Robert : The facts led somewhere you didn’t like, so you declared war on the facts. And you’re losing the war. 
The “facts” being the “settled” government-funded science recommending more government, that is crucially dependent on hiding data and other Climategate-type frauds.
Yes, your beloved fraud army has done very well indeed.
Wall-Mart does indeed only negotiate, in the sense that it does not and cannot use proactive force or the threat thereof in its dealings; only government can do that.
That it may undercut competitors into bankruptcy, thereby bringing cheaper/better products to the public, does not contradict this.
Of course, most rational people realise the carbon pricing policy would cost a great deal more than $30 trillion and achieve no beneficial change whatsoever.
That would be true if the $30T disappeared into a black hole, or Al Gore’s capacious pockets, as opponents of carbon pricing claim. But if instead the $30T were used to incentivize use of lower-carbon energy sources, which is what the policies actually do, you would have to argue that CO2 was harmless in order to demonstrate no beneficial change whatsoever.
Everybody wants to think that their beliefs are the rational ones and the others are the irrational ones. Whenever I see “most rational people realize” in an argument, my first thought is that the arguer has failed to grasp this fundamental point. It is the same in religion. Muslims believe their version of Islam is the only correct one, whether they are Sunnis or Shiites Christians likewise, whether they are Catholics or Protestants. They all feel free to say “most rational people realize…”
Hey there just wanted to give you a brief heads up and let you know a
few of the pictures aren’t loading correctly. I’m not sure
why but I think its a linking issue. I’ve tried it in two different internet browsers and both show the same outcome.
It is clear from many of the comments on this and other threads that CAGW alarmism is an agenda of the Left / ‘Progressives’.
Progressive: “I am shocked, shocked to find that alarmism is going on in here.”
Meteorologist: “Your unprecedented temperature report, sir.”
@HAP: An open Arctic is a normal and natural event.
Absolutely right, HAP. This is why ships have been able to sail easily from Japan to Europe over the North Pole during summer for centuries.
Can I interest you in a well-known bridge that’s recently come on the market?
Vaughan Pratt,
Meteorologist: “Your unprecedented temperature report, sir.”
Skeptic: “Unprecedented over what period, Mr/Ms Meteorologist?”
‘I marvel at thee Octopus,
If I were thou, I’d call me Us.’
(Ogden Nash.)
http://www.orionmagazine.org/index.php/articles/article/6474/
‘On octopus intelligence .researcher Mather suggests that losing the ancestral protective shell freed the octopus for mobility and was a catalyst for brain development. ‘The octopus makes the decision to go out and get information, figures out how to get the information, gathers it, uses it, stores it.’
VP refers to recent (last 10K years) tendency for the Arctic ocean to be mostly closed to shipping. As for much of the debate on this blog, the time periods are far too short to draw conlusions (even 10k years is very short in the context of the lifespan of Earth). I understand that the Earth polar ice caps have only existed about a third of the time over the past 10million years or so.
http://www.geolsoc.org.uk/gsl/pid/6782;jsessionid=E6FF642F2987DD40DFF3227276269D74
Vaughan Pratt,
Thank you for your response to my comment.
Everybody wants to think that their beliefs are the rational ones and the others are the irrational ones. Whenever I see “most rational people realize” in an argument, my first thought is that the arguer has failed to grasp this fundamental point. It is the same in religion.
You got that absolutely right. Case in point, you think your comment is rational. And you think that wasting trillions on mitigation strategies without sound evidence they will do anything beneficial to the climate or sea level is rational. Your statement is correct and, without recognising it, you comment provides an excellent example of economically irrational argument.
That would be true if the $30T disappeared into a black hole, or Al Gore’s capacious pockets, as opponents of carbon pricing claim. But if instead the $30T were used to incentivize use of lower-carbon energy sources, which is what the policies actually do, you would have to argue that CO2 was harmless in order to demonstrate no beneficial change whatsoever.
Sorry, Vaughan, that is no better than ‘pub talk’ economics.
