by John C.K. Daly of Oilprice.com
Ever since the global recession began in 2008, suggestions of an imminent trade war erupting between China and its trading partners have been increasingly rising.
Now the first shot in trade disputes has been fired. By China.
On 5 January the China Air Transport Association (CATA), which represents four of the country’s biggest airlines, including Air China, said that its members would refuse to pay a new carbon allowance levy, which came into effect on New Year’s Day under the European Union’s Emissions Trading Scheme, or ETS.
CATA deputy secretary-general Chai Haibo said, “The CATA, on behalf of Chinese airlines, is strongly against the EU’s improper practice of unilaterally forcing international airlines into its ETS. If governments like the U.S., China and Russia launch strong and forceful retaliatory measures, this will form enormous pressure and we hope could make the EU change its mind.”
China’s media has gotten into the act, warning that the EU’s ETS policy “infringes on national sovereignty, violates international aviation treaties and will lead to a trade war.”
What has gotten deputy secretary-general Chai into such a tizzy?
The EU launched the ETS in 2005 as an attempt to reduce carbon emissions of power stations and industrial plants but subsequently decided to include airlines into the system in the absence of a global agreement to cap aviation greenhouse gas emissions (GGEs).
Simply put, the ETS requires airlines flying to or from European Union airspace to obtain certificates for the carbon dioxide GGEs generated by their aircrafts’ jet engines.
Under the ETS mandate, airlines flying into EU airspace will be given free credits for 2012, but beginning in 2013 they will have to buy or trade them to cover the carbon offset duty, but the airlines will get 85 percent of their allowance for free.
How much?
The European Commission has assessed the impact on airfares at $2.55-$15.34 per passenger.
And what if CATA brazens it out? Well, if CATA refuses to pay the surcharge, its airlines in violation of ETS could face fines of up to $128 a ton for their emissions – or they could be banned from EU’s 27 member-nation airports.
What is perhaps most extraordinary about the brewing dispute is that the sums involved are relatively trifling. If the tariffs are implemented, then CATA would pay an estimated $123 million in 2012, (95m euros) this year, rising to as much as $369 million annually by 2020. In 2010 Air China made profits of $1.83billion.
As for the airline’s GGEs? Airlines are responsible for three percent of GGEs.
But the dispute trundles on, seemingly with a life of its own. On 20 December the European Court of Justice dismissed a legal challenge presented by the Air Transport Association of America (now Airlines for America), several U.S. airlines, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) and the National Airlines Council for Canada and instead upheld the ETS legislation, rejecting claims that the ETS impinged on the sovereignty of other nations, concluding that the scheme was consistent with international law.
China’s response to the ruling was swift. Deputy secretary Chai remarked, “We deeply regretted that the United States lost the lawsuit. China will continue to steadfastly pursue a lawsuit.”
And Beijing is acquiring some powerful allies. Besides the U.S, India, Russia, Japan, Brazil and 40 other nations have protested that the ETS represents an inappropriate extraterritorial application of national law. What unites the long-haul carriers is that under the ETS regulations international airlines will have to account for GGEs produced during the entire length of a journey to and from a European destination, not just the GGEs produced within European airspace.
The U.S. congress has moved to make it illegal for airlines to pay the levy and Washington is insisting that the appropriate forum for resolving the issue of airliner GGEs is the UN’s International Civil Aviation Organization, which has been administering international aviation since 1944.
So, Brussels versus Beijing, Washington, Moscow, Tokyo, Brasilia and forty others? Should be interesting to see who blinks first.
JC comment: James Stafford, who runs the website oilprice.com has contacted me about cross posting some of my posts at his site, and also about writing a guest post for Climate Etc. This post is a result of this interaction. Note, I am looking around for good energy blogs. Joe Romm used to be my go-to site, but I haven’t found that site useful since 2009 (Romm seems to have gone off the rails in the wake of climategate). I’ve added oilprice.com to my blogroll. Let me know if there are other energy blogs out there that you recommend.
So was the tea tax in Boston.
The world is unsafe today because leaders of nations and sciences took the wrong leadership path in ~1971:
a.) Power, pride and ignorance
b.) Humility, service and truth
Here are brief summaries of experimental data and observations that were compromised in astronomy, astrophysics, biology, climatology, cosmology, nuclear, particle, planetary, solar and space physics to fit their agenda:
1.”Neutron Repulsion”, The APEIRON Journal, in press
http://arxiv.org/pdf/1102.1499v1
2. “Is the Universe Expanding?”, J. Cosmology 13, 4187-4190 (2011)
http://journalofcosmology.com/BigBang102.html
3. “Origin and Evolution of Life”, J.Modern Physics 2, 587-594 (2011)
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/JMP20112600007_31445079.pdf
Humility is required to see reality:
Earth is a tiny piece of fly ash heated by the
nuclear furnace that made our elements and
spit out the ash five billion years (5 Gyr) ago.
This ill-tempered furnace is more than a million times larger,
http://0.tqn.com/d/space/1/0/r/6/1/sun2_trace.jpg
And 300,000 times more massive than the tiny speck of fly ash over which world leaders seek control:
http://0.tqn.com/d/space/1/0/r/6/1/sun2_trace.jpg
Earth is too small be seen in the image of Earth’s furnace:
http://0.tqn.com/d/space/1/0/r/6/1/sun2_trace.jpg
To see this tiny speck of fly ash that orbits the furnace:
i.) Focus on the dot representing Earth in the above image;
ii.) Zoom in and expand that area by a factor of ~500,000;
iii.) Block out blinding light from the Sun furnace; and
iv.) Voila! Earth as seen from space:
http://rst.gsfc.nasa.gov/Sect16/Sect16_1.html
Images like this convinced world leaders in ~1971 to unite nations to avoid mutual nuclear annihilation and fight against a “common enemy” – Global Climate Change.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Climategate_Roots.pdf
Despite noble intentions, the world is less safe today because leaders of nations and sciences took the wrong leadership path in ~1971:
a.) Power, pride and ignorance
b.) Humility, service and truth
Thanks for the posting.
Since the AGW claim is scientifically unsound, Brussels will probably back down.
You really don’t understand what this is all about, do you?
You are right. I do not understand why world leaders were not candid with the public in ~1971 when the decision was made to unite nations against an imaginary common enemy – Global Climate Change.
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10640850/Climategate_Roots.pdf
I will be happy to respond to any questions about the experimental data and observations in any of the above three, peer-reviewed publications.
As far as I’m concerned, what this is all about is the fair and equitable use of natural resources.
From what I’ve read, the New International Economic Order (NIEO) in the 70’s was supposed to address this issue as well as bring about a redistribution of wealth from the ‘North’ to the ‘South’ (you know, to atone for sins such as colonialism, capitalism, conservatism, Christianity. In other words, basically ‘fix’ all socioeconomic systems that are white and not liberal) but it fizzled out in the early 80’s.
‘Sustainable Development’ (SD) followed after the demise of the NIEO and is in many ways (according to one UN website) the successor to the NIEO. Leave it to the first Vice President of SocialistInternational.org, Gro Harlem Brundtland, to give us this final ‘solution’ of SD.
What’s the rush, with when you are dealing with the stars in red… the nation.
remember: We’ve already paid for this…
WASHINGTON, March 26th, 1996— Kyodo
U.S. Treasury Secretary John Snow told People’s Bank of ChinaThe People’s Bank of China (PBC or PBOC) (Simplified Chinese: 中国人民银行; Traditional Chinese:
….. Click the link for more information. Governor Zhou Xiaochuan
This is a Chinese name; the family name is Zhou (周).
Dr Zhou Xiaochuan (Chinese: 周小川; Pinyin: Zhōu Xiǎochuān on Friday that China needs to scrap its dollar-pegged foreign exchange system and float the yuan.
”In the meeting with the central bank governor, Secretary Snow reiterated the U.S. view that the international trading systemThe introduction to this article provides insufficient context for those unfamiliar with the subject matter.
Please help [ improve the introduction] to meet Wikipedia’s layout standards. You can discuss the issue on the talk page.
….. Click the link for more information. works best with free trade, free flow of capital and flexible market-based exchange rates,” Treasury Department spokesman Robert Nichols told reporters.
Snow also told Zhou that he will soon appoint a high-level official, who will be stationed at the U.S. Embassy in Beijing, to ”help to facilitate China’s transition to a flexible currency regime,” Nichols said.
China has pegged the yuan in a tight range of around 8.28 yuan to the U.S. dollar since 1994. U.S. manufacturers have accused China of keeping the yuan artificially low to provide an unfair competitive edge for its exports.
Snow commended China’s ongoing efforts to modernize its financial markets and urged the Chinese central bank governor to continue the reforms, Nichols said.
————————————————————————————
Remember the EU is not a nation, so it does not matter anymore. Right.
Just like US. The hole globe: ls the deal today. If we would just make minimum wage $100 bucks an hour for 18 year olds in America, just think of the growths that will take taxes someday. If China is still willing to pay our way? When they are done buying up Greece, maybe we will sell our UN World Heritage sites just to float Wall Street, a little longer or until they can do the “Big China” IPO.)
tricky old dragon II
Excellent news that China and the US and Russia are fighting this nonsense. As I asked in my posting on WUWT about these jokers, who elected them to tax the world?
w.
Who elected them to tax Europe?
Who elected them period.
Judy, re your comment about other blog rolls, WUWT has just gone over 100,000,000 viewers.
RG
Views, not viewers.
Read on…
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2083831/Obamas-held-secret-Alice-Wonderland-themed-party-White-House-depths-recession-2009.html
More Left love feasts, in an economic downturn, what’s a few more dollars? Punch, anyone? Science turns their heads back to CO2. Why should we care you ask. Joshua knows Hollywood & what kind of folks these people are: ‘the smartest in the room’.
I’m wondering if this tax applies to NATO forces aircraft? Anyone know?
Most military, government, and humanitarian flights would be exempt.
http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=CELEX:32009D0450:EN:NOT
Military, Governments, & humanitarians… are already exempt from the laws that have been passed to to rule US, little people. While they sign- up to fly the skies of their neo-Virgin. Makes one ask though, just how did they ever get past the DEQ?
Go Reds.
Please excuse me, they are blue now…
how did that happen, I wonder.
thanx Jeff
“Now the first shot in trade disputes has been fired. By China.”
I’d say the first shot was fired by the E.U.
Simple problem though. Just charge EU airlines “upgraded” landing fees to match the costs of the EU carbon tax (plus “administrative overhead” of course), then rebate that to own’s own airlines…
Andrew, carbon tax is not just for the money. Second reason is; when they are collecting the tax, makes sound as if the phony GLOBAL warming is for real; (is not talk / guessing, but action). Reason 3: they know that GLOBAL warming is a pack of lies, they are inventing those lies; so, after long tome, when people realize that is NO GLOBAL warming – they can legitimately state that; it didn’t happen, because they collected carbon tax. Same as if you are collecting carbon tax to prevent the moon of falling on the earth – when it doesn’t fall = you can clime that you prevented it.
Here’s a paper that challenges the IPCC’s predictions concerning Global Warming:
http://www.fel.duke.edu/~scafetta/pdf/Scafetta_models_comparison_ATP.pdf
If the sun is responsible for the observed temperature variations won’t carbon taxes look like fraud? Won’t the people talking about a “Precautionary Principle” look like idiots or crooks?
“”Won’t the people talking about a “Precautionary Principle” look like idiots or crooks?””
They already do.
“If the sun is responsible”
And the likelihood of that is low. The mechanism cited in the paper you link to is a long shot in the dark about astronomical cycles.
Far more likely that the warming is due to greenhouse gases. So no it won’t “look like a fraud” when people are sensibly going for the most likely explanation.
galoping, it’s the other way; the sun producing global warming theory, makes the sceptical people believing in it; are idiots. Because there is no such a thing as GLOBAL warming. Solar eclipse, when the moon gets in between – reflects lots of sunlight – but there is no global cooling even for one day. Because the atmosphere shrinks a bit for the duration , to release less heat = no global cooling. When gets the other way, warmer instead; oxygen / nitrogen in the troposphere expand extra INSTANTLY – intercept extra coldness and cancel the extra heat, INSTANTLY. Sun-flares, sunspots have being created ”water pistols” by the Warmist, as present to the Skeptics. Same as the phony WARMER planet in 5BC, 1230AD; it was localized warming; but by Skeptics using it as GLOBAL, is a signal / proof to the leading Warmist that: Skeptics are all below 6 years old, mentally.
stefanthedenier,
I read your blog and concur with you. Warmists found the reality that instead of 5/6degC rise, the satellite data shown to be 1.5deg C so the revised down. The skeptics danced with the warmists saying 0.5degC plotting a straight line across that industrial period. What makes the Earth different from other planets is water (ocean water, land water, plant water, animal water, atmospheric water vapor, cloud in different forms and content) which plays a major part in regulating heat contents of the Earth that your blog seems missing. I totally agree with you the warmists and skeptics were/are barking the wrong tree (CO2) at best.
Sam NC, satellite takes two dimensional shots; temperature distribution is 3 dimensional in the troposphere. NASA is cooking the data, because: if there is catastrophe ahead – their budged doubles – if is .”steady as she goes” their budged goes down by half, instead; they are not stupid.
It’s all their on my website. I have added a bit this morning on the ”methane page” to correct their cherry picking to mislead, read the whole page, to see how and why they operate dishonestly. Looks like you are interested in the truth; make a comment on my website; I will incorporate it into the text. Have in mind that: no matter from what and how extra heat is produced; by oxygen / nitrogen expanding extra, they get read of it instantly. In my book I gave in detail as an example if 50 megaton 100 atom bombs explode – that extra heat is wasted instantly. O+N control the temperature to be always overall the same, not CO2 or the climatologist..
What is perhaps most extraordinary about the brewing dispute is that the sums involved are relatively trifling.
So what? The lunchyard bully extorts 5 cents today. Next year, who knows?
What’s the difference between this and “protection” schemes run by the mafia?
(Hint: trick question. There is no difference.)
The EU has no right to charge for airliner exhaust. In theory they could have a case if flight could be achieved via gas-less unicorn dust and airliners had a choice, but fossil fuel engines are what we have.
I guarantee the chinese aren’t going to blink first.
“The EU has no right to charge for airliner exhaust.”
That’s silly. They have every right.
If you don’t like the laws of the EU, you don’t have to visit the EU. One of the law of the EU is a fee for carbon emissions by commercial airlines. No one is forcing those airlines to fly to an EU airport. This fee is no more “bullying” that the sales tax you pay on the pack of gum you buy at the airport.
Robert
This “tax” is simply Mafia-style extortion.
China is perfectly within its rights to resist it (although the European Court won’t think so, of course).
Max
Of course, “mafia-style extortion” is pretty much how blog libertarians view all taxes, period.
This is a tax/tariff like any other. Do you feel that duties on imported goods constitute “mafia-style extortion”? If so, why? If not, how does this differ from that?
It is hard to see how the EU has a right to tax emissions that occur outside the EU, perhaps thousands of miles away. This is how it works isn’t it, they tax the whole flight’s emissions? Do they have the right to tax visitors on the number of children or pets they have at home, or the in-flight food?
They have every right within EU’s remit/limit not air space beyond. Get it?
The Chinese has every right not to pay the CO2 emission tax beyond EU territories. Get it?
“It is hard to see how the EU has a right to tax emissions that occur outside the EU, perhaps thousands of miles away.”
It’s not hard to understand at all. They can tax whatever they like. They can tax a flight based on the number of redheads aboard. More seriously, they can tax goods based on the conditions in which they were manufactured, or based on how much or little we like their country of origin, or according to how they feel about wholly unrelated issues.
Once you are on their territory, subject to their laws, they can assess taxes on you in any way compatible with that law. The idea that they are not allowed to take into consideration your actions before entering their territory is pure and complete fiction.
They have a right to tax for what transpires in their airspace. They do not have a right to define the planetary surface as their airspace.
Do you feel that duties on imported goods constitute “mafia-style extortion”?
Extortion comes from them thinking they can redefine their airspace to include the entire planet.
“They have a right to tax for what transpires in their airspace.”
They have a right to tax whomever chooses to use their airspace (or any other part of their territory). They can assess those taxes however they like, on whatever basis they like.
“They do not have a right to define the planetary surface as their airspace.”
Which of course they haven’t done.
Robert: It’s not hard to understand at all. They can tax whatever they like. They can tax a flight based on the number of redheads aboard. More seriously, they can tax goods based on the conditions in which they were manufactured, or based on how much or little we like their country of origin, or according to how they feel about wholly unrelated issues.
Aren’t these subject to international treaties?
Goodness, I don’t know; maybe. I should say, “Subject to their treaty obligations.” Didn’t an EU court already rule in favor of the tax’s legality? Did it look at treaty obligations?
But there is no larger legal principle at issue.
Robert, carbon tax is, legalizing extortion. Warmist as neo-reds can use democracy to oppress / rob the people with carbon tax in the democratic west. But Chinese politburo knows how you operate… com-on Robert.
