by Judith Curry
The U.S. Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works is convening a Hearing today on Climate Change: The Need to Act Now.
The website for the Hearing is [here]. From the Opening Remarks by Barbara Boxer:
We should all know we must take action to reduce harmful carbon pollution, which 97% of scientists agree is leading to dangerous climate change that threatens our families. To say we can’t have an opinion because we are not scientists makes no sense to me. All the more reason to listen to the scientists.
The American people understand the threats posed by climate change, and they want action. According to a recent Washington Post-ABC poll, a bipartisan majority of the American people want federal limits on carbon pollution. Approximately 70 percent say the federal government should require limits to carbon pollution from existing power plants, and 70 percent (57 percent of Republicans, 76 percent of Independents, and 79 percent of Democrats) support requiring states to limit the amount of carbon pollution within their borders.
It is in America’s DNA to turn a problem into an opportunity, and that is what we have done by being a pioneer in the green technology industry. These new carbon pollution standards are no different. Landmark environmental laws have bolstered an environmental technology and services sector that employs an estimated 3.4 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And many of these jobs, like installing solar roofs and wind turbines cannot be outsourced.
Witnesses
Here is the list of witnesses:
• The Honorable William D. Ruckelshaus
Strategic Advisor, Madrona Venture Group, and Former Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• The Honorable Christine Todd Whitman
President, The Whitman Strategy Group, Former Governor, State of New Jersey, and Former Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• The Honorable William K. Reilly
Senior Advisor, TPG Capital, Chairman Emeritus, ClimateWorks Foundation, and Former Administrator, U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• The Honorable Lee M. Thomas
Former Administrator
U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
• Dr. Daniel Botkin
Professor Emeritus of Biology
University of California, Santa Barbara
• The Honorable Luther Strange
Attorney General
State of Alabama
• Dr. Joseph R. Mason
Hermann Moyse, Jr./Louisiana Bankers Association Endowed Professor of Banking, Louisiana State University, and Senior Fellow, The Wharton School
The first 4 are former EPA Administrators that served under Republican Presidents. An interesting strategy. However, all of their written comments were very brief and say pretty much the same thing, consistent with party line of Obama’s EPA. However, things seem to have gotten more interesting in the questioning – the Daily Caller reports on the Hearing in an article entitled Former EPA Chiefs Skeptical of White House Climate Agenda.
The three witnesses selected by the Republicans – Botkin, Strange and Mason – are each quite interesting. Botkin’s testimony is very similar to what he presented in a recent House Hearing. Strange provides a perspective on the impact of the EPA regulations on the State of Alabama, including some legal concerns. Here I focus on the testimony of Joseph Mason, which presents the clearest take down of carbon cap and trade policies that I’ve seen.
Mason’s testimony
The link to Mason’s written testimony is [here]. A few excerpts:
Since I am not a climate scientist I cannot opine from more than a lay perspective on whether there is a consensus in the discipline on man-made global warming. Since I am an economist, however, I can say that there exists a wholesale consensus among economists that carbon is not well-suited for cap and trade.
Below, I review recent evidence on the shortcomings of cap and trade, concluding that we should emulate the historical approach we took to establishing a central bank after the Panic of 1907: take our time and study what works and what does not so that we design an effective system that does not pose unnecessary costs upon our nation.
The Interpol Environmental Crime Programme now lists ten classifications of carbon crimes that have already occurred throughout the world and continue to remain a threat. Those include:
- Manipulating measurements to fraudulently claim additional carbon credits;
- Sale of carbon credits that either do not exist or belong to someone else;
- False or misleading claims with respect to the environmental or financial benefits of carbon market investments;
- Exploitation of weak regulations to commit financial crimes;
- Tax Fraud;
- Securities Fraud;
- Transfer mispricing;
- Money laundering;
- Internet crimes and computer hacking to steal carbon credits; and
- Phishing/Theft of personal information or identity theft.
Some environmentalists even get it. Friends of the Earth has recognized such crimes and, as a result, advocates a carbon tax rather than cap and trade.35 Still, politicians remain preternaturally attracted to cap and trade, even as carbon markets continue to grow and problems continue to mount.
From the Conclusions:
Economists agree, cap and trade does not work for carbon. So why do politicians continue to pursue such mechanisms? It seems to me that while some paint “climate deniers” as a problem in Congress, an equally troubling problem is “cap and trade failure deniers.” Perhaps politicians think that adopting a “market” based solution will get them off the hook for tough decisions on carbon tax rates. But, unfortunately for the rest of us, doing so only exposes the US economy to new sources of fraud, theft, and risk of loss while raising energy prices WITHOUT reducing carbon output.
JC comments: Well, if this Hearing is about ‘the need to act now’, none of the witnesses invited by Democrats made much of a case for the urgency of acting now. The Republican witnesses made a pretty strong case for not acting now, with Mason summing it up with this statement:
. . . take our time and study what works and what does not so that we design an effective system that does not pose unnecessary costs upon our nation.
Overall, I would say this was a pretty interesting Hearing, with an interesting strategy by the Democrats to invite 4 former EPA Administrators that served in previous Republican administrations, that agree with Obama’s EPA. The three witnesses selected by the Republicans were all excellent choices, and provided good breadth of topics covered in arguing why not to act now.
Act on the basis of altered data?
http://stevengoddard.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/massive-data-tampering-in-the-southeastern-us/
Strange Events of August 1945 !
Here’s a BBC report on the nuclear geochemist that recruited me in 1960 and assigned a research project that would reveal little-known events in August 1945, the key to Climategate emails in November 2009:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/2170881.stm
Unreported CHAOS & FEAR of nuclear annihilation in August 1945 and the survival instinct forced world leaders to adopt Stalin’s totalitarian control of world society:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/10640850/CHAOS_and_FEAR_August_1945.pdf
Dear Mr. Omanuel, I know you post this link frequently wherever you comment. I have read all of the words you have linked to and found the articles extremely interesting.
Thank you.
Thank you, Keitho, for your kindness.
World leaders and scientists had valid reason to believe Aston’s 1922 prediction that other elements could be accidentally ignited and Earth changed into a star by uncontrolled release of nuclear energy in Aug 1945.
To restore constitutional governments and integrity to government research, we must forgive them for deception about nuclear energy.
I.e., if Keitho and I and others had been leaders of the USA, the USSR, and China in August 1945 we might have made the same decision to hide nuclear energy to save the world from nuclear annihilation.
most of what you have written is not “little known” but quite in the open: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_nuclear_weapon_program
Everybody studying radiation physics or medical physics knows about Nishina and the atomic bomb program in Japan. Every (radiation phsyics/nuclear physics) student has to struggle with the “Klein-Nishina” formula to understand scatter. The only “new” thing is Your conclusion of a gigantic conspiracy because of this. Or are You referring to “the Club of Rome” perhaps? That is not even a conspiracy. But still, I fail to see how you contribute to the otherwise excellent debate on this blog. To me, it is very farfetched, indeed.
It is pretty hard to act now when no one knows what to do. The simplest thing to do would be to boost our nuclear from 20% to 50% over the next 30 years. That will be hard to pass in congress.
The reason nobody knows what to do is that there’s nothing to be done!
Any MEANINGFUL reduction in ACO2 made in the US will be brutishly expensive for everyone, it will cost many, many jobs, it won’t reduce global temperatures by more than a couple of HUNDREDTHS of a degree, and it will essentially be UNDONE by China ACO2 in a few months. Not only this, but US coal companies will simply export their product to emerging nations who will burn it for cheap energy and to stimulate jobs. This essentially exports US jobs overseas. Forcing anything like this is a prescription for political suicide.
I still don’t know what Obama is playing at. Surely he must know all of the above! I hate to keep playing the “he’s stupid” card. His advisers are not stupid. Surely they have made the bottom-line calculation described above.
I can only think that he’s engaging in political gamesmanship with the whole ACO2 bologna. He never expects any of this to pass, he’s just angling for votes or is distracting us from the real problems of his presidency.
It’s a puzzle.
Obama is not stupid.
No, but he thinks you are.
He’s not stupid if he’s deliberately destructive, only incompetent if he’s not.
=========
The President is not stupid. He lacks experience, has zero leadership skills and by many accounts is a bit on the lazy side. He has no interest in putting in the time and effort to convince leaders in the House and Senate to support his policies or at least reach the sort of compromises which allow both sides to claim victory.
@ Walt Allensworth
“I still don’t know what Obama is playing at. Surely he must know all of the above! I hate to keep playing the “he’s stupid” card. His advisers are not stupid. Surely they have made the bottom-line calculation described above.”
I have had a long running ‘discussion’ with Jerry Pournelle about this very subject.
His answer so far has been to quote the old saw: ‘Never ascribe to malice that which can adequately be explained by stupidity and/or incompetence.’.
My argument has been much like yours: I suggest that he review the curricula vitae of Obama, his staff, and his advisors, the predictable–and predicted–consequences of their policies, and ask himself if stupidity and/or incompetence remains a viable explanation.
So far he has resisted answering either yes or no. I have not.
It’s odd to me, that as the hiatus continues, this topic comes up even more than before. How can that be?
To the warmistas out there, what’s wrong with this plan. Start building Nuclear now, and place a massive carbon tax on China, and soon to be India. If you don’t like that idea, why not.
RickA,
Good suggestion. And here’s a new 4 minute video explaining why:
Why not just act on the basis of using energy more wisely? Vastly more effective at reducing emissions than ill-conceived proposals by the Democrats and their “green-energy” loons. Happy by-product: saves the folks money.
Mike,
Can you explain what “more wisely” means?
Utilities promote conservation and efficiency pretty heavily these days. Manufacturers are driven to increase the efficiencies of their products and processes. However conservation and efficiency have their limits.
Mike Keller | June 18, 2014 at 5:29 pm | Reply
Why not just act on the basis of using energy more wisely?
I second the request to explain what “using energy more wisely?” means.
Presumedly the intent is to reduce consumption.
While this may be a good idea, not sure what “problem” would be solved.
Often code for smart grids, under which the serfs can smart.
===============
Explain “Where is energy used.” Europe’s plan, and our plan, seems to be “Ship our manufacturing to China.” But, as one clever economist noted in one of the congressional hearings Dr. Curry was on, the ledger for CO2 production in Britain is rising when accommodated for imported goods from China.
US, and I presume Europe’s, manufacturing is less CO2 intensive than is China’s. So adding expensive artificial restrictions to energy use helps send manufacturing to energy intensive China, and ironically, increases the production of CO2.
Academia has created a red-headed monstrosity: Leftist science — it’s always right, leaves no room for argument and can be counted to prove the continuance of big government is imperative for the survival of the globe, humanity be damned.
97% “discrepancy” – wait for crucial evidence
Mason’s testimony is supported by Economist Ross McKitrick who observes:
“. . .the IPCC, estimated “radiative forcing” of greenhouse gases I. . .increased by 43% after 2005. Climate models all predicted that this should have led to warming . . . instead, temperatures flatlined and even started declining. . . .not “hiatus” but “discrepancy.” . . . troposphere the post-1999 gap is something new. It has not only run the longest of any previous gap but it is still widening. . . .The IPCC . . . reports that over the 1998-2012 interval 111 out of 114 climate model runs over-predicted warming, achieving thereby, as it were, a 97% consensus. . . .climatologist Hans von Storch “in five years, we will need to acknowledge that something is fundamentally wrong with our climate models.” Climatologist Judith Curry of Georgia Tech recently observed “If the 20-year thereshold is reached for the pause, this will lead inescapably to the conclusion that the climate model sensitivity to CO2 is too large.”
We will reach the 20 year mark with no trend in the satellite data at the end of 2015, and in the surface data at the end of 2017. . . .
Benefits and costs of climate polity are analyzed using so-called Integrated Assessment Models (IAMs) . . . the problem is that IAMs are calibrated to mimic climate models, not reality. . . .There is little benefit to acting now . . . what we learn over the next couple of years . . .to get these final, crucial facts could prevent countries from making very costly mistakes on how they manage fossil energy resources over the coming century.”
In plain English, there is 97% confidence that the models are wrong!
McKitrick further shows that increasing energy supply leads to growth and reducing it decreases growth and increases unemployment. See: *McKitrick, Ross and Elmira Aliakbari (2014) Energy Abundance and Economic Growth: International and Canadian Evidence. Vancouver: Fraser Institute Research Paper Series.
I am 97% confident that Boxer’s proposed actions will seriously harm We the People with negligible impact on global temperatures.
FOMD’s ‘Ernie Banks’ Climate-Change Solution
It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame … Let’s play two!
• Phase I Implement *BOTH* a small-scale carbon tax *AND* a cap-and-trade program immediately, sufficient to double (over a seven-year period) both carbon-neutral energy research and carbon-neutral energy production.
• Phase II Every seventh year, assess the relative efficacy of carbon taxes versus cap-and-trade, and adjust the mix accordingly.
Throughout, restrain economic, political, and climate-science ‘backtest bafflegab’ by strictly respecting the mathematics of backtest overfitting:
Judith Curry, please teach your students a recognize, eschew, and deprecate the harmful yet too-common practice, in economics and climate-science alike, of purely statistical backtest overfitting!
Conclusion Recognize and reject “backtest bafflegab” in economics, politics, and climate-science!
Looks like you are making my point about “green-energy” fanatics. Let’s just drive the middle-class into poverty so everyone is equally miserable.
Yeah, that is the dream, isn’t it?
@ Mike Keller
“Let’s just drive the middle-class into poverty so everyone is equally miserable.”
While they are pursuing these nominally insane policies with every tool available to their Thugocracy, they are VERY aware that there will ALWAYS be a subset of ‘everyone’ which is ‘MORE equal’. The guys who make the rules get the gold. As everyone is well aware, progressives are the ‘kings of rules’, and the mitigation of Climate Change Armageddon by taxing and regulating every human activity with a ‘carbon signature’ is the greatest rule making opportunity of all time. Right ahead of controlling everyone’s health care. Which is another way of saying that ‘There is a lot of gold out there to be got!’ and we (The progressives–why are these scams ALWAYS originated by progressives?) intend to get it.
Interesting to see Boxer start off with a false statement in her first sentence.
@ Paul Matthewe
As Gomer would say, ‘Surprise, surprise, surprise!’
FOMD’s ‘Ernie Banks’ Climate-Change Solution
It’s a beautiful day for a ballgame … Let’s play two!
• Phase I Implement *BOTH* a small-scale carbon tax *AND* a cap-and-trade program immediately, sufficient to double (over a seven-year period) both carbon-neutral energy research and carbon-neutral energy production.
• Phase II Every seventh year, assess the relative efficacy of carbon taxes versus cap-and-trade, and adjust the mix accordingly.
Throughout, restrain economic, political, and climate-science ‘backtest bafflegab’ by strictly respecting the mathematics of backtest overfitting:
Judith Curry, please teach your students a recognize and avoid the too-common practice, in economics and climate-science alike, of backtest overfitting!
Conclusion Recognize and disdain “backtest bafflegab” in economics, politics, and climate-science!
Why?
