climate economics
stoat | December 13, 2010 Tim Worstall has written a book, and not only that, he sent me a copy to review. So I have. And this is it.
It is a Slim Tome, as I believe delicate lady poets are wont to publish; yours for £6.74 off Amazon. Being slim is good; far too many books now are bloated and turgid.
First the Good News (if you're Tim, or are thinking of buying it): the book is worth reading and will stimulate your thinking about the interface between economics and climate change; or possibly greenery in general.
On the other hand, if you're looking for an excuse not to read it, you'll find one. You could get hung…
stoat | January 31, 2010Says the Grauniad. Not the "Hurrah", I added that. The Grauniad doesn't come out for it being good or bad news. But I think it is. Emissions trading is a waste of time and an enormous waste of money, promoted mostly by those who hope to get rich on it.
Carbon Tax Now.
My previous post refers.
stoat | January 28, 2010This was an ask stoat question, and probably a fairly easy one, so I'll have a go.
First of all, what is it? AF (ie, Airbo(u)rne Fraction, is the proportion of human emitted CO2 that stays in the atmosphere, the rest being sunk in land or ocean. Now it is important not to confuse the "proportion that stays in the atmosphere" with "the concentration in the atmosphere" otherwise you get silly little skeptics running around thinking that "airbourne fraction is constant" means that CO2 has stopped increasing. Sigh. However, I see that last time I looked at this I was having to slap down the…
stoat | January 22, 2010Isn't this beautiful:
Story behind it from withouthotair.blogspot.com/2010/01/wind-farm-wakes.
stoat | December 22, 2009Carbon prices drop in wake of climate talks.
Carbon prices plunged on Monday in the aftermath of the Copenhagen conference on climate change, dealing a blow to the credibility of the European Union's carbon-trading scheme. Prices for carbon permits for December 2010 delivery, the benchmark contract for pricing European permits, dropped nearly 10 per cent in early trading, before recovering to end the day 8.3 per cent lower at â¬12.41. One dealer described the market as like "a falling knife" but said that a rise in European gas prices had helped to support the carbon market. UN-backed…
stoat | October 21, 2009The Economist has a couple of articles on energy policy and climate change, both related to Britain's Committee on Climate Change, an untested body. My title comes from the first, which basically says that a carbon tax would be a good idea (I agree). The second sits rather oddly with the first, and says that the markets won't work, and doesn't mention the word tax at all. How can they come from the same report?
It looks like you can read the CCC report from http://www.theccc.org.uk/reports/progress-reports (not to be confused with the similar HoL committee here). No, the CCC is far more sexy…
stoat | September 16, 2009Says Nature. Well, good, is my first reaction. It is set at â¬17 (and phased in) whereas â¬40 was apparently the minimum considered worthwhile. Furthermore "the plan is to phase in higher carbon prices over time, but Sarkozy failed to give further details" so we'll have to see. More from the beeb: "It will apply to households as well as enterprises, but not to the heavy industries and power firms included in the EU's emissions trading scheme." Hmm, tricky. Taxing them twice would be bad. But so are exemptions. I'm not sure I'd trust the EU trading scheme to be sane.
As to the reactions: "Mr…
stoat | May 4, 2009asks Unscientific American (and CP). The short answer is no. As you can find from the FAO, calories per day are going up, not down. [W]orld grain prices in the spring and summer of last year climbed to the highest level ever. says USciAm - but somehow can't find space to mention that since then food prices have crashed to far below the 2008 average, and below the 2007 average, and remained stable in 2009. Now it took me 5 minutes and google to find that, can it be that Lester R Brown might be a teensy bit one-sided?
The new idea seems to be, if people won't worry about GW for themselves,…
stoat | May 1, 2009In which I reveal my folky side. Not a part of my youth; something I've learnt recently. The Martin Carthy version (with Eliza on violin, which is where this started, as I was looking for some of her playing for another purpose) is just superb. [[Wikipedia]] has the story if not the words; this is a reasonable written version. If you want, you can listen to some American telling you the bleedin' obvious.
Did I mention the Famous Flower of Serving Men? or Bold Sir Rylas (see-also the 10th April news)?
And the contrast with some other versions is painful. Steeleye Span were apparently famous in…
stoat | February 28, 2009Hansen has finally realised why cap-n-trade is more "popular" than a carbon tax. Of course I said this ages ago. JH says (I think it's in there somewhere; the text I'm quoting is from an email):
In my testimony I noted that a "Cap" raises the price of energy, just as does a simple honest carbon tax on oil, gas and coal at the first sale at the mine or port of entry. "Cap" is a pseudonym, disguising the fact that it is a tax, assuming that the public is a bunch of dummies, who will never catch on. With all its hooks and eyes, Cap&Trade will allow a lot of funny business. At least we…
stoat | January 11, 2009How overfed are we? refers, in which I express some doubt about the problems of food production. But Battisti and Naylor (Science 9 January 2009: Vol. 323. no. 5911, pp. 240 - 244; DOI: 10.1126/science.1164363) Historical Warnings of Future Food Insecurity with Unprecedented Seasonal Heat re-raise these problems, and they do it in Science, so lets have another look. You can also read it direct.
