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Tom Curtis at 00:37 AM on 11 April 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #14
archie lever @3, warming has "plateaued" at a rate of rise greater than the twentieth century average (GISTemp). That little fact the economist probably forgot to mention. Further, paleo studies of climate sensitivity continue to show climate sensitivity greater than 3 C. Studies of temperature increase in the last century and some studies of the increase since the LGM show lower sensitivity; but the latter depend on a controversially high finding of LGM temperatures and the former are very noisy. So perhaps, and hopefully they are right about the climate sensitivity - but that is not a conclusion that can be drawn from the full range of recent studies.
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Tom Curtis at 00:33 AM on 11 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @39, apparently it is your intended stragegy to argue against a policy because half the policy will have consequences that the full policy does not. That makes your arguments trolling in any man's language. Given that, and that you have been comprehensively refuted, there seems little point in further responding to you.
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archie lever at 00:32 AM on 11 April 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #14
According to last week's 'Economist' report warming has plateaued and climate sensitivity is most likely lower than the 3 degreesC for doubling CO2. Any comment on this?
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Tom Curtis at 00:29 AM on 11 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Composer99 @37, the 2009 Census data does show that households in the North-East spend, on average, 22.5% more on utilities than do households in the west. The next most expensive region after the North-East is the Mid-West, then South, then West. The increase is almost entirely due to increased demand for electricity, gas and fuel oil so it is a reasonable conjecture that the increased energy use is due to heating requirements.
That increase is partly compensated because the West and particularly the South spend far more on gasoline than do the Mid-West and the North-East (particularly). Never-the-less, a carbon tax would slightly favour the warmer regions of the US over the colder in the short term. (Of course, longer term heating bills in the north will fall, while cooling bills in the south will rise.)
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Kevin8233 at 00:29 AM on 11 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Composer 99,
I missed Houston. Minneapolis also jumps out as an anomoly. However, the rest remains. Also, keep in mind that cost of utilities is not definitively amount of utilities, as the repective price of utilities is not listed.
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Kevin8233 at 00:17 AM on 11 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Composer 99,
The evidence that Tom Curtis presents straightforwardly shows that expenditure increases, in absolute terms, with income in the US. It then follows that, contrary to your assertion, a per capita or otherwise income-neutral carbon dividend or rebate will disproportionately benefit lower income individuals & families - indeed, all the more so if they spend a higher proportion of their income on energy.
Think it through. The low income people spend a higher percentage of income on energy. The proposal is to "tax" carbon, effectively raising the price of energy. This will push the percentage up that lower income people spend on energy, not down. How that tax revenue then gets distributed through lower income tax rates (as in the example presented) is a different issue.
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Tom Curtis at 00:16 AM on 11 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @36, assuming for ease of calculation that all people within the same income bracket pay the same amount on utilities, then the maximum percentage payment for the 70-79K bracket is 4.9%, not 5.58%. On the same basis, the minimum percentage payment in the 120-150K bracket is 2.76% while the maximum is 3.47% so both of your figures are out.
More importantly, you continue to ignore the fact that you are criticizing a proposal compensation in the form of a flat rate per capita dividend. The people in the 70-79K bracket pay approximately $3500 per annum on utilities. The people in the 120-150 K bracket pay approximately $4200 per annum on utilities. So, first, 3500 < 4200 so the people in the lower income bracket will pay less carbon tax than the people in the higher income bracket. Further, because they are paying less and recieving the same amount back, they will be relatively better of after the carbon tax plus dividend than the people in the higher bracket.
Resorting to percentages to confuse the issue is the lowest form of legerdemain. It ignores the fact that the flat rate dividend represents a far greater percentage of low incomes than it does of high incomes.
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saileshrao at 00:11 AM on 11 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
Correction: the climate was relatively stable in the past 10,000+ years. That does not necessarily mean that it is still stable today. Perhaps that past stability had to do with the fact that ecosystems were relatively intact then. Currently, we have destroyed half the forests on land and overfished and destroyed three-quarters of the marine fisheries. Will the climate remain relatively stable as we merrily continue with the destruction of ecosystems at an exponentially growing pace, mainly to satiate the appetites of the rich one-third of humanity? That question cannot be answered based on simple extrapolations from the past.