EU collecting carbon tax, those money should be given to you, Joshua and the WebHub; so you can rebuild the Berlin Wall again.
Robert, you are being silly. Many individuals involved in international business have a need to travel to EU countries. You say, “No one is forcing those airlines to fly to an EU airport.” What is your retort to those individuals who have to travel to EU countries to conduct important business matters? I suppose that you might suggest that they could travel by ship. Your gum tax is equally silly.
Sure.
EU has the right to tax anything they want… including the McDonalds in NewYork City, USA, If they so chose. Chinese have all the right to ask the Europeans to go-suck-an-egg, Just like the McDonalds in NYC has. Both EU and China have the right to blink first or not blink.
Chinese, ahve an absolute right to charge literally 100s of dollars per european passport holding passenger landing in China, wherever they are flying in from.
They might even have the right to pick one out of every 4 european passengers from Europe and execute them as spies. Let the Blood bath begin
on a serious Note… EU has no choice. They either rescind this stupidity now or a few months later. They look like A**es they are, no matter when they do this. Most probably the rest of the world will find a face-saving “out” for those muscleheads-from-brussels.
David W –
it would be interesting to see how this gets played out in international legal fora, but certainly you think that nations have a right to have criteria they apply to people entering their territory based on things that happen outside of their territorial boundaries, do you not?
Of course, if international legal bodies do rule it to be illegal, it will be fun to watch as folks who uniformly denigrate international legal bodies turn cartwheels to support any such rulings.
All this China-love from conservatives is already quite amusing.
…but certainly you think that nations have a right to have criteria they apply to people entering their territory based on things that happen outside of their territorial boundaries, do you not?
They do not have the right to claim their territory as being the entire planet. What part of this do you find confusing?
Not quite as amusing as watching the left trying to resurrect the white man’s burden.
Joshua: All this China-love from conservatives is already quite amusing.
Possibly you missed the Chinese Communist Party’s conversion to capitalism and free (at least much freer) markets.
FWIW, it is “alliance”, not “love”.
Most of the posters whom I often agree with have it wrong.
The EU does have the “right” to impose taxes on airlines flying in their airspace in whatever form they wish. The issue is how other countries will retaliate to the EU’s actions. The retaliation can take many forms. The tax was a bad idea.
This isn’t an airspace issue; it’s a landing/takeoff rights issue. If it were an airspace issue, the tax would only apply in the airspace, not all the way from the other end.
Maybe Max can confirm this, but I believe that this wouldn’t apply to a flight from Beijing to Zurich.
In any event, this is begging for retaliation; if the Euros can do this, what’s to prevent the Chinese (and the ROW) from imposing a retaliatory tax of their own, effective all the way to London or Frankfurt?
@ Rob Starkey
“The retaliation can take many forms. The tax was a bad idea.”
You miss the point, I’m afraid. People like Robert and Joshua Tree *want* the cost of air travel to rise world-wide. They simply don’t want to say so out loud … it’s the greenie way
IANL8888,
Robert and Jushua live in the caves. No need to travel. Or I have mistaken terribly that they are getting gravy out of this tax such as funding their life support in the form of tax payer’s pocket money -> public funds.
Will I see in future of all Chinese airlines stop their flights at Gatwick and then British Airways or Virgin take over to fly them into the respective EU detination countries?
David Cameron is smart!
No actually I understand the point quite well. The goals were to discourage the use of fossil fuel, and to raise revenue. A byproduct of the method they used to achieve the goal will not be as they intended since those outside of the EU do not share the belief in the priority of the goal
“Now the first shot in trade disputes has been fired. By China.”
Wow, what a bizarre perspective. The EU assesses a tax, backed by the threat of fines up to approximately 7% of Chinese airlines’ profits (and scheduled to almost triple over the next 8 years), or in the alternative barring Chinese airlines landing rights in Europe. All for the purported purpose of reducing CO2 emissions in an amount that will have zero impact on climate even if ever CAGW prediction were taken as gospel.
And China fired the first shot.
The reality is that Europe’s progressives are leading their economies into the abyss with ridiculous energy boondoggles, and just want to spread the idiocy. Why the author thinks the Chinese are potentially starting a trade war by refusing to pay the price for Euro economic lunacy is beyond me.
I looked at the oilprice.com website to see if there were some indication of where this perspective came from, given the otherwise reasonable tone of the above post. And I found this article.
“A Look at Some of the Obstacles Facing Wind Energy in the U.S.”
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Wind-Power/A-Look-at-Some-of-the-Obstacles-Facing-Wind-Energy-in-the-U.S.html
The article seemed a fair analysis of some of the (huge) obstacles to using wind power as a substitute for carbon based fuels. So far so good. But then I got to the article’s conclusion, which was as follows:
“Instead of focusing on delaying the inevitable, perhaps we should start thinking about preparing people for simpler lives that use less energy of all types. Such an approach might solve multiple problems at once–too much CO2, too little oil, and too little capital to tackle all the problems that need to be tackled at once.”
I looked further and found another article (dealing with nuclear power), the concluding paragraph includes this comment: “But because nuclear does not smack the primary problem right on the kisser (fossil fuel substitute), I doubt it will be heralded as the answer to our prayers, and imagine that its role will be correspondingly modest.”
http://oilprice.com/Alternative-Energy/Nuclear-Power/What-the-Future-Holds-for-Nuclear-Power.html
So then I looked at the site looking for a general statement of philosophy. While I found none, the drop down menu at the top includes a tab for “Enviroment,” which includes a sub-category of “Global Warming.” (Uh oh).
Looking at a few of the articles, I found a uniform CAGW bent. Including this article, “A Look at Why the Durban Climate Talks Failed,” which again, at the end, includes this comment: ” Nobody expected much from the Durban talks. Thanks to the US and China, the negotiations fully lived down to their expectations. It’s past time for these nations to wake up and realize that even their short-term growth strategy is doomed to failure. It may be too late by now to avert serious climate impacts, but the world can still benefit by abandoning its pointless and counterproductive quest for growth at any cost.”
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Global-Warming/Global-Warming-Naysayers-Says-the-Heat-is-On.html
As well as this objectively titled article: “Global Warming Naysayers Says the Heat is On!”
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Global-Warming/Global-Warming-Naysayers-Says-the-Heat-is-On.html
And this comment, again at the end of an article, continues the party line: “OK … so now we know the causes of Global Warming. It’s not ALL our fault, but we certainly have played a significant role in the decline of our environmental integrity. However, when you stop to think about it, that’s actually good news! You see, if we played a major role in creating, the problem, that logically means that we can also play a major role in SOLVING the problem!”
http://oilprice.com/Environment/Global-Warming/What-are-the-Causes-of-Global-warming.html
So what we have here appears to be a fairly sophisticated attempt to dress up typical CAGW political polemics as independent energy industry analysis. The articles are uniformly CAGW supportive, but the slant is usually not revealed until the end of the article.
It would be really interesting to know when this site was created, by whom, and who provides the funding. (Questions I ask only because some of our more prolific commenters claim that we should always be on the outlook for political bias )
The articles are uniformly CAGW supportive, but the slant is usually not revealed until the end of the article.
Despite the subtle-as a-dumptruck-in-your-living-room leftist tilt I suspect that very few readers detect any tilt whatsoever, that they are so tilted leftward that the articles seem purely reasonable and rational. To me (and you too apparently) it’s obviously breathtakingly transparent green propaganda. I’m beginning to think that reading comprehension is a lost art.
You observation re who is starting a trade war is spot on. It’s as if these people can’t seem to grasp the notion of cause and effect. We see that here where one ongoing theme is that skeptics have “claims” when the truth is that what happens is something else altogether — e.g. the hockey stick voids the MWP prompting the skeptic to observe that this doesn’t follow the historical evidence and the alarmist squad perversely regards this as a competing claim.
WTF? The skeptics made no claim; the hockey team did, and the skeptics react. Cause. Effect. Really simple. But not to the alarmists. Similarly, the EU decides to unilaterally impose an idiotic and perverse tax. The chinese react. Cause. Effect. How is it even possible to get the obvious backwards?
GaryM,
Thanks for digging up all the details.
“Looking at a few of the articles, I found a uniform CAGW bent.”
Global warming is a reality. You can’t expect Dr Curry or anyone else to provide you with a 100% reliable filter against that reality. Denial is a “slant,” simple acknowledgement of the facts of the physical world is not.
Get out a bit more please Robert. You might find that the denial is all about the “cause” not the effect.
“To sheep, doubtless other sheep appear different”
The most common denier position is that the world isn’t warming (it is) followed by the belief that the warming is not primarily human-caused (also proven.) Read the polls.
No Robert, the most common denier position is the world isn’t warming unnaturally, the largest denial is to the (UNPROVEN) human causes.
It’s a tragedy you can’t understand this.
Robert, I can tell you’ve really been trying hard in the New Year to sharpen up your contribution to this blog. And I give you credit for your tentative efforts in that direction. But, at the same time, I’ve gotta tell you that your last two comments, above, can only be viewed as a relapse on your part. I mean, they’re, like, a complete regression to your former style of commentary. I mean, like, they’re nothing less than an unfortunate backslide into your former tedious, dullard, party-line-hack, brain-dead, on-auto-pilot, “faking an orgasm”, dog-whistle leg-humping ways.
Look, Robert, I know you’re an impulsive “Delinquent Teenager” and have control problems. But all you have to do is follow a simple rule–if you don’t have anything interesting, witty, original, and/or colorful to say, then be a considerate, well-tracked, useful-“Idiot” and just don’t engage your motor-mouth. Rather, you need to just hold it in until you can come up with a worthwhile comment. Or, if you must get it out of your system, then just post your retro-Robert comments on your own loser blog–I mean no one’s gonna be inconvenienced by that since no one but you are your sock-puppets read that pathetic, loser blog of yours. Seem reasonable, Robert?
“No Robert, the most common denier position is the world isn’t warming unnaturally,”
Based on what? Do you have a source?
That’s really funny, mike.
If I want a critique of my contribution here or at my own blog, you would not, sad to say, be my first stop.
Perhaps, though, I can inspire you by my example to embark on an improvement in the constructiveness of your own comments.
“No Robert, the most common denier position is the world isn’t warming unnaturally,”
“”Based on what? Do you have a source?””
Yea, I do.
Robert,
“That’s really funny, mike.” etc.
Good reply! Tone is just right. Pointedly responds to my comment, but in a grace-under-pressure civil manner that draws a dignified contrast between your response and my contemptible, vulgar Robert-baiting. My compliments.
So keep up the good work and just lay off the “Idiot” comments in the future. What do you say, Robert? Please. Pretty please.
“Yea, I do.”
I really doubt that. How about a link?
Robert,
“Global warming is a reality” should be replaced with “Global warming/cooling is a natural reality”. Next time make sure you know how to write a reality sentence.
““Global warming is a reality” should be replaced with “Global warming/cooling is a natural reality”. ”
If you’re a delusional denier.
Your inability to deal with the reality of the physical world is your own problem. The rest of us are under no obligation to coddle you when that reality conflicts with your tinfoil-hat belief system.
Robert,
Too bad. As a warmist’s propagandist you cannot even write a sentence correct after just being educated.
“Global warming is a reality.”
Roberta,
Global Warming is a hoax, my dear.
Andrew
Andrew,
When denying reality, you might have better luck if you didn’t misspell the first word of your comment.
*Roberta*,
Global Warming is about as real as you are.
Andrew
It’s so cute you *can’t spell*, but think you know all about science.
I’m afraid you’re not up to the level of this discussion. Too bad.
Robert, there you go again, hijacking a post must be a sport for you.
GaryM,
The site seems to take seriously the peak oil thinking (and Gail Tverberg is introduced as a peak oil activist). Some of the conclusions are similar to those of climate activists and mentioning CO2 can be used as an additional argument to strengthen the peak oil type conclusions. The site appears to be interested in climate issues as an additional argument to support their views on oil, not vice versa.
I should perhaps add that I do also think that running out of oil is going to affect us much faster and much more certainly than the consequences of warming. Developing alternatives for oil seems to be far too difficult and slow. Thus running out of oil is likely to have many unpleasant consequences for national economies and well-being of the type we are used to.
People have many different reasons for their worries. Not everyone, who disagrees with you is a member of the CAGW team.
Pekaa Pirila,
“Some of the conclusions are similar to those of climate activists” seems to me an understatement. Every article I looked at had a CAGW slant, not one came across as luke warmer, let alone skeptical. And “peak oil” is just the flip side of the CAGW coin.
Not everyone who disagrees with me is part of the CAGW team. Dr. Curry, Steve Mosher, and Willis Eschenbach spring to mind as notable contributors here whose positions on various issues conflict with mine, yet are not members of that “team.” No, a “member of the CAGW team” to me would be one who uniformly supports using the impending doom of global warming qua climate change as an excuse for radically altering the economy. (As an aside, is there anyone who preaches the doom and gloom of peak oil who doesn’t also toe the CAGW line?)
I just find from my initial perusal of the oilprice.com site that it fits that bill; all the pretty commodity graphs and trappings of faux objectivity to the contrary notwithstanding. I would still love to know the answers to my questions.
Pekka, trust me on this one. The minute the Warren Buffets of the world believe that petroleum is in it’s final decent, and alternatives will pencil out, hundreds of billions of dollars will find their way into new energy. And unlike government research, these efforts will actually pan out.
Watch what the money guys are doing. They have information that we don’t have. They’re not always right, but they have a better track record than the putative “experts”.
“Developing alternatives for oil seems to be far too difficult and slow.”
Distracting us and wasting money with silly projects like windmills doesn’t help a bit in developing alternatives for oil. A lot of money is simply flushed down the drain becuase of the CAGW hysteria (which is distinct from the peak-oil hysteria).
P.E.
I have been following closely energy developments since 1980. Based on that I have little trust in claims that rapid changes are possible, when big investors get interested. If no solutions exist, they don’t miraculously appear, when investors get interested.
Referring to another comment in this thread, nobody with any understanding of these issues thinks that the shortage will appear suddenly one morning, but that’s not required for the buildup of major problems. The problems may worsen within years, solving them may take decades. Perhaps the ratio of time scales in not ten, but three to five is likely and bad enough.
Pekka. What you say is true, regarding the time scales. But again; the money people aren’t stupid. They know all of this. The fact that they’re not putting substantial resources into this now means that they believe that the time isn’t ripe yet. Either that, or there simply isn’t any realistic alternative on the horizon. If they can’t find it, there’s no reason to believe that a government research program will.
And remember that old technology exists to make synthetic fuels from coal or natural gas, at the right price. Even if the world runs completely out of liquid petroleum, there is still decades worth, at a very minimum, of alternative feedstocks.
If the world stops pumping crude oil, there will still be a slow evolutionary process of substitution. And pushing carbon taxes does nothing to address this. Carbon taxes will influence the electricity generation system long before they’ll have any effect on transportation fuel.
The only logical conclusion is the obvious one: this isn’t about modifying behavior, it’s a new revenue stream.
They are not putting money in, because there are no solutions to invest in. R&D is not a good investment for individual investor, when the outcome is far from certain or even unlikely to be realized.
The development in energy technologies and solutions has been far too slow, when looked against the future problems. The slow growth of energy consumption from 1980 to 2000 gave more time for development than most anticipated in 1980, but the extra time has not made us much better prepared.
We will survive all that, but probably not without serious losses.
We have alternatives to oil ready to go now. Coal to liquids conversion has been practiced on commercial scale since the 1940’s. It needs sustained high oil prices and dismissal of CO2 paranoia to revive. Natural gas is cheaper on an operating cost basis than gasoline. Vehicle costs are higher. It needs build out of infrastructure to make it viable. High annual mile fleets in the US are already moving this way.
Peak oil could be a complete non-event.
Just look at the volumes. Switching from oil to alternatives can be done on some scale, but doing it at the required scale does not appear possible. There are very severe bottlenecks at several points.
But Pekka, you just admitted that oil isn’t going to stop overnight. If it goes into slow decline, the alternatives will evolve over the same time scale. And then in a few more decades, they’ll evolve out as something new arrives.
This is the way it’s always happened. Evolution. 100 years ago, horses were still dominant, and airplanes were still a hobby.
I said that the decline in supply will be several times faster than the buildup of alternative solutions. When we subtract 5 and add 1, we end up with shortage.
Then we’re going to have to get fracking, aren’t we?
Fracking helps a little, but the problems are much larger.
“R&D is not a good investment for individual investor, when the outcome is far from certain or even unlikely to be realized.”
So that would be why greens all trumpeted large investments by Warren Buffet and T.Boone Pickens in “alternative energy” over the last decade or so.
Oh wait, they weren’t investing in alternative energy, they were investing in using alternative energy to obtain massive transfers of tax revenue to their private concerns. Which explains why Pickens ran away from his wind farm investments screaming like a little girl when the massive “subsidies” (read crony capitalist transfer payments) were not forthcoming.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/40612094/ns/business-going_green/t/pickens-plan-no-longer-features-wind-energy/
Actually, for those of you unfamiliar with how investment is done in a free market system, the vast majority is not done by wealthy individuals. It is done by many individual investors combining their resources in these weird, evil things called corporations. Which corporations then go on to risk vast amounts of capital for the privilege, when they are successful, of being demonized by the economic illiterates of the left on the occasions when their risk taking pays off.