In the FANTASY world of Fan there is unlimited funds to spend as he/she wishes.
I predict that independents in the US will not support these proposals since they will be expensive and accomplish no measureable benefits to those paying for them
Right now our carbon-petrodollars support these boys
and their rich toys … at a cost to American families that has been a treasure worth more than any amount of petro-dollars.
Conclusion It’s time to end America’s cheap carbon-energy addiction … an addiction whose price has been far too high.
Fan
You comment again avoids dealing with reality and pretends that fantasy is fact.
The fact that countries that have fossil fuel resources greater than their immediate needs and sell those resources does not have anything to do with the merits of implementing expensive actions to lessen CO2 emissions in the US.
The fact is that the claimed potential damages due to human released CO2 have been vastly overstated.
The fact is that the US does not have money to waste and that you seem to live in fantasyland. You can’t point to a single net positive benefit for the US climate that will occur as a result of reducing CO2 emissions.
Of course once cheap energy is gone, there will be less of everything, food included, health care included, you know that right? We will be poorer. No more helicopter trauma ambulances to save lives in remote areas, no more air conditioning keeping the elderly alive during heat waves or heat keeping them alive during cold snaps.
Less of everything. It cant be otherwise. If we are spending more labor and time and capital making energy, it will come from somewhere else.
… has everything to do with spilled heroes’ blood and six trillion dollars in squandered treasure.
Premise by Rob Starkey, common-sense conclusion by FOMD.
That carbon-energy costs are unaffordable is common-sense to every young scientist, and common-sense too, to every American family that every family that appreciates “Terminal Lance”.
“One implication is that a backtest which does not report the number of trials N used to produce the selected configuration makes it impossible to assess the risk of overfitting”
Have a word with Hansen, Mann, Nerilie J. Abram and WHT.
Yeah, that did bite Mann in the butt too, didn’t it.
Hansen’s 1981 climate-change worldview has flourished because it has simple solid foundations:
• Planets that absorb more solar energy than they radiate get hotter and hotter.
• Businesses that buy high and sell low lose money.
Conclusion Carbon energy-economies subsidize cheap fuel prices by borrowing against the future of the planet … which is dumb.
That’s why it’s time to end the world’s cheap carbon-energy addiction … an addiction whose price has been far too high.
These long-term scientific, economic, and moral realities are not complicated, DocMartyn!
Hansen got it all wrong. Global warming is simply a side effect of the Clean Air Acts, et al. Nothing to do with greenhouse gases. Cleaner air = stronger insolation = more warming. Easily proveable.
You need to re-visit your “realities”
Who has been inconvenienced financially by the consumption of fossil fuels, and how would they set about proving it? Putting an additional price on fossil fuels implies that someone will benefit from such a cost but I don’t see who that would be and by how much they would benefit.
If individuals were required to pay more for fossil fuels they would presumably get a reduction in other costs of an equal amount. How would this achieve anything of value and how would we know?
Putting a large tax on fossil fuels would help the US balance its budget, but that would be the only sure benefit
The only thing that will help with balancing the budget is for Washington to stop spending. If you give them more money, they will merely spend more. That has been proven time and again.
Rob Starkey | June 19, 2014 at 2:42 pm |
“Putting a large tax on fossil fuels would help the US balance its budget, but that would be the only sure benefit”
Doesn’t typically work that way.
Increases revenue from a “large tax on fossil fuels” would inevitably be offset by reduction in revenue from companies going out of business or moving abroad.
PMHinSC-
Companies potentially going out of business due to increased fuel taxes (or a gas tax) is not the primary concern of the tax. The primary concern is that such a tax is considered unfair to the poorest segment of society since they have the lowest ability to absorb the additional costs. Companies generally just pass along the cost increases. A few of the products/services will become unaffordable, but it is small.
Of course to balance the US budget we would need a roughly $4.00 per gallon tax. Another issue is that there is no guarentee that government would not just increase spending elsewhere and pretent that they can run deficits forever….kind of like Greece
“One implication is that a backtest which does not report the number of trials N used to produce the selected configuration makes it impossible to assess the risk of overfitting.”
I was trying to make this very point to WebHubbleTelescope about his CSALT model, but I don’t think he understood the concept. He said is model didn’t have “runs,” I guess I should have used the word “trials.”
Thanks FOMD for giving me a link to a concept that was intuitively obvious, but I didn’t have the terminology to clearly explain to our friend Webby.
The CSALT model does not use runs. The CSALT model does not use trials. I designed and wrote the algorithm code so I should know what it does and does not do.
There is no Monte Carlo generator in CSALT. So if that is your confusion, I will wait for you to admit it.
Fan, I am already to support your Phase I and Phase II policies if you can provide for me an estimate of:
1) The change in radiative forcing from ACO2 that will result from these policies.
2) The change in the climate that will result from these policies and when.
Well heck, that’s easy.
1) zip
2) nadda
Left versus right: cap and trade junkies vs. cap and trade deniers?
“We should all know we must take action to reduce harmful carbon pollution, which 97% of scientists agree is leading to dangerous climate change that threatens our families.”
That statement is factually incorrect. Is it an intentional lie? (97% of scientists do not agree carbon pollution is leading to dangerous climate change.)
This is the Senate that can’t seem to figure out how to ever balance a budget. (we currently are spending approximately $600 Billion more per year than we generate in revenue. I agree with Mason’s perspectives about Cap &Trade but would add that it is an administratively expensive approach that results in accomplishing virtually nothing.
According to previous testimony from MoB, introducing a cap and trade policy will triple the unemployment rate –e.g., if unployment is ‘x’ now the unemployment will be 3x if the Leftists had their way.
Your statement raises a question in my mind. Many here are critical of climate forecasts not being validated. But you state “trade policy will triple the unemployment rate”. Where does this “prediction” come from? Have these economical models been validated? What “first principles” are they based on?
What are their error bars? Any link would be appreciated.
Lord MONCKTON:
(Hearing on Protecting Lower-Income Families while Fighting Global Warming, Subcommittee on Income Security and Family Support of the Committee on Ways and Means, US House of Rep., March 12, 2009)
I am also suspicious about human “economic forcing”. But it is just a feeling. My point is that you seem as confident in your models as the GCM scientists are in theirs. Why should I trust your models? Economic models use economic data which is based on what exactly? Can the experiments be repeated with different initial conditions? For example, there have been too few economic crises to do a statistical analysis of why they occur. I asked someone once about an economic model that had the word “peace” in it and he just laughed. I guess that would be bad for the economy as well.
These were the same ALARMIST claims the Right Wing made under the Clean Air Act under Bush Sr. and essentially all mandates to improve car efficiency.
Alarmism goes BOTH ways, you know!
GM went bk, right?
But Doc, if it’s government-mandated it must be beneficial! Stop that petty fact-based, real-life impact quibbling! Or we’ll slap on a quibble tax!
What is the left expectancy of a turbo charged engine vs naturally aspirated?
http://www.thetruthaboutcars.com/2013/10/how-european-fuel-economy-testing-will-kill-the-naturally-aspirated-engine/
“The American people understand the threats posed by climate change . . .”
No they don’t. Most Americans are utterly clueless on the subject. Just ask 20 random people on the street, “What is the most common greenhouse gas?”.
Most probably don’t realize the glee with which academia roots for America’s economic suicide.
Roger that.
Penn and Teller get people to sign a petition banning water.
Here’s the Wapo-ABC poll which Pelosi references.
Makes one wonder why, with all that support, Democrats haven’t been able to turn such poll numbers into legislation, especially a few years ago when they had control of the Senate and House, and Obama had more favorable ratings.
However, there are many other polls in which Americans are asked to prioritize national concerns and in those “climate change” ranks dead last or next to last. Usually “jobs” and “economy” lead off those lists.
Support for climate change may be broad but it’s an inch deep. And if those Americans in favor ever realize how serious climate change legislation affects jobs and economy that could turn around quickly. The “green jobs” fantasy has already been exposed.
I doubt Democrats are going to get very far with their current focus on climate change beyond Obama’s legislative end-run via the EPA.
It depends on how much of a limit and what that limit will cost vs. the benefit. I would have answered “should limit” to the basic question. How the question is asked drives the answer.
An alternate proposal: In addition to a carbon tax (and/or a cap-and-trade), let’s introduce a tax on wealth. 0.5% on the wealth in the US, 1% on a declared wealth elsewhere, 5% on all undeclared wealth. To test the idea, it should apply first to the most patriotic people only – all elected or appointed government members (all three branches of the government) and their extended families. That should clean the air real fast.
Now my advice for those who die
Declare the pennies on your eyes
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman
And you’re working for no one but me
Taxman
The Beatles — George Harrison
Ever heard of the revenue-neutral carbon tax?
It works like this:
* A tax is place on carbon-based fuels at the source (well, mine, port of entry) based on how many tons of CO2 is emitted.
* This tax is calculated so that clean energy will be slightly cheaper than fossil fuels on the MARKET>
* All of the tax collected is returned to Americans in some form of individual tax credit.
* Under this plan 66% percent of all households would break even or receive more in their dividend check than they would pay for the increased cost of energy, thereby protecting the poor and middle class [1].
* A predictably increasing carbon price will send a clear market signal which will unleash entrepreneurs and investors in the new clean-energy economy
“Talk of a federal carbon tax has been recently revived by several conservative-leaning groups. Earlier this year Robert Inglis (former Republican Congressman from South Carolina) launched the Energy and Enterprise Institute, a new advocacy group aimed at marketing carbon taxes to Republicans. And last month rumors of carbon tax discussions at the American Enterprise Institute led AEI’s own Ken Green to reiterate his opposition to the carbon tax idea.
What sets the new conservative proponents of carbon taxes apart from traditional advocates is revenue neutrality. Instead of adding a carbon tax to existing taxes, Inglis proposes offsetting any increased revenue from a carbon tax with reductions in income and capital gains taxes. The question is: should we take the bait?”
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/04/08/why_we_support_a_revenue-neutral_carbon_tax_117849.html
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323611604578396401965799658.html
George Shultz, RR’s Sec’y of State (among many other things), & Nobel laureate Gary Becker of the U of Chicago. They’re not exactly a couple of flaming liberals. They’re both now at the Hoover Institution.
“Under this plan 66% percent of all households would break even or receive more in their dividend check than they would pay for the increased cost of energy”
I am sure history is littered with examples of governments taxing working people and then returning slightly more as an annual lump sum, but I cannot recall one.
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.” – P. J. O’Rourke
Gary Becker died last month.
Shultz is an old “national security” carbon rationing advocate from the 70’s oil embargo days. McCain and Lindsey Graham fall into this has-been culture as well. This sort of rhymes with Thatcherism of the pro-nuke advocates but it’s all discredited as history has proven them fools. The green left-wing took over the talking points and none of this national energy management would ever come to a good outcome.
Taxes never, on broad based scheme, end up “neutral”. This is true at every state level certainly, the federal level absolutely. It’s the stuff of “Big Foot” and Unicorn sightings. It’s the stuff of “lock-boxes” and Social Security “Trust Funds” that are actually government obligations that tax-payers have to repay since it was really “borrowed” money from excess SS collections.
If it’s taxed it will be “spent” no matter how it is euphemistically reworded.
Remember, it always starts with “good intensions”. It’s steep in WW2 war planning and “sacrifice” thinking. That’s where the Keynesian economic, “common good” excuse was conceived. A war economy. Meanwhile people of European descent globally have a birthrate below replacement. Countries like Italy are on track for 90% indigenous declines (essentially extinction) by the end of the century.
On this topic Schultz is more than a hazard. Margaret Thatcher wised up if only too late but Schultz is in a fog on this topic to this day. The Greenshirt left must simply be crushed, eviscerated. NO DEALS on climate authority no matter how invented the rationalizations!
The of the great underpinning arguments of the Shultz/Graham/McCain variety is the miss gotten economic assumption the U.S. would be naturally more secure is imported oil was somehow reduced. Again, much of this comes from 70’s if not 40’s thinking.
It’s a global trade system, about 60% of oil crosses borders. Even if we rationed and expanded domestic production what would make that arbitrarily more secure? Some countries like Japan and China could never be independent based on domestic production. So you need a world wide energy export/import security system in place regardless of domestic energy independence. It might make people of different political enclaves feel better the idea of less energy dependence from imports but objectively it’s trivia. If Japan was cutoff, war is going to happen.
The pipe dream is going on yet again regarding Iraq, “no blood for oil” nonsense. What we’re going to cede a pan-Islamic terror State and let them control 30% plus of the worlds oil and gas supply? That’s a world where a few hundred million could die rather quickly if you want Asia to mobilize for their security and even argue about it among themselves over exactly what sort of system would fill the U.S. void of the post WW2 hegemony that remains more or less intact but which the Obama administration is undermining daily.
The whole point of the current system is that Germany and Japan are not mobilized. Russian security on its boarders is promised. While the EU talks from the side of it’s mouth it is absolutely dependent on the U.S. containment and intervention status quo in Iraq and elsewhere.
So cutting U.S. imports, rationing carbon is plain flat-Earth thinking. It’s a global system, 650 Trillion in fiat debt and obligations. So I interpret Shultz/Graham/McCain as Neo-America First has-beens talking to people who remain largely clueless or nostalgic for a time gone by. They exist in both parties. Oil trade, regardless of our dependence, must be secured to maintain global confidence. Leaving it to others will lead to the same dreadful results of the 1930’s abdications of authority as the world is sadly predictable on these points.
The final mythology to comment on is the “price signal” triggering “clean energy” investment. Non-carbon energy has lost market share in the past 20 years (go look at the BP report issued this week). Massive increases in gas and oil, lost market share for “clean energy”. In short, more unicorn hunting of central planners.
Schultz should head to the beach, he’s done. His energy views are hazardous.
“And if you like your doctor, you can keep your doctor.”
Yes, and the average annual insurance premium will decline by $2,500.
Hee hee hee, that was another good lie by our dear leader. But I am sure they will get this “Cap and cash back” idea of Pelosi’s implemented without problems.
@ Concerned
So who is going to ‘keep the books’ on all these carbon taxes, monitor whether they are being paid properly, investigate carbon tax evaders, arrest them, try them, draft the regulations, identify the citizens who deserve the tax credit, determine how much credit that each deserves, root out the inevitable fraud, ad infinitum, and are they going to do it for free? Or are they going to be another herd of government bureaucrats, with paid up medical plans, copious time off, excellent retirement plans, and unassailable job security? And all the while, being ‘revenue neutral’, returning all the carbon tax back to the citizens.
Oh by the way, are you in the market for a bridge?
Concerned,
I suggest you change your name from “Concerned” to “Gullible”
I suggest you change your name to that as well.
As P.T. Barnum aptly stated; “There’s one born every minute”
“Lock box”;
http://www.jpetrie.net/wp-content/uploads/SNL-2000-Bush-Gore-first-debate.flv
Concerned wrote, “All of the tax collected is returned to Americans in some form of individual tax credit.”