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Composer99 at 00:09 AM on 11 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin:
The evidence that Tom Curtis presents straightforwardly shows that expenditure increases, in absolute terms, with income in the US. It then follows that, contrary to your assertion, a per capita or otherwise income-neutral carbon dividend or rebate will disproportionately benefit lower income individuals & families - indeed, all the more so if they spend a higher proportion of their income on energy.
How does this prove any point you have sought to make on this thread? How does it tie into the discussion in the OP of reducing subsidies to fossil fuel production? It seems to me to be contradictory to the primary claims you have made on this thread.
You have also claimed, without substantiation, that the regional energy consumption patterns show that "it does stand up that the colder the city you live in, the more you will spend on energy."
Whether or not this is the case, you cannot conclude so based solely on your comments: all you have is a correlation and no analysis showing that it fits together the way you want it to.
At any rate, just looking at the data, one notes that the regional breakdown shows that the largest expenditures, by region, of utility & fuels (in the housing category) and gasoline & motor oil (in the transportation category), occurs in the Housten-Galveston-Brazoria region. For the reasons I have outlined above this is not a conclusive blow against the notion that expenditures on energy relate to climate of one's residence, but if you wish to support the relationship you are claiming exists, you must take it into account in your analysis.
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Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
With respect to possible spikes in the Holocene record, as claimed by 'skeptics' looking for alternative explanations for current warming: It's worth noting that there is a 200-400 year spike that we have significant evidence for - the 8.2 Kya decrease in temperatures, possibly caused by meltwater from the Laurentide ice sheet. This shows up in ice cores, sediments, and changes in sea level.
On the other hand, we have no evidence for major warm spikes in the Holocene, certainly nothing like the ~0.9 C current warming, nor any plausible natural mechanisms that could cause one. Claims to the contrary are, IMO, a mix of claiming "it's a natural cycle, "it's not us" and simple denial of the greenhouse effect.
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BillEverett at 23:43 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
(1) I have added a comment (awaiting moderation) to the Tamino blog post.
(2) I don't find anything in the Marcott analysis to give me reasons to be optimistic about the future. First, we have rather good reasons to believe that nothing like the last two hundred years (approximately) of climate history has happened in the last several million years. Second, despite all that we don't know about the fine details of the Earth's climate system, I think we have a rather good general understanding of the role of greenhouse gases (carbon-based gases in particular) in controlling temperature and the carbon cycling in the atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere system with slow but more or less steady draining to the lithosphere and occasional brief small releases of carbon from the lithosphere (principally volcanic releases) to the active atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere climate system. Third, as I understand the Pleistocene ice core data, the general picture is that CH4 was the initial amplifier of the Milankovich warming stimulus with CO2 being the subsequent "enforcer" of the warming periods. Fourth, about two hundred years ago, humans began a massive transfer of carbon from the lithosphere to the atmosphere-hydrosphere-biosphere system. So far as I know, this massive injection of lithospheric carbon into the climate system is unprecedented in recent history (recent meaning the last few million years). To me, it seems somewhat similar to the volcanic transfer of lithospheric carbon that preceded the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum. And we only need to continue business as usual for a few more decades to achieve in about three hundred years something similar to the change in atmospheric CO2 concentrations that occurred over about ten thousand years 50 million years ago.
Given the above, I don't think we really have sufficient historical information to accurately predict the outcome of a really new climate ball game. My main point is that it is not simply that we have increased the carbon-based greenhouse gases in the atmosphere (and dissolved in the hydrosphere) but it is most significant where we have taken that carbon from.
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bouke at 23:23 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
MartinG @3: "Nobody, not even ”contrarians” disputes that surface temperatures have risen in the last 100 years"
That just isn't true. Even a US senator claims that nobody disagrees that we are in a cold period. A short read on contrarian blogs shows that they throw doubt on anything they don't like, including the modern temperature record.
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chriskoz at 22:53 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
CBDunkerson @6,
Tamino explains here why 'magical temperature spikes' of last century's magnitude could not go undetected in Marcott 2013 reconstruction.
To those who doubt the possibility of detecting the high frequency periodic signal with lower frequency sampling, just think what Fourier transform can do for you. Look here for the simplest example.
I agree with Tamino that Marcott 2013 signal proves conclusively their main result (that last century warming trend is unprecedented) regardeless of logical explanations.