Whether it be “big phamaceutical” and wonder drugs or “big oil” and fracking and discovery of new deposits, there is nothing more despised by the left than successful and productive investments. I’m still waiting for the time “big soft ware” will be demonized, now that Steve Jobs is gone. (Bill Gates seemed to fit this role for a while, until technology left all the anti-trust hysteria in the dust as he had predicted.)
At some point, this is like trying to argue with a 9/11 truther. The real proof isn’t in the technical details but in people’s behaviors. If we were about to run out of oil, people would be behaving very differently.
Some people have the strange idea that people can behave rationally when a major problem is building up.
The dynamics of change is not not like that at all. Myopia is an extremely important factor. It’s also possible and common that every individual behaves rationally as an individual, but all together behave very irrationally, when judging against common good.
Tom said, “Coal to liquids conversion has been practiced on commercial scale since the 1940′s.”
True and it is a way forward especially combined with very high temperature hydrogen production by some other means, like nuclear. Why capture CO2 to dump someplace when you can hook it up with some hydrogen. Unfortunately, coal suffers from unscientific phobias, dearly held by the more scientifically oriented followers of the no threshold linear modeling religion.
And hindsight is always 20/20. The problem is that, as Calvin Coolidge put it, nine out of ten problems rolling down the road at you end up in the ditch before they get to you.
You’re problem is to know ahead of time which of those ten is the one that isn’t going to end up in the ditch. I see climate change and peak oil as a couple of prime candidates for the ditch. That leaves us with 8 to worry about.
Grr. *your
GaryM
“And “peak oil” is just the flip side of the CAGW coin.”
That shows that you do not understand either “peak oil” or CAGW.
Peak oil will happen whether or not there is anthropogenic warming.
As Pekka discusses, Peak oil happens when new production can no longer make up for depletion rates.
Peak oil of a given resource with a given technology (implying a given price) is inevitable by physics.
Shifting to alternative resources is what is needed to manage the peak “light oil”.
Peaking of global hydrocarbon use will impact anthropogenic warming – but that is different from “peak oil”.
CAGW requires ongoing massive amounts of fossil fuels – plus alot of missing physics on the magnitude of natural causes vs anthropogenic causes.
Good to see that you’re learning, Gary.
Now all you need to learn is how to apply that sort of scrutiny on a uniform basis.
Gary, this sure looks like a clone of the Oil Drum. They too, started out sounding more like a think tank than an advocacy site, but it didn’t take long for the mask to fall.
Which gets back to Judith’s question about “energy blogs”. I’m suspicious of this one, but it’s curious that in an internet with as many climate blogs as we have that we don’t have any real well-known and neutral energy blogs. The energy advocacy goes on on the climate blogs. And frankly, I don’t think that it’s possible to discuss energy dispassionately. This is religion.
how many well known and neutral climate blogs we got? we got warmists and skeptics.
BIllC –
Pielke Jr.’s is about the closest I can find — although it’s not exclusively a climate blog and is probably not considered to be “realist” or “skeptic” by “realists” and “skeptics.”
RPJ’s site is about as close as it gets I think.
PS Where’s your response to me and TimG56 from the error cascade thread? Still waiting….
Random musings – might as well put this here. I find the Oil Drum (TOD) even more misanthropic than CAGW. I think this site is more think-tankish, but for think tanks to exist there have to be big strategic issues, right?
@Joshua – two “skeptic” notes:
1) Timg56’s point about how if you think being right of center predisposes you to being a skeptic, does being left of center predispose you to be a better climate scientist?
2) Max’s response to my comment on the climate dice thread about deaths from warming vs. lives saved (from lack of cold). My own biases tend to consistently favor ignoring that there may be benefits of GW, though I try.
“this site” – oilprice.com
“Now the first shot in trade disputes has been fired. By China.”
Yep that was one line that stood out for me in the article. China bashing is a favorite sport of the left (and right) of western countries.
No global, socialist cabal around AGW rationalizations? How material can the evidence be? The authority to tax states for the invented “common good” of fighting carbon under the fraud of AGW effects.
More like Roman Tribute extorted over conquered lands.
They don’t have the authority, and the chinese are about to demonstrate this to them.
“More like Roman Tribute extorted over conquered lands.”
If the Roman tribute was a small fee levied on people who chose to visit Rome.
Robert, it’s more like the person that was demanding money in Rome from tourist; to give them permission; to throw money in the fountain.
More like Caligulas attack on the ocean: folly and hubris.
The best part of EU ETS Carbon Emissions Surcharge is to charge the Chinese airlines enroute countries and pocketed them. It will be more appropriate for the EU ETS to charge the EU people to breathe out CO2/farting than any other than EU places. I am sure EU people are more willing to pay for the breathing/farting charges.
EU is practically bankrupt and its outlook for taxes from its members states to support the largesse is weak … tax the rest of the world seems to be their only answer.
Better idea is to pare the EU back to the original intent … EU adds no value to the European nations so this would be a positive accomplishment.
If it hasn’t happened at the highest level already I suspect the conversation between the Chinese and the Europeans will go something like this.
Europeans: “If your carriers don’t pay the carbon tax we will penalise them thus——“.
Chinese: “If you penalise our carriers 1 Euro we will not be buying any more of your filthy government bonds. Period”.
I know where I’ll put my money.
EU: “Oh, well. I don’t suppose you will be wanting to sell us 300 billion euros’ worth of exports a year, either.”
The Chinese, unlike their more belligerent advocates here, are well aware a trade war would cost them a lot of money. Trade wars always do. That is why they are more often threatened than waged.
Robert
Response to EU threat to China (which you voiced).
OK, guys. Then we’ll just call in our debt (“in natura”, of course, since the Euro will have about the same value as the old Drachma).
EU: “No.”
Fortunately the Chinese are considerably more savvy than you are about the limits of their power. I don’t know who will win this particular tussle, but I do know the Chinese are not going to escalate matters in the way some folks here are fantasizing.
Robert,
You say: “…I do know the Chinese are not going to escalate matters in the ways some folks are fantasizing.”
Well, Robert, you’re quite the Renaissance-man, know-it-all motor-mouth. So, in addition to all your other competencies, you’re an “old China hand” who knows how China’s not going to play its cards.
C’mon, Robert, you’re obviously faking it. I mean, the Deputy Secretary of the Chinese airlines association flat-out says China’s airlines will not play ball with the EU’s carbon assessments on airlines. Maybe an expert in Chinese geo-political thinking like you knows otherwise, but I’d say China can’t back down now, given its bold, public declaration without an unacceptable loss of “face.” Especially since the high-handed EU’s membership includes those now pip-squeak, but formerly imperial nations, whose past “unequal treaties” and “extra-territorial privileges” rankles China as a still living memory. Both sides have painted themselves into opposite corners thanks to the EU’s “Idiot” left, greenshirt brinkmanship, it seems to li’ll ol’ me. Gonna get nasty, I’d estimate. Common sense really.
And if I consulted the oracle of Delphi in the manner, I’d expect her to say that the EU’s latest, greenshirt miscalculation leaves the U. S. in an enviable position in many different ways and the ultimate winner. And if she didn’t say that, then I’d tell her she’s just another bull-merder phony like Robert and cancel the credit-card charge.
But I could be wrong, Robert, maybe you really do know a thing or two and can show that your EU greenshirt soul-mates are not a cautionary tale as to the perils of “Delinquent Teenagers” at the wheel of the family car and off on a joy-ride. I doubt it, but I’m willing to listen to your pitch.
Robert may have helped the EU to formulate the tax that he knows a lot more we don’t know.
CHina will not have to escalate, because the EU paper tigers, UN bureaucrat retreads, will just keep escalating the war of words but nothing will happen.
DEEBEE , it is happening. As long as there is a debate about the ”phony GLOBAL warming, carbon taxing” Warmist are benefiting. The DEBATE is advertising the phony GLOBAL warming as real.
Judith Curry
I, for one, welcome a closer cooperation between this (climate) site and the oilprice.com (energy) website.
The topics are interrelated.
Looking forward to a future post here by James Stafford as I’m sure the oilprice.com denizens are to a post by you.
Max
Max,
No! Did you read GaryM’s post here about its (oilprice.com) conclusions of all articles cited. Its another CAGW’s propaganda!
I don’t see any problem with cross posting. It doesn’t get any more CAGW than Real Climate, and that is still the place to go to find out what the consensus thinks. As long as you know the bias, the more voices the better. You might actually get a dialogue here, since they strive for the appearance at least of calm objectivity.
Imagine a WebHub, but with broader knowledge, without the snark, and with a willingness to actually engage in genuine dialogue. Not saying that would happen, but it might be interesting if it did.
Gary, it remains to be seen if that’s what we have here. Frankly, the peak oil thing isn’t any more likely to be settled on a blog than the climate thing. Actual energy ideas might have a chance, but I have my doubts about that as well. Too many people have their pets and love them too much.
Gary,
“You might actually get a dialogue here, since they strive for the appearance at least of calm objectivity.” Yeah, it was one of the original Dr Curry’s intentions of starting the blog.
“…with a willingness to actually engage in genuine dialogue. Not saying that would happen, but it might be interesting if it did.” Lets wait and see if its not paroting the CAGW’s propaganda with its article conclusions!
Robert
Further up this thread you opine:
Is the world warming?
Yes, it has been warming in three statistically indistinguishable multi-decadal cycles since the modern record started in 1850 (with multi-decadal cycles of slight cooling in between). The latest warming cycle appears to have ended end 2000, with a lack of warming over the 11 years since then, but whether or not this is the start of another multi-decadal cycle of slight cooling remains to be seen.
Is it “proven” that the observed warming is “primarily human-cased”?
No. There is NO such “proof” (i.e. empirical scientific evidence) that this premise is valid.
Sorry, Robert.
Max
And you plan to go about proving that — how?
Obviously the world’s climate scientists disagree with you, and it’s no mystery why — there is a mountain of empirical evidence detailing the human fingerprint of the current warming. So you are either:
1. Ignorant of that evidence.
Or. . .
2. Disagree with it, and should be able to say where and why.
Those are the options — pretending it doesn’t exist isn’t. Ignorance is not a super power.
Robert
You’ve got the shoe on the wrong foot if you are wanting me to “prove” that there is “no proof” (an impossible task).
It’s up to YOU to show “proof” (or rather empirical scientific evidence based on physical observation or reproducible experimentation) that your claim is valid ”that the observed warming is primarily human-caused”.
Your turn, Robert – let’s see what you come up with.
Max
“It’s up to YOU to show “proof” ”
No, that’s backwards. You made the claim (that there is no empirical evidence of AGW); it’s your burden of proof. Now you say it’s impossible for you to prove your claim. Which of course it it, but that’s not my problem.
You deny the existence of all the evidence which is perceived without difficulty by the world’s scientists. So the only two possibilities are, still:
1. You are totally ignorant of the science in question.
Or:
2. You disagree with the science in question, and think pretending it doesn’t exist is easier than explaining where and why you disagree with it.
But like it or not, you have a burden of proof if you want to assert that there is “no empirical evidence” for AGW. And your ignorance cannot, in any way, impose on me an obligation to educate you. If you decline to explain the specific arguments you have against the vast body of empirical evidence of AGW, I can only conclude you are ignorant of it. But your ignorance doesn’t change the facts; ignorance is not a superpower.
I suppose we would also have to prove that there is no proof that there is a god too, Robert?
You are following a religion and you probably don’t even know it. Like many, you think you rejected religious dogma in favour of science and marched head-first straight into another faith, the faith of climatic doom.
I’m sure many will be irritated by your irrationality. Me, I think it’s hilarious to see. :)
“I suppose we would also have to prove that there is no proof that there is a god too, Robert?”
Are you asserting that as fact? Because then you would need to prove it, or at the minimum make an argument for it. Basic stuff, guys.
“You are following a religion and you probably don’t even know it.”
Your projection aside, you’re not offering any argument against the science. You may feel that your beliefs, which are grounded in ideology, are superior to observations of the physical world. I disagree.
“observations of the physical world”
Roberta,
I suspect you haven’t done much observing, except maybe your computer screen.
Andrew
Still can’t spell, Andy?
I’m afraid you just don’t have the juice to hang in there in a discussion like this. You’re out on your feet, mumbling the same useless ad homs, not even able to spell a six-letter word.
It’s sad, really. But there’s nothing I can do to help you. You’re just outclassed here.
“You’re just outclassed here.”
Roberta,
I may be outclassed by some commenters, but not you.
Andrew
Robert,
sorry to tell you that manacker is completely correct when saying: “You’ve got the shoe on the wrong foot if you are wanting me to “prove” that there is “no proof” (an impossible task).
So please, if the scientific evidence about the link between anthropogenic CO2 emissions and GW is so contundent as you pretend it to be, why don´t you just provide it?. We, after all may be reasonable people.
I, like many others, cannot find but a failing correlation between the raising CO2 concentrations and global T averages:
(see http://www.climate4you.com/ClimateReflections.htm
20080927: Reflections on the correlation between global temperature and atmospheric CO2).
Don’t you think that such lack of correlation hints at the existence of important climate factors that scientist may not understand and overlook at present? It seems as a likely possibility for me and, at least, for some other scientists that I respect. Just for an example of the latter listen to Jasper Kirkby’s answer ( at 1:06:00) to a speculative question in his talk about the potential meaning of the CLOUD experiment. Kirkby just does not “pretend” to know what he doesn’t (How refreshing!).
Sience for many of us is a kind of “utter honesty” that Kirkby aptly represents but that (to my eyes) I find lacking in the activist- (-laymen and -scientist alike) of the CAGW crowd. But then…I may be wrong (only time will give the answers).
And with respect to the taxes the EU is trying to impose in airtravelling I think our politicians are way over their heads!. Cannot wait until the EU-green-faddism fades away (I really think we, in the EU, are suffering from some kind of senility problem).
Alfonso
The link to Jasper Kirkby talk:
http://cdsweb.cern.ch/record/1389876
Alfonso
We all agree: he made a claim. He can’t support it with evidence. So he should withdraw it, and make his argument in a form where he can have some hope of success.
Because it’s not my burden of proof, and it’s not my job to educate you as to basic facts of science, whether you are truly ignorant of them or merely pretending to be; neither bodes well for your ability to learn.
No, I don’t. It seems you are arguing with a straw man; no one has ever maintained that CO2 levels are the only thing that affects temperatures. Especially in the short term, there are many other influences pushing the anomaly up or down. None of which in any way conflicts with the theory of AGW.
Still, this is more like an actual argument; you are citing specific pieces of evidence to support your thesis that CO2 levels are not responsible for the recent warming. What I would like to see is more people laying out their reasons for disagreeing with the mainstream science on a subject, rather than pretending they’ve never heard of it and asking for it to be explained to them over and over.
Roger,
for me the lack of correlation hints that the whole AGW hypothesis may be incorrect. I’m not saying that GW has not happened, but that CO2 is not likely its main driver (other unknown factors predominate over CO2 forcings during cooling periods and may as well be predominat during warming ones.
Neither the claim of unprecedented temperatures holds much water in wiew of the paleoreconstructions going back either 11,000 to 400,000 y:
See climate4you global temperatures An overview to get things into perspective (yes I know also about MBH 98, but it fails to show the MWP and the LIA that oter reconstructions find).
I will wait for the answers that time will bring but for the moment I would not support any policies about attempting to solve (what I perceive) as a non-problem (the evidence to support AGW seems weak to say the least)
Alfonso
I will leave it here since I do not think we can resolve our different
As expected, Robert CANNOT provide the empirical evidence to support his attribution claim on the observed gradual warming from 1850 to today (because there is NO such evidence)>
Nor can Robert explain why it has warmed in multidecadal cycles with similar cooling cycles in between, and that since January 2001 it has again stopped warming despite CO2 concentrations reaching record levels.
Instead, Robert simply bloviates.
Robert!!!! ”Current warming” is loaded comment. There is no current Global WARMING!!! Stop lying, your nose will grow even bigger… If you want to rebuild the Berlin Wall, use your own money.
Am I asserting what as fact, Robert? You’re incoherent.
If you wish to assert something as certain, you must provide compelling evidence in support of that assertion – just as you would need to provide evidence of the existence of a god to make the argument for his/her/its existence scientifically compelling, you must provide compelling evidence for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) in order to make any scientific case for it.
That climate changes is not proof or even evidence of CAGW. That the climate has warmed in the instrumental record is also not compelling evidence of CAGW. It is a logical fallacy to assert that, because CO2 is a greenhouse gas and because man is responsible for an unknown proportion of the 0.00011% atmospheric increase in CO2, that therefore some prophetic climate catastrophe is therefore imminent. It simply does not follow. There is no evidence in support of this assertion, only the bleatings of pseudo-scientists spewing junk science.