The Highway Trust Fund was to be funded by gasoline (and other taxes) and used to build and maintain highways. It now pays also for mass transit and deficit reduction while “our crumbling infrastructure” and “Trust Fund Insolvency” get headlines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highway_Trust_Fund
Once the money gets to Washington …
Concerned: please supply an example of any tax plan, in any jurisdiction in any country, ever where 100% of the taxes collected form one group were redistributed to another.
Currently in the US, well over 100% of the taxes are being redistributed to one group or another, we are running deficits you know.
I’ve made the point before that if we chose to change our energy fuel portfolio to reduce climate change we could do so simply, if not easily.
France went from 0% to 85% renewable energy in the 1950s and 60s, by building nuclear power plants. We could do so in a decade and use better design and technology to make the plants safe. We ourselves put nuclear power plants into 180 or so nuclear submarines and several aircraft carriers in the same time frame, so I’m convinced we can do that.
The dash for gas has been well described and it is a natural bridge fuel. Solar is getting cheaper every year and its growth tracks the price falls.
We don’t need cap and trade. We need policy decisions if we want to move away from fossil fuels. We recently got one–to move away from coal as a fuel for power plants. A good move and the ruckus has pretty much already died down. Those who are sufficiently angered can elect a Republican president who may well revisit the policy. I hope not, but that’s the way it works.
Both sides keep the discussion vague which makes the solutions look monumental, when in fact they are well within the scope of Western societies’ capabilities.
To heck with cap and trade. Just put in a small carbon tax and promise to revisit it every 10 years or so to see if it’s doing what we want.
This is the first time I see a Nuclear characterized as “renewable”. There is an utter confusion out there.
Curious,
Nuclear is at least as renewable as what are commonly called renewables. And if you haven’t seen it before, you clearly don’t follow the debate.
First, Nuclear requires about 1/10 as much marterial – therefore 1/10 as much mining, processing, fabricating, construction, decomissioining, waste disposal and transport between all stages – as for renewables.
Second, nuclear fuel is effectively unlimited
So, nuclear is at least as renewable as are the ‘unreliables’ you probably think of as renewable.
Peter Lang darling,
I am all for nuclear – but don’t call renewable. It is equally renewable as coal, oil, or natural gas. Lying will not support our cause.
Curious George,
renewables are no more renewable than nuclear for the reasons I gave. It’s no lying it’s pointing out the spin that the anti nukes and RE advocates have been using for 50 years to demonise nuclear.
“Peter Lang | June 18, 2014 at 10:47 pm |
Curious George,
renewables are no more renewable than nuclear for the reasons I gave. It’s no lying it’s pointing out the spin that the anti nukes and RE advocates have been using for 50 years to demonise nuclear.”
Well nuclear fuel is finite, but the existence of planet Earth is also finite.
I don’t think we have on Earth all the fissionable fuel we might need/want for say 10,000 years. Fusion on other hand is might have much more energy available on Earth.
If include below 10 of km under the surface of Earth and/or get fissionable fuel beyond Earth. Both both of either, I would say are comparable in terms difficulty, then one might looking unlimited fissionable fuel in terms millions of years.
One could say that we have an unlimited amount fissionable for next 1000 years, and planning beyond 100 years is foolish. Of course with breeder reactors we can make fissionable fuel, so from the aspect one say it’s renewable. Or also one reprocess used up nuclear fuel [nuclear waste] to make additional energy [and reduce certain types of nuclear waste]. So in additional way one could call nuclear energy renewable.
And in terms of waste in general, nuclear energy has lower waste than other types of energy production. Though hydro dams probably best renewable energy available with current technology.
But such things of as wind and solar energy have only limited usefulness as source of energy.
One could economically function an entire economy in terms of electrical power on hydro power, and for some countries hydro power is very dominate source of electrical power. But this is not possible with wind and solar energy.
So in terms of sustainable and renewable and global answer nuclear and hydro are the best if talking about more than 50% of needed electrical for a nation.
Another kind of renewable type source of energy may be methane hydrate. Methane Hydrate deposits are not ancient, it may be sort of like a peat deposit- which can be ancient but are not formed long term geological processes. Another aspect of methane hydrate is it’s abundance. So maybe Methane Hydrates are like forests but instead 50 years to grow it could be many thousands of years to form. Due to there being high abundance this mitigate the longer time it requires to “grow”.
Or it might possible to speed up the time required for development of methane hydrate deposits. Of course this could also be applied to other fossil fuel. Or the ways to make a shale or coal deposit become a source of oil- we might get better at this- develop new technology which more related to farming than mining.
George,
Nuclear is renewable in the following sense:
1) the uranium in spent fuel rods can be recycled. I believe recovery of usable fuel is above 90%.
2) Breeder reactors can produce more fuel than they consume.
From a technology standpoint, nuclear is effectivelly unlimited.
“Spent” fuel rods aren’t really spent – it’s because after a small percentage of the fuel is used up they become extremely brittle, and so are removed from service while they are still only “slightly used”, rather than risk them breaking up and becoming impossible to remove from the core.
Molten salt technology removes that shortcoming, making it practical to use up virtually all of the fissionable material.
“This is the first time I see a Nuclear characterized as “renewable”. ”
Now we just need to tack on free range and organic to really sell renewable nuke power :)
really good Capt. cheers.
Gee, Capt, I hadn’t realised you are one of the anti-nukes too.
I read his comment as pretty funny. Probably good advice.
You forgot hormone free, pesticide free and non GMO as well chemical and preservative free.
Though it is renewable if you turn the near unlimited U-238 into fuel.
Gluten Free and Fair Trade
Don’t forget World Peace.
And Dolphin Fiendly.
Tom Fuller,
I agree with the intent of your comment but with two corrections:
1. “France went from [near] 0% to 85% renewable energy in the 1970s and 80s, by building nuclear power plants.
2. “We could do so in a decade” I don’t think that is realistic because of the cost. I think a reasonable time scale is several decades. I’d suggest the economic way to do it is to replace fossil fuel plants when they are ready to be replaced anyway because they have reached the end of their economic life. Then, if nuclear is the cheapest option, nuclear will be selected for the replacement without any need for government interventions to force or encourage it.
To facilitate getting to the point where nuclear is the least cost option governments have an important role to play. It is to remove the impediments previous governments and regulators have imposed on nuclear power that make it much more expensive than it would be if not for five decades of anti-nuke fear-mongering which caused governments to impose the impediments to nuclear power.
The impediments cannot be justified on any rational basis because nuclear power is the safest way to generate electricity. The impediments are having exactly the reverse effect of what is wanted. They are causing fatalities from electricity generation rather than reducing them.
If nuclear is all that cost-effective absent gov’t constraints how come China is building so many new coal-fired power plants instead of nuclear power plants? Surely you won’t ask us to believe it’s because China is concerned about proliferation, radioactive waste disposal, meltdowns, or any of the usual western concerns.
Your arguments are thus refuted, Lang. Nuclear power is not more expensive than fossil fuel power because of regulatory burdens.
Yet they are as advanced in nuclear power research as anyone.
==========
David
China has 20 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction.
Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world’s most advanced, to give more than a three-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then some 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.
China has become largely self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the fuel cycle, but is making full use of western technology while adapting and improving it.
China’s policy is to ‘go global’ with exporting nuclear technology including heavy components in the supply chain.
Coal fired power plants take less time to bring on line and a lack of reliable power in China is greatly hurting their ability to produce quality products and employ the populace.
Rob,
You forgot to mention that the 58 gigaWatts nuclear by 2020 for China is less than half the nuclear power generation in the United States today.
Get real and stop the cheerleading.
http://oilprice.com/Energy/Energy-General/China-Moves-Forward-with-New-Nuclear-Reactors.html
I once thought they’d be franchising pebble bed reactors around the world by now, and supplying and recovering the pebbles.
============
Skimpy
I am not a China cheerleader, but I have done a great deal of business there and have dealt with both their public and private sector.
China does what China thinks is in their best interest.
Kim- why do you think China has not built more nuclear plants in other countries? They need the skills domestically. They have a limited capacity
Nuclear power is far more expensive than it should be. It will take decades to get the costs down. Even once wee start removing the irrational impediments that have been imposed on nuclear over the past 50 years or so, it will still take time to get to a trajectory of about 10% cost reduction per doubling of capacity (and doubling of electricity supplied).
I said “irrational impediments” because they are. The impediments to nuclear are irrational because they are preventing the world from having much safer electricity generation. Compared with coal, nuclear would save about 1.3 million fatalities per year if it replaced coal fired electricity generation now, and over 2 million per year by 2050. Therefore, the impediments are irrational. We should remove them. In reality, the USA has to lead the way on this.
China is doing well in catching up with the developed countries. To argue that China has only half the nuclear capacity that the USA has is irrelevant and a really silly argument. China is developing rapidly and catching up from a very low base. It takes decades to develop the industrial capacity needed.
The thrombosis in the system is USA and EU. They need to take the lead. If they were really seriously concerned about reducing global GHG emissions they’d do all in their power to remove the impediments preventing the world from having low cost nuclear power.
I’ve written about the impediments and how to reduce them on many previous threads. so won’t repeat it here.
China is building two a year and intends to do so until 2050. One major problem (not just for China) is skilled staff for design, construction and operation. They are taking a staged approach. I can’t criticize them for that. Can you?
–David Springer | June 19, 2014 at 10:09 am |
If nuclear is all that cost-effective absent gov’t constraints how come China is building so many new coal-fired power plants instead of nuclear power plants? Surely you won’t ask us to believe it’s because China is concerned about proliferation, radioactive waste disposal, meltdowns, or any of the usual western concerns.
Your arguments are thus refuted, Lang. Nuclear power is not more expensive than fossil fuel power because of regulatory burdens.–
Coal [and other fossil fuel power plants] are the quickest ways to generate electrical power. Nuclear power [or building a dam] require more time. The US regulatory burden is mostly harmful in that they increase the amount of time to build a nuclear power plant- but without such necessary time burden, it still takes a long time to make nuclear reactor.
So also since Coal power is faster, by delaying added more power generation [whatever the type generation] one is essentially “promoting” coal use, as it’s the fastest thing to build in a energy crisis.
One could say China had and has energy crisis, the speed to get power generation in line was a factor in why China has and is building coal power plants, and is also reason Germany is building coal power plants.
But though US has most amount of nuclear power plants in the world, in the future China may rival the US or over take the US in this regard.
China will be self sufficient in nuclear technology and they will export it at some point. This is where the US has failed miserably. We need to have our own comprehensive nuclear technology base. It’s a matter of survival.
From the article:
Mainland China has 20 nuclear power reactors in operation, 28 under construction, and more about to start construction.
Additional reactors are planned, including some of the world’s most advanced, to give more than a three-fold increase in nuclear capacity to at least 58 GWe by 2020, then some 150 GWe by 2030, and much more by 2050.
The impetus for increasing nuclear power share in China is increasingly due to air pollution from coal-fired plants.
China’s policy is for closed fuel cycle.
China has become largely self-sufficient in reactor design and construction, as well as other aspects of the fuel cycle, but is making full use of western technology while adapting and improving it.
China’s policy is to ‘go global’ with exporting nuclear technology including heavy components in the supply chain.
http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/Country-Profiles/Countries-A-F/China–Nuclear-Power/
“We recently got one–to move away from coal as a fuel for power plants. A good move and the ruckus has pretty much already died down.”
The callousness of the modern progressive writ large.
The regulations have only been proposed, not implemented, and the tens of thousands of people who will lose jobs haven’t yet done so. And the significant increase in power costs to poor families across the country have not hit yet.
But progressive journalists are busy filtering the news, so “the ruckus has pretty much already died down.” It is of course only a coincidence that those same progressive journalists aren’t the ones losing their jobs, or having energy costs eat up more of their budget than they can afford.
Hi Tim, That looks about right for solar. It’s growing between 20% and 30% annually, and that should continue. But we do need a portfolio approach–solar will not power the planet soon. We do need nuclear, hydro and in the emerging countries, coal. And even in Western countries, if the coal is ‘clean’ enough there’s a place for it.
What there is no more room for is power plants grandfathered in to escape emission regulations for pollution as well as emissions for political purposes. If they can clean up, fine. If it renders the plant uneconomical, shut it the hell down.
Tom,
I just read a rview on the decreasing cost gap between solar and fossil fuels. One number stood out. Assuming the 30% tax rebate is renewed, distributed solar is expected to grow from its current 0.2% of retail electricity sales to 1.5% in just a few years. (Can’t recall the exact time span but I believe it was under 10 years.) That’s pretty impressive growth.
What is not very impressive is the 1.5% of retail distribution. That’s not 1.5% of overall generation, just the of the portion which is used by retail customers, you and me. In some places this number is likely to be bigger. I’ve seen projects for Hawaii up to 40%. A couple of other states could reach the 20% range. But overall, anyone who believes solar is going to replace fossil fuel can’t do simple arithmatic. Which I guess is ok. Barbara Boxer can’t and she’s a US Senator. So it apparently isn’t career limiting.
Hi Tim, That looks about right for solar. It’s growing between 20% and 30% annually, and that should continue. But we do need a portfolio approach–solar will not power the planet soon. We do need nuclear, hydro and in the emerging countries, coal. And even in Western countries, if the coal is ‘clean’ enough there’s a place for it.
What there is no more room for is power plants grandfathered in to escape emission regulations for pollution as well as emissions for political purposes. If they can clean up, fine. If it renders the plant uneconomical, shut it the hell down.
Tom,
I didn’t mean to imply you lacked arithmatic skills. I pretty much agree with your comments above.
Tom, well said, like pretty much everything you post.
The only thing I would add is that with all the $ from Silicon Valley, and to a far lesser extent the federal government, solar will become cheap enough to compete with fossil fuels within 10 to 20 years, in my view. And when that happens, solar will be on the tops and sides of most new big buildings. It will be in the deserts of the world, as in western China, western India, eastern Pakistan, the deserts of Peru and Chile, and many parts of the Sahara. Unlike wind, it will produce power during summer and daylight peak hours most of the time, so it won’t need as much storage and backup as wind – thought it will still need some.
The issue then will be, who will manufacture the solar? Can we make it in the US, if wages have come up sufficiently in other places by that time?
I am very much a supporter of using solar energy for anything (not just solar cells but passive heating, etc.) There are many critics of alternate energy research. What I am missing from this thread is who funded the research behind these solar panels that are becoming so successful? Governments or private enterprises? Was it considered a waste of money at the time the funding began? Did any economic model predict the success? If yes, did policy makers use this economic prediction to increase funding for solar research?
John,
No it won’t not even close. Here’s why: You have to include the cost of energy storage or back up, and the grid system enhancements to make the cost comparison comparable.
When you include those properly you find the cost of solar is around 5x the cost of fossil fuels an nuclear.
Before you do the comparisons it is important to properly understand the requirements of the electricity supply system:
The most important requirements for energy supply are:
1. Energy security (refers to the long term and especially important for periods of economic or military disruptions that could threaten energy supply, e.g. 1970’s oil crises [1], world wars).