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Kevin8233 at 22:46 PM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
It is noteworthy that household expenditure on energy as a percentage of income declines with increasing wealth; so a dividend based on taxable income would make the poor worse of - but that would be a political decision to do so, and is not what is being proposed.
It is further noteworthy that household expenditure on rates including electricity never rises above 4.5% of household income, showing that doom and gloom stories about the impacts of a carbon tax on the poor are works of fiction.
From the tables in the article you supplied, the percent income spent on "utilities" for the 70 79K bracket is 5.58%. The percent income spent by the 120 - 150K bracket goes down to 3.77%. This just proves my point. The primary need for heating / cooling, with some elasticity for wealth thrown in - I'll grant you the elasticity is more than I anticipated.
As to never rising above 4.5%, the figures you supplied also included water, so whether the 5.58% is less than 4.5% once water is removed is impossible to tell.
Scaddenp,
If you look at the data that Tom Curtis supplied, you will notice that the highest consumers were in cities like Philadelphia, New York, and Boston, and the least consuming cities were San Diego, and San Franscisco, so it does stand up that the colder the city you live in, the more you will spend on energy.
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CBDunkerson at 22:16 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
The thing which tickles me about the whole Marcott uproar is that the graph isn't really 'new'. Past studies had shown the same basic shape... which is why the Shakun reconstruction can be lined up with Marcott in the first graph in the post above. The Marcott study has just narrowed the uncertainty ranges. Just as subsequent versions of the original 'hockey stick' time period have given us an increasingly clear image there.
There will inevitably be more analyses of the Marcott (and Shakun) time periods which will continue to give us better and better data. The 'skeptics' are now clinging to a ridiculous belief in 'magical temperature spikes'... there is some disagreement over whether the Marcott study conclusively disproves that or not, but it really doesn't matter because there is no logical explanation for how they could exist in the first place.
The BEST surface temperature study had an interesting approach of including even very fragmentary temperature records and correcting for outliers. I expect we'll eventually see something like that applied to the various proxy records... so you'd have the widely spaced proxies from Shakun and Marcott in the same study with annual proxies from Mann and other ~1400 year 'hockey sticks' and the even more detailed proxies used to match the instrumental record in Anderson. Different proxies over different time periods, but they can all be woven together to create a single record of equal or greater accuracy than the individual studies.
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CBDunkerson at 21:37 PM on 10 April 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #14
Actually, Delingpole has been a special kind of crazy for a long time. He just isn't as well known as Monckton.
That said, I've never been comfortable with the fact that there have been calls for a 'climate Nuremberg' going the other way too. People should be held accountable for lies, slander, and destructive deceptions, but let's leave the Nazis out of it.
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CBDunkerson at 21:30 PM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
Huh. I knew a lot of Antarctica was below sea level because of the ice pressing down on it, but I'm surprised to see large contiguous swathes like that. This would suggest to me that if the mass of ice on top melts enough that it would no longer weigh enough to push the bottom ice down to the land surface large portions of the ice sheet could just 'pop' free from buoyancy and float away. Not going to happen any time soon, but significant portions of the Antarctic ice may wind up being lost through export rather than in situ melting.
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MA Rodger at 19:33 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
MartinG @3.
It is true that almost all contrarians don't dispute the surface temperature record but there are plenty who dispute its validity as a true record of surface temperature.
As for your assertions that if the end point of the Marcot curve were at an earlier time would yield some sort of 'anti-hockeystick', this is entirely wrong. The Marcot curve does still have an uptick all of its own, even after the 'proxy fall-off' issue is addressed. See the Tamino graph here.
And while marrying up the last century's temperature record at the correct equivilant reference temperature may not be an entirely trivial process, even if the temperature record was stuck on at an obviously low position, the resulting up-tick remains a feature of unprecedented suddenness. -
John Mason at 19:14 PM on 10 April 2013The History of Climate Science
@ chriskoz - translation is underway!
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Lars Rosenberg at 18:16 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
No, Martin, they are not ”adding the two curves together”. What happens i this:
Their statistical algorithm generates the whole curve from the proxies, with the uptick. On that curve they perform a number of tests, which show that the reconstruction from 1890 onwards is not robust. This is shown in detail in the article.
This means they can't use the last part of their curve. To be able to compare the rest of the reconstruction with modern temperatures they align its mean whith one of the curves from Mann (2008), which in turn is referenced to the instrumental 1961-1990 mean.That gives them access to the modern temperature scale. They never use the uptick in any of their conclusions.