The onus is on you to provide compelling evidence of imminent catastrophic anthropogenic global warming, not on sceptics to prove that you have none. First provide compelling evidence, Robert. Otherwise your claims of CAGW are as compelling as Moses’ assertions that he did actually meet god, and that god got him to jot down a list of instructions.
I have no issue with you holding a religious belief but I object to the notion that your religious faith should be hoisted on me. You can believe what you want, but you have no moral right to impose that anti-scientific religious doctrine upon me.
Simon Hopkinson,
Don’t waste your keystrokes on Roberta. Unless you want to make fun of her. Then go go ahead.
Andrew
“Am I asserting what as fact, Robert? You’re incoherent.”
No, Simon, you’re just not a very good reader. I quoted the claim I was referring to.
“If you wish to assert something as certain, you must provide compelling evidence in support of that assertion . . .”
Exactly. You better get started.
“you must provide compelling evidence for catastrophic anthropogenic global warming (CAGW) in order to make any scientific case for it.”
Why do I need to make a case in support of a claim I never made? “CAGW” is a climate denier straw man, invented when you were forced to admit that the evidence for plain old AGW was irrefutable. I don’t use the term.
You are attributing beliefs to me that I haven’t professed, and demanding I prove them. That’s silly.
You seem unable to support your arguments with facts, but that’s not my problem. If you want to profess your ignorance of climate science, go ahead. It doesn’t impose any burden on me to educate you. If you want to challenge that science with your own theories, feel free to do that as well, but support your arguments with evidence.
Max,
Why “Sorry”!
Sam NC
An expression of civil discourse, as in “Sorry, old chap, to have to embarrass you by pointing out how totally absurd your claim was, but…”
Admittedly, “civil discourse” is largely a waste of time when debating with snarly teenagers, or those like Robert.
Max
Daly says “…rising to as much as $369 million annually by 2020. In 2010 Air China made profits of $1.83billion”. You really thing that amount is trifiling?
Since when is a 20% tax on profits trifiling? How about you send me 20% of your incomre after taxes since you think 20% is such a trifling amount.
So you think in an economy growing by 8-12% a year, Air China’s profits in 2020 will be the same as those in 2010?
If they are, they will have much bigger problems than a modest carbon tariff.
Robert
You have no earthly notion what Air China’s profit will be over the next 10 years, with or without the carbon extortion attempt of the EU.
The point is simply that the Chinese are resisting an extortion attempt by the EU bureaucrats.
It is not unlikely that EU citizens will start doing the same, as they realize what these bureaucrats are doing to their energy costs in the name of saving the planet from global warming, especially if it continues not to warm for another decade or two.
Max
“The point is simply that the Chinese are resisting an extortion attempt by the EU bureaucrats.”
Except, of course, that you haven’t made the case that this fee is “extortion.” It’s a rather mundane fee that anyone can avoid by choosing to land someone else.
“You have no earthly notion what Air China’s profit will be over the next 10 years,”
If you have “no earthly notion” what Air China’s profit will be in 2020, why did you compare today’s profits to a possible fee in 2020?
“especially if it continues not to warm for another decade or two”
Since it’s warming now, as it has been for the last thirty years, “continues” is the wrong term here. “If our fantasies about the past come true in the future” would be closer to what you mean.
Robert!!! Reds like you and the Chinese, know how to take other people’s money, not how to GIVE. They are not different than you and Joshua.
China is benefiting from the misleading propaganda, same as you. They are making solar panels for the world, heavily subsidised by the western idiots politicians – then they borrow money from China, to pay for it. That’s how China will take control of democratic west, without one bullet fired. If China drops on the market the American bonds they already have, – USA dollar will be equal to Zimbabwe dollar. Only reason they are not doing it now is; they wait until their own people can afford to buy the plastic junk they produce. Because they invested lots of money, to build those factories. When fighting about the remaining crude oil starts, then they will do it. Robert, what are you going to do then? You can’t con the Chinese, they are smarter than you, they are red as you, they know how you operate.
More significantly, even if their profits rise equivalently, who are the Euros to tax it?
They are the people whose sovereign territory China Air is landing in.
If they don’t want to pay the tariff, all they have to do is not go to those airports. Same as any other tariff.
Robert,
Suppose you drive a car from Charlotte North Carolina USA to Toronto Canada and suppose Canada has a car CO2 emission tax and the US dod not have such a tax. Suppose Canada is levying CO2 emission tax all the way from North Carolina to Toronto, not just the the border to Toronto, will you pay Canada the whole journey CO2 emssion tax from Charlotte North Carolina to Toronto Ontario?
Robert,
Now, if your car has 4 passengers and levied 4x CO2 emission tax across the border, will you pay the Canadian? EU is taxing per passenger on the other side of the world! Biggest CO2 emission tax hit are the Eastern Asian countries (China, Japan, India with major airlines with lots of passengers).
If that’s the law of Canada, and I chose to drive there, of course I will.
So will you. Or you’ll stay home. Which is exactly what Air China’s options are at this point.
Perhaps China’s saber-rattling will bear fruit. We’ll see. But there’s nothing at all exceptional about the tariff. Countries can tax and charge fees in whatever amount and by whatever rules they like. You pay or you don’t do business there.
Robert,
The ‘tax’ is not on it’s impact at the landing country’s airport on a Euro bound trip. It is an attempt to legitmize something that is by no means styled as a cause much less a solution.
Robert,
You seem to approve EU’s wrong doing to tax beyond their territories of air space and beyond their land space or their sea space.
If China yields to pay the tax, it looks like the EU passengers’ pockets will be suffered most. The EU people voted their bereaucrats to tax their pockets. No one to be blamed except themselves but those innocent non-EU passengers destined EU countries suffered.
Eventually, USA and non-EU countries will follow to tax those passengers originated from the EU countries. Hopefully these countries can use their common sense not to widen/extend passenger CO2 emission taxes to other countries. But, no government will not welcome more cash even if what behind the tax is based on frauds.
For energy blogs, i recommend Geoff Styles’ Energy Outlook Blog: http://energyoutlook.blogspot.com/
thanks for the link
The sums may be ‘trifling’ but the Chinese have a thousand years of experience with how bureaucracy works. They know that the EU tax is a ‘precedent’ tax. The aim is start low, establish the ‘authority’ to charge, and then slowly ramp it up.
The Chinese aren’t falling for it.
John, in other words, you are saying that: ”the Chinese know how Robert, Joshua operate – they are same blood-red colour”.
It is interesting that the Chinese rejection of the Euro tax is considered to be a first shot. I would suggest that the first shot was the imposition of the tax itself. As to the amount of the tax, why should the size of a tax be consideration of its appropriateness? The figures quoted in this post are anything but trivial: $125mm is not small change in any realistic world view. It may be instructive to focus on what are likely the underlying issues: arbitrary imposition of a tax, and the lack of connection between the tax and any possible link to the climate or weather. At the end of the day the airline tax is seen as merely the first step in applying taxes in the name of climate on an international basis by non-internationally agreed means: the camel’s nose under the tent. It is understandable that this Euro effort is being resisted, no matter how trivial some may claim it is.
This ploy is not new to the EU. RoHS, WEEE and REACH are some other EU directives enacted to level the playing field for products imported into the EU. Simply put, the EU has legislated itself into a corner. It cannot produce products competitive economically in the global marketplace…. many are too expensive or inferior. They have to be made to meet their own rules. They need to impose the same rules on competition trying to sell in their marketplace to level the playing field. I am frustrated how manufacturers here have just rolled over without question in the face of these directives. We are now spending lots of energy and time re-engineering products and processes to fit the EU’s needs, not ours. I wouldn’t mind seeing a little more push back.
The ETS carbon tax is no different. They need to make non EU air carriers more expensive to travel on. They are leveling the playing field. The EU wants to impose its will on the rest of us. Do we want that or not? It will be interesting to see how it all plays out in the coming year.
RoHS is a good example of them shooting themselves in the foot. They managed to get almost all the components certified, because they never used much lead anyway. But with the ROW still willing to accept non-RoHS, the fabricators in China will quote you one price for RoHS, and a cheaper price for non. Bottom line: products headed for the EU are more expensive than the functionally identical products elsewhere. On the one hand, they did get all the parts to conform (at nominal cost). On the other hand, they didn’t for the final product. Fail.
Below is a post I put on Lucia’s site about 1 week ago
So far, not one skerrick of detail in reply, including the posts here. You will notice that the opening post for this thread completely evades/ignores all of the questions. My prediction of useless greenie arm-waving replies has proven accurate:
“We need to know:
1) precisely what this tax is applied to
2) precisely who this tax is imposed on
3) precisely what the monetary level of tax is, and if it is to be ratcheted up in any clear timeframe at some defined rate
4) whether this tax is applicable to flights into the EU but taxed over the distance of these flights across non-EU countries including return flights
5) if the answer to 4) is yes, who gets this money (if it’s payed at all)
Please note that I live in the Southern Hemisphere, that half of the globe blithely ignored in all of the above comments. This is critical: calculate the tax on, say, a Sydney-Amsterdam-Sydney return flight, multiply that by the number of weekly passengers, and that by the number of weekly flights from other distant countries
Not insignificant. If this is actually correct, there are many valid objections to this impost – one of which is that other people strongly object to contributing forced bailouts to the debt mess the EU has lurched itself into”
Dr. Curry, as to your question regarding the source site for this thread: lefty peak oil greens writing on energy issues are going to give you insights on energy issues with the same credibility of relying on 911 Truther sites for info on terrorism. As to a formal link between this oil green site & Climate etc., it is hardly an even exchange: you are a known academic running what has grown, by your efforts, into a major site. Oilpricecom is none of that. it is vastly more profitable to the oil site. But it is your site to do with as you think best
I just wandered over to oilprice.com to see if they had any interesting articles worth reading, as my interest in more on energy then AGW.
Their content seems to me to be targeted to a ‘verbal’ rather then ‘mathematical’ readership.
So lots of words and not many numbers.
But to be fair, numbers are hard to come by in the energy discussion.
I.E. I can’t find out how much the delivered price of coal is in Washington State. We have only one privately held coal power plant and the EIA suppresses the number as it would by definition be releasing what a single private company was paying for coal.
Lot’s of people talk about ‘high voltage DC grids’ like they are candy. To find a rough estimate of the costs I had to sift through a mountain of information at Bonneville Power. Since Bonneville Power is a ‘Government’ creation their budget detail is a public record. (About $1.5 to 2 million per mile for HVDC line capable of carrying 3 GW).
If I want the ‘true cost’ of new nuclear the details on Vogtle #3 and Vogtle #4 are ‘sketchy’ at best. But the VC Summer #2 and #3 projects are subject to quarterly public progress reports which contain some quite interesting financials.
The US EIA has levelized costs of different energy sources and using their numbers wind is quite attractive. But if I go to the NW Council(NW regional electric reliability council) the ‘all in’ costs of wind when transmission and balancing costs for wind are taken into account the price of ‘wind power’ isn’t all that nice. I.E. The EIA puts wind costs at about 9 cents/KWh. The northwest council puts the cost between 11 and and 15 cents/KWh depending on location of windmill and the resulting transmission costs. On top of that our ‘hydro balancing’ resources are not unlimited.
Since hard numbers are so difficult to come by there aren’t many ‘energy sites’ that use hard numbers. They blather on endlessly about ‘expensive’ or ‘clean’ and leave out substantial cost factors such as balancing and transmission or use ‘averages’.
Everybody knows the Henry Hub price for natural gas, but that isn’t the ultimate price being paid by homeowners or electric utilities.
Do those DC costs include the cost of the inverter? It would seem to me that for DC, there’s a big fixed cost, and then a smaller cost per mile compared to AC transmission. Or could you tell?
They started building these DC links in the ’60s (in the US, anyway). I would imagine the cost of the inverter has come down considerably since then, making them more attractive for shorter distances.
Reading Stafford’s site more closely, I would withdraw my comments that imply it is a kook site. I may not agree with his opinion but Oilprice.com is not a Romm type of site. Stafford seems serious about the topic, even though he has view on tax and subsidy not supported by facts. The question I would ask would be to find out if he intends to keep the forum open for opinions counter to his?
Hunter,
Did you read the article “How Biomass Can Provide 25% of Global Energy without Affecting Food Production”?
http://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/How-Biomass-Can-Provide-25-of-Global-Energy-without-Affecting-Food-Production.html
Not just a proganda, its trying to get the tax payer’s pocket money to support their research/studies with tricks very similar to funding AGW and CAGW studies.
Sam NC
The oilprice.com article on biomass technology may well have been partly a statement of support for taxpayer-funded research programs in this direction.
I am opposed to any large-scale public funding of any research other than some very specific basic research programs of a potentially strategic nature. Whether or not this would qualify as an energy security measure would have to be determined, but is not totally out of the question, IMO.
Public funding for climate science to find out what makes our planet’s climate behave as it does might conceivably also fall into this category.
Climate science “to prove AGW” is another story. I would agree with you that this is money wasted. The taxpayers should not be spending money in order to be bamboozled. Until the IPCC “consensus process” is eliminated, and with it the need for “agenda driven science”, I would oppose taxpayer funding of this type of “climate science”.
Max
PS As an example, I think it is appalling that James E. Hansen is drawing a taxpayer-funded government salary to act as an CAGW activist/lobbyist.
Missed that one. That idea is neat for SF but is not supported in real world data. I guess my point, poorly expressed, is tha
Manacker, As a Swiss Miss, how can you pretend to demand how another sovereign nation decides on an energy strategy?
hunter
I agree with you that oilprice.com is NOT a Romm-style kook site (even though I do not personally support all of Stafford’s views).
I do believe that interjecting some thoughts on the energy picture into the climate debate makes sense for the following reasons.
– As we realize that “peak oil” is like an ever-moving desert mirage (and we become aware that coal, oil and gas are totally interchangeable based on currently available technology), we become aware that the doomsday forecasts on petroleum reserves “running out very soon” are bogus “wolf cries”.
– At the same time, we realize that there is a finite limit to ALL fossil fuels, which we will reach in 150 to 300 years from now (depending on the future rate of consumption), UNLESS we switch to existing (or improved) sources along the way or totally new non-fossil fuel energy sources are developed (BOTH of which will occur IMO).
– We also realize that the current rush to taxpayer-financed windmills in many EU nations is total folly, as are highly subsidized large-scale solar power plants – both because of inherent reliability problems requiring extensive backup facilities to cover ~80% of the time when they cannot generate power..
– And finally, we realize that even if ALL of the very optimistically estimated remaining fossil fuels on our planet were TOTALLY consumed, we would only be able to increase atmospheric CO2 levels from today’s 390 ppmv to an absolute maximum ever possible level of around 1,065 ppmv, thereby constraining the absolute maximum ever possible level of human-caused greenhouse warming to around 2C (based on past observed CO2/temperature response, assuming IPCC estimates on past long-term human versus natural attribution are correct).
Armed with this knowledge, we can discuss climate issues a bit more intelligently than if we are just bumbling around in the dark on energy issues – so I welcome our hosts idea of posting some oilprice.com posts here for discussion.
Just my opinion.
Max
.
Not Romm. More like Oil Drum. With a LOT of conjecture.
Let’s face it: predictions are hard, especially about the future. Nobody can know what the energy future is going to look like any more than they can tell what the stock market is going to do in 2023. The desire to know doesn’t make you any more likely to know. This necessarily is all conjecture. At best, you can rule things out, but you can’t rule anything in.
I do not believe this is the start of a trade war. However the Chinese along with the US are right to oppose this ridiculous tariff.
The problem with the EU is that it is naturally a tax raising organisation and of course it has to be, otherwise how would they pay for their non-productive workforce, Weimar Republic like politicians and its own incompetence.
What do we need in a deep recession more taxation? The must be mad.
Nice.
I always do love your comments, Stacey.
“…Weimar Republic like politicians …”
Wow. Does that mean that she and the other critics of the EU are like the people who brought down the Weimar Republic?
Is it a Godwin’s Law violation if you are comparing your own side to the Nazis?
My pleasure and thank you for the praise :-)
Stacey
This article was written last April, but is still very pertinent to the discussion regarding the idiocy of EU bureaucrats.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/columnists/christopherbooker/8440423/What-happens-when-the-great-fantasies-like-wind-power-or-European-Union-collide-with-reality.html
didn’t bother reading it. I can see “Christopher Booker” in the URL. Whatever the article, it has no credibility.
Thank you Manaker for the link. There is absolutely nothing that can be argued against in Mr Brooker’s article. After all the truth is simply the truth.
In the end, the national governments in Europe will instruct the folks in Brussels to step back from the abyss. Some face-saving will be needed of course (delaying the effective date of the taxes until say 2016 or 2020, then quietly abandoning them some years from now?), but the net will be the EU is not going to end up taxing activities outside it’s boarders.
With regard to the peak oil site: Like other similar peak-oil sites, the focus seems to me myopic. The decline in available conventional oil will, of course, gradually force prices upward. This will a) make more viable non-conventional oil (extra-heavy crude, tax sands, shale oil, syncrude, etc.), b) bring about efficiency improvements/reallocation of energy that comes from oil, and c) eventually make nuclear and other non-CO2 alternatives for electric generation more viable as demand for reduced carbon in aggregate (including coal) pushes up against supply capacity.