2. Reliability of supply (over periods of minutes, hours, days, weeks – e.g. NE USA and Canada 1965 and 2003[2])
3. Low cost energy – energy is a fundamental input to everything we have; if we increase the cost of energy we reduce the rate of improvement of human well-being.
Policies must deliver the above three essential requirements.
Second order requirements are:
4. Health and safety
5. Environmentally benign
[1] Oil crisis: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_crisis
[2] ‘List of major power outages’: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_major_power_outages
:
“I am very much a supporter of using solar energy for anything (not just solar cells but passive heating, etc.) There are many critics of alternate energy research. What I am missing from this thread is who funded the research behind these solar panels that are becoming so successful? Governments or private enterprises? Was it considered a waste of money at the time the funding began? Did any economic model predict the success? If yes, did policy makers use this economic prediction to increase funding for solar research?”
Solar panel were developed for use in space:
“1958, Solar Energy In Space
Solar power was used to power space exploration equipment such as satellites and space stations. This was the first commercial use of solar energy.
1959-1970, Efficiency of Solar Cells and Cost
During the period between 1959 and 1970 there was major discussion about the efficiency of solar cells and reduction of costs. Up to that time the efficiency of the solar cells was only 14% and was not comparable to the high cost of producing cells. However in the 1970′s, Exxon Corporation designed an efficient solar panel which was less costly to manufacture. This was a major milestone in the history of solar energy.
1977 Governments Embrace Solar Energy
In 1977 the US government embraced the use of solar energy by launching the Solar Energy Research Institute. Other governments across the world soon followed.”
Solar panels are still used in Earth orbit and primary power source for the 200 billion dollar global satellite industry. This not subsidized, it’s simply the cheapest way to make electrical power in space.
gbaikie Yes, that is an excellent summary of the results of federally supported research with unpredicted economic benefits.
Act before it snows in DC tomorrow!
From the article:
…
Snow is falling over the higher elevations, as an upper-level low swirls over the Northern Rockies. Alta, Utah reported nine inches of snow on Tuesday, which makes it their third highest one-day snowfall total in June. Lake-effect rain and snow has also developed off the Great Salt Lake, with snow above 7,000 feet.
…
http://www.weather.com/safety/winter/montana-snow-june-20140616
Yeah, but I think the ice in Lake Superior has finally all melted in the past week, so Spring is coming!
There is still a giant iceberg, last week it was nearly a mile long. The water around it was still below 40F and it was estimated to last to the beginning of July.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/06/mile-long-icezilla-imaged-by-landsat/
There are also still piles of snow at Pictured Rocks, where they are sheltered from the sun and wind.
http://www.drroyspencer.com/2014/06/snow-piles-still-in-michigan-june-16/
Don’t let the truth get in the way, Al.
From the article:
The Turning Point: New Hope for the Climate
It’s time to accelerate the shift toward a low-carbon future
by Al Gore
JUNE 18, 2014
In the struggle to solve the climate crisis, a powerful, largely unnoticed shift is taking place. The forward journey for human civilization will be difficult and dangerous, but it is now clear that we will ultimately prevail. The only question is how quickly we can accelerate and complete the transition to a low-carbon civilization. There will be many times in the decades ahead when we will have to take care to guard against despair, lest it become another form of denial, paralyzing action. It is true that we have waited too long to avoid some serious damage to the planetary ecosystem – some of it, unfortunately, irreversible. Yet the truly catastrophic damages that have the potential for ending civilization as we know it can still – almost certainly – be avoided. Moreover, the pace of the changes already set in motion can still be moderated significantly.
http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-turning-point-new-hope-for-the-climate-20140618?print=true
Say, jim 2, wolves in charge of the flock comes ter mind.
Basically this call for action now is the same strategy that dogs use by barking at prey, it prevents the prey from making good decisions in order to make subjugation easier.
Cap and trade is designed to drive more US businesses and a few million more US jobs overseas to the emerging capitalist economies in China, India and Brazil. Why wouldn’t a Democrat-controlled Senate take that up?
Golly. You mean if you create a global market in a fraction of thin air, with various strong compulsions to engage, people will commit fraud and generally fiddle the system to blazes?
This can’t be what Enron and Lehman Bros envisaged!
Curious when some one references a long-term disaster, the creation of the Federal Reserve as an example of prudent government regulation. The dollar has lost, get this for a karma figure; 97% of it’s value since we essentially ceded monetary policy to the government spawned, crony capitalist enclave of the Federal Reserve.
The parallels to long-term government expansion, top-down daily management of carbon and the monetary global structure are frighteningly similar. Wholly undemocratic, bullying, central planning for an imagined “common good” while elite interests drive the general population into the carpet. Government and its cronies pick the winners, demonize others under populist rhetoric (the mob). Yes, it does sound a lot like climate change soap box gruel of Fanboy and Joshua doesn’t it?
So while “cycles” were mitigated and smoothed with credit expansion the total debt ratio (government debt plus private debt plus total non-defaulted obligations) has increased about 600% since WW2 alone. Massive social debt from cradle to grave, all back stopped by inflation and unrelenting taxes which are the highest in world history. None of it possible with out the central planning of the Federal Reserve and the central government expanding “guarantees” to investors at every level of the credit chain. A socialist monetary authority with all the predictable outcomes.
All this came from the “skeptic” economist Joseph Mason.
The Mason testimony was not very helpful; much of it was throwing all kinds of stuff against the wall to see what would stick. As a result, he ended up complaining both that cap and trade didn’t restrain emissions and that it drives up the cost of everything (since companies now include carbon prices in their capital budgeting processes).
I tried to explain some of the economic and political economy issues involved in using taxes versus cap-and-trade a while ago:
http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/03/14/taxes-al-carbon/
A basic point to remember is that all the evidence we have on AGW suggests that there is a fairly linear expected (purported) gain to each increment of CO2 not emitted. That applies even if there were some sort of forcing tipping point because 1) the tipping would be at a threshold STOCK of CO2 in the air while the control policy affects the FLOW of emissions and 2) there’s great uncertainty about where the threshold would be anyway.
This linearity of purported benefit matters because, as Weitzman showed back in 1974, given uncertainty in the cost of emissions reductions, a linear benefit function makes taxes superior to quantity restrictions (cap & trade). The goal is always to get the marginal benefit of mitigation equal to the marginal cost. With the marginal benefit constant (i.e., linear total benefit), a carbon tax set at the marginal benefit of avoided emissions gives exactly the right incentives to everybody and allows the market to use private cost information to de facto set the level of mitigation. If it turns out to be cheaper than expected to mitigate, for example, the emissions tax will generate more mitigation than a quantity-based cap based on the incorrect expectation would. Or if it turns out that mitigation is more costly than expected, total mitigation will be less.
You only want to use the quantity-based restriction (cap and trade) when the marginal benefit curve for mitigation has a big kink in it, as when a substance is harmless until its concentration rises to some critical threshold. In that case, uncertainty in mitigation costs means that you won’t be able to set a tax level that will reliably keep the substance below the threshold and you will need to set a hard cap on total emissions (number of permits issued) to keep it at a safe level.
The O & M site looks potentially interesting. The first two words on the latest post refer to someone I used to know (Gans), leading into a quote from him, which gives me an indication of potential standards.
“The President’s carbon pollution reduction plan will avoid up to 6,600 premature deaths, 150,000 asthma attacks, 3,300 heart attacks, 2,800 hospital admissions, and 490,000 missed days at school and work.”
http://www.epw.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Hearings.Statement&Statement_ID=f19ae0dc-20a8-4497-be84-fcbde39fccfa
Amazing. Can’t wait to see the magic in action.
Andrew
Interesting reading.
The odd rumbling in Iraq, Nigeria, Venezuela, Ukraine etc might mean coal saves a lot of lives in an energy diverse USA. I won’t try to express it in exact numbers of asthma attacks or hospital admissions, but you get what I mean.
Guys, we’ve done the 1970s, including the hopey-changey leadership thing. Do something else.
fulltime,
I don’t deserve any credit…
“thank Senator Whitehouse for putting together this marvelous panel.”
Andrew
Some say 3,300 heart attacks. Others say 3,400. I always like to start with disparate odd numbers, 3,700 will win more hearts and minds.
You even get timid statistical souls who will simply say “over 3,000”. But the low-carbon future will not be forged by such pigeon-livered, fence-sitting milksops.
97% of those who agree with me agree warmly. The other 3% will be sent to the Lewandowsky Statistical Re-education Unit.
Isn’t it good now the adults have completely gone away and left the kids in the kitchen? Everything now is yes-we-can, especially numbers.
Atmospheric CO2 does not cause respiratory or coronary stress. Particles of carbon, normally referred to as soot, causes health problems. Conflating all types of carbon emissions into “carbon pollution” is deliberately deceptive.
Amen to that.
On the other hand, I will keep an open mind to the possibility that folks like our Governor (Jay Inslee) and our President really don’t have a clue.
There was a ‘consensus’ among scientists back in the late seventies early eighties. The McGovern committe put out a report in response. Fatty foods were killing americans. Fat was declared guilty causing obesity, diabetes, and heart disease just to name a few. Well the report card is in and it’s F- for the scientists. Americans got fatter had more diabetes and heart disease. The scientists put america on a suicide diet of refined carbohydrates. Industry immediately responded with all kinds of new low fat processed foods and dangerous unsaturated fat products and substitute killer processed foods. Today it’s better understood that fat is an essential part of the diet. A good macro nutrient diet consists of 30% fat 40% carb and 40% protein. It should be the balance of your daily diet. Steak butter eggs etc are found to have the benificial good cholesterol (not as much as yams) and can be eaten in moderation. Refined carbs especially sugar are now the culprit. Be skeptical my friends, it may save lives.
No chance it had anything to do with McGovern representing a wheat state, is there?
Ha ha ha! It’s a rhetorical question.
Actually I quite liked McGovern, he seemed like an honest man. I used to watch him and Bill Buckley debate on Firing Line. They were lifelong friends albeit on the opposite sides of the fence.
McGovern was a progressive before his time. But he was also very principled – arguing against some of the pet liberals causes of today because they were anti-democratic.
There are a lot of carbohydrate sources that are not commercially grown in South Dakota, and his recommendations were rewritten the same year the McGovern Report was issued: 1977. Wheat can be grown in all 50 states. Farmers liked McGovern because he opened up overseas markets for their production.
McGovern Committee recommendations:
Increase carbohydrate intake to 55 to 60 percent of calories
Decrease dietary fat intake to no more than 30 percent of calories, with a reduction in intake of saturated fat, and recommended approximately equivalent distributions among saturated, polyunsaturated, and monounsaturated fats to meet the 30 percent target
Decrease cholesterol intake to 300 mg per day
Decrease sugar intake to 15 percent of calories
Decrease salt intake to 3 g per day
It had nothing to do with South Dakota being a wheat state. It was an even bigger meat producing state. That was my father’s business: meat.
McGovern was an honest man.
Brave as well. Flew B-24 missions during the war.
When you personally know a politician it may be possible to overlook some flaws. McGovern and McCain are similar in my mind. Both were pilots and war heroes, both ran for president and lost, both have flakey ideas, and both have last names that begin Mc.
Opps, bad math, it’s 30, 40, 30. Go ahead eat your veggies
Oops, posted before I got to your correction.
” A good macro nutrient diet consists of 30% fat 40% carb and 40% protein.” A 110% diet must surely be weight-increasing?
He He He,
I always like to give 110%.
Before he went to Washington, my father and mother were very good friends with George McGovern, and remained so throughout his life. My mother lives with me, and I had to tell her that George had passed away, which made her very sad. When he first started running for office he talked Dad into becoming a county chairman, and Dad used to drive McGovern around the county to meet with all the farmers and ranchers, who were, by and large, the people who elected him. Dad used to sponsor picnics to raise money for McGovern which were heavily attended: hot dogs, baked beans, potato salad, potato chips, jello with tons of marshmallows, relish, etc. You figure out the percentages.
They were both war heroes.
But anyway, less fat is not the same thing as low fat, which came later. Bob Dole engineered the rewrite of the dietary recommendations the same year the McGovern report was written. The meat industry was demanding a recommendation for eating more meat. They settled on eating more lean meat.
Nice story. Yeah I knew about McGovern being a war hero. Not a lot those guys left like him and your dad from WW II. GM was sure right about Vietnam.
Not sure about Viet Nam, but he sure pushed a lot of carbs down American throats in support of his “farmer” buddies.
Now it is ethanol in the gasoline.
JCH still lives with his mom.
There’s a real shocker.
Hey, I respect his filial obedience.
====
No you despicable creep, my mother lives with us. She’s 90. She has vascular dementia and requires 24-and-7 care, which my family provides for her. It’s a huge commitment of time and resources.
And thank you, kim.
Is this opening sentence fact or belief?
Do we know whether or not CO2 emissions are harmful? How do we know?
Is it true that “which 97% of scientists agree [CO2 emissions are] leading to dangerous climate change that threatens our families?
Where did scientists say this?
What did they say the threat is to families?
Neither. It is fantasy, beginning with a reference to something non-existent “harmful carbon pollution,” by which it means not carbon but an essential gas which is not a pollutant. So whatever scientists have to say on this “carbon pollution” is irrelevant.
The evidence is that it’s very beneficial. It is unlikely to ever be harmful. If it is harmful, it won’t be forever, probably only a short period of time.
Junk Science Week: IPCC commissioned models to see if global warming would reach dangerous levels this century. Consensus is ‘no’
Someone remarked that Boxer echoes her aides verbatim because the words echo through the hollow chamber in her head. Her statement would tend to support this supposition.
I have heard of 97% consensus, but I have yet to hear (other than Boxer) that “97% of scientists agree is leading to dangerous climate change “
Nor does any science support that.
They always need stronger rhetoric than what the facts support, even the original 97% claim is proof of that.
TJA, it will soon be ramped up to 110%.
philjourdan Every politician echoes what their aides say, whether it be on scientific or economic issues. Critique of what Boxer says is fine with me. I agree with her on many other issues, just not this one.
@Rmdobservations – You should go back and correct your error before she has you arrested. It is SENATOR Boxer – she earned the title.
/sarc
I stand corrected, Senator Boxer.
@rmdobservations – I was just kidding. Sorry I did not make that clear.
From Judith’s quot of Mason’s written testimony:
Yes. And he has provided some convincing arguments as to why it wont work. But there’s much more. And, very importantly, any form of carbon pricing will not succeed. The reasons are explained in Submission 2 to the Australian Senate inquiry into repeal of the carbon tax legislation: http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Clean_Energy_Legislation/Submissions
So,,,,, why is it again we have to raise the cost of existing cheap energy?
And we have to do that to definitely avoid what again?
No really, why?
To avoid multi-trillion-dollar tragedies and devastated landscapes and drowned cities.
What is your next question ossqss?
Imagine FOMD’s horror when the Bering Land Bridge disappeared! Connection to Asia lost forever! How many trillions would that have been worth?
Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiight.
Superstitious and gullible is no way to go through life, son.
Sorry, you presented nothing relevent to a carbon tax.
