National Academy of Science Urges Carbon Tax 875
eldavojohn writes "Moving for the first time from a cautious message to a message of urgency, the National Academy of Science has advised the United States government to either adopt a carbon tax or cap and trade legislation. This follows a comprehensive study in three parts released today from the National Academies that, for the first time, urges required action from the government to curb climate change."
Re:externality (Score:2, Interesting)
Too Controversial (Score:4, Interesting)
In today's political climate, there's far far too much controversy surrounding the individual issues of taxes and energy, alone (much less combined), to permit any real legislation to succeed.
A sane society would tax things like gasoline, diesel fuel, fuel oil, etc., highly enough to discourage its profligate consumption and apply the funds to develop practical implementations of an array of alternative renewable energy sources (fusion, solar, biofuels, etc.).
But in the USA, if you proposed adding another $2/gallon tax on gasoline, it would be political suicide. (Hell, just suggesting it on /. risks karma suicide.) In the meantime, many of us still drive gas guzzling hummers and SUVs, and pride ourselves on it.
We need to break the loop somewhere. As long as that behavior is affordable, it will continue to be popular; as long as that behavior is popular it will continue to be affordable.
And eventually, when scarcity will inevitably drive up the cost of this fuel, it will be the energy corporations who will make the profits on the higher prices, not the governments... perpetuating another problem of too much corporate money influencing government policy. The smart thing to do is drive the price up now, via taxes, and use the revenue to do something more useful than line the pockets of corporate executives and stockholders.
Re:Both solutions are economic disasters (Score:3, Interesting)
The thing about cap and trade is that a lot of left leaning environmentalists hate the idea because they feel that it's a case where markets/capitalism are intruding into environmental matters and the economic libertarians hate it because its government intrusion into markets. Cap and trade worked well for controlling NOX and SOX emissions but had unintended consequences where it was tried in Europe. The Carbon offsets were poorly defined and often lead to fraud.
Its a good idea, but must replace Income Tax (Score:5, Interesting)
The only way to sell it to the masses would be to promote it as the elimination of Income Taxes. Set a date (20 years?) by which point income taxes will be eliminated, and slowly ramp up the Carbon (GHG) tax while reducing income tax over the same period of time.
What? You're opposed to eliminating Income Tax?
Re:Grandfathered in (Score:3, Interesting)
No so fast there... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Too Controversial (Score:3, Interesting)
Gas tax should be used for one purpose only - to repair the roads. I don't want to see the US copy the EU model where drivers are taxed to death to fund all kinds of non-related projects like military or welfare or food stamps, while the nondrivers pay zero taxes but get the free handouts. Gasoline tax should be as close to a use tax as possible - like a road toll.
That said I do think we need to double the gasoline tax. Our roads are falling apart, and need the extra money.
Re:Same thing (Score:3, Interesting)
Every resource is "rationed." It just so happens that in Capitalism those with power get more rations than others.
Re:Same thing (Score:2, Interesting)
This country produces thousands of college graduates every year who go on to be bankers or Wall Street traders when they should be engineers and scientists. We produce people who not only don't contribute anything themselves but actually make it harder for other people to be productive.
That's a rather shortsighted view you have. Has it occurred to you that the banker and stock investor provide the capital needed by the engineer and scientist before they can produce items of value?
And how do they propose we tax BRIC? (Score:3, Interesting)
Bottom line: if you don't get the BRIC nations to sign on to any type of comprehensive deal and they actually abide by it, Cap and Trade in the US isn't going to amount to much on a global scale.
Re:Same thing (Score:4, Interesting)
That still doesn't explain why we need an entire class of people who are wealthier than the engineers, scientists, and workers they are supposed to be empowering to produce. I can almost accept that argument if not for the fact that it still doesn't justify those people, the bankers and Wall Street traders, being able to live better than the people who actually have the ideas they support in the first place. Perhaps there is a legitimate place for them, but I think the role they currently play has grown to the point of absurdity.
Someone Please Explain (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Same thing (Score:5, Interesting)
I also have religious beliefs, like you. I believe in pink unicorns and fairies.
There's a lot of both economic theory and empirical data backing up that cap and trade systems are more efficient. See for example this study showing that cap and trade would very well for handling levels of sulfur dioxide pollution in the US http://www.jstor.org/pss/2647033 [jstor.org].
Politicized science (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Grandfathered in (Score:4, Interesting)
Good point. That's why I've been toying with the idea that loggers can fix the CO2 problem. Send them out to harvest pine trees at the end of their fast-growing (and thus fast-CO2-absorbing) phase. Stack the wood in warehouses or use it to build houses, just as long as it's treated so it doesn't decompose. If we can do this on a large enough scale, loggers might be able to sequester CO2 by cutting down enough trees, then planting another set of trees to continue the process.