The possibility that people will wake up one morning and find the world has ‘run out of oil’ strikes me as either daft or motivated by worries about CO2 driven warming. In the case of the site in question, the latter seems more likely than the former. There will be a gradual transition away from conventional oil, that’s all.
Sorry, that should have been ‘tar sands’, not ‘tax sands’.
Need an edit function here Judy.
Why does history have to repeat itself? The European mercantile system of the 16th to 18th Century attempted to established a balance of trade by restrictive policies, relevant to this case in particular, shipping. The result was a series of wars and the rapid expansion of colonialism. Fast forward to 21st Century, carbon taxes on jets, steamships, etc and you are back to controlling trade for the mother countries’ benefit. Taxing the air travel from Sydney to Heathrow. What is next is taxing every container that makes its zig-zag journey from Shanghai to Liverpool. We have seen this all before.
In an essay I wrote on the previous thread: Week in Review 1/7/12 regarding another piece by Oilprice.com, I reflected upon the writer’s and editors’ myopic energy/supply/demand view related to a Moscow/Berlin energy cooperation the flies in the face of nine centuries of mistrust and hostilities. Just one example of Oilprice.com’s writers and editors disconnected with history. After all, the European Union is an experiment of commerce cooperation via a common currency to avoid the very state’s rights issue that tore apart the US 150 years ago and only settled by war.
Treaties by international bodies, ratified by the constituent members are the current mechanisms to cross one another’s boundaries. No signed treaty, no binding treaty. If the European Community whats to tax transport within its boundaries, a flight from Paris to Dusseldorf, fine, there are agreements already in place to do that. Reaching into the larger global economy unilaterally will trigger?…trade… WAR. How short sighted and not regarding Europe’s own history. International treaties have to be negotiated. It seems to me that Oilprice.com as a resource is likely to go off the rails as Joe Romm has. Student’s of History Unite!
“Why does history have to repeat itself?”
I think each generation feels ‘it will be different this time around’. It never is and so the cycle goes.
If you’re a student of European history, there’s a lot to be concerned about. These carbon taxes may just be a footnote after all is said and done.
Like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria is a footnote, the World War I flint/steel spark that led to 9 million dead? The strategic alignment of global powers when presented with a dichotomy, chose WAR. Unilateral action by Gavrilo Princip, a young student nationalist, in the cause of a Bosnian state (another Nobel Cause), led to untold suffering. The current nobel cause of climate change is no different including all the religious tapestry surrounding its leaders and apologists. The European Union is throwing down a gauntlet, a challenge, a dichotomy. Does the EU have the courage to pick it up and instead move towards the negotiating table. There is no free ride on this one. Poorly conceived and executed, the machinations of climate change proponents are fraught with danger as missteps such as these escalate to becoming unmanageable and truly catastrophic. EU, heed your history, its only a hundred years old.
RiHo08, don’t worry, Chinese remember ”the opium war” This time they are getting better prepared, to win. Chinese are eating with chopsticks, but are making forks and spoons for the Europeans / Americans. .Any friction – Europeans, Americans will have to do ”finger job” back in stone age.
I was looking to buy a more powerful fen – don’t exist any more. Chinese with those small / very cheap fens, closed the western factories; just a small example.
@ Robert
Just because you say something does not mean its true and in fact invariably the opposite of what you say is normally true.
“Weimar like politicians” means the type of weak politician who resides over disaster. In Germany’s case led to the Nazi’s coming to power.
Of course I am not calling opponents of the EU nazis. The new brown shirts are all on the happy clappy green gravy change.
If China yields to such tax like all other countries, next EU ETS Carbon Emissions Surcharge will be goods destined for EU countries by air, by land and by sea!
Good bet Sam. The Greens have been calling for just such carbon tariffs for a long time, and loudly. And China is the number one target.
Yes, but China is very sensitive about sovereign rights – in this case the airspace. I don’t know if the rest of the world have any concerned their sovereign rights, but EU levys CO2 emission tax on China’s airspace is begging for resistance and troubles.
Dr Curry, on a list of energy blogs, you might consider Master Resources. This piece on wind turbines – Are Wind Opponents Zealots? – is a sample of what they write:
http://www.masterresource.org/2012/01/wind-opponents-why/
I’ll second DonB’s recommendation of Master Resource. The blog is well-written; obviously, it does have a point-of-view that is prominently disclosed.
http://www.masterresource.org/
I read MR every day. They’ve got a host of experts, including such luminaries as Vaclav Smil.
I will third that suggestion. Masterresource is willing to ask tough questions.
The Chinese are clearly quite content to witness self-destructive behavior on the part of their economic rivals in the West. But the carbon tax on European plane travel threatens to enmesh a chunk of the Chinese economy rather too deeply in the tangled web of AGW nonsense, and the Chinese may have decided to draw a metaphorical line in the sand. Thread by thread the AGW web is unravelling before our eyes with evidence of, for example:
— no dangerous sea level rise
— no global temperature rise in sight, other than trends and fluctuations of “normal” pre-industrial proportions.
— evident undermining of the CO2-triggered “forcing” assumptions built into the leading global circulation models (GCMs) used for scary IPCC yarns
— revealing e-mail communications dating back ten years or more, showing that several of the hockey-stick “team” of scientists, even then, had significant reservations about the veracity, magnitude and uncertainty levels of their own climate projections. Yet they were content to let their grant-lubricated gravy train roll on.
As, when and if the unravelling continues over the next five or eight years, the question of accountability will raise its rather ugly head. There will probably, in fact, be “hell to pay” for the hundreds of billions of wasted taxpayer dollars lavished on phantom climate mitigation and “research”, and it may be interesting to speculate what form this “backlash” will take.
So who will stand exposed to this wrath, and what form will the retribution take?
Interestingly, the first victims of the backlash against “AGW scares” are likely to be board members and executives of corporations which have made bad bets on AGW. Some companies have been careful to hedge their bets or (like in the case of Solyndra) make sure that the stockholders were at least getting loads of leverage from government (taxpayer) funds, so they gained a lot if the firm succeeded and lost relatively little in case of bankruptcy. But the executives of other firms — GE or Nextera come to mind — may have difficulty convincing stockholders that their companies’ “green” initiatives were a wise use of corporate treasure.
For some disgraced executives, or course, it may mostly be a matter of “how golden” are their parachutes. Others will just be fired.
Readers of this thread may want to speculate on the fates of AGW-supportive government bureaucrats, university scientists and politicians as they attempt to duck the future brickbats of angry taxpayers. What about their jobs? What about their pensions? Incarceration, perhaps? The Chinese airlines may be among the first to take a firm stand on resisting the bogus AGW narrative; they likely won’t be the last. Only time (and the weather) will tell.
Would you like to provide some citations to the evidence to which you refer? The assertions that follow seem disconnected from reality.
Robert
How about the FACT that we now understand that the current GCMs can not accurately predict any future weather related conditions at a level significant to policy making
Define “a level relevant to policy making.”
I suspect you’re confusing climate science with the weather report.
Robert: Would you like to provide some citations to the evidence to which you refer? The assertions that follow seem disconnected from reality.
Are you asserting that there are no flaws in the evidence for CO2 induced global warming? That the flaws are negligible? That the results can not be other than catastrophic?
Can you provide a quote of me saying this or something like it? I think you’ve misunderstood.
Robert: Can you provide a quote of me saying this or something like it? I think you’ve misunderstood.
Hence my question. After reading your posts, I can not figure out exactly what information you are seeking. Discussions of flaws in the evidence appear in abundance at Climate Etc and WUWT, and Tom Nelson’s blog, and in many other places — even sometimes at RealClimate. You seem to be asking for something that you have in abundance already.
I didn’t ask for proof of the claim “there exist some flaws in the evidence for CO2 induced global warming.” I asked for evidence to support specific claims, for example:
“no dangerous sea level rise”
Without a citation, it is not clear exactly what is meant, or what evidence the poster is referring to. A productive discussion grounded in the facts requires claims by supported by specific evidence. That is to everyone’s benefit.
Just on the basis of what I know, I’d say that was a transparently silly denier delusion at odds with all the credible science on the subject. But I am perfectly willing to look at the evidence. And he should be willing to provide it.
How about you stop asking everybody else for their citations and put up a few up of your own Robert. As it is, you have no authority to be making the claims you dol.
Let’s not change the subject. When I make a specific assertion, you are welcome to ask me for a citation, and I will try to provide one. At the moment, though, the question is still whether we are doing to see any citations supporting the litany of dubious assertions from #157083.
I’m beginning to see why people assume you’re a woman, Robert.
It’s the old “well if you don’t know what’s wrong, I’m not going to tell you..” story. :)
Simon,
You probably offended a lot of woman includin Robert or Roberta!
“I’m beginning to see why people assume you’re a woman, Robert.”
Because in addition to being incompetent at argument, their resentment towards women is such that they think calling someone a woman is an insult?
I don’t worry about it. That kind of misogyny is to be expected from dateless wonders like yourselves.
Maybe if you got laid once in a while, you’d be less of a punching bag in debate. In your case, you’d better save your pennies for a professional. ;)
Judith
Re “other energy blogs out there that you recommend.”
I recommend TheOilDrum.com as an active blog with experts covering production, costs and future availability of all fuels, Energy Return On Investment etc.
The primary organization focusing on future fuel availability is:
The Association for the Study of Peak Oil (ASPO), with chapters in numerous countries. See PeakOil.net
ASPO-USA.com and their associated EU and US conferences.
Some individual blogs:
Gail “The Actuary” Tverberg posts at Our Finite World
ROBERT RAPIER Consumer Energy Report/R-Squared Energy
Economist/Energy expert James Hamilton runs Econbrowser
David thanks for these links
Environs extremist and Malthusians talking sbout stuff is entertaining but is not going to get you far if you want reality.
The aspirations of bureaucrats who have the job of pushing CO2 taxes are necessarily global because the problem has been defined as global. The behavior of these bureaucrats was predictable and is predictable. They will necessarily threaten our present international arrangements regarding national sovereignty. In brief, these bureaucrats believe that they are justified in taxing the world. To someone who believes in national sovereignty, this bureaucracy is yet another version of Frankenstein’s monster, a radical failure that harms not only innocents but itself and its creator.
The most serious harm that comes from this modern example of the wages of hubris is the harm to democracy. EU bureaucrats are not elected and are subject to no reasonable controls by the people of the sovereign nations that make up the EU or the rest of the world. Today in the US we face similar challenges to democracy from bureaucracies who act beyond the limits set by the Constitution. The administrators of the EPA believe that they have power to create huge tax burdens through their new found ability to regulate CO2. Such actions will necessarily lead to a constitutional crisis in a showdown between the Administration and Congress. The outcome of that showdown will determine the future of democracy in the US. Need I add that no serious thinker would have imagined that bureaucrats could attain the power to shape our democratic form of government and our individual liberties.
re Robert
“like to provide some citations”
— Sea level rise: see the results of your own blogging this morning over at WUWT. Lots of evidence from satellites and experts regarding the continuation of the (approx.) 7 inches per century of sea level rise of the past two centuries. The evidence of shore-dwellers regarding their own tide-gauge levels. (I call this “pier review”.)
— No out-of-the-ordinary temperature rise: Temperature fluctuations for the last thirteen years bear no statistical relationship to measured CO2 rise. Likewise 30-year periods of warming (and lack of warming) in the 20th century now seen to be unrelated, apparently, to CO2 concentration. And hockey stick purporting to show no MWP and no LIA, clearly discredited.
— Undermining of “forcing” assumptions in GCMs: No empirical evidence produced to date to prove the “water vapor” component of alleged CO2-induced warming. Plausible theories from CERN and elsewhere regarding cloud albedo issues which could produce the opposite effect on CO2 increases. Projections of these models over the past twenty years have been even less skillful than Dr. Gray’s now-abandoned attempts to predict next year’s hurricanes.
Want more evidence? You’re in the right place to find it!
So you can’t provide a single specific reference or link? Just more assertions? You rest your case?
bobbie,
Speaking of references: I am worried about your little friend, josh. I sent him off to Googleland yesterday to find some evidence for one of his silly baseless assertions, and I think he has gone missing, due to failure and the resulting embarrassment. I know you are tracking him, so I am asking you where the little hypocritical rascal has gone. If you can get him to show his face here again, I will make a brief visit to your blog. Thanks you in advance, bobbie.
Don, don’t do it. I went there and copped intellectual pain. It hurt to know another human being can be so bitter and twisted.
Is it any worse than Gleik’s spittle spray?
I live so deep inside Don’s head I’m thinking of ordering cable service.
There you are, you wittle wascally hypocrite. It sure didn’t take you very long to show up, after I jerked on your leash. Where is that evidence, joshy? Has Google let you down? You should have listened, when the adults told you to stay in school. Have you ever done anything useful, joshy?
Hey, I think I hear Judith coming. You better prepare to resume yapping at her heals. Don’t let her undermine faith in the CAGW scam. Tell bobbie, I wasn’t really going to visit his blog.
As for “evidence,” Don – you accused me of making stuff up w/r/t the Emerson electric situation when I spoke of a case study that quoted the principles involved.
I’d like to make a wager with you as to whether I made stuff up as you believe in your delusions. We’ll ask one of the sensible “skeptics” who post here to mediate the bet. I suggest $10,000, but if you’d like to wager more, I’m game.
Your argument was empty rhetoric about Obama. The evidence of financial engineering affecting growth and investment in the manufacturing sector is ubiquitous. The laughable argument that a lack of investment in the manufacturing sector is attributable primarily to Obama’s policies – as opposed to factors such as overseas labor costs, technological developments, increased focus among executives on self-serving, short-term stock returns as opposed to long-term but solid return on sustainable business decisions, and other exponential increases in financial engineering ignores long-standing trends that are easily found with a modicum of effort.
You interjected yourself into an adult conversation I was having with Cap’n to post your usual insults, partisan memes that you substitute for reasoned discussion, and empty proclamations of “victory” because I tired of attempting to have a rational conversation with you.
And the fact that you chase me around these threads like a puppy with a hard-on is easily evident. I have no idea why I live so deeply in your head, I’ll let you figure that out on your own, but that you think it isn’t obvious is, alas, just another of your delusions.
And Don – please don’t forget about my offer of a wager to back up your assertions. Anyone can see that you’re obsessed with me, but it may not yet be perfectly clear whether you’re a weasel. Please don’t pass up an challenge to make it clear that you aren’t. Stand behind your posts, my friend.
Shall we see if we can find someone to moderate the bet?
Oh, you are inside my head? You are a nutty little putz. Is it going to be a new board rule, that we have to put up $10k, or little josh will sulk and keep his alleged evidence to himself? You are a childish little clown. Your proposal is impractical and silly. I would be very happy to fight you for the $10K, or any amount.
I will keep this simple for you:
“Not being a business expert,” You got that much right.
“They were being told to take on more debt for the (basically) singular purpose of manipulating stock price.” Stock price manipulation is a crime. But you have an excuse for misusing those words, called ignorance.
The managers who run publicly traded companies work for the shareholders. The shareholders own the company, josh. It is the responsibility of management to maximize shareholder value. Taking on debt, when it is prudent, is a perfectly respectable and sensible way to enhance shareholder value. It is not stock price manipulation.
If you are interested in how we finance and investment professionals analyze the important question of optimal financial leverage, you could get started by learning about the State-Preference Model. Actually, you need to learn what ‘financial leverage’ is first. Particularly, why they call it ‘leverage’. Google it, putz.
Anyway, the professional financial analysts/engineers looked at Emerson’s financial structure (which means the way the firm’s assets are financed , josh) and suggested that the company should be taking advantage of leverage to make their stock more attractive to the investing public, to enhance their current shareholders’ value. Management knew that intelligent investors consider these things and they were convinced by the learned analysts. So they did it. This is basic stuff, but for some reason it makes you angry and causes you to throw around words like manipulation.
Then you went on to make the silly claim that this manipulation thing became “prioritized” in the publicly traded manufacturing sector, and blah…blah…blah. You lack a basic understanding of business and economics. That seems to be a pre-requisite for being a little socialist dope.
Now show us what you got. You should have been able to find several left-wing academics, who share your disdain for the people who manage American corporations. Just think how well-off we would be if you people were running the show instead. No more debt. Right, joshy?
PS:
” The laughable argument that a lack of investment in the manufacturing sector is attributable primarily to Obama’s policies” You made that up. Stop lying. I didn’t say that there is a lack of investment in the manufacturing sector, and I didn’t say anything about a lack of investment being primarily due to Obama. I said:
“Many US companies have a lot of cash that they are reluctant to plow back into their companies, because they are worried about the health of the world economy and what the activist in the White House will do if he gets four more years to screw them.”
Don,
Joshua hears voices and has decided it must be yours.
This is sort of like a few months back when one of the trolls was posting some quasi-sexual musings regarding our host that were a mix between sad and creepy.