You show us War, land usage change, and sea level rise items that are and will continue to be inevitable for the most part as far as the eye can see.
I still ask,,,,, Why toss cheap energy to the side and put forth punitive circumstances on those who can least afford it ?
How much did the US debt, in trillions, go up over the last 5 years?
I must say, I expected more from you……… Step up!
FOMD obliges.
ossqss,
Expecting more from fan is your error, not his.
Although a couple of topics back it appeared that he may have contributed 3 real, on topic posts. And they were informative and reasonable.
I’m chalking it up to the blind squirrel theory.
Many of us “Green Conservatives” (also called Green RINOs by our fellow Republicans) believe the “correct” approach to reduce carbon emissions is through international free trade agreements.
We dislike a carbon tax as any way you slice or dice it, it is a regressive tax. We dislike cap/trade, since after all it will be a financial derivative (and we saw how that worked out in the housing market). We really hate Government command/control “top/down” approaches. The Conservative approach is a bottom/up approach, allowing flexibility and creativity.
While I don’t blog much, I did write 2 articles on this:
http://greenenergy.blogspot.com/2013/11/using-international-trade-to-lower.html
http://greenenergy.blogspot.com/2013/11/where-obama-is-wrong-on-coal.html#internationaltradelcs
One can be a “Green Conservative” and not be a RINO. Just about all of us don’t want real pollutants loose in the environment. If you are classifying CO2 as a pollutant – that hasn’t been proven. That wouldn’t make you a RINO, but it would make you wrong.
I don’t like CO2 being “described” as pollution either.
It’s interesting to see how USA politics evolved since Nixon’s presidency. Today I vote democrat because I consider the GOP to be so changed it’s not longer something I can vote for. Being smeared with that RINO insult was the final straw. It sure makes more sense to be more pragmatic, more in the center and definitely less engaged in religious mania and hyper militarism. The focus should be more on reducing bureaucracy in a real sense and also on improving budget efficiency.
@ Fernando
“The focus should be more on reducing bureaucracy in a real sense and also on improving budget efficiency.”
And so with those objectives you vote Democratic. Interesting.
Fernando – interesting you mentioned Nixon. Obama is Nixon all over again. The dog ate my hard drive, I read about it in the newspaper … sheesh!
Call me an ignorant Pommie B*stard if you like (an Aussie term of alleged affection, or perhaps contumely), but I don’t know what RINOs means and a quick Google doesn’t help – widely used, but only as an acronym.
Republican In Name Only.
Faustino,
Catching on? KP is a PINO, Muralitharan is a BINO. Turnbull is a LINO. Greg Inglis is a QINO. And so forth.
– your affectionate Aussie mate
mosomoso, does that make me a Faust INO?
Stephen Segrest
Well said.
Stephen Segrest,
The two posts you linked are excellent too. I don’t agree with your apparent advocacy for renewable energy nor for Germany’s experiment with it.
Regarding Germany, you and other followers here might be interested in this excellent post by Graham Palmer;
Germany’s ‘Energiewende’ as a model for Australian climate policy?
http://bravenewclimate.com/2014/06/11/germany-energiewende-oz-critical-review
GaryM and others may be interested in it too, It relates very much to Stephen Segrest’s comment and the two posts and presents an impartial and interesting history of policy that got us to where we are now in Germany and Australia. Australia’s route to get here is similar in may ways to USA’s, so should be of interest.
Peter – the eternal optimist :) The “progressives” seem hellbent to ignore the experience of other countries and press on to nationcide.
Jim2, There are extremists who are blinded by ideology on both sides. Then there are rational people in the middle who can listen to reason, sort out what is relevant and weigh the evidence – people like you, TonyB, Beth, Faustino, Johanna, Manacker (in case he’s watching us :) ), DocMartyn, many others I can remembrer right now. And then there is Stephen Segrest who has just joined in with two excellent posts – worth reading!
Stephen Segrest is not trying to communicate with the extremists and Deniers on either side, and not am I. It’s impossible. I am trying to communicate with rational people.
Just my opinion, but “Green” is a poor term. Like environmentalist, it has acquired a lot of baggage and negative connotations. A few years ago we had to scrub all reference to environmental from our science education material.
But ultimately it isn’t what you use to describe yourself that matters, but the quality of what you have to say. Keep speaking up Stephen.
I would go for simplicity: carbon tax, regulations to encourage methane capture from garbage and oil/gas companies, and slap a small tax on beef, rice and cement. Drop income taxes.
Cap and trade is used to avoid the carbon tax controversy, but it makes sense if they drop income tax to offset the added government income. It’s a system suited for those who wish to encourage bureaucracy.
Fernando,
No carbon pricing system will succeed. It is the wrong approach. Here’s why:
http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Clean_Energy_Legislation/Submissions
See Submission 2.
“Simplicity” will end up a multi thousand page bill that nobody reads in full chock full of goodies for the power base of the politicians that write it.
Have you learned nothing from Obamacare?
Keep havng your fantasies though, just a shame that Obama finally shredded the credibility required to pass it.
I learned an indigent person living in Dallas who had needed surgery for more than 5 years could easily be enrolled. His friends all hate Obama and they had convinced him not to enroll. This includes a high school buddy of his who is now a lawyer. I told him his friends were all complete morons. He pays $216 a month, and within days he was scheduled for surgery and is now doing great.
He is indigent but he could never get Medicaid and he has $216 a month? OK, color me skeptical.
Huh. A poor person who doesn’t qualify for Medicaid suddenly finds $2,600 per year to pay for Obamacare. Remarkable story. So what is this indigent person’s annual income?
Not “poor,” “Indigent,” synonyms: vagrant, pauper, derelict…
Fernando – No Carbon Tax is much simpler than Carbon Tax. Write that down.
You could call it “Science Is Settled” hearing because no scientific issues pertaining to climate were even mentioned, and, perish the thought, discussed. It is quite well known but never mentioned in such august circumstances that the global warming which these measures are supposed to fight does not even exist today. That alleged warming is the famous greenhouse warming that Hansen said existed because he himself discovered the greenhouse effect in 1988. Turned out that he didn’t because he was cheating and used a non-greenhouse warming that lasted from 1910 to 1940 as part of an alleged 100 year greenhouse warming. No one else did either and direct observation of the greenhouse effect is still missing. Record shows that there has been no warming, either greenhouse or any other kind, for the last 17 years. Now that is a scientific observation of nature that this political charade is keeping a deep, dark secret from the populace, lest they start doubting their party line. Warming advocates today are looking all over for their “lost heat”, even in the ocean bottom. After all, the Arrhenius greenhouse theory tells them that there should be warming because carbon dioxide in the air is constantly increasing. And here we come up against the rules of the scientific method. If your theory tells you to expect warming and nothing happens for 17 years that theory is wrong and should be discarded. It belongs in the waste basket of history. The only theory that accurately explains why there is no warming today is the Miskolczi greenhouse theory (MGT). That is because it is able to handle a general case where more than one greenhouse gases are actively absorbing IR. Arrhenius theory cannot do this. The GHGs involved in such a case establish a joint optimum absorption window which they control. In the earth atmosphere the the greenhouse gases that must be accounted for are carbon dioxide and water vapor. Their joint optimum absorption window has an optical thickness in the infrared of 1.87, calculated by Miskolczi from first principles. If we now add carbon dioxide to the atmosphere it will start to absorb, just as the Arrhenius theory tells us. But this will increase the optical thickness. As soon as this happens, however, water vapor will begin to diminish, rain out, and the original optical thickness is restored. As a result, no warming takes place despite of an increase of atmospheric carbon dioxide that just took place. This is the situation we have now – warming has ceased despite a constantly increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide content. This just happens to be the way the laws of nature control absorption of radiation by the atmosphere. They have always done so and any reports of previous greenhouse warming are nothing more than misidentification of natural warming by eager-beaver “climate” scientists wishing to prove the existence of their magical greenhouse warming. There is none, and with it, there can be no such thing as anthropogenic greenhouse warming. Belief in the existence of AGW is therefore an illusion, a pseudo-scientific fantasy of scientific illiterates.
TL;DR But you might try breaking it into paragraphs next time.
In addtion, high temps have persisted during this time. We should have seen non-temp responses during this time which would be the drivers of feedbacks. Rules out high global average temperature sensitivity to ghg warming.
Pingback: “Climate Change: The Need to Act Now” | Fabius Maximus
The Need to Act Now = The Election by Which We are Sure to Lose the Senate Is Only Four Months Away.
+1
Children: PLANET’s TEMPERATURE ”OVERALL” DOESN’T GO UP AND DOWN AS A YO-YO!!! All proven – the truth will win on the end: http://globalwarmingdenier.wordpress.com/q-a/
There is a video of the proceedings at
http://www.c-span.org/video/?320038-1/addressing-climate-change
Daniel Botkin is on at 1:21. He says similar things to what he said at the hearing a few weeks ago – nothing unusual going on, predictions are way off, over-emphasis on AGW has led to the neglect of other more serious enviro issues, incorrect assumption that all change is bad, IPCC muddles natural and man-made warming…
Written version here.
Scribe, scribe.
==========
… and Mason is at 1.31. What he says is similar to his written testimony but not identical.
… there’s a great bit at around 1:47 where Senator Boxer says “the alarmists are wrong” and a moment later she is claiming that the increase in C02 to about 0.04% is causing asthma.
Postulate Ossqss and his ilk do not live in the fear — sustained for years on-end — of coming home to find “a sergeant and a chaplain” waiting outside; it isn’t ossqss’ and his ilk land whose “land usage” is changing; ossqss and his ilk simply doesn’t care about centennial-scale sustainment, and they require that no-one else care either.
“Quibblers” is the mildest description of these clueless citizens, who are willfully ignorant both of science and of history, and who seek to sustain their insolation from the environmental, economic, social, and moral desolation that the global carbon energy economy already has wreaked.
“a troll (/ˈtroʊl/, /ˈtrɒl/) is a person who sows discord on the Internet by starting arguments or upsetting people,[1] by posting inflammatory,[2] extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community (such as a forum, chat room, or blog) with the deliberate intent of provoking readers into an emotional response[3] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[4]”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troll_(Internet)
Fan
You seem very angry today. Have a nice cup of tea and calm down
Land usage change due to fossil fuel takes many forms. Personally, I think the US is crazy to allow whole mountain tops to be removed in this manner. However, here is another perspective, this time of ‘green’ wind farms ruining the intimate landscape of Britain.
https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wind+farms+ruin+landscape&rlz=1T4DSGL_enGB415GB416&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=0MiiU_f-A-_e7AbJj4HwAQ&ved=0CDgQsAQ&biw=1366&bih=566#facrc=_&imgdii=_&imgrc=zw9cMqOt3KTtNM%253A%3BN9PePS0Us_p2AM%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fi.telegraph.co.uk%252Fmultimedia%252Farchive%252F02469%252Fwindfarm_2469682b.jpg%3Bhttp%253A%252F%252Fwww.telegraph.co.uk%252Fearth%252Fenergy%252Fwindpower%252F9845499%252FWind-turbine-plans-stealing-soul-of-Cumbria.html%3B620%3B387
As for sea level rise, the North sea rose and inundated the neolithic farmers, it rose again and covered habitation around the coast of Cornwall. Since then sea levels have been oscillating around a metre or more according to whether the snow and ice is locked up in glaciers or, as in the Roman or MWP , melted. Sea levels are greatly complicated by land rising or falling and teectonic plate movement but is generally still below that of the Roman period.
tonyb
Platitudes by climatereason, learning opportunities by FOMD.
Your emphasis upon foresighted integrative learning is welcomed, TonyB!
TonyB,
Yes. Sea level has been oscillating by about a metre over the past few thousand years. What most people seem to forget is that now days, infrastructure is regularly upgraded, modified and maintained. And it usually replaced in around 50 years – during which time sea level might rise 10-50 cm. Engineers make allowance for these sorts of changes and much more. They don’t have to be told by the climate cultists how to do their job. They understand it far better than the climate cultists.
Toxic ideological bafflegab by Peter Lang, science-respecting common-sense by FOMD.
It’s the subsonics.
============
Fan
I’ve been buying in season, locally grown food from local shops for decades. Glad that Wendell Berry has caught up with me.
tonyb
Congratulations TonyB! You and Wendell Berry both are eminently sensible!
“Unleash us from the tether of fuel”
Gen. James Mattis
fan once again shows us he hasn’t a clue as to what Mattis is talking about.
It is well to presume that whatever James Mattis says and writes serves multiple-leveled foresighted purposes.
For an in-depth foresighted multi-leveled appreciation of Mattis’ order “First, Do No Harm”, an end-to-end careful reading of the Mattis-authored “FM3-24: Counterinsurgency“ is recommended.
No doubt a thoughtful citizen like *YOU* appreciates these Mattis-writings already, timg56!
Ha! Some of us deal with the reality of the science and reasonable and attainable solutions to problems. Obviously there is a disconnect on your end to that which is attainable and sustainable.
I am well aware of the science and history surrounding the socialist style of government and regulation of which you favor. It has never succeeded in history, and never will. Eventually you run out of other peoples money, every single time.
I strongly oppose punishing he poor with cheap energy deprivation as you so willfully push forward towards as the only solution.
You are simply a fringe element that is part of the problem, not the part of the solution. Your ilk has already bloodied your hands to the tune of millions of lives over the decades. Sanctimonious is not a descriptive term one could apply to your pattern of thinking.
Your policy of “dealing with reality” is eminently sensible ossqss.
Reality The most peaceful, prosperous, educated, healthy, free nations on earth uniformly embrace public-private hybrid economies … including strictly regulated national healthcare systems (per Hillary/Romney/Obama) and massive long-term investments in public education.
Good on `yah, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Switzerland, and Canada! Good on `yah all for health-care, Hillary and Romney and Obama!
Good on `yah for “dealing with this reality” ossqss!
I hope that health care system can help you stay on your topic in the future and not sway in the wind of attentive thought as you display today by avoiding the rebuttal of that of which you promote yet once again.
It ain’t easy being you is it :-)
fan,
I’m curious how many people you know currently serving? I count 5 just in my own family. That doesn’t count those of us who are prior service.
I ask because you constantly make reference to things which I find highly questionable you having any real link or connection to.
The “sergeant and chaplain” have rung our doorbell twice, once for a Baghdad-to-Landstuhl medevac, once for death. Economic analyses do not capture the costs to a family of hearing that doorbell.
My condolences on your loss.
And I’m surprised to hear they do this for WIA’s. My brother heard the news directly from his son. Perhaps fortunately, our son went straight to inactive reserve after commissioning. The Marine Corps apparently doesn’t need 2nd Lt’s like they once did.
‘Act’ is the right verb! As Olivier said “What is acting but lying and what is good lying but convincing lying?”. She lies right there in the first sentence and the next two sentences manage to contradict each other. A politician then through and through!
All they have learnt is that cap and trade is useless but they don’t care to know that so they will ignore it. By the bye, skeptics predicted cap and trade was useless as well as predicting that the models which convinced (too many) scientists about thermageddon were useless. Maybe politicians just really need to learn to listen people who have a track record of being right rather than wrong. Fat chance of that happening though!
