/
Robert also maintains the Labour Theory of Value FAQ here: http://www.dreamscape.com/rvien/Economics/Essays/LTV-FAQ.html which answers your questions about the Marxist theory of profit.