Re:Experts (Score:3, Interesting)
I am using my brain, I use it to learn when I am ignorant. I am aware of just how little I know, and I am aware of how long it takes and how much effort to fill a head with knowledge on an issue like this. I admire and respect that expertise, and I listen when they speak.
If, collectively, humans are engaged in some activity that is harmful or will be harmful to everyone then it is acceptable to me to limit your or anyone else's freedom to correct that behavior. It is not limiting freedom for no reason. Of course there are scientists who disagree, there are dissenters in every issue but finding one out of a hundred scientists who disagree doesn't outweigh the 99 who think it is happening, and is human caused.
I value having a suitable planet to live on more than your economic freedom, if intervening in the economy is the tool needed to solve the problem then that's what I support. Sorry.
Re:Experts (Score:3, Interesting)
>>Considering your other comment (which is wrong), it's probably not necessary for you to answer this question.
I was being sarcastic. Labeling CO2 as a poison is one of the most stupid recent advancements in the debate over global warming.
>>When you say "research" do you mean enrolling in graduate physics courses at an accredited university to learn about the radiative physics of the atmosphere?
I have a Master's degree in computer science; my master's thesis was on the modeling of seawater. But beyond that, I actually do my own research, and know how to eliminate crackpot theories better than Al Gore, who uncritically reported several false stories in an Inconvenient Truth.
>>Keep in mind that all the creationists I've seen are convinced that they understand evolution better than 97% of evolutionary biologists.
Consider that 97% of climate scientists think they can run an economy better than anyone else. Then become scared when they point to Kyoto as a model for the future.
Re:GLOBAL WARMING VIA CO2 IS A FRAUD (Score:2, Interesting)
-Oz
Re:Experts (Score:2, Interesting)
I can only speak about the weather station near me which by chance happened to be one of the top examples which made the international "news" with regard to this ongoing "story" and had the blogs all aflame. (not trying to hide my "bias" either) And unrelated to all this I happen to learn about the history of that station some years ago.
In the case of this station the adjustment was totally justified and above the board. It was moved from where it lived for 100 years at the edge of where the city used to be, to the local observatory which is some 300 feet higher in elevation. A few adiabatic lapse rate calculations later and the correction factor they used after the date of the move seems just about the same as you might expect. But of course only the existence of the adjustment made the "news", never the justification for it.
No idea about all the other weather stations around the world, but to me the onus to prove that the other adjustments are part of some grand evil plot by the scientists is clearly on the bloggers. And so far they've only been able to come up with a lot of hot air and noise as far as I'm concerned.
Re:Experts (Score:3, Interesting)
>>Another example of the modified salem hypothesis.
Did I mention it to begin with? No. So don't get angry when you bash on someone for not having graduate credentials in a related field, and they turn out to. I wasn't bragging, and if you read my original post, I'm encouraging people to do their own research instead of just reading what they should believe online. I can't believe anyone would disagree with that.
FWIW, I believe in AGW, and think it's a serious problem. Does that sound like a crackpot creationist to you? No? Oh, I guess you don't fucking know what you're talking about, do you?
What I was taking issue with was the notion that because scientists know science, they can design economic and political systems just as well. This is clearly a flawed point of view, but one the OP clearly subscribed to.
Memo to NAS: The #1 emitter of CO2 is CHINA! (Score:3, Interesting)
So why doesn't the National Academy of Science make China their top priority? Not only is China the largest emitter of CO2, it is also the fastest growing. Not much can be done with the fully-developed countries like the US, Canada, and Japan. "Cap and trade" is really just a variant of "tax and spend", which inevitably leads to "inflate and borrow".
If this is the best these people can do, their budget should be slashed. Whoever puts out this crap is wasting my tax dollars. Let's just downsize 'em and call it our national contribution to reduce global warming.
Investigate the National Academy of Science and you will find one of those "think tank" organizations that is funded by the government in order to write white papers consisting of what the government wants to hear.
Hmmm... an organization that gets 85% of its funding from the government is advising the socialist government to enact whopping taxation. Oh my, what a surprise!
Re:Same thing (Score:3, Interesting)
China is ahead of the US in investment in clean/renewable energy.
Re:externality (Score:1, Interesting)
10 years is too short of a time span to be statistically significant. You're not thinking long term enough. It's just as bad of an argument as saying, I walked outside today and it was cooler than it was yesterday by 1 degree, in a month it'll be cooler by 30 degrees
Okay, let's stretch things out further. The average global temperature is 2-3 cooler than it was during the Medieval Warm Period, giving us an average cooling rate of about half a degree a century across the last six hundred years. Is that a long enough trend line to average across to be "statistically significant"?