“Landmark environmental laws have bolstered an environmental technology and services sector that employs an estimated 3.4 million people, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.”
Yes but it drove twice as many other jobs overseas because the landmark environmental laws made it more expensive to do business in the US. Either Boxer is stupid or she thinks people who listen to her are stupid.
David,
There doesn’t have to be an “or”. I’m sure both conditions apply with Boxer.
97% of computer climate models projected more greenhouse warming than was subsequently observed. 97% of scientists trusted the models which turned out to be wrong.
It’s nothing more complicated than that. Computer programs are no more reliable than the assumptions the programmers use in their construction and most scientists evidently just don’t have that little factoid incorporated into their world views. Lay people definitely do not. Speaking as a life-long computer scientist I’m well aware of the limitations of the technologies I helped invent.
David, you write “It’s nothing more complicated than that. Computer programs are no more reliable than the assumptions the programmers use in their construction ”
Precisely. The only thing you can rely on in physics is the hard, measured empirical data.
Jim
No, you can rely upon models that perform within the reasonably tight margins of error that they have demonstrated to match observed conditions.
If there were models that had reasonably accurately matched observed conditions for temperture, rainfall and sea level rise for the past that forecasted a change in conditions as a function of increased CO2, I would be concerned.
There are no such models (that I am aware of). Having a model with a huge margin of error is of no value. Implementing policy based on deeply flawed models is …….based on faith.
Rob, you write “If there were models that had reasonably accurately matched observed conditions for temperature, rainfall and sea level rise for the past that forecasted a change in conditions as a function of increased CO2, I would be concerned.”
Agreed. I was being too cryptic. If you understand the physics well enough, then you can indeed, write models which can be guaranteed to predict the future. But before you can do this, you have to have the observed data. That is the point I am trying to emphasise.
The basis of understanding in physics is having both sides of the coin. The theory (or law) which describes what is happening, and the observed, measured data, which proves the physics is understood correctly. At the moment, with respect to CAGW, all we have is a hypothesis, and no measured data which can show that this hypothesis is correct.
Unfortunately we do not have the observed data to prove that CAGW is wrong, either.
Jim Cripwell There IS data. It just started in 1970’s when satellites began. See “http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/psd/data/gridded/data.ncep.reanalysis.derived.html”.
The satellite data (and I believe any other measurements) is put into a grid using a weather model and anyone can study it.
There are geostationary satellies covering every hemisphere (2 in US, EUROPE, INDIA and Japan) . They measure every 15 to 30 minutes. Then the NOAA sun synchronous satellites measure globally twice a day (always the same local time).
It gets a little compilcated if you want surface measurements because clouds get in the way. Measuring stations that look “up” are few and far between. The best that can be done are the radiosondes that go up twice a day, but this is not global.
rmdobservations, you write “Jim Cripwell There IS data.”
Of course there is data. That is not what I wrote. I wrote “and no measured data which can show that this hypothesis is correct.”
Such little data as we have, as I have noted many times, strongly indicates that adding CO2 to the atmosphere from recent levels, has a negligible effect on anything to do with temperature.
Jim Cripwell My point about the NCEP reanalysis products is that the GCMS are validated with them. The output of the models is realistic and this gives modelers the confidence to believe the output when one of the variables, be it CO2 or insolation, is changed.
rmdobservations:
I think you are not using the word “validated” correctly. As far as I am aware, there is not a single GCMS which has been “validated”.
Statistical validation requires making a prediction (actually a number of them) and then having actual observations meet those predictions, within a statistical margin of error.
I do believe that one hurricane prediction model was considered statistically validated – but that is it.
No GCM has been statistically validated.
Common wisdom among computer programmers: “Damn this computer! It does exactly what I tell it to do instead of what I want it to do.”
This sums up the problem. Computers do exactly what they’re instructed to do which is often not what we want them to do. We instruct them to follow rules about how the climate works and we want them to then predict what the real climate will do. The computer follows the rules we prescribed but the output is not what we wanted.
David, there are actually two distinctly different GCM problems.
The fundamental is that the smallest feasible grid cells are still much larger than needed to even approximate essential convective processes, especially tropical Tstorms. They therefore cannot reproduce the general concept of Lindzen’s adaptive iris. So they overstate specific humidity in the upper troposphere, and understate low and middle clouds as well as get cloud patterns wrong, especially where it matters most, the tropics.. That is why CMIP5 still produces a tropical troposphere hotspot when none exists observationally. IN MY OPINION the causality behind Dr. Christy’s observation in the APS review meeting.
Because the GCMs cannot do this, they have to be parameterized, and those parameters tuned via hind casting. Tuned largely to a period when natural variation was also causing temperature to increase. So, as Dr. Asakofu has pointed out, they will inherently run hot. As the pause now indelibly shows, and Zweirs himself has conceded on his most recent paper. And as NIc Lewis among others are showing, the more likely TCR is on the order of 1.3 (compared to the no feedback case on the order of 1.2 per Lindzen), with an effective sensitivity and an ECS on the order of 1.8, but in any event less than 2. Both of which argue more for adaptation than mitigation. And with respect to any action at all, it is less urgent. There is more time to develop better solutions than presently available, for example more advanced nuclear electricity generation than the gen 3 AP1000 design. More time to let existing infrastructure reach natural end of life. Less potential economic harm of the sort being done in UK, Spain, and Germany and which Obama apparently intends to impose on the US in an election year!
Rud
Well summerized–+1
“They therefore cannot reproduce the general concept of Lindzen’s adaptive iris.”
The iris hypothesis has already been busted .There is no need to model a thing that does not exist.
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Iris/
http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0477%282002%29083%3C0249%3ANEFI%3E2.3.CO%3B2
ftp://eos.atmos.washington.edu/pub/breth/CPT/delgenio-kovari_jcl02.pdf
http://rain.atmos.colostate.edu/research/pubs/rapp2005.pdf
As usual Mosher you don’t know what you;re talking about. You don’t model an iris effect a la Lindzen. I the model’s fundamental physics are correct and complete, and if a Lindzen iris effect exists in the real world, then it will be an emergent property of the model. Duh.
What argues for adaptation isn’t ECS. What argues for adaptation is that mitigation on a scale that makes a significant difference in the ultimate outcome requires international cooperation and economic sacrifice on an implausible scale. That isn’t going to happen. In fact such cooperation is even farther away than ever before given that Kyoto Protocol first binding commitment period expired in 2012 and binding commitments for a second period have not been established. Plus Canada backed out of the agreement altogether joining the United States in legal eschewment.
Mosher, replying to myself means a busted thread.
But replying to Mosher means a busted Mosher.
I was careful to state the general concept, versus Lindzens specifics. If you want to debate that, I will prepare excerpts from three forthcoming essays, which will with laser focus dissect that narrow issue. And you will be proven wrong.
Two choices, since I have already decided to prepare that essay. One, I ask Judith to post. Two, you give me an email (mine is already sufficiently public) and we take it off line. I prefer 1. Gracious host Judith may not. But boy, have you given me an idea for a guest post better than the last two on the specific deficiencies in CMIP5 models. Even better than the part of one chapter in the last book, which could only look at CMIP3 and AR4.
Thank you for that inspiration. Especially since most of the ‘layman’ level writing you just inspired comes from Judith, or lectures she invited, or from the APS hearings.
Lovely.
I would vote for #1 so all of us can read it.
Rud.
Do as you please.
here is a hint. looking at models wont help you correct lindzen’s errors.
in fact looking at models will tell you little.
C02 warms. the question is how much.
Mr.Mosher, you say “C02 warms. The question is how much.” I’ve heard pretty much the same from Cripwell. This is progress. Yes?
By my estimation, Phil, measurable progress.
=================
Steven: C02 warms. the question is how much
Come again? According to your reference, water is 8 times stronger as a GHG. Okay, so water condenses and CO2 doesn’t easily but so what. Water is the major component here. … ‘Water warms. The question is how much’
Water goes up, comes down and moves around. Any far from equilibrium turbulence – self-organization (if any such) is going to act on the water GHG which is both 8 times greater and *does* condense evaporate and flow
I thought we couldn’t measure albedo, or outgoing energy instead of albedo, with enough accuracy and precision to prove or disprove Lindzen’s hypothesis. It would only take a response of a few W/M2 to compensate for extra forcing from CO2 – give or take. I thought we couldn’t measure that. For that matter, can we even measure the incoming energy with the necessary accuracy and precision.
One of Richard Lindzen’s early research efforts was on a model of the Quasi-Biennial Oscillations of stratospheric winds. The other day I wrote a post on the QBO and what may be one of its main forcing factors
http://contextearth.com/2014/06/17/the-qbom/
Lindzen is a smart guy but science keeps on moving forward.
And, with these rates of warming, it is very likely the “do nothing” option is the best option. Best to watch how things play out and adjust if we do start to see costly resonses to warming.
I’m aware of the problem of insufficient computational resources to work with cell size small enough to accommodate convective cloud formation and dissolution. Nevertheless a parameterization is still a prescribed rule so I don’t see how it changes what I wrote.
I say, make Barbara Boxer and Al Gore be contestants on “Naked and Afraid” so they can experience first hand a “decabonized” existence.
+1
except for the point of who would watch. I could probably come up with two people I’d less like to see naked, but it would be hard work.
To be effective, reducing emissions should involve worldwide cooperation so as to create a level playing field.
Before implementing such a plan we need to practice….herding cats comes to mind.
@ Phil Brisley
“To be effective, reducing emissions should involve worldwide cooperation so as to create a level playing field.”
Define effective.
Is there any actual evidence that ANY or ALL of the mitigation measures being advocated by the experts would have any MEASURABLE effect on the climate, however defined, if actually implemented world wide? Or that the effects, if any, would actually be desirable?
Bob, thanks for the reply, I should have said: “To be effective (if possible)….”.
IMHO the anthro CO2 bite on OLR , as a concern, suffers from exaggeration.
It’s about total control of ……everything;
http://news.investors.com/ibd-editorials/061814-705320-epa-army-corps-of-engineers-expand-regulation-reach-through-clean-water-act.htm?p=full
@ cwon14
“It’s about total control of ……everything;”
Precisely!
Progressive Shangri-La: a society in which everything not commanded is forbidden, with themselves doing the commanding and forbidding. And, not coincidentally, receiving the baksheesh necessary to avoid the commands or receive the permits.
If CO2 can be defined as a pollutant, then puddles can be defined as navigable water ways.
Count on it.
@ Gary M
“If CO2 can be defined as a pollutant, then puddles can be defined as navigable water ways.”
If CO2 can be defined as a pollutant, then puddles have been defined as navigable water ways.
There, fixed it.
This works just like the Commerce Clause, which morphed from regulating actual interstate commerce into regulating anything that AFFECTED interstate commerce, resulting in a ruling that a guy growing wheat in his back yard for his own, personal use, was engaging in ‘interstate commerce’ and was therefore subject to regulation under the ‘Commerce Clause’ because the wheat he wanted to eat MAY have crossed a state border if he had not grown it himself.
By the same token, the puddle in your back yard may not be navigable, but it may be construed–just like the wheat–to AFFECT a navigable body of water, and is therefore subject to federal regulation.
They already have been.
I think the EPA has already done that.
The new rule bares no resemblance to the one outlined in that editorial. IBD is more often than not pure propaganda.
http://yosemite.epa.govopaadmpress.nsf3881d73f4d4aaa0b85257359003f5348/ae90dedd9595a02485257ca600557e30
I know nothing of IBD, but if the quality of the comments there in response to the article flagged by cwon is an indicator, it wouldn’t be on my most-reliable-source list.
Moderator would you please blacklist “latex” so FOMB can’t use those stupid distracting signatures?
Meh, better to leave them. All the easier to skip.
=========
Exactly. The one public service he provides us.
I do to. But I also enjoy reading the replies. Swings and roundabouts.
Maybe Congress should drop by Jo’s blog. Lubos has been shown, IMO, to have been off base in his criticisms and I understand he has taken down his post on the notch and delay formulated by Evans and Nova.
From the article:
…
The tree ring readings of the Finnish foresters are predicting a large decline in temperature bottoming out in about 2045. The downturn you see on the right hand side of the graph is as large as any in the last 200 years. A cold period longer and deeper than any other in the last 200 years would have lots of real world consequences. That would be worth following up on, wouldn’t it?
Well, we now have a way of cross-checking the tree-ring based predictions. A just-released climate model using a notch-delay filter has the promise of providing much higher resolution in climate forecasting. Using historic TSI data, the model can see out to 2025:
…
http://www.americanthinker.com/2014/06/a_cold_dawn_coming.html
LOL … Jim2, it’s time for Climate Etc’s “backtest bafflegabbers” to clean-up their heuristic cycle-seeking!
Hansen’s science shows us a simpler way: Planets that absorb more solar energy than they radiate get hotter and hotter.
This simple conclusion from elementary thermodynamics and plain common-sense is solidly affirmed by phenological citizen-science, eh Climate Etc readers?
This was mostly about the Evans and Nova model. As usual, FOMBS.
http://joannenova.com.au/2014/06/lubos-and-a-few-misconceptions/
I prefer tea leaves.
Lubos’s post is still up, it’s just been pushed further down by more recent posts.
More what I assume to be hysteria.
From the article:
…
An increased storm tide flowing high enough to exceed Manhattan’s seawall defenses is 20 times greater today than it was 150 years ago, according to a new study published in a journal of the American Geophysical Union.
The increased risk comes in large part to rising sea levels in New York Harbor, bringing with it the risk of extensive flooding on a more frequent basis, co-author Stefan Talke said.
“The most surprising finding in our research was that we noticed this large increase in storm tides in New York Harbor-nearly 1 foot for the [once in] ’10-year storm’ over the past 150 years,” Talke said.
…
http://www.accuweather.com/en/weather-news/storm-tide-nyc-manhattan-seawall/28668628
Woof! By May of 2016.
=====
Oops that wound up in the wrong place. I’m referring to the temperature drop predicted in Archibald’s American Thinker article today. Notcho Mama!
======
“All the more reason to listen to the scientists”. You know, the ones whose basic approach we know from Climategate.
Yeah, that makes a lot of sense.
Yeah, because the few bad actors in climategate represent all scientists.
That makes a lot of sense.
“It seems to me that while some paint “climate deniers” as a problem in Congress, an equally troubling problem is “cap and trade failure deniers.”
Good point. Yes, most economists (I am one) think that carbon taxes are a better way to go. I think the testimony misses an important point about why politicians prefer cap-and-trade, however. C&T gives them more discretion about how to allocate the costs of the policy. In particular, as the failed Waxman-Markey C&T effort showed, they can grandfather in their favorite carbon sources, giving them a big windfall, and also, they can “protect” consumers by shielding them from higher energy prices at the switch/pump. Of course, doing the latter vitiates one of the main purposes of carbon policy, namely, encouraging consumer-level conservation.
Ed Dolan.