The whole thing is very elegant. The confusion comes from all those commenters who did not read the paper. -
MartinG at 15:16 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
Im struggling with this article. Nobody, not even ”contrarians” disputes that surface temperatures have risen in the last 100 years, the dispute concerns the causes. I have understood that the point about the marcot blade is that it is incompatible with the rest of the curve. If the data added at the end had been taken from another time – one where there had been a short term downturn in temperatures – and this was joined to the smoothed long term curve – then the graph would show a different picture – a smooth curve with a downturn at the end. Therefore it is scientifically invalid to consider the data from the blade (which is real in its own right) together with the data from the smoothed long term series (which are also correct within their framework). Given this understanding the Marcot curve itself is quite correct, and it does not change anything we didn’t know before. But its interpretation is open to misunderstanding and misuse – and gives endless opportunities for biased input from both sides of the debate. So in that way Marcot et al were misguided in adding the two curves together.
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mikeh1 at 14:55 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
Dana. You say
There may be some valid criticism that the press release and some media discussions were not clear that the comments about recent unprecedented warming are based on comparing the instrumental temperature record to the Marcott reconstruction
Part of the problem is the difficulty that some in the media had in understanding the article. When Andrew Revkin of the NYT was asked to substantiate his claim that
there’s also room for more questions — one being how the authors square the caveats they express here with some of the more definitive statements they made about their findings in news accounts.
he stated the following
One was cited in another comment above, but here it is again (Shaun Marcott, quoted by Seth Borenstein in a widely published AP story): “In 100 years, we’ve gone from the cold end of the spectrum to the warm end of the spectrum,” Marcott said. “We’ve never seen something this rapid. Even in the ice age the global temperature never changed this quickly.”
Yet Borenstein's article was quite clear as Nick Stokes pointed out when the same claim was made on his blog.
No, the excitement from Borenstein et al was based on Fig 3 in the paper which compares the distribution of proxy temperatures with two decades of instrumental; 1900-9 and 2000-9. Here's SB saying that:
"The decade of 1900 to 1910 was one of the coolest in the past 11,300 years — cooler than 95 percent of the other years, the marine fossil data suggest. Yet 100 years later, the decade of 2000 to 2010 was one of the warmest, said study lead author Shaun Marcott of Oregon State University. Global thermometer records only go back to 1880, and those show the last decade was the hottest for this more recent time period."
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chriskoz at 14:20 PM on 10 April 2013Real Skepticism About the New Marcott 'Hockey Stick'
Some people are trying to credit Steve McIntyre, who apparently first spotted the issues with Marcott 2013 interpretations. In fact, McIntyre's comments inspired Tamino's analysis.
To those allegations, Tamino has an excellent response in his For the Record post. I particularly like this part:
...perhaps if Steve McIntyre had been more careful in explaining himself, more interested in communicating reality than in demeaning the results, and less indulgent of his own sneering, people might refer to him rather than me when mentioning the impact of proxy droupout, and the "dot earth" blog might be referring to his posts rather than mine as "illuminating."
In other words: McIntyre lost a real chance of contributing to paloeclimate science by seeking to confuse and deminor the Marcott 2013 results rather than constructively criticise/explain them. He can blame only himself.
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DSL at 12:54 PM on 10 April 2013It's the sun
Chris: "Those who cite CO2 as the only culprit in weather change are again ignoring the fact that our models to date have failed to predict temperature and weather movements with a reasonable degree of accuracy."
Ironically, it's fake skeptics who pull this sort of maneuver by claiming "natural cycles" or solar or GCRs and refusing to account for the rather well-established greenhouse effect and its recent enhancement.
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Composer99 at 12:40 PM on 10 April 2013It's the sun
Chris:
There is a fundamental problem with your argument, as indeed with any argument which tries to exonerate the enormous - and extraordinarily rapid - rise in atmospheric CO2 as the principal cause of the recent, also extraordinarily rapid, changes in the Earth climate system. This fundamental problem is that it flies in the face of extremely well-validated radiative physics.
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Daniel Bailey at 11:07 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
Rob Painting was kind enough to point out this NSIDC bedrock graphic of Antarctica:
From the Atlas of the Cryosphere, Antarctica page.
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scaddenp at 10:10 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Hmm, so by Kevin's logic an Inuit hunter has massive need for energy consumption and so must be spending more on heating than an apartment dweller in New York?