Joshua is more in the silly-and-creepy-at-the-same-time arena.
It is odd that the noisiest trolls of late are fixated on defending a tax that would literally do nothing to ‘fix’ the climate even if their beliefs about the climate were correct. It is almost as if they are defending the idea that AGW demands should be able to be imposed merely because they happen to be made by AGW believers.
Don –
It’s pointless to trade viewpoints with you, so I won’t bother any further. If you think that you are right, so be it.
Don –
(1) You chase me around these threads with your petty insults.
(2) You interject into exchanges I have with other people on a regular basis.
(3) You stay up late at night exchanging fantasies about what motivates my behavior.
(4) You write comments fantasizing about my personal life.
(5) You write a post to Robert about me because I haven’t posted for a while – obviously indicating that you’re tracking my posts – and so that you can (laughably) crow because you think you won an argument with me (which apparently means a lot to you).
(6) You’ve said many times over that you were going to stop posting anything in response to my posts, only to prove that you were incapable of doing so. I’m clearly in your head, Don.
Again, the fact that you don’t seem to realize it is on you – but it’s obvious.
I have no interest in your Internet tough guy posturing. You claimed that I made something up. Quite frankly, I have no desire to meet you for any reason (I’m afraid you’re a bit creepy, Don).
You were wrong. I’m offering you a chance to prove that you’re not a weasel who makes unfounded claims and then runs away with your tail tucked between you legs when challenged to back up your allegation.
It’s up to you, Don. If you want to take the challenge and prove you’re not a weasel, let’s make an arrangement and put $10 thousand on the line. Don’t duck, Don, and offer to fight me. Just tell me if you’re going to take the challenge or not.
If you want to apologize for your incorrect allegation instead, that would be a second best option (I’d prefer the money, of course).
If you want to play games instead of taking the challenge, that’s your prerogative also. It’s about what I expected from you, but I figured I’d give you the chance to prove that you’re not a weasel
So, do you want to put your money on the line or not, Don?
hunter,
(Tell the emotionally disturbed little moron that you will mediate the bet. I don’t believe the clown will go through with it, but there is 5 grand in it for you, if he is really that stupid.)
I just proved that you are a liar and an idiot, joshy. And all you got to say is that you are not going to exchange viewpoints with me. Take your ball and go home, putz. However, you are very wise not to take me up on my counteroffer.
Regarding your stupid bet, let’s see who steps up to mediate. I will accept the first impartial volunteer.
I didn’t read the long laundry list in your most recent post. But I am sure it is amusing.
Sorry, I won’t accept hunter. He seems like a reasonably nice guy, but his constant beratement of me makes him a questionable choice. BillC. John Carpenter. Anteros. Mike. There might be a few others also.
I’m glad to see that you’re willing to accept the bet. Suggest someone else to monitor the bet and we can find someone to agree. Then we can set up the terms.
I suggest that we both send the agreed upon person a bank check for $10,000. Upon settling the bet to that person’s satisfaction, that person deposits both checks and sends a $10,000 check to the winner.
Sound good?
Who is going to define what we are betting on, joshy? Are you going to prove that the use of financial leverage to increase stockholders’ share values is stock price manipulation? Are you going to prove that the manufacturing sector prioritized that behavior? Are you going to explain what is wrong with using financial leverage? You don’t mind it when the government borrows a few trillion bucks to ‘invest’, do you josh?
Are you going to prove that this is an accurate representation of what I said: “The laughable argument that a lack of investment in the manufacturing sector is attributable primarily to Obama’s policies – as opposed to factors such as overseas labor costs, technological developments, increased focus among executives on self-serving, short-term stock returns as opposed to long-term but solid return on sustainable business decisions, and other exponential increases in financial engineering ignores long-standing trends that are easily found with a modicum of effort.”
Define what it is you want to bet on, dummy. And try to stop lying.
So far, I have noticed a rush of volunteers who want to get involved with your foolish bet. I wouldn’t expect anyone with any sense to raise his hand.. Although, you have given an incentive:
“I suggest that we both send the agreed upon person a bank check for $10,000. Upon settling the bet to that person’s satisfaction, that person deposits both checks and sends a $10,000 check to the winner.
Sound good?”
He gets to keep ten grand for himself. You little putz.
We seem to have lost tetragrammaton, who was sadly unable to produce a single piece of evidence to back up his sweeping claims.
Donnie’s emotional instability seems to be getting worse. Apparently getting pwnd by Joshua on a regular basis is affecting him more than simple egotism can explain.
So, Donnie, you writing a check or what? It’s put up or shut up time.
Don –
You and I will. You said that I made something up. You were wrong. If you think you were right, then simply agree to the bet and stop hedging, ducking, and all-around acting like a weasel.
And BTW – you also said that I said what people did was illegal. Apparently you were confused. I never suggested that anyone did anything illegal or that they were advised to do anything illegal. In fact, my point was that what they did is quite legal and very commonly done.
Here’s are some hits from a quick Google that you can read up on to understand better. You will see that what I discussed is not only a very common phenomenon, but is also much discussed in the business community.
In particular, I really liked this gem:
http://beginnersinvest.about.com/od/incomestatementanalysis/a/share-repurchase-programs.htm
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/23/the-nasty-news-on-tech-share-repurchases/
http://www.rightline.net/education/buybacks.html
http://www.toledoblade.com/business/2011/12/22/Big-companies-stock-buybacks-increase-again.html
http://www.investorplace.com/2011/12/stock-buybacks-an-investors-friend-or-foe/
http://dividendmoney.com/stock-buybacks-who-benefits-the-most/
OMG, joshy! Look at this:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/44669865/Berkshire_s_Surprise_Stock_Buyback_Authorization_What_s_Buffett_s_Strategy
The favorite billionaire of the soak-the-rich left-wing looney class warriors is manipulating his companies stock. You better call Eric Holder and find out what he is going to do about it. BRK.A common is already going for $114,000 a share and they are trying to manipulate it up some more. That kind of greed cannot go unpunished. And what is the matter with Warren? The company owes $60 billion in long term debt, with total liabilities of over $200 billion, and the dummy is going to buy back stock, instead of paying down debt. It’s a good thing that Warren is so filthy rich, because he ain’t very smart, by your
logic.
beginnersinvest.about.com? Are you serious. I am not a beginner. I have an MBA in finance, and I have made millions investing. Why would I look at that.
Stop the clowning. I didn’t challenge you to a bet, dopey. You challenged me. Define what it is you want to bet about, or shut your big mouth.
Oh, I spotted another lie.
“And BTW – you also said that I said what people did was illegal.”
I didn’t say that you said it was illegal. I said that stock price manipulation is illegal. You used that term out of ignorance.
Stop the lying and state your position coherently, you clown.
Don –
I’ve “defined” it a few times already. You said I made something up. You were wrong. If you insist that you were right, agree to the bet. We can define the terms more precisely once you agree to bet with me (and once we find a mediator) You can opt out (or chicken-out more likely) any time you want prior to signing a written document that spells out the conditions. It is my assumption that working out the precise details of the agreement will take some time and require the input of an impartial mediator.
Alternately, if you want to save yourself some money, you could just say that you were wrong.
Or, as a third alternative, you could continue to weasel your way out of being accountable for what you wrote. That seems to be your preferred option – but since I like you, I thought I’d give you the benefit of the doubt.
Both Don & Joshua wrong. Send me $10,000 each.
===================
You have some serious mental issues, josh. And I am serious about that.
You write down what you want to bet about. Only an irrational idiot would expect someone to agree to a bet with the details to be determined later. We don’t need a mediator to come to an agreement on what the bet is. We either agree or we don’t. And if I am going to agree, you have to stop lying. I have proven that you are a serial liar and you just pretend it never happened. Now if you aren’t going to chicken out, define in coherent terms-without lying-what you want to bet on. Put up, or shut up. This is your last chance.
kim,
Do you want to be the mediator? Josh says that we both send you 10 grand and then you send the winner 10 grand. By my calculations, you make an easy 10 grand.
OK josh, I am going to have to help you. I bet $10k, no $50K, that you can’t prove that you are not lying little putz. Kim has agreed to mediate. Now accept the bet, or chicken out and stf up. You got 30 seconds to respond.
“pier review”
Winner of best pun in….pick a time frame.
I am not sure if it has been mentioned, but imposing an equal tax on EU carriers landing in the US would recover this, and could be distributed to the US airlines to make up for it. This is because by my reckoning (a crude check of airlines on a few selected transatlantic routes) there are equal numbers of US and EU flights on them. They could alternatively use this as a carbon tax, but I am fairly sure the US congress would want nothing to do with this as an income source in its current state.
But the Chinese just might.
What may actually get the Euros’ attention is a big order from China with Boeing.
P. E.
I thought of that, too. But I saw that Hong-Kong Airlines went ahead with its purchase of 10 Airbuses after all despite earlier holding off the purchase as an expression of its disapproval of the EU’s pending carbon assessments.
Then I checked out Boeing’s backlog of backorders. Apparently, more than a 1,000. So my best guess is that Hong Kong Air had to go through with the Airbus purchase since Boeing can’t handle additional orders at the moment. But in the long run, I think you’re right. Boeing will pocket the Asian Market (and maybe a portion of the Asian tourist market, as well).
But does anyone know for sure the Boeing/Airbus situation and the likely future of those firms’ sales in Asia as a consequence of the EU’s greenshirt adventurism (I mean, except Robert, who knows everything, of course–just ask him if you don’t believe me)?
Mike,
Hong Kong’s Cathay Pacific Airline (a subsidary of the Swire Group own by the British) is solely a commercial enterprise has its own discretion to buy Airbus or Boeing based on its own evaluations and decisions are independant of an official Chinese authority delegation to sign the contract to signify a Chinese decision.
Sam,
Thanks for the info.
“I am not sure if it has been mentioned, but imposing an equal tax on EU carriers landing in the US would recover this, and could be distributed to the US airlines to make up for it.”
Good idea! But aren’t they already changing EU airlines this fee? I think it’s for all flight, not just non-EU ones. But you could charge them for flights by European carriers not landing in Europe, or double tax the carbon.
That’s a trade war I could get behind!
Robert, if they use fuel tax as ”luxury tax” is only half as good; because collecting from the airlines ”carbon tax for preventing the phony Global warming”; the extra benefit is the ”insinuation” that the GLOBAL warming is for real is just as important as the LOOT money.
Another energy web link: http://www.energy-daily.com/
And at the top, “space war”?
http://www.spacewar.com/
Almost certain it has already been posted, but it seems to me the EU ETS fired the first shot here by trying to extort $$ from the airlines. I think this tax is going to cost British Airways about $70 million ( or was it $70 Pound Sterling?) Hardly chump change in an industry that in aggragate has had a hard time turning consistent profits for the past decade.
@ Robert
You seem to like hijacking the posts here.
You want a reference which confirms that the hypothesis that man made CO2 will cause dangerous global warming is false. It’s so easy please refer to the Climategate emails.
Stacey,
I don’t see taking part in the discussion as “hijacking” it. Some people seem to think of “Climate, Etc.” as a climate denier clubhouse, but where is that written?
“It’s so easy please refer to the Climategate emails.”
Non-deniers have never been able to find anything in the e-mails which “confirms that the hypothesis that man made CO2 will cause dangerous global warming is false.” Do you have a specific reference in mind?
Robert, when you are striving to dominate the discussion, IMO, that’s hijacking!
And how did you determine that I am striving to dominate the discussion?
You didn’t ask me, certainly. I don’t see how asking people to cite a source, or offering a critique or a fact check, constitutes dominating the discussion, unless people feel compelled to abandon whatever relevant point they were trying to make and devote themselves to attacking me, which unfortunately is what some people chose to do.
@Stacey
I would still like you to cite what in the hacked emails specifically you think “confirms that the hypothesis that man made CO2 will cause dangerous global warming is false.” That seems a dubious assertion on your part, but let us review the evidence, and reason together.
Robert,
Well, if you aren’t striving to hijack this post, you are succeeding … tally your fraction of the number of comments to this post.
A constructive comment: … Think a bit longer about your desire to participate in the discussion before you thoughts result in a comment and you hit the ‘send’ button.
IMO, many comments between individuals who disagree on this blog reflect personal bias and aren’t very insightful.
“in a tizzy?” “trifling amounts?”
If they’re so trifling, then you can volunteer to burn that much money every time you fly. Personally, based on the tone of this article, I will not be reading this blog.
SUT,
Please explain the link between taxes and shaming and controlling the climate by way of CO2 taxation.
It is ironic that you mentioned the CDC as a model for response planning. I am reading a book on public health issues that refers to the CDC quite a bit.
The CDC first looks at things they know can exist or have existed. They do not impose policies whose goal is to prevent epidemics without some strong information about the epidemic.
I’m luke warmist myself but I agree in theory with the EU’s right to apply these taxes to extra territorial flights.
This is how I think “shaming” non-cooperative nations into emissions standards is supposed to work. Trade barriers in general are going to be the main tool to bring non-compliant nations like China and India into negotiations, nations that would never have been cooperative (enough) for environmental concerns alone.
The problem is that for this type of action to be menaingfully impactful on future climate outcomes, it will have to be applied across carbon-intensive industries. Imagine the nightmare that imposing these taxes, tariffs, trading boards etc, across corrupt political beauracracies trying to get “cut in” and geopolitical blocs pursuing conflicting agendas. Anything that comes out of such a system of stakeholders is probably operating primarily to fight global warming, the original end.
SUT,
You say, “Trade barriers in general are going to be the main tool to bring non-compliant nations like China and India into negotiations…”
So, SUT, if I understand your description of the latest big-move on the carbon-tax front: the EU “tail” (and let us imagine that tail as a frou-frou poodle tail–you know, one of those metrosexual tails that sport an adorable French-style high-and-tight with a little pom-pom fur-ball topside) is gonna wag a whole pack of “non-compliant”, ill-tempered, war-dog mastiffs, to include Russia, the U. S., China, and India?
O. K. so tell me how it works, SUT. I’m all ears for this one.
John, Sam –
Essential to my understanding of the debate on thequestion of AGW’s expected impact is the ability to adapt my forecast in the face of imnprovements to the science, and formost in the development of future climate experience, eg does tell-tale 90’s warming resume? As a luke-warmist, I accept AGW (with high sensitivity) as plausible, but far from proven theory. This means I must accept the possibility of AGW being validated/occurring and the neccesity of some international response prevention/mitigation. So, what kind.of (small) solutions can we implement right now as models for possiblly needed future solutions, just like the CDC plans for epidemics even though one has not occured yet.
Mike –
Then the question is what forms of international aggrements will work. I’m no expert here but it seems to me two proposed solutions are through:
1. agreement through UN: IPCC, Kyoto, etc
2. regional regulation and “shaming” of non-compliant regions. I hear this idea often promoted when people say the US needs to act first, then others will feel compelled to follow our leadership. Clearly this idea that China will be swayed by our moral decision is ludicrous, but I think they’re more likely to listen to talk about trade.
Given my opinion about the institutions in solution #1 – the UN, esp the IPCC, I would like to have some alternative solution that can be implemented in the face of a (unlikely but possible) global problem. In my post, I was trying to imagine some of the economic ineffeciencies of solution #2, but I still think I’d like to have it on the table.
SUT,
“I’m luke warmist myself but I agree in theory with the EU’s right to apply these taxes to extra territorial flights. ”
Sad that you don’t realised you are a faithful warmist.
Regards,
SamNC
“This is how I think “shaming” non-cooperative nations into emissions standards is supposed to work.”
SUT, I too take a lukewarm position, but a strategy of shaming others into doing what you want them to do is not going to being a winning one. This strategy results in resentment, which tends to fester and rear its ugly head later at an inappropriate time. A winning strategy would entice one to want to act for a benefit. If the benefit is lower CO2 and a planet less likely to warm because of it, then the EU needs to present the case that taxing someone for emitting such tiny amount will have an actual benefit to the environment. The problem is that case has not and cannot be brought convincingly in this example. Rather the EU is trying to impose its will on others for legislating itself into a corner.
Resentment or outright contempt. Try that in the Middle East, and they’ll bust out laughing.
The only ones who should be ashamed about this fiasco is the Eurocrats who caused it. What they are essentially saying is – we got ours, now you do without, or we’ll erect trade barriers to force you to decarbonize.
It’s like Rosanne Barr lecturing some poor Ethiopian kid about cutting back on the carbs.
No the EU approach is the right one. Force the issue.
Too many countries get away with pretending they are acting to reduce carbon emissions.
With such an action as this those countries are now having to publicly show their true face of not wanting to do anything about emissions.
Trying to get global agreement first will not work. Those other countries know it. All it does is delay and make it look like countries are “doing something” when in fact all they are doing is talking.
lolwot:Too many countries get away with pretending they are acting to reduce carbon emissions
Lowlot, if they were not constantly pestered by the western Reds, they wouldn’t need to pretend. All the spoils from any carbon tax should be kept in a trust account. When is proven that is no such a thing as GLOBAL warming – money to be returned back to the Urban Sheep
lolwot,
I sincerely hope your thinking is the one the Eurocrats settle on. It will cause the destruction of the already weakened nominal global tolerance of AGW as a political factor even more quickly.