There is virtually no chance of ANY carbon pricing scheme succeeding. I’ve explained why in my submission to the Senate Inquiry on repeal of the carbon tax legislation (Submission 2 here:http://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Environment_and_Communications/Clean_Energy_Legislation/Submissions).
Mark Steyn has a post on the hearing:
http://www.steynonline.com/6428/eight-thumbs-down
Let the record show that Mark Steyn’s column contains no references to scientific studies, survey articles, or textbooks.
Let the record show instead that Mark Steyn’s column deployed pejorative rhetorical terms that included: corruption, contempt, falsehoods, cartoon climatology, yawnfest, apocalyptic loons, clogged septic tank, sh*tty, disgrace, rubbish.
Conclusion If Mark Steyn case was strong in the science, his column could pound on the science. If Mark Steyn’s case was strong in the law, his column could pound on the law. Yet Mark Steyn’s column did neither; instead it pounded on the table.
Why does Judith Curry promulgate Mark Steyn’s table-pounding?
The world wonders!
Fact, about 3% of clmate scientists don’t believe it has even warmed over the last century. Law, of probabilities, that the remaining 97% believe the warming is mostly man-made and dangerous is slim to none. Table, what those citing the 97% number have drunk themselves under.
Let the record show that Steyn has the law, the facts, and the poundable table, not to mention the science.
=========================
I too so look forward to the discovery phase of Mr. Steyn’s suit with Mann. Why would Mann not pound the table with his science instead of running from discovery?
Good on ya Mark Steyn (to borrow a phrase if you will)
Fan resents being so table-like.
==========
Fanboy, you only like the self-segregated “science” where a tiny enclave decide among themselves if they are “qualified”. Even then the mythology of “consensus” doesn’t exist. Simply exploring the weasel word “significant” and replacing it with “dangerous” in the surveys reveal this.
So one of your main piece of dogma, vast “science” support for your version of reality simply doesn’t exist.
It really isn’t worth feeding the Fanboy troll but his constant appeals to consensus authority are easily debunked;
http://dereksorensen.wordpress.com/2014/06/18/ninety-seven-percent/
Steyn and Dilingpole are exactly required to deal with Fanboy and his culture.
A fan of *MORE* discourse: Yet Mark Steyn’s column did neither;
Those were not the only options. The “Etc” part of the title of the blog includes political commentary, and Mark Steyn writes cleverly, sharply, and insightfully how discordant the political calls for action are from the science. Some of his hot links are to evidence-rich discussions of technical points, such as the 97% mirage that Boxer misquoted in her introductory remarks.
Mark Steyn pointed out that the Republican former EPA administrators all declined to support president Obama’s alarmist claims. It is very important to all voters, I suspect, where the President’s pronouncements are supported by science, and where they are not.
His article is well worth reading for anyone interested in the American politics of CO2 regulation.
a fan of *MORE* discourse: The world wonders!
No. I bet that most people who follow the link and read the article give thanks.
oops! That was supposed to be “Republican and Democratic”, to get to “eight thumbs down”.
“Let the record show instead …”
So instead of actually interacting with Steyn’s points, you provide a list of individual words you don’t like, which as a refutation makes about as much sense as objecting to the font.
By the same yardstick, you should advise people to ignore your posts, as they frequently contain words such as “LOL”, “yah”, “bafflegab”, and the inarticulate noise “eh”.
This isn’t even table pounding, it’s woolly headed silliness. It makes one ponder whether all those young scientists with families would appreciate you appointing yourself unilaterally as their spokesman.
AGW believers can’t last on the big stage, it was always an academic parlor game in largely tight green related circles and needs partisan media controls to sustain itself. Once it leaves the safe places where it is accepted and passed off as rational, like public schools in the U.S. or shill activist media spinners, it gets crushingly debunked as reflected in Steyn’s treatment.
The Obama power grab is a Waterloo type event, it will be turned back and then subjected to the revisionist history arm of the left. The only history they ever choose to consider. A considerable chunk of population see it more clearly then ever before. There may be a cynical endgame if the fire-up-the-greens campaign plan fails outright and the Senate lost, it involves the greens going under the bus and the administration moving somewhat to the center for the 2016 push. Keystone approval and triangulating the domestic carbon boom. Then again, he’s an ideologue with about 4-5 topics that have a road to impeachment written all over them. He’s never shown any bi-partisan inclinations to speak of. The IRS political abuse coverup probably being the most glaring example at the moment. I’m sure he hates Hillary and Clinton’s in general and sees no need to smooth her/their path.
He painted a corner for himself in Iraq as well, the left-wing might just jump-the-shark if the most limited interventions are attempted. They’re freaking over embassy support which was pretty logical tokenism in light of the abomination of the Benghazi disaster. Losing the base is a tradition in failed Presidencies as well as successful ones, of which I’ve only seen one in my lifetime in retrospect. The AGW meme will be looked back on as a huge tactical error dwarfed by real events that expose it for the propagandist and ideological gruel that it is and always was. The Greenshirts, deep thinkers that they are, see all the incentives in turning on Obama as agenda sinks into the abyss. He will be scapegoated for “weakness” and “incompetence” which are true enough qualities, just not in the context that his base will apply them. This is how you will get to 30% approval numbers which is where it is going. As the election dominoes fall into place globally, the U.K. and the U.S. next to join Canada and Australia the sham green agenda will need to reform out of political expediency. This of course will resemble cage fighting and we are already watched them eat their own.
Meanwhile the oceans keep heating, the seas keep rising, and the ice keeps melting … all without pause or obvious limit … as long foreseen by the scientific consensus.
That sobering reality is the rational reason why the communities of scientists, of young family-starting voters, and all the world’s religions, are united in their adamant and well-founded rejection of willfully ignorant ideology-driven climate-change denialism.
That’s why short-term politics doesn’t much matter, eh cwon14?
These realities are obvious to *EVERYONE*, eh Climate Etc readers?
A fan of *MORE* discourse: adamant and well-founded rejection of willfully ignorant ideology-driven climate-change denialism.
Tell us again who denies climate change. Most of the people who object to major new investments to reduce CO2 “pollution” are strong believers in climate change. The case that a lot of recent warming (“recent” meaning since the end of the LIA) has been caused by anthropogenic CO2 is full of liabilities, as has been shown by numerous people analyzing and citing the scientific literature.
There is no case that immediate action to reduce CO2 is either useful or necessary to prevent CO2-induced climate-warming catastrophes.
Mathew, Don’t worry, he has his “Climate Youth” movement, where he explicitly excludes “pale stale males.”
So sure, you could tell him to his face that the spot where you were standing used to be under a mile thick sheet of ice, kind of like where I am typing this, and he will still call you a “climate change denier” because he has no arguments and doesn’t understand the links he presents well enough to defend them from specific criticism. He just presents more links in the faith that somehow they refute any objections, even if he himself can’t.
And besides, he has this whole Climate Youth thing going.
Oceans keep heating? We probably measure less than 2% of ocean mass. This is just another unknown claim wheeled in to save the meme. There are plenty of points that only unmeasurable speculations and warmists always assume it supports the general claim.
There is zero comprehensive support for increased or captured AGW heat in oceans.
From the Opening Remarks by Barbara Boxer:
We should all know we must take action to reduce harmful carbon pollution, which 97% of scientists agree is leading to dangerous climate change that threatens our families.
On this issue, Sen Inhof is better informed or has better judgment (or both) than Sen Boxer. That’s only a rank ordering and not a blanket endorsement of Inhof. But Boxer should always be remembered by people who insult Inhof for his views on AGW.
Boxer: And many of these jobs, like installing solar roofs and wind turbines cannot be outsourced.
Boxer is a consistent supporter of jobs programs that are a net drain on the economy. And she is a consistent supporter of increased regulation on the supply of things that people want to buy. Without a hint of irony she has frequently noted that only the tax-subsidized sector of the CA economy is growing; everything else is diminishing or leaving the state completely. Also without a hint of irony, she has praised the rebate/tax credit portion of the alternative energy constructions, without noting that only the better off can benefit from the tax credits. She’s a perfect example of what is called a “limousine liberal”. She has been a part of the movement that for decades prohibited the construction of new electricity generation in CA, and a part of the movement that prohibits CA from developing its own natural gas for its powerplants.
She’s popular in CA, and wins re-election handily.
@Matthew Marler – with her statement you quoted, she appears to be a big supporter of low wage jobs as well. But then she is a democrat.
“Boxer: And many of these jobs, like installing solar roofs and wind turbines cannot be outsourced. ”
How could anyone claim that solar panels will reduce man made CO2 output at all? The amount of heat required just in melting the silicone alone is unbelievable. Like half the temperature of the sun’s surface for a day! How many years does it take to recover the energy used in manufacturing, delivering, installing, maintaining these things? They only last like 15 years before their output starts falling off. If it takes most of the life of the panel just to recoup what was spent making the things then what we are doing is burning and exhausting years worth of co2 NOW and then attempting to get it back later by hoping they are not destroyed by wind, hail or fire before they pay back their co2 debt.
I understand the need for off grid applications, but what possible sense can this make where power grids are available? These thing are going to be worse than corn ethanol where we are burning more than a gallon worth of fossil fuel to make a gallon of ethanol!
Re: Cap and Trade …
The budget deal that Gov. Jerry Brown negotiated with Democratic legislative leaders last week allocates $250 million this year and 25% of future revenues from California’s cap-and-trade auctions for high-speed rail. The state legislative analyst predicts the auctions will raise $12 billion to $45 billion cumulatively by 2020.
http://online.wsj.com/articles/political-diary-california-choo-choo-madness-1403037861
California which is totally run by the Democrat party (which is maintained by the public employee unions) has become synonymous with the idea of a bullet train to nowhere. California government loathes business.
In the jump-to article, “Who cares about climate change consensus?” I think the Guardian misses the point. The climate community destroyed its credibility.
Just look at all of the dishonesty and deceit from the get-go. The continual changing the rules and playing with the language to sell the message (plus, nature says with the hiatus, ‘Not’ and ‘Nyet!’ with global warming and all of the alarmism) cannot be ignored either.
Being a part of the climate change ‘consensus’ (which was nothing more than a made-up idea to sound impressive), essentially aligns you with crooked marketers and Leftist politicians. Like the public, scientists ought to be more skeptical than credulous by now.
After reading thru these comments I am beginning to wonder if George R. R. Martin is using the pseudonym A fan of *MORE* discourse to try out material for his latest fantasy novel.
I’m more of a Saltine Cracker.
A piece of wood brought Christian Schlüchter Bernese geologists in conflict with climate research.
Der Bund, Interview: Bernhard Ott. Update on the 07.06.2014 (translated by Bing):
Mr Schlüchter, you figured out based on the analysis of wooden finds in advance of glaciers that Hannibal was the crossing of the Alps, usually through the forest, but never about glacier.
This is pointedly expressed. I was confronted with Hannibal but in fact in the course of my research. A friend told me that I should prepare the public, from the noble image of the Alpine glaciers in the sunset to say goodbye – for the benefit of a «hannibalistischen world».
What do you mean by «hannibalistischer world»?
The Timberline was much higher than it is today, there were hardly glacier. Glaciers are mentioned in any of the detailed trip reports from the Roman period.
We can always look at the AGW advocates cousin, the left-wing media to see where the “trust” factors has reached;
http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/gallup-public-confidence-tv-news-all-time-low
So Fanboy, if the public doesn’t trust the operatives touting Climate activism where do you think the played out meme is going?
Greenshirts aren’t trusted either, AGW is just one of many dead parrots in the waning decline of a failed administration that never even attempted to find middle ground on even benign or naturally bi-partisan topics. Fringe climate authority ambitions are on the way out. It’s a dead parrot Fanboy, it has ceased to be. You should switch your cause to blocking windmills killing rare birds, the underpinnings of that are far more sensible.
Scientists and farmers and Popes and moral folks in general all have noticed that elections come-and-go … yet meanwhile the oceans keep heating, the seas keep rising, and the ice keeps melting … all without pause or obvious limit.
Perhaps it’s time for thoughtful science-respecting conservatives too, to join in embracing centennial time-scales (and rejecting decadal denialism)?
The world wonders!
Tectonic plates also keep moving. Maybe you blame that on CO2 also???
“Tectonic plates also keep moving. Maybe you blame that on CO2 also???”
Yes, I’m surprised they haven’t managed to blame tsunamis on CO2 yet. Their MO is to fix on a single natural event, and extrapolate from that to impending disaster.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2009/09/16/us-climate-geology-idUSTRE58F62I20090916
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/16/climate-change-tsunamis_n_3769200.html
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2012/feb/26/why-climate-change-shake-earth
Actually, one role of scientists is to analyze situations where what mankind is doing is not good for the propagation of the species. So when scientists have looked at the effects of adding lead to gasoline and house paint, they found that it caused developmental brain damage and had the effect of increased crime in society. Therefore we removed the lead from gasoline and house paint, and the the problem was essentially solved.
The same thing may occur with fracking and earthquakes. It may turn out that the earthquakes generated by triggering strained faults via hydraulically-induces underground shocks may not be so good in the long run.
You project way too much, the progressives (i.e. majority of scientists) are the sane voices.
The real issue is that many right-wing nut-jobs (i.e. anti-scientists) want to see civilization destroyed, for either religious reasons or to invoke disaster capitalism and clean up on the downside.
@WebHubbleTelescope:
“Actually, one role of scientists is to analyze situations where what mankind is doing is not good for the propagation of the species.”
So I take it you are anti abortion? You are aware that replacement is < 2.1 worldwide? Come on, don't engage in bs. Are you honest about what you claim to believe?
"So when scientists have looked at the effects of adding lead to gasoline and house paint, they found that it caused developmental brain damage and had the effect of increased crime in society."
You are mixing apples and oranges in 2 areas:
1) The role of scientists is to describe empirical facts mathematically. Moral decisions based on their discoveries are sometimes obvious, sometimes not. But the call has nothing to do with science per se.
2) Your analogy is a FALSE analogy between scientists studying the effects of lead or mercury on human cognitive ability, as opposed to AGW. The former gives unambiguous results. The latter shows a lot of fear mongering coupled with a string of false predictions, along with a frustrating inability of warmists to admit their less than stellar track of predictions.
All you offer in response is FOMBS simple *assertions* of phenomena that are contradicted by the facts.
I wouldn't be surprised if tomorrow he'd include as a reason to believe in AGW that New York City was 100 feet underwater, even if it weren't. The warmists don't seem to have any integrity at all, with regards to facts. They may have good intentions, but without actual facts, why should anyone believe them?
@whut, to clarify my first point:
“Science must not impose any philosophy, any more than the telephone must tell us what to say.” – G.K. Chesterton.
Now I’m not a Christian and I think Chesterton is in general is a blowhard, but here he makes a very cogent point. What do you think?
@Edim, thank you. I’ve truly lost all hope now. The world has gone insane. You’ve freed me from the obligation of treating my fellow human beings who are liberals, as anything other than nut job sociopaths.
They keep telling us:
yet meanwhile the oceans keep heating, the seas keep rising, and the ice keeps melting … all without pause or obvious limit.