However, I am very pleased the Tom Curtis has now supplied us actual data (as a science should) on energy expenditure per income bracket.
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chriskoz at 08:59 AM on 10 April 20132013 SkS Weekly Digest #14
A denial press release that Mike Mann shared on his FB.
Denier Delingpole Wishes For ‘Climate Nuremberg’
It's not worth reading the original (referred therein by Joe Romm) because it's indeed nauseating, if taken seriously. Waste of time to wrestle with pigs. But it's worth at least reading this commentary by Joe.
Climate Science Deniers have reached the new low. To date I thought Monckton was the bigest nutter among the deniers. Now he was overtaken by James Delingpole.
This James Delingpole fellow openly admits he has nothing but the "art of metaphor". Abusive and bullying metaphors, like a kindy child, or a nutter in a mental institution. And a UK Daily Telegraph has printed it. Unbelievable! Lower than I ever expected. I wonder if they can go any lower still... -
Tom Curtis at 08:43 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @30, here are US expenditures by income bracket on rates and gasoline in 2009:
Rates include both electricity and water, and it is possible but very unlikely that the increased expenditure on rates with income comes solely from increased water consumption. The increased expenditure on gasoline and motor oils with income is straightforward.
You make unsubstantiated claims to support the contention that high income groups spend less on energy than low income groups. Of course, your anecdotal evidence is incomplete. You mention energy efficient fridges, but fail to factor in the size of the fridge, or the number of fridges. A low income household is likely to struggle by on a single fridge while a high income household will have a large fridge, a freezer and one or two bar fridges.
Likewise your claim on energy use for heating fails to factor in the size of the dwelling being heated.
I note that Sphaerica calls your claims anecdotal evidence. They do not rise to the level of anecdotal evidence which would require you to actually mention specific cases, including showing that the high income familly actually spent less on energy, something you do not bother doing.
Assuming, as is reasonable, that expenditure on household energy use rises with rates, it is clear that household energy expenditure rises with rates. It is further clear that. Ergo higher income families would pay a higher absolute value in the carbon tax, and recieve less than their expenditure on the carbon tax back from a flat rate dividend. Conversely, those on low incomes would spend less on the carbon tax and recieve back more from the flat rate dividend than they pay. Ergo they would be better of. They could invest that extra money recieved in high energy efficiency fridges (which are not significantly more expensive than low energy efficiency fridges) and insulation and be better of still.
It is noteworthy that household expenditure on energy as a percentage of income declines with increasing wealth; so a dividend based on taxable income would make the poor worse of - but that would be a political decision to do so, and is not what is being proposed.
It is further noteworthy that household expenditure on rates including electricity never rises above 4.5% of household income, showing that doom and gloom stories about the impacts of a carbon tax on the poor are works of fiction.
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Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
Note - an earlier summary of this paper as a poster presentation is available here, for those blocked by the paywall.
This poster also describes using an ensemble of AGCM (atmospheric global climate model) integrations without the pressure observations, finding that the reconstructions with the pressures are a much better match to surface temperature observations - the barometric pressures add considerable information.
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Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
william - They used data from the Twentieth Century Reanalysis Project and:
...have ignored all air temperature observations and instead inferred them from observations of barometric pressure, sea surface temperature, and sea-ice concentration.
[Emphasis added]
This was done to remove influences of various influences on surface land stations such as urban heat influence, station moves, equipment changes, land use, statistical processing, and all of the other things that 'skeptics' have been complaining about.
In short, they estimate air temperatures by what they could be when constrained by the other measurements.
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scaddenp at 06:28 AM on 10 April 2013It's the sun
Chris, your idea of "reasonable degree of accuracy" obviously expects models to predict science says they cannot. They are designed to predict climate not weather and have shown considerable skill. Please see "Models are unreliable" and feel free to comment if you still dispute this after reading the article.
Please note to that strawmen arguments are easy - disputing a claim that the science has never made - but doing that here will win you no points.
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william5331 at 06:14 AM on 10 April 2013Land Surface Warming Confirmed Independently Without Land Station Data
Do I feel dumb. I didn't understand a word of this article. What data were they using to determine the temperature change over the period studied.
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Pete Dunkelberg at 05:40 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
Compare Bedmap2.
http://spaceref.com/earth/antarctica/bedmap2-a-detailed-view-of-antarcticas-landmass.html
If enough ice melts, the two separate populations become one.