By the way, the Euros are the biggest hypocrites on CO2.
“No the EU approach is the right one. Force the issue.”
FIne, force the issue in the EU… you guys can live by your rules. But don’t impose your rules on others. That is an evangelical approach and will not be adopted by the masses. It’s a bad strategy. So your not delaying… great… save your corner of the world, I’m not against it, your doing your part. We can watch and see if it actually works. I suspect there is more time to act than you think.
SUT,
Would it not good, if we are in a world where we want good outcomes, to show how taxing carbon/CO2 is going to help the climate?
Does this train of thought make sense? – The EU is broke. They tried to levy a transaction tax which would have had the effect of bringing desperately-needed outside money in from the UK. David Cameron refused. Now they’re looking for someone else outside the EU to tap for funds. The Chinese are not going to be taken for mugs either.
Mike,
The fiscal problems of the Eurozone are thousands of times larger than the CO2 tax. This tax, sadly, not only will do nothing for the CO2 in the atmosphere, nothing for the climate and nothing for the altest AGW bs, ‘weather extremes’, it will do nothing for the Euro financial train wreck of any significance. It is a pure ideological fee to set a precedent to tax CO2 more widely. If they succeed at the airlines, they will move on to shipping, pipelines, and finally the real goal, oil and coal producers and processors.
CO2 obsession is not just fun to watch as we read the trolls here. It has real impacts in bad policies oozing their way in around the world.
hunter – I fear you may be right.about the scale of things, or maybe they couldn’t think of anything else and just had to be seen to be doing something, preferably something green, to punish the prudent and reward the reckless. Or if they can’t save the reckless, to make sure the prudent go down with them.
You are certainly right about the CO2 obsession. Has there ever been as much destructive insanity right across the democratic world before?
Judith to your question on energy focused blogs (I hope I didn’t post this comment twice!)
I haven’t found any one blog/site to cover all the items I am interested in as far as energy goes, hence I get info from my points of view into my inbox as follows-
1) Power For USA- http://dddusmma.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/storing-electricity/
2) Renewable Energy World- http://www.renewableenergyworld.com/rea/news/article/2011/12/renewable-energy-adoption-and-the-increasing-cost-of-electricity-in-the-u-s
3) Energy Institute- http://ei.haas.berkeley.edu/
4) Geentechmedia- http://www.greentechmedia.com/articles/read/getting-33-percent-renewables-on-the-grid-part-3/
5) Center for Sustainable Energy- https://energycenter.org/
6) California Air Resources Board (Cap and Trade) http://www.arb.ca.gov/cc/capandtrade/capandtrade.htm
7) California Energy Commission (CEC)- SCE’s comments to the 2011 Integrated Energy Policy Report (“IEPR”): http://www.energy.ca.gov/2011_energypolicy/documents/comments_draft_iepr/SCEs_Comments_TN-63209.pdf were very interesting.
8) Power- Business and Technology for the Global Generation Industry http://www.powermag.com/POWERnews/4169.html?hq_e=el&hq_m=2326952&hq_l=7&hq_v=bb09315ba5
9) Energy Self-Reliant States- http://energyselfreliantstates.org/content/some-skepticism-solar-thermal-powers-storage-potential
10) Energy Central- http://www.energycentral.com/events/24796/Harnessing-Disruption-A-Conversation-With-Daniel-Yergin?
And no I can not keep with everything. By the way this year is the first year that our (CA) public utilities are legislated to fall under the 33%RES. Reading the comments from the leadership of some of the public agencies has been interesting. http://www.energy.ca.gov/2011_energypolicy/documents/comments_draft_iepr/index.php
SCE, a private electrical service provider, seems to be at the forefront of developing metrics to address the intermittent and non scalable nature of most forms of RE.
Mark thanks for these links
Dr. Curry,
As you have pointed out consensus scientific- or for that matter economic- reports, studies, peer reviewed papers are frequently lacking in what the legal system has- A spot for the dissenting option(s) in the original reports. Hence I end up reading lots of comments to get some context (reminds me of my old business schools days- trying to find the missing details for writing up case studies…) on assumptions, limitations, boundary conditions etc.. So here is yet another energy focused web site (and as David L. Hagen noted I should of differentiated my list above into energy news agglomerates vs. the primary source locations) that I subscribe too that covered a dissenting option-
Energy storage: not so fast
Markets should determine right application, right price
http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/11/11/energy-storage-not-so-fast&utm_medium=eNL&utm_campaign=IU_DAILY2&utm_term=Original-Magazine
“I was among those who reviewed the California Energy Commission’s recently released “2020 Strategic Analysis of Energy Storage in California” report, referenced in Phil Carson’s column last week, “Energy Storage, EVs and Collaboration.” I was listed as an “advisor” to the CEC process that produced the report. In his column, Carson lamented that dissenting views were not published with the report. I’ll provide such a view here.”
The California Integrated Renewable Energy Systems Program (Cal-IRES) is another source of energy related items that I have found to be worthwhile- the program is run by UC Davis-
http://cal-ires.ucdavis.edu
Judith
Several energy news agglomorators:
The Energy Bulletin
Consumer Energy Reporter
Futures chain for crude oil (NYM)
Energy Export DataBrowser
The relationship between how much a topic offends the believer trolls and how hard the trolls work to hijack the thread is interesting.
Trolling, off topic, etc:
http://judithcurry.com/2012/01/07/china-rejects-paying-eu-ets-carbon-emissions-surcharge/#comment-157159
Luoise,
Was it you or Martha who shared the sad insights of your stalking of Dr. Curry? You trolls sort of all blur together.
hunter,
Was it you or Bruce or Wagathon or Don Montford or cwon1 who told me to “go abort a someone, cheer yourself up”? You trolls sort of all blur together.
Louise –
Sounds like Bruce to me. Not paranoid enough for cwon, or wagathon. Too well-spelled for hunter. And too sophisticated for Don (his insults usually don’t get more sophisticated than calling someone “dopey”).
Heh. Dopey.
That’ll only cost you four hundred fifty-four bucks.
=======================
Institute for Energy Research (DC-based free-market energy education and advocacy group): http://www.instituteforenergyresearch.org/
MasterResource (free-market energy blog that includes climate scientist Chip Knappenberger): http://www.masterresource.org
I am founder and CEO of IER, and I manage MasterResource as my own project.
It is a pleasure to see you post. Have you worked up anything on the EPA MACT? I was surprised to see that the regulation seems doable for coal, but a few more biomass users in the forestry products area will be hurt. It should make a pretty interesting analysis with so many cellulose ethanol facilities not being used.
Well, we are dealing with true believers in carbon-caused imaginary disasters. World War I was fought because of an assassination, this trade war because of total stupidity in high places. There is no global warming caused by carbon dioxide that emissions can control but these morons think there is and actually believe that they are saving the world by what they are doing. Let me outline my argument against it for those who are unfamiliar with it. First, let’s use satellite temperatures which are available from 1979 to 2011 to get an idea of global temperature trends. Neither NASA nor NOAA nor the Met Office have recognized their existence ever since they became available. Satellite temperatures differ from ground-based values which these gentlemen have been manipulating. They cover both hemispheres and the ocean uniformly which cannot be said of ground-based temperature curves. The first important discrepancy with the establishment temperature scale concerns the difference between ground temperature and the air temperature above it. Greenhouse theory requires, and climate models predict, that the air above ground should be warmer than the ground itself. After all, that is where carbon dioxide does its stuff, absorbing infrared radiation, getting warm, and passing it on to the ground below. But this is not what satellites tell us, for the real air temperature turns out to be cooler than the ground below it. That already tells us that something is wrong with the greenhouse theory they use. The satellite temperature curve begins in the eighties and the nineties with an ENSO oscillation. It manifests itself as five warm El Nino peaks with cool La Nina valleys in between. The average temperature about which these oscillations swing remains constant during this entire period. Hence, there is no warming whatsoever in the satellite record from 1979 to the middle of 1997. But if you then check out the ground-based temperature records you find that they show a steady warming during that same period. And comparing the details of ground-based and satellite temperature curves you discover that their warming is obtained by making the La Nina valleys shallow but retaining the El Nino peaks unchanged. I do not know of any natural process that can change the low points of a curve without also changing the adjacent high points. But that’s how it is and Hansen used this imaginary warming in 1988 to tell us that global warming has started. According to the satellites real warming started with the super El Nino of 1998. In four years that followed global temperature went up by a third of a degree and then stopped. This created a six year warm period during which the temperature stood still. This, and not some greenhouse effect was the cause of the very warm and record-breaking first decade of our century. During this period there should have been a La Nina belonging to the ENSO system but it was abortive thanks to the mass of warm water near shore. ENSO oscillation was re-established with the appearance of the 2008 La Nina cooling. This has been followed by the 2010 El Nino which in turn was followed with the current La Nina we are in. There was no warming during the twenty-first century high and if you extend a straight line to the right it intersects the middle of the line connecting the bottom of the 2008 La Nina and the tip of the 2010 El Nino. This is exactly how you do determine the average of an ENSO oscillation. Hence, the 2010 peak fits the pattern for ENSO oscillations and we must use its midpoint, not its tip as the true ENSO mean temperature. This, unfortunately, is not done in ground based temperature curves that want to imagine the El Nino tip as a sign of warming which it isn’t. There is simply no sign of warming in that part of thethe satellite record and it looks like it will continue that way indefinitely. This means that there is no period during the entire satellite temperature measurement era that can be called a greenhouse warming period. To prove greenhouse warming Arctic warming is usually held up as a showcase of global warming, but this also is a dead end. That is because it is impossible for Arctic warming to be greenhouse warming because it would be a violation of the laws of physics (PDF at http://curryja.files.wordpress.com/2011/12/arno-arrak.pdf). With that I cannot think pf any actual observation that would prove the existence of the greenhouse effect. And that is exactly what Ferenc Miskolczi’s theory requires. Using NOAA database of weather balloon observations yhat goes back to 1948 he was able to show that the infrared transmittance of the atmosphere for outgoing radiation has been constant for 61 years. During that period the amount of carbon dioxide in the air increased by 21.6 percent. This means that the addition of this amount of carbon dioxide to air had no effect whatsoever on the absorption of IR by the atmosphere. And no absorption means no greenhouse effect, case closed. With it, all model predictions of dangerous greenhouse warming are nullified. And the vaunted sensitivity of temperature to doubling of carbon dioxide becomes exactly zero. QED
Hello
There is no science evidence to prove that CO2 causes climate change. Most scientists know this to be fact.
So what is the motive behind climate change and carbon trading?
Why create such acrank pot idea?
Could it be trillions of dollars?
“There is no science evidence to prove that CO2 causes climate change.”
Are you unaware of the evidence that CO2 causes climate change, or are you aware of the evidence, but are unpersuaded by it?
If the former, you need more education.
If the latter, you should be able to say where and why you disagree.
As I noted in the post above (Jan 8, 5:11pm), no reply to questions on the substance of details. Just useless arm-waving from the greenies. Avoiding questions they don’t like is such despicable cowardice
The Aus minority Govt has legislated a tax on CO2 emissions (not active yet), deliberately double-crossing the electorate *after* an election to achieve this, yet details on how this works and at what rates are impossible to find. In fact, it has been made a CRIMINAL offence to include this tax item separately on an invoice. We are even not informed of WHO must pay this. Such information must remain hidden, it is decreed
This is how greenie taxes are applied – in secrecy of details for which the electorate is deliberately denied accurate information. The EU plane tax is just another (very pushy) example. This need for sleazy evasion of details will eventually cause electorates to reject such a modus operandi, perhaps explosively in some cases. The touch paper is already lit. Populaces are too jealous of hard-won democratic rights to tolerate it for long
The issue isn’t one of finding an an energy blog, but of finding useful quantitative energy analysis blogs. There are plenty of engineer hobbyist sites that discuss the tweaking of commercial and alternative energy devices, but very few that statistically analyze the resource base.
The polymath whiz David McKay has probably the go-to site for energy devices in his free online book “Sustainable Energy – Without the Hot Air”.
The quantitative field is held close to the vest by consultants with ties to the energy industry. I have recently been thinking about the need for fresh blood based on how ordinary people react to the energy situation, and to how they deal with quantitative analysis and statistics in general.
I use two analogies that have a significant populist bent, and helped form my early thought process — that of baseball statistics and fishing luck. These are not vitally important in the greater scheme of things but they show a direction to proceed.
Let me start with the baseball statistics, which I was crazy about when I was a kid. In the late 1970’s, a baseball fan named Bill James started applying some fairly comprehensive statistical analysis to ballplayer performance. Although it gained recognition among the diehard fans, it took a while before the pro teams started using this approach to apply some pretty foundational ideas to improve their winning percentage. This culminated in the Pitt movie “Moneyball” which came out recently, and I thought did a good job of conveying the populist Bill James statistical approach. (Pitt’s protagonist Billy Beane hates losing more than he enjoys winning, which is another metaphor for our situation, but that is a comment for another day)
The other interesting metaphor is that of people with a fishing hobby. In the very early days of the original oil crises of the 1970’s, a couple of people that were big fans of sport fishing, King Hubbert and George Pazik started talking about the concept of peak oil, although it wasn’t called that at the time. Hubbert was the professional geologist and was a fisherman secondarily, but if you read about what Pazik wrote at the time, you again get a feel for the populism of the themes.
Pazik published a magazine called Fishing Facts which actually used some scientific approaches to amateur fishing, popularized by people like Buck Perry, who was a math/physics teacher. Again, the metaphors were ripe for cherry-picking — The ideas of “fished-out” lakes, The possibility of renewal of fisheries, The statistics of fishing and of patterns in location, Searching for that last fish or the “Big One” that must still be out there, Remote sensing, and good old Luck and Secrets — these were all metaphors that ordinary people could relate to. As a kid, I also gobbled up all this information and it stuck with me over the years.
Anybody that understands a fishery understands the importance of the work it takes to maintain, and the interesting thing was that Pazik actually informed his readers that crude oil, unlike fish, were not a renewable resource. And he used his fellow fishing acquaintance, King Hubbert, the namesake of the infamous Hubbert Curve, to get his point across.
Now this may all seem far out, but the lesson is that ordinary people who obviously enjoy thinking past-times such as baseball and fishing (and even gambling, gasp!) can also appreciate some of the possibilities of thinking about energy in quantitative or statistical terms.
The only issue is that thinking about non-renewable energy is unpleasant and doesn’t lead to individual and personal rewards. I know this for a fact because a few years ago I actually decided to pick up on my skills and interest in things statistical, and apply that to my oil blog and book The Oil Conundrum. Trust me, I would get a lot less hate mail if I stuck to baseball statistics and fishing topics, and didn’t write about oil. And I am not even close to a doomer.
So tell me an energy analysis site or book that has elevated basically an amateur’s level of appreciation to that of universal usage? I would certainly like to know about it, as I would contribute. That is the way of the future, and also that of socializing science.
Cheers.
WHT –
Maybe, but I’ve hung out at some baseball blogs that are far more vicious than Climate Etc.
Sure, but that is just locker room banter, not the paid opposition.
It is pretty funny that you think someone would be paid to write thing contrary to your opinions since there are so many who are willing to poke holes in what you write for free.
Hey Ringo, you don’t see my email.
In any case, show me the error cascade in my book. It’s solid as a rock.
If you want to send me one I will read it and comment. I certainly would not pay anything to read what you have written based upon reading what you have written here.
Web,
You are delusional.
Book pimping.
Nice trash talking. Quite fitting for the populist theme.
WHT,
Just try and remember that you don’t really have to do what those voices tell you.
No problem, you are not needed for any intellectual insight.
Web,
The first intellectual insight you offer that does not involve magic will be the first.
Indeed, math is quite a wonderful and magical tool. I will be in the grave when I stop applying mathematics to solving problems.
When you dumb stuff down (populist? heh) you’re admitting that the public didn’t buy the scare the first go-round and your excuse as to why is that they’re too stupid. Good luck with that.
What scare? This is all about gaining knowledge to make decisions. The populist angle is to play up the fact that the statistics are very accessible … if you are willing to learn (which you evidently aren’t).
People already made their decision. It wasn’t the one you thought they should make. In your tinfoil world that can mean one of two things — they are unknowingly being lied to by EVIL (bwahahaha) Koch brother special interests, or they’re stupid. Scaring them with the vast right wing conspiracies has already been overdone, so you’re tackling option #2. They’re stupid. You can tell. They even vote against their own self-interests!
You simply can’t come to grips with the fact that people made up their minds and ignored your screeching. If only they could get it. Let’s see, we’ll explain it all as fishing analogy or belly button lint supply.
Up goes a top-level post on energy and the guy goes hysterical, bringing up Koch brothers out of thin air. It is fun watching various commenters go nuts as they can no longer control the plot.