Yet, they only have alarmist consensus model output and “adjusted” data to support the alarmist claims.
Actual real data places us well inside the bounds of the past ten thousand years. If you just glance at past data, there is clearly an obvious limit. If you just glance at the data, there is an obvious pause.
Only in unskilled alarmist climate models is there no limit.
They should have been taught how to use and not use computers before they were handed computers to abuse. Garbage in, Garbage out.
They don’t have any output that matched real data.
Schlüchter is convinced: Our society is fundamentally dishonest. For example, Mann’s ‘hockey stick’ was a double-cross:
(See, Christian Schlüchter interview, supra)
“Today, many scientist are to servants of politicians, but not more scientist concerned with new knowledge and data.” ~Christian Schlüchter
According to an another Bernese climate researcher Thomas Stocker, we have only the choice between a global warming two or four degrees. Is this hysteria?
The invention of the devil was the greatest invention that mankind has ever made. You can make much money if you paint it on the wall. On the other hand, the potential impact of warming on a complex and spoiled society like today’s would be serious – similar to the situation which has triggered the migration of peoples and brought the Roman Empire to collapse.
(See, Christian Schlüchter interview, supra)
Wagathon
I met prof stocker at the Exeter climate conference a few weeks ago. He is not a great believer in natural variability and is very rigid in his thinking.
Tonyb
In the interview Schlüchter has a realistic appraisal of the situation we face –i.e., while there is always so much for us to learn about the world, as the quality of our research falls, science becomes more concerned with policy and less concerned with uncovering what is hidden from us.
Wagathon
Out of the panel of 5 ipcc reviewers taking questions at the conference three were political. Stocker was one of them
Tonyb
There’s no money or political power to be had in a consensus view that it’s the sun, stupid. And, the rest of academia is just waiting for the house of cards to collapse around our collective ears as they continue to pretend they are not helping to bring about Western society’s collapse.
Ja! Ja!
Again: What’s behind the Glacier fluctuations? The solar activity is the lever of change. In addition, tectonic movements and the shifting of the seasons in the northern hemisphere play a role. Even volcanoes can be a trigger. ~Christian Schlüchter (DerBund.ch/NewsNet, 07.06.2014)
Corruption in science history and also in economics:
~Christian Schlüchter (DerBund.ch/NewsNet, 07.06.2014)
I’ve been on a search for the last two decades, to understand why people could have illogical beliefs. I found that people, generally, cling to deep seated beliefs and will say almost anything, absent of facts and despite facts, to support those beliefs. As part of the search I tried to understand why people of different religions or sects would kill because of their beliefs, but found no acceptable answer. The book “True Believers” provides some insight; explaining how groups can think alike and act alike when they construct a common enemy and have a strong leader. However, it is beyond me how humans can be so inhuman, so irrational.
I am a scientist who has been blogging on this website for years. My views are at least as valid as any other scientist. Unanimity is not something we pride in a field so complex as climate, Dr Christy’s evidence to a prevuous house shows clearly that the consensus leaders IPCC do not understand climate science because all their models exaggerate global temperature and do not poredict the present pause,
It’s not that they “didn’t understand” the “science”, it’s that they understood the politics.
Alexander, I have 2 questions:
(1) Can you provide a link to a paper/article which puts/summarizes all the major “pieces parts” (and the associated science) together in trying to understand CC/GW — which of course starts with (as Mosher describes) the basic science of “non-feedback loops”. I have a paper by V. Ramathan (starting on page 2), but written in the late 1990’s is a little dated: http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr72.pdf
(2) Just for discussion purposes, lets assume that the “non-feedback” component of IPCC Models are “nailing” it with accuracy. Of all the feedback components, which one do you think probably highly explains what’s going on that Scientists have not been able to model very well yet. Thanks!
http://www-ramanathan.ucsd.edu/files/pr72.pdf
I think the problem is rather that climate science does not yet understand climate. The results are so many and varied and ambiguous that very different interpretations are possible. Ideology then becomes a driving force. Reasonable people can look at the same science and come to opposite conclusions. This is hard to accept.
Mike Wilson,
Be reassured. Solar PV panels are typically made from silicon, not silicone, though silicone finds some usage in sealing the panels and your roof. Degradation of their output begins immediately, not after 15 years as you stated. However, depending on the variety of panel, it is only about .5% a year. Most solar companies warranty the panels to produce above 80% of their initial rating up to 25 years. Many years ago I bought old panels from a dismantled A.T.& T project and they were still performing admirably more than a decade later when I sold my off grid mountain ranch.
I can’t imagine what you mean by saying in regards to the energy of manufacturing that it is,” Like half the temperature of the sun’s surface for a day!” But, according to studies, the energy required to manufacture them is typically recouped in about a year and a half. That’s about 6% of the energy they should produce during their lifetime. Even less if they are re-purposed as we did.
While I have written numerous letters to the editor criticizing the quality of analyses of the economics of solar power that appear in our local paper here in Silicon Valley, yours is even worse.
Compare the drought maps from June 2012 and 2013 to now. The drought is easing.
http://droughtmonitor.unl.edu/MapsAndData/MapArchive.aspx
“The first chairman of the Atomic Energy Commission, Lewis Strauss, predicted in a 1954 speech that nuclear power would someday make electricity “too cheap to meter.”
A half century later, we have learned that nuclear power is, instead, too expensive to finance.
The first generation of nuclear power plants proved so costly to build that half of them were abandoned during construction. Those that were completed saw huge cost overruns, which were passed on to utility customers in the form of rate increases. By 1985, Forbes had labeled U.S. nuclear power “the largest managerial disaster in business history.”
So says the Union of Very Concerned and Honest Scientists
Daniel,
Here is a technical discussion on the pros and cons of developing nuclear energy: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/lenr-year-of-answers/
I know why world leaders agreed to hide the source of energy that caused U and Pu atoms to fission over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but I believe we “shot ourselves in the foot” because governments cannot safely harvest nuclear energy and prompt textbooks that deny neutron repulsion is the primary source of energy in cores of:
1. Heavy atoms like Uranium
2. Some planets like Jupiter
3. Ordinary stars like the Sun
4. Galaxies like the Milky Way
5. The expanding Universe !
Correction (above): prompt => promote textbooks
Major error promoted in nuclear physics textbooks after WWII:
BEFORE 1945:
Aston’s nuclear packing fraction correctly showed nuclear stability
_ a.) Revealed neutron repulsion in neutron-rich nuclei
_ b.) Revealed proton repulsion & Coulomb repulsion in proton-rich nuclei
AFTER 1945:
von Weizsacker’s nuclear binding energy distorted nuclear stability
_ a.) Neutron-rich nuclei appeared more stable than they actually were
_ b.) Proton-rich nuclei appeared less stable than they actually were
Here are more technical details on nuclear physics: http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2014/06/04/lenr-year-of-answers/#comment-58541
Here is a technically-delayed reply to p.g.sharrow on “Nuclear Forces and Physical Structure:”
https://www.dropbox.com/s/sw18qbrj2wea9js/Nuclear_Forces_and_Physical_Structure.pdf
France has some of the lowest cost power in Europe because when Nuclear is done right, it is the lowest cost.
If every Nuclear Power Plant is designed from scratch and all the anti groups fight every step, it does get expensive.
That is a political problem and not a science problem or engineering problem.
The “97%” studies, in addition to being no good, refer merely to those who believe humans have some influence on past warming, not that it is dangerous, as Boxer claims. Her’s is a fine case of political exaggeration.
But given EPA’s attack on coal I think the question whether or not to act now has been made moot. The action is underway. And the EPA rules are a de facto cap and trade system.
The point of the hearing is thus unclear.
The point should have been to embrace fracking.
The Supreme Court has just told the EPA that they have no authority to regulate CO2.
The EPA action against CO2 does break the law and the EPA must stop trying to regulate CO2.
The point of the hearing just became clear. Congress tells the EPA what they can regulate and CO2 is not on the list.
The EPA rules are de facto History. Congres rejected cap and trade system and the Supreme Court rejected the EPA de facto cap and trade system.
Finally, Life is GOOD! Junk science must now provide real data and proof that they don’t have.
They can’t just say the science is settled and then do whatever the Alarmists want.
Let me bring this out as a new piece
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Phil Brisley. | June 19, 2014 at 7:30 pm |
Mr.Mosher, you say “C02 warms. The question is how much.” I’ve heard pretty much the same from Cripwell. This is progress. Yes?
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Possibly, but I doubt it. I maintain that the question of “How much?” can ONLY be answered with hard, measured data. From what I have read, Steven, our hostess, the IPCC and all the rest of the warmists, think this question can be answered with estimates and the output of non-validated models.
Jim
What you sometimes write makes your position seem much harsher than I believe it actually is.
“C02 warms”
Except when it doesn’t.
*See every squiggly line climate science has ever produced.
Andrew
Coal warms.
“Coal warms”
Except when it gets colder.
Andrew
Yeah, Mosher going around repeating overly-simplified and unscientific assertions is indicative of the joke this whole thing is.
Andrew
There is hit piece on the net about the ‘hefty environmental cost,’ of cooking with charcoal this 4th of July. Why? Because the carbon footprint is so much greater using charcoal than cooking with gas.
But, charcoal is made from trees, a renewable resource. Add the fact that trees are replanted — making up for all of the putative greenhouse gas emissions caused by cooking with charcoal — and, all of the CO2-alarmism goes up in smoke.
Part of a speech delivered by David Victor of the University of California, San Diego, at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography as part of a seminar series titled “Global Warming Denialism: What science has to say” (Special Seminar Series, Winter Quarter, 2014):
“First, we in the scientific community need to acknowledge that the science is softer than we like to portray. The science is not “in” on climate change because we are dealing with a complex system whose full properties are, with current methods, unknowable. The science is “in” on the first steps in the analysis—historical emissions, concentrations, and brute force radiative balance—but not for the steps that actually matter for policy. Those include impacts, ease of adaptation, mitigation of emissions and such—are surrounded by error and uncertainty. I can understand why a politician says the science is settled—as Barack Obama did…in the State of the Union Address, where he said the “debate is over”—because if your mission is to create a political momentum then it helps to brand the other side as a “Flat Earth Society” (as he did last June). But in the scientific community we can’t pretend that things are more certain than they are.”
David Victor sounds like a good man. Maybe “please call me Senator Boxer” could give an ear.
Here we go, 100% consensus, WH lies;
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Taxes that are allocated to a program work but politicians will not allocate taxes, refusing any setup that doesn’t alloe future redirection of funds
I.e. general revenue. General revenue alloes the nondupporters to come on side because they know the majority of the money will be siphoned off to places that they agree with.
Cap and trade looks good, threatens no big business that can pass on the costs and can be an investment itself: just ask Al Gore. A tax is in the voters’ face, the owners of which are sophisticated enough to know the tax is unlikely to go to its putting ends.
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http://reason.com/blog/2014/06/23/tax-carbon-or-innovate-to-save-the-clima
… and he goes on from there.
http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/22/opinion/sunday/lessons-for-climate-change-in-the-2008-recession.html?_r=0
A pure carbon tax is a reasonably efficient means to raise revenue. If you establish a $4.50 per gallon tax on gas, you would balance the US budget deficit.
I would rather see a Rob Starkey tax of $10,000 per year on Rob Starkey.
Jim
People in the US like to pretend that we can spend more than we generate in revenue forever. We can’t. Unfortunately a 10k additional tax on me would be meaningless.
Then the law of supply and demand kicks in and the deficit is not fixed. Gas is not inelastic.
Phil
There is very little that is completely inelastic economically, but it does not seem that a major increase in price would dramatically reduce consumption in the short term. I’d guess demand for gas would only go down by between 8%-15% in the 1st year.
Rob,
I was getting my econ degree back in the mid 70s. At the time, one of my professors, one of my favorites as well (he did listen) told me that Gas was inelastic. And that was just after the oil embargo and the “explosion” of gas prices from around a quarter a gallon to over 50 cents (several years later they started talking about what to do when it exceeded a buck a gallon).
What he missed was that gas was artificially low and so the rise was not a factor. That is no longer the case.
You are talking about (we’ll say conservatively) a doubling of price over night. When gas went up over $3 initially, you did see a pull back. As time has gone on, and the price has stayed steady, it has come back. But that demonstrated that gas is indeed elastic. And to a greater degree than many would like to think. Almost every state – and definitely the feds (although they cry poor mouth at every opportunity, so we can ignore them) is crying because tax revenues are down. And they will go down with a doubling as well.
You say 8-15% – that still shows some elasticity (albeit not much). And since we have nothing to lose but pride on a wager (as I doubt we will be able to test it – and hope to hell we will not), I bet it goes down at a minimum of 30% the first year, and settles at 40% before starting up again. People will figure out alternatives. They always do.
Oh, and if they do pass the tax, I am moving all my money (investments) into hybrids. They will finally turn a profit (except for the volt).
Phil
I generally agree with what you have written and when I was studying economics we described gas as “relatively inelastic”. My estimate of an 8-15% reduction in consumption is just an estimate. If I recall the tax in Canada yielded about 5% reduction. You note that I only estimated a 1st year reduction. A cost increase of that magnitude would probably result in a larger percentage change over longer periods, but people would need time to adapt.
@Rob – Understood. And if the tax was a fraction of the price, I would tend to agree with you. But that is a doubling overnight. Patterns would change. Travel would be cut way back. And of course people would seek alternatives (public transportation, bikes, or walking). That was my point. We do have a base of usage that other than a shortage, we will not go below (trucks still got to deliver goods). But a 100% increase over night would cause most to curtail trips, and others just to plain not be able to afford it.
BTW Rob – whether it is 8 or 30%, I think we are in agreement that the estimated revenue from such a tax would exceed actual revenue. That is how it almost always is with government revenue. We see goods as elastic (or relatively inelastic which still means some elasticity), but the government never does.
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/
http://uspolitics.einnews.com/news/supreme-court-congress
https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/oagnews/release.php?id=4768
Senate Hearing – Climate Change: The Need to Act Now
Supreme Court – CO2 – Don’t even think about getting rid of CO2 without Congress Laws that allow that.
CO2 is not Pollution and the EPA has no authority to make it a Pollutant.
I entered “Carbon Pollution” for a Wikipedia search and I was told.
The page “Carbon Pollution” does not exist.
I knew that.
Carbon is a pollutant and it is not carbon dioxide (CO2), carbon dioxide is an invisible non-toxic gas and is not a pollutant, it is the stuff of life because without it there would be no plant life. carbon dioxide and carbon are two totally different substances and one only shows their general ignorance by confusing them. Carbon dioxide has been accused of causing global warming and there may be a partial truth in that accusation, but no one knows enough about carbon dioxide to predict its future effect on climate.
Fortunately we do not have to throughly understand the Physics of CO2, because there has been no global increase in temperature in the last 16 years or so. despite large increases in CO2 concentration, which is still however less than 1% of the atmosphere. Of course average temperatures fluctuate so it is easy to identify years when some are slightly higher and some will pounce on these to justify their claims of pending disaster.