Re:Grandfathered in (Score:5, Interesting)
This is why it needs to be a revenue neutral carbon tax, where revenues are redistributed equally to everyone. So if the average person uses 500 gallons of gasoline in a year and the tax is $.20 per gallon, then everyone would receive back $100 every year whether they used 500 gallons or not. No impoverishment necessary.
Re:Just purchase Carbon Credits instead! (Score:3, Interesting)
none
Cap and Trade isn't designed to work like that.
(and here we go with the 'trollbait' mods...skeptic opinion always gets modded trollbait)
Cap and Trade provides an enormous market for banks to make fortunes in. It's another commodity market, only on a commodity that isn't actually related to any actual industry or production measure (and so is infinitely capable of being manipulated by "market makers").
It's the commodites equivalent of a financial derivates market; futures trading in something that has no actual objective value in the future.
Cap and Trade is not going to have anything to do with atmospheric CO2, and even less to do with Global Warming. It's a scam, pure and simple.
For example: how, exactly, are they going to measure a multinational company's CO2 emissions to any kind of accurate degree?
And if they do solve that thorny question (which I haven't seen any workable solution for), how are they going to stop multinational companies from playing this game, given that the company can move its CO2-producing operations to another country, sell it's Carbon Credits and continue polluting the same atmosphere with the same emissions, only more profit?
Re:Great (Score:3, Interesting)
the money instead will go through international banking cartels (IMF, etc.) who will get piece of the action, as well as line the pockets of hedge and derived market funds set up by entities such as Goldman Sachs. These parasites on western civilization need to be eliminated, not fed.
Re:externality (Score:2, Interesting)
If you lose your job at pollution inc because society has made it unprofitable to pollute the land, that is too fucking bad.
That's funny, because leftists claim to be all about the working man. It's those evil big business Republicans that are keeping the man down. Our side would never do anything that might screw him over.
You are a bunch of hypocrites, just so you know.
Re:Experts (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd been reading Anthony Watts's websites for years before Kyle and I discussed surfacestations.org last year. He acts like a serious crackpot on his other site wattsupwiththat.com, but clearly tries to keep a lid on the crazy when writing surfacestations.org.
Taken together, both sites make it clear that Watts believes climatologists are incompetent and/or engaged in a massive conspiracy. He ignores the multiple independent proxies and wind studies which back up the instrumental temperature record. He implies that the urban heat island effect is responsible for the rise of instrumental temperature record because 90% of stations are "poor quality" according to him. So scientists take the 10% of stations that are "approved" by Watts, and its time series is very similar to the time series of all stations. Furthermore, the abstract of the Menne 2010 paper I've already linked pointed out that the bias was "counterintuitive" to Watts's preconceptions. This is not a verification of Watts in any sense.
That's not how I read James Annan's series of three articles. He seemed to mainly be criticizing Pielke's sloppy statistics. I've previously described this in many places, but the best I can find at the moment is here [slashdot.org]. Again, the analyses I've linked take proper ensembles of the AR1 models, updated with actual emissions and other forcings, and analyze the results with an understanding of the statistical limitations imposed by the need to average out weather noise. I don't see any evidence that Pielke actually did any of this, which is probably why he hasn't gotten any of these rants published in a reputable journal.
Again, I think the stratospheric water vapor issues I've previously linked and the inherent unpredictability of turbulence like ENSO are enough to explain most or all of this difference.
Even the "large" uncertainties in current GCMs are small enough to show that anthropogenic greenhouse gases are responsible [ucar.edu] for the warming since 1970. Even though the two curves [dumbscientist.com] have wide error bars, they don't overlap. What other objective measure should we use to determine when the error bars get "small enough"?
I've recently been threatened [slashdot.org] with a lawsuit on Slashdot, so my commitment to anonymity is stronger than ever. I don't want to end up like the CRU scientists. But I've described [slashdot.org] my
Re:externality (Score:1, Interesting)
Why do you believe that you have an inherent right to not have to pay for damage that your actions cause? If burning Coal to power your home causes property damage due to acid rain and erodion etc. from global warming, you are most definitely liable to pay for that damage. Society has no obligation to shield you from the consequences of environmental damage caused by your actions.
I call bull shit on this. Please point out exactly where the damage is, and prove that it is caused by my use of air conditioning/heating my home, as opposed to natural cycles which have occurred throughout the history of the earth. Remember, its not "Global Warming" anymore, its "Climate Change". An ubiquitous catch all phrase which assigns any negative changes in nature to the life style of industrialized nations. Receding glaciers? Global Warming. Rising water levels? Global Warming. Hurricanes? Global warming! Blizzards and cold summers... uh... er... Climate Change!!!