WebHub, methane is energy. You promised to write an extensive mudslinging regarding me and my proofs regarding methane. Please don’t chicken out. Because I have already exposed your misleading / cover up on my website on the page ”METHANEGATE”
It would be correct to state that the EU’s actions were correct if you understood what the elasticity of demand is on air travel impacted by the tax and if it was understood what the reciprocal actions that would be taken by other countries. Since it is apparent that the EU did not understand how much air travel would be reduced by the tax and didn’t not understand how other countries would retaliate, it was a not a good idea for the stated goal. It was a tax to raise revenue. Governments do that when they spend too much.
From what I saw on this thread, nobody has a clue how the EU “law” is working.
First off, there is no “EU law”.
The EU (the Commission , the Parliament) have no authority to do laws.
What they do are Directives which must/should THEN be implemented in ALL national laws.
They sometimes are and sometimes are not. Sometimes with and sometimes without modifications. Every member state has at its disposal a large inventory of tools for not implementing or modifying any Directive.
Second Switzerland and Norway (to mention only those) are not members of EU. Therefore they have no obligation to implement EU Directives in their national laws. There is absolutely nothing that prevents a Chinese, US or Russian plane to land in Zürich and pay no tax be it EU or otherwise.
So now EU has the right to establish any Directive it wants and expect that the member states will implement it in their national laws.
It could decide that it will tax any person per kilo of corporal weight exceeding 60 kg because they use up infrastructures.
Whatever. Anything.
In any case the defining feature of a law is that it can be enforced.
If airlines from 90% of the world refuse to pay this tax, the only way to enforce it is to ban all these airlines.
But I recall again – there is NO European law so this would mean that every country would have to pronounce its own ban applicable only for its territory because it is only a national state that can enforce such a ban.
Some would do it and some would hesitate. Some would argue that they can’t or that they will do it later.
For me this tax is stupid and makes no sense whatsoever. It is just empty posturing. When there is China, Russia, US that don’t like an aggressive unilateral move that adversely impacts their interests, then it is a good move for every individual european country to avoid to be perceived as being at origin of similar aggressive moves.
Germany that depends on Russian gaz for energy (especially since they pretend to close their nukes) and exports its products to China, has really no interest to make them angry for such a trifling matter like a few € on airplanes.
Other countries (especially the Eastern European – Hungary, Czechia, Poland) have other priorities in their post communist development than taxing airlines of important trade partners.
Etc.
The most likely outcome of that matter will be that the EU will heroically say that they won’t budge one inch, but the individual countries will explain to US,China,Russia&Co that it is not as hot as it looks, that they won’t have to pay anything provided that they agree that we all march towards radious futures full of sustainability and general rejoicing.
As concerns this directive all EU countries are participating in its implementation as far as know. Norway is not a member of EU, but has agreed to follow quite extensively EU directives in its EEA agreement with EU. Thus Norway has decided to implement this directive as well. Switzerland is not bound in the same way, but is likely to implement something equivalent. I don’t expect that Switzerland would like to differ on this issue from neighboring EU countries.
The income from this directive is not particularly large as 85% of the emission rights are given free. I think all claims that the limited income would be the reason for this directive are totally unfounded. The directive was finalized in 2008 after lengthy preparation. Thus all the economic considerations date from 2007 and earlier. The real basis is in the idea that air traffic should not be free from emission trading, when most other activities are bound to it.
The goal of EU is to get other countries to participate in the arrangement in comparable terms. If and when that occurs the income is to be divided between countries involved.
The compatibility of the directive with other international agreements and practices is certainly a problem not resolved by the recent decision of the EU court. It remains to be seen, what EU will finally do, when other countries do not agree on bilateral arrangements in the spirit of this directive.
Peeka
Does it make sense to implement a tax with the goal of reducing emissions without 1st stating the estimated reduction in emissions that should come from the tax? It doesn’t to me.
Rob,
This is supposed to be a component of the overall climate policy. Goals for the reduction are given for the total effect, not for every component separately. The share of free emission permits is high (85%) probably just to make the directive more acceptable to other countries. EU policies are also drawn in the spirit that they would make best sense, when all other countries join with identical or at least compatible rules.
Right now it seems that EU had in many ways unrealistic hopes and also unrealistic thoughts about its capability to formulate rules that would be efficient in reaching the stated goals without serious unintended consequences.
Peeka
Economic policies should ensure all the components of a policy make sense in order to meet the overall policy goal. That is really just fundamental economics. To a high degree it seems that AGW supports want to implement something, almost anything to show that they are trying. That approach often leads to ineffective laws in the best case and harmful ones frequently. An example was the fuel tax in Ireland
The basic idea of cap and trade is that only the cap is decided externally leaving the choice of means to the market. Deciding only the cap is, however, already a major problem, because it requires guessing the future, and doing that both with respect to the urgency of the reductions and with respect to the costs of reaching a particular level of reductions.
It’s, however, not true that the markets would be efficient in reacting to a specific cap. They are not efficient, because no actor can predict how easy it will be to reach the target. No actor is directly influenced by the cap, they are influenced by the price of permits and the price of permits by the overall development of emissions as well as the state of economy.
EU decision makers have grown impatient with the limited results and started to make more and more additional regulations. On these they fail again to figure out, what is both influential and cost effective. In my view they are trying to repair a faulty system by making more serious errors. (A harmonized carbon tax would be much better than cap and trade, but difficult to agree upon.)
Including air traffic is both logical and internally less problematic than many of the other regulations, but it leads to the international issues discussed in this thread. No charge that cannot be agreed upon by all parties involved is really in the spirit of WTO agreements on free trade.
What is your objection to the fuel tax in Ireland?
The directive was finalized in 2008 after lengthy preparation. Thus all the economic considerations date from 2007 and earlier.
Bloody brilliant. A plan hatched in the pre-climategate, pre-Durban failure era of flogging the public to hysteria with polar bear propaganda (and thereby gaining unearned inertia) accordingly is simply adopted as if nothing had changed.
It’s tough to read this one. Are the implementors of this plan utterly tone deaf and ignoring the public sentiment re AGW scaremongering or are they cynically going ahead with a new income stream vector because they have exhausted other income streams?
My guess? Both. They’re tone deaf *and* evil.
I think all claims that the limited income would be the reason for this directive are totally unfounded.
Unfounded? Hardly.
Frog. Pot. Lukewarm water. Fire. It’s not the amount TODAY, but vector and precedent.
Peeka
I agree that Cap and Trade is terrible policy. It is a highly inefficient means of reaching the stated goal as the policy has a very high bureaucratic cost and a low actual reduction in emissions. You are correct that a simple fuel tax would be more efficient, but I am not at all sure it would lower consumption.
Robert
regarding the fuel tax in Ireland- as was discussed in another thread a fews months ago, the tax did not measureably reduce consumption in Ireland. It raised revenue but did not lower emissions. I agree Ireland either needs more revenue or less spending however.
Robert
BTW- I didn’t writethat I objected to the fuel tax in Ireland. I don’t care since I do not have to pay the tax. When I am there I get reimbursed for expenses. I just wrote that is was ineffective in reducing emissions, which is what proponents said it would accomplish.
Starkey — …the tax did not measureably reduce consumption in Ireland.
It isn’t “consumption” when there isn’t an alternate way to get bread from the bakery to the market. Small wonder the tax failed to reduce emissions. It’s not exactly a mystery, either; most motor fuel isn’t used to power pleasure boats, and they damn well knew it. Tax on fuel as some sort of attempt to achieve vacuous “reduced emissions” can only work when a) there is an alternative means to get bread to the market and b) most fuel is used for non essentials like pleasure boating. Since neither a nor b applied nobody could possibly be stupid enough to believe it. Rather, the fuel tax was a tax implemented cold-heartedly with the lie of “emissions” tacked on to it to make it sound high minded. It was not high minded. Ever. It was an excuse to gouge the people.
What random said. Incentives only work when you’re trying to encourage the possible.
A fuel tax in the EU is pretty ineffective because people have already done what they generally could do to reduce consumption. (fuel was already highly taxed) such a tax would be more effective if implemented in the US because there is still a fairly high amount of actions that can be taken to reduce consumption. Those are just facts- I am not advocating any additional US taxes that are not a part of an overall budget balancing plan. They WILL be needed to balance the US budget however.
Starkey —…such a tax would be more effective if implemented in the US because there is still a fairly high amount of actions that can be taken to reduce consumption.
Not really. The majority of US consumption of motor fuels is trucking bread to the market and getting to the market to buy it, and due to geography alone any and all fuel taxes are subject to a nasty multiplier where ALL goods become absurdly expensive, and for no reason. i.e. you get to pay $4 for a $2 loaf of bread so that some pinhead can claim he’s saving the planet?
Screw him and screw his pretentiousness. It’s already clear that unless China and India swear off development and promise to have their populations living their previously medieval existance that these countries will more than make up the “saved” emissions, meaning that you get to double the price of bread for no reason other than the government proving that they can force this, and of course we can all sing kumbayah.
Yeah, that’s politically wonderful, and everyone will sign up for it. I guarantee that the first set of politicians who speak to the voters about geopolitical reality (as per above) vis a vis emissions are going to get elected, and they will not only kibosh any emission tax idiocy, but they will double down and make it exceedingly difficult or impossible for the EPA etc to ramrod similar regulations. If said politicians campaigned to outight abolish the EPA, most Americans would sign up for it. At this point that would include me.
This is a fun subject in that I can examine my own leanings. I’m center-left by nature but where it concerns environmental regs I’m obviously somewhere to the right of Atilla the Hun. What works is what is practical, and what is practical can only be delivered by the free market. Regulation works only for mature tech in relative stasis, and flower waving platitude and well meaing intent doesn’t create 75 mpg engines. Surely it isn’t disputable that the inventor of a 75 mpg engine that develops enough HP to get out of it’s own way will be rich beyond dreams of avarice, the upshot being that the incentive of “reduced emissions” and polar bear happiness isn’t going to be MORE incentive than that of base human desire.
In short, we don’t have 75 mpg engines not because we haven’t been properly incentivsed. We don’t have these engines because Americans are hell bent to use 20 mpg engines “just because,” either. We don’t have 75 mpg engines because Americans are against the planet. We don’t have them because they have yet to be created, but when they are, I will be first in line to buy one. Do you think I want to pay $3.50 to go 25 miles if I can pay $3.50 to go 75 miles in the same vehicle?
These are rhetorical comments, Rob. I know you’re not the bad guy.
Rob Starsky,
“A fuel tax in the EU is pretty ineffective because people have already done what they generally could do to reduce consumption. (fuel was already highly taxed) such a tax would be more effective if implemented in the US because there is still a fairly high amount of actions that can be taken to reduce consumption.”
So you think Americans have not already done what they generally could to reduce consumptions! In EU countries, most of them have mass transportation systems. In the USA, they have to rely on their cars to drive to work (if they are not the unfortunate 9% out of work) and to go to the grocery stores at their minimum wages, as no public transport systems are available (only a few major cities have their own mass transit systems). What left in their pocket after taxes, buying the gas (or petrol) becomes a main chunk of their pocket money. In general, buying gas to work costing more than they pay for their food.
Its sad that most American cities cannot afford a mass transit system as their populations are widely dispersed and car manufacturers are also burdens to carry. Coupled with high costs in education and medical care systems, puting the Americans in the very uncompetitive future and very vulnerable to future oil price hikes.
You guys need to try to understand I am considering the issue here as an economist and not an advocate of such a tax.
No, Americans have not taken all the actions they could take to reduce consumption. Yes, it is true that trucking is a high consumer in the US and that consumption in that area would not go down by any significant amount.
It is also true however that if fuel was significantly more expensive that people would make less discretionary trips and would be more likely to purchase smaller more efficient cars. I am guessing, without good data; but I could see consumption going down by a couple of percent within 3 to 5 years after such a tax was implemented. We should get more data before even considering such a tax.
Rob Starkey,
Like all warmists, you seem to prefer to live in an ivory tower focus only at the tip of a leaf, ignoring the forests and the surrounding jungles. Typical example is this EU Tax blindly tax beyond their remits!
What I wrote has nothing to do with AGW but is simply economics.
Thank you for clarifying that, Tomas. The press reports aren’t very clear, and there is no way for Americans to make any sense of this. Regardless, it’s still not hard to understand why China (among others) is registering its objections at this point.
What set this thread off on a contentious start was the misleading claim that China has fired the first round in this.
It is the Eurocrats imposing the tax who started this. China, and a growing list of countries, are simply responding to the imposition.
Never has one defender of the Euro tax shown how it will make a difference to anything but euro treasuries receiving money. Not one thing will change in CO2 consumption or the climate from this tax.
It is interesting that how AGW believers need to reframe issues so as to hide truth so often.
Interesting aviation emissions article and site.
http://theenergycollective.com/davidhone/68176/where-now-aviation
The initial cost of the program to CATA is hardly “trifling” – $123m / $1830m = 6.7% of profits.
For most companies, that’s twice more than the dividend payment. If my mother could invest all of her resources at a guaranteed annual return of 6.7%, she could live forever.
Why is it that so many people who consider themselves knowledgeable analysts have absolutely no concept of the value of money?
One point is sure and everybody should understand it.
The decision to impose this tax via an EU directive has nothing to do with economics.
And that is precisely the biggest problem.
The motivation for it was a purely political discussion in 2006 and 2007 which concerned the fate of post Kyoto agreements.
The environmental lobbies have (rightly) pointed out that it was not consistent to declare that the “fight against the global warming” was an absolute (EU) priority and simultaneously NOT to tax airlines which obviously emit CO2.
This argument has not fallen on deaf ears because the EU Commission is rotten with bureaucrats deeply committed to any and all regulations because that is how they earn their living.
On top especially in Germany where the political weight of the Greens is largest in Europe, even the right wing government of Merkel looked favorably on such an initiative.
So when the French government (also nominally right wing) with the drunk Minister of Environment Borloo did out of the “fight against the global warming” also a priority, the case was clear.
No European country dares to oppose an initiative when it is supported by Germany and France. Not that many would in this particular case because they have their own crazy environmentalists in the government too (UK, Spain).
Those who disagree (Czechia, Poland) will be bullied into submission if necessary.
Nowhere during this process appeared a notion of budget or economy.
The expected amount of the tax is negligible to count or to change significantly the budget balances of any country. Nobody cared about that.
It was purely political dogma.
As far as AGW is concerned, the EU bureaucrats and some (not all) European countries see themselves as having the sacred duty to save the mankind.
They have been given a vision and it is a tragedy that the dumb Chinese, Russians and Americans didn’t see the light yet.
So as they are dumb, the only way to show them that they simply MUST join our sacred crusade is to start it alone and give example.
To all of you, non european readers, you will understand nothing aabout European political behaviour concerning the AGW if you don’t understand that this particular issue is seen by many politicians as a sacred duty where we (europeans) must show example to the rest of the world. And this crusade has nothing to do with economics at all.
We (europeans) must be ready for the ultimate sacrifice (e.g self destruct the economy) if that is what it takes to convince the rest of the world that we really mean it seriously.
This trend is particularly clear in Germany and we might have some unpleasant surprises in the next 2012 general elections.
Of course the man in the street doesn’t think like that and his worry is how he will pay the heating of his house (fuel poverty), how he will find a job and when his standard of living will increase.
Sofar the people didn’t yet make the link between energy costs, economical growth and environmental constraints.
For instance in France had been a movement protesting against the huge gas price increase (in US the gas prices went down) motivated by the argument that France must import its gas (Algeria , Russia).
At the same time the drilling for shale gas of which there are significant reserves was forbidden by the Parliament because … the environment radicals threatened to stop any attempt at drilling.
These 2 measures were so clearly inconsistent that even the mass media (traditionally left&green) began to question if this “ecology über alles” made sense.
So the man in the street who detains the power with his vote is slowly but surely waking up and it is only a matter of time when he gets angry and puts a stop to all these environmental measures which only drive the energy prices up and his living standards down.
The EU ETS Carbon Emissions Surcharge is simply, by definition, an additional landing tariff. That’s all the Chinese are saying. The peril of a trade war escalation mentioned is what most nations recognize to be true, that escalating tariffs benefit no one. It is a simple matter for the Chinese to exact a landing tariff to all EU flights into China commensurate (key word here) with what they pay the EU. In other words, a wash. And that is all that trade wars ever amount to – a wash from the point of view of the participants.
There are however, administrative and other internal costs inherent in the tariffs that only benefit local bureaucracies, at the sole expense of the nations constituents. That is the part that is objectionable. A tariff on another nation ends up being a tax on your own nations’ people when the other nation escalates.
Best,
J.
Judy, regarding energy blogs, I like Robert Bryce’s work. His articles and interviews have been on everything from PBS’s News Hour, to Fox, to the NYT. They can be found at
http://www.robertbryce.com/
His books Power Hungry and Gusher of Lies inject some sanity into the energy debate. Power Hungry has a nice summary of energy/power density which is essential to understanding the price and environmental impact of various energy technologies. For an introduction and bio, see this MasterResource entry:
http://www.masterresource.org/2011/11/bryce-vs-energy-statism/
Bryce describes himself as a “global warming agnostic”.