Moderator Response:[DB] Hotlinked URL; embedded linked graphic.
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Lanfear at 04:51 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
Actually all of the links in the reference-list are Facebook-prefixed.
Moderator Response:[DB] You are correct. Bitly was used to keep the links short for the article, originally written for the FB site The Earth Story. I have updated the References Sources section into the standard SkS linked format.
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Phil at 04:51 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @30
People are going to consume energy in proportion to heating / cooling needs primarily, and only secondarily to wealth.
People also consume energy through Travel costs (both commuting and leisure) and indirectly through consumption of manufactured goods
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bouke at 02:09 AM on 10 April 2013Antarctic Octopus Living Testament To Global Warming
The link to http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v5/n6/full/ngeo1468.html links to facebook instead.
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Bob Lacatena at 01:32 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin,
You don't seem to have much faith in the concept of a free market economy. You also seem to be focusing on rather narrow (and ill-conceived) anecdotal episodes.
If a lot of people need more energy efficient appliances, then manufacturers will be motivated to create and supply them. People will also be motivated to find other alternatives, like wearing a sweater instead of just cranking up the heat. Rich people can ignore that sort of thing, but most people simply need to adjust their behavior. As their behavior changes, and demand for inefficient products goes down, the market must similarly adjust.
This is basically how capitalism works... unless you break the system by providing subsidies while ignoring external costs (i.e. the damage done by greenhouse gases), so that people can pretend that there is no problem while other people get disproportionately rich by absorbing all of the wealth while the ultimate burden will be shared by everyone, eventually.
The basic idea of a free market economy is that things cost what they cost, and the market will adjust -- through changes in demand, innovation and evolution -- to meet reality. Subsidies and external costs break that system. They should be anathema to anyone who believes in a true, free market economy.
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CBDunkerson at 01:18 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, there is a vast difference between 'it could be done wrong' and 'it cannot be done right'. The essential point is that it is entirely possible to eliminate the massive direct and indirect subsidies to the fossil fuel industry without negative economic impacts. A carbon tax with rebate is one way to do that.
As to 'rich people have greater energy efficiency'... I don't care how efficient the machinery is, a mansion is going to take more power to heat than a two bedroom apartment. Find a study showing that total energy use decreases with wealth anywhere on the planet and we'll talk. Until then it just sounds like nonsense.
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Kevin8233 at 00:41 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
1) It is patently obvious that a carbon tax will draw money from people approximately in line with their energy use. That means wealthy people who have high energy use will pay more tax. It follows that if the rebate is equal for each person, people on low incomes will be rebated more than they originally paid in carbon tax. You would get a lot more respect around here if you did not feel it incumbent on you to assert such blatent faslehoods so frequently.
It is not patently obvious at all. People are going to consume energy in proportion to heating / cooling needs primarily, and only secondarily to wealth.
As wealth increases, so does one's ability to purchase better more energy efficeint equipment, or to better insulate one's home. In fact, some lower income families do not own the home, so they can't make efficeincy improvements (while some don't pay for heat).
2) As is also patently obvious, you don't need to invest anything to take advantage of a flat rate per capita rebate. Further, you can cut energy usage as a simple means of reducing additional costs, something anybody can do.
My point on reduction of energy usage - Let's say you make plenty of money. You get a top of the line refridgerator that is tops in efficeincy. I do not make as much. I have to settle for a Searsbottom of the line refridgerator.
Bottom line, I consume more electricity every day, yet you make more money than I do.
CBDunkerson,
Thanks, that was an interesting article. Glad it worked for them, but I do know that US congressmen / Senators or even state representatives can / will screw anything up/
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Composer99 at 00:31 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin:
If the vast majority of human history shows anything, it is that humans can get by - and even thrive - with extremely low energy consumption by the standards of modern materially affluent societies. Indeed, there are many societies and proto-societies still extant in the modern world where people appear to be getting along just fine with but a fraction of the energy consumption that materially affluent societies engage in. Some of them are in quite inhospitable environments, to boot.
So as far as I can see energy consumption is rather more flexible than you make it out to be.
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Tom Curtis at 00:29 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @26, from your first article:
"More people die from the cold weather in Britain than in any other European country, including Siberia."