And besides, if your so damn concerned about "climate change", power down your computer now. I'm quiet certain you have no idea exactly how much CO2 polution your causing just getting to your favorite internet sites (all those servers and switches using electricity from evil coal powered plants). I mean, you should have to pay for all this damage your doing.
I know all of you eco-leftists are full of shit because I can still see your bullshit on the internet, which causes tons of "CO2 pollution". You all are still driving cars, living in buildings, using petrol products (yes, plastics and all), and electricity which comes from coal fired plants. If you "really" believe the end is neigh, start practicing what you preach.
Comment removed (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Volcanos: not responsible for warming, sorry (Score:3, Interesting)
If CO2 is a problem you have four possible solutions
Is CO2 the mayor problem? You asked the question rhetorically but for me this has not yet been answered with sufficient *scientific* backing. Sure, the guy you pay the money to is the guy who told you CO2 is the problem. Don't you understand that is questionable? Besides, there are already taxes on fuel, these taxes indirectly also tax the CO2... no need for a new tax.
And even if CO2 was the only factor of the problem, how do you even think a CO2 tax will help anything (hint: energy usage will continue to rise perhaps a slight bit slower, but rise nonetheless)?
Re:externality (Score:3, Interesting)
If you have a real look at those geological records you're so fond of, you'd see that we should be well on our way back into another ice age by now. [theresilientearth.com] All of the previous periods between ice ages have been short and sweet, but thousands of years of human agriculture followed by the industrial revolution have stretched this one out far longer than the previous several. Not that I want to live through an ice age - a certain amount of global warming is a good thing, but there is a good chance we've gone too far in the other direction now.
Re:Volcanos: not responsible for warming, sorry (Score:5, Interesting)
Please understand me, I think there is some warming and I think CO2 plays a part in that... But if you blindly accept the CO2 as the only culprit you are not really looking for a solution but settling for one handed to you. Leaving some questions unanswered (or discarding them outright) only feeds the paranoia of some, and the hopeless feeling that other scientists experience because of the perceived demise of the scientific method(s). Until now the best success against these 'crackpot' opponents has been to refute their false statements (like the volcano's etc.), so this is the way to go, answer any and all arguments with good science and facts that can be checked.
As to your question 'what incentive do climate scientists have': funding, which can be quite a lot. The scientific community has commercialized, there is no denying that. I think 'mislead' might even be a big word, but it is understandable they won't say "we're not sure about the cause, we need to study more" and instead say "this is the likely cause, we need to study this more" which becomes a hyperbole 'fact' when competing for the funds. It's not exclusive to global warming, scientists are also trying to sell their services and any salesman can tell you that to sell it helps to exaggerate a little... This is no conspiracy on a massive scale, just some typical human behavior. These people are no saints here to save us, they're just another working guy making their living with this stuff...
Although people like Al Gore are plain opportunists. Sorry but it has to be said, if he had any altruistic goals he sure as hell would not have capitalized on it personally... fucking hypocrite.
Re:Volcanos: not responsible for warming, sorry (Score:4, Interesting)
Make no mistake, I think everything else you said is also wrong, but I though this deserved special attention. Of course, "carbon offsets" are a way to monetize a problem. It's quite obviously a bribe to capitalists to get them to support reducing CO2 by monetizing the problem.
You miss the point.
If the government gets money from CO2, the government will do everything it can to *encourage* the use of more CO2 so that it can get more money. As another poster further up in the thread said, this is like trying to make cows go extinct by opening hamburger restaurants-- it simply does not make sense.
The problem here is that you recognize that capitalists will (generally) take whatever action makes them the most money, but what you don't seem to realize is that the government will do the exact same thing.
4) Tax the people who release the CO2.
If you don't like option #4, what would you choose instead and why?
The only realistic option is to make "green" energy sources either cheaper, better, or both than existing carbon-based energy sources. Note: it will probably have to be both cheaper and better. After all, Linux is significantly cheaper than Windows, but even that isn't enough to get it widely adopted.
Now I'm not going to comment on *how* that should be done, because frankly I don't know. But any band-aid you put on the problem before "green" energy can effectively replace carbon-based energy is a costly waste of time-- it won't solve the problem, it *will* cost us all a buttload of money.
What's the rush? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Who is going (Score:3, Interesting)
Plant growth, CO2 is a plant nutrient,
and
you said
Right, but that's 3% over equilibrium, and it's cumulative.
and nature reply by sucking 6% more CO2 from the air!