They say:
Higher growing season temperatures can have dramatic impacts on agricultural productivity, farm incomes, and food security. We used observational data and output from 23 global climate…
stoat | January 6, 2009Since I seem to be stating my position perhaps its time to clarify my position on CO2 taxes. I hear Obama is waiting to hear what I have to say on this burning issue :-)
When I said that heavy, extremely painful carbon taxes weren't going to happen, some people seem to have misinterpreted it to mean that I thought CO2 taxes were a bad idea. Far from it. But I also don't think that we should be aiming at any particular number just yet (yes I agree we would need large cuts to stabalise CO2 levels in the atmosphere, but they just aren't going to happen in the near (next decade or so) future, so…
stoat | September 25, 2008I decided to skip over the synthesis - how can I judge that, before reading the chapters its supposed to synthesise? I'll come back to it.
Previous: Part I.
Chapter 2 "Future carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels" is by Nordhaus and Yohe; and by Ausubel and Nordhaus. Eli has laid into this, but he largely based his post on Oreskes et al. (henceforth, OCS), and I no longer think thats such a good thing to do. They say: Chapter 1, written by Nordhaus, Ausubel, and Gary Yohe,... but this is, a teensy bit wrong. The chapter in question is chapter 2 (chapter 1 is the synthesis) and OCS have…
stoat | June 8, 2008Don't worry, fuel hasn't gone up that much. No, this one is about food. For quite some time now, ever since I've been doing it, certainly more than a year, our weekly family-of-4 shopping bill at Waitrose has been £100, give or take about £20, depending on how much booze or other exceptional items are on the list. Given all the news about increasing commoditity prices, and food riots, and suchlike, I keep expecting it to head skywards, but it hasn't. Perhaps Waitrose already has such overheads that they have enough fat to cut.
stoat | June 5, 2008Its Jim Hansens plan (or is it copied from someone else? who cares) and its pushed again here. The idea: carbon tax, to be returned diurect to the public. As he sez: Principles must be crystal clear and adhered to rigorously. A tax on coal, oil and gas is simple. It can be collected at the first point of sale within the country or at the last (e.g., at the gas pump), but it can be collected easily and reliably.
Sounds good, though notice that the principles don't allow you to decide exactly where to tax it, so there is plenty of room for argument there.
Later on, it gets murky too: The…
stoat | June 1, 2008£75 is how much it cost to fill up our C5 a few days ago; with diesel at 1.29 per litre, you could work out our tank size, if you were bored.
Current fuel prices are clearly causing some pain, or at least some squealing, all around the world (as Maribo notes, "we are approaching the elastic part of the gas price equation"). It would be nice to think that this will lead to a reduction in consumption, although the hike in prices is caused by increased consumption so the rise is more likely to just redistribute the consumption. And it will lead to more coal-to-oil plans, like this by the US…
stoat | May 20, 2008Ha. Now you know I really have gone over to the Dark Side. Prompted by British funds back Rockefellers' green rebellion to bring in new ExxonMobil chairman. The complaint appears to be that The firm has refused to follow rival oil companies in committing large-scale capital investment to environmentally friendly technology... Exxon maintains that present green technologies are not financially viable. But critics fear that the company's reluctance to explore alternative energy will prove to be bad business judgment in the long run as rivals such as BP seek to capture public affection by re-…
stoat | April 28, 2008"Tesco to put carbon scores on goods" says The Torygraph. Sounds like a good idea in principle. Do go on ...The labels - which will be put on 30 products, including tomatoes, potatoes, orange juice, light bulbs and washing detergent - will detail how many grams of CO2 were created in their production, packaging, distribution and disposal. Well, that still sounds good. Whats the downside?
However, the scheme has come under fire from rival retailers, consumer groups and academics, who say shoppers - already bombarded by complex information on packaging - will be further confused. Hmmm. Sounds…
stoat | December 3, 2007Internatioanl Rivers says The great majority of hydros in the CDM would very likely be built regardless of receiving credits (in CDM-jargon they are "non-additional"), in contravention of the mechanism's basic principle. The CDM was designed to issue credits to projects that are "additional". They point out that More than a third of the large hydros approved for credits by the CDM's Executive Board (a UN body) were already completed before CDM approval. The majority of the projects (89 percent) were expected to be completed within a year following approval, and almost all (96 percent) within…