As Siberia is undoubtedly colder than Britain, clearly the excess deaths are not caused by the cold per se but by not taking adequate measures against the cold. Or, as the article says, quoting William Keatinge,
"Many people here simply do not take the cold seriously and appreciate the danger it poses.
"Simple things like wrapping up warm and keeping moving when hanging about in the cold really can save your life".
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Tom Curtis at 00:20 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @23,
1) It is patently obvious that a carbon tax will draw money from people approximately in line with their energy use. That means wealthy people who have high energy use will pay more tax. It follows that if the rebate is equal for each person, people on low incomes will be rebated more than they originally paid in carbon tax. You would get a lot more respect around here if you did not feel it incumbent on you to assert such blatent faslehoods so frequently.
2) As is also patently obvious, you don't need to invest anything to take advantage of a flat rate per capita rebate. Further, you can cut energy usage as a simple means of reducing additional costs, something anybody can do.
3) Energy consumption is not infinitely flexible; but nobody said emissions would be reduced solely by eliminating consumption. An increased cost of supply that is not applied to emissions free generation will drive up supply by emissions free generation. It will also drive the substitution of lower emissions generation (gas) for higher (coal).
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Kevin8233 at 00:14 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
Here are a couple of articles for you...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/1754561.stm
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-16817162
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1332343/Nine-pensioners-died-cold-hour-winter-prices-soar.html
Moderator Response:[DB] Note that link-vomiting (posting links without proper context) is frowned upon in this establishment. And a Comments Policy violation.
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CBDunkerson at 00:13 AM on 10 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, as Tom Dayton notes... your rhetoric is at odds with reality. Indeed, Skeptical Science has an article about this thing which cannot possibly happen.
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Tom Dayton at 23:56 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, Alaska has been doing this for decades. Not exactly a hotbed of Communism.
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Kevin8233 at 23:16 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
CBDunkerson,
Under the rebate plan discussed by scaddenp, there is no way it is easier for people to heat their homes. At best, it is break even. However, when was the last time that a govt. sponsorred rebate plan worked as advertised? The next time will be the first.
This essentially transfers money from high energy consumers (i.e. corporations and the wealthy) to low energy consumers (e.g. the poor)...
Again, not true. The corporations and the wealthy have the money to invest in infrastructure to take advantage of these incentives. Those on fixed income, or low income do not!
TOM CURTIS,
The most fundamental point is that your claims amount to the claim that market mechanisms cannot efficiently adapt to changes in prices.
Just a comment on this point. Energy consumption is not infinitely flexible. There is a lower amount that people have to have. The market can, and does, flex its muscle and push in certain directions, however, it can only push so far.
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Tom Curtis at 23:04 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin @20, there are far cheaper ways to stay warm in the winter than central heating. Blankets, jumpers, thermal underwear etc can keep you warm enough to survive in Antarctica if thick enough, and that with no heating at all. No mere Chicago winter (or what ever example you have in mind) is cold enough to cause people to die from lack of central heating. So, in the first instance, even if your premise (that more people would not be able to afford central heating) where true, your conclusion that there would be more deaths is false. What there would be is more people wearing jumpers and thick socks indoors so they can keep the thermostat a little lower, with a net saving on the powerbill.
Of course, your premise is also dubious, as argued by DBDunkerson. In fact, a fee plus flat rate per capita dividend, as he envisions, will result in people currently at risk from cold having more money to do something about it. Of course, we cannot assume that a flat rate per capita dividend will be implimented anywhere, least of all in the US. Consequently we cannot be certain that people on low incomes will be better of because that depends on the particular design of the carbon tax or emissions trading scheme implimented. It does mean that the poor being worse of (if it occurs) will be a consequence of deliberate choice just as the poor in the US often not having enough money for power bills is a matter of political choice.
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CBDunkerson at 22:52 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Kevin, you're ignoring the rebate side of the equation... that is, the carbon tax dollars collected are then given back to the populace. This essentially transfers money from high energy consumers (i.e. corporations and the wealthy) to low energy consumers (e.g. the poor)... making it easier for them to heat their homes.
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Kevin8233 at 22:28 PM on 9 April 2013Trillions of Dollars are Pumped into our Fossil Fuel Addiction Every Year
Tom Curtis,
It also means that more people will not be able to afford to heat there homes during the winter, which also means that more people will die from an inability to properly heat their homes during the winter.
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