Nordhaus (2012) concludes that a policy that would implement the optimal carbon price throughout the whole world, in unison, and keep it at the optimal price throughout the world for 50 years and beyond would have a net benefit of $3.5 trillion (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/apr/26/climate-casino-exchange/). Just to be clear, that is a net benefit of just $3.5 trillion compared with $2,200 trillion cumulative global GDP (discounted at 4.3%) (i.e. about 0.02%). And the benefit is only realised if all the assumptions are met. Here are the assumptions that must be met to achieve that benefit (judge for yourself whether or not you think they are practicable):
The assumptions are academic but totally impracticable to achieve in the real world. Here are some of the assumptions:
• Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries)
• All emission sources are included (all countries and all emissions in each country)
• Negligible compliance cost
• Negligible fraud
• An optimal carbon price
• The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison
• The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically
• The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter).
If these assumptions are not met, the net benefits estimated will not be achieved. As Nordhaus says, p198 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf :
Moreover, the results here incorporate an estimate of the importance of participation for economic efficiency. Complete participation is important because the cost function for abatement appears to be highly convex. We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent instead of 100 percent will impose a cost penalty on abatement of 250 percent.
In other words, if only 50% of emissions are captured in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are caught, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are caught in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded).
Given the above, we can see that the assumptions are theoretical and totally impracticable. To recognize this, try to imagine how we could capture 100% of emissions from 100% of emitters in Australia (every cow, sheep, goat) in the CO2 pricing scheme, let alone expecting the same to be done across the whole world; e.g. China, India, Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia.
Lastly, I have not seen a proper, objective, impartial analyses of the probability that the proposed mitigation strategies (like CO2 tax and ETS) will have the desired effect on climate or sea levels. Have you?
Sorry, 100million years
Vaughan Pratt,
[This was response was posted elsewhere (in the wrong place)]
Thank you for your response to my comment.
Everybody wants to think that their beliefs are the rational ones and the others are the irrational ones. Whenever I see “most rational people realize” in an argument, my first thought is that the arguer has failed to grasp this fundamental point. It is the same in religion.
You got that absolutely right. Case in point, you think your comment is rational. And you think that wasting trillions on mitigation strategies without sound evidence they will do anything beneficial to the climate or sea level is rational. Your statement is correct and, without recognising it, you comment provides an excellent example of economically irrational argument.
That would be true if the $30T disappeared into a black hole, or Al Gore’s capacious pockets, as opponents of carbon pricing claim. But if instead the $30T were used to incentivize use of lower-carbon energy sources, which is what the policies actually do, you would have to argue that CO2 was harmless in order to demonstrate no beneficial change whatsoever.
Sorry, Vaughan, that is no better than ‘pub talk’ economics.
Nordhaus (2012) concludes that a policy that would implement the optimal carbon price throughout the whole world, in unison, and keep it at the optimal price throughout the world for 50 years and beyond would have a net benefit of $3.5 trillion (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2012/apr/26/climate-casino-exchange/). Just to be clear, that is a net benefit of just $3.5 trillion compared with $2,200 trillion cumulative global GDP (discounted at 4.3%) (i.e. about 0.02%). And the benefit is only realised if all the assumptions are met. Here are the assumptions that must be met to achieve that benefit (judge for yourself whether or not you think they are practicable):
The assumptions are academic but totally impracticable to achieve in the real world. Here are some of the assumptions:
• Negligible leakage (of emissions between countries)
• All emission sources are included (all countries and all emissions in each country)
• Negligible compliance cost
• Negligible fraud
• An optimal carbon price
• The whole world implements the optimal carbon price in unison
• The whole world acts in unison to increase the optimal carbon price periodically
• The whole world continues to maintain the carbon price at the optimal level for all of this century (and thereafter).
If these assumptions are not met, the net benefits estimated will not be achieved. As Nordhaus says, p198 http://nordhaus.econ.yale.edu/Balance_2nd_proofs.pdf :
Moreover, the results here incorporate an estimate of the importance of participation for economic efficiency. Complete participation is important because the cost function for abatement appears to be highly convex. We preliminarily estimate that a participation rate of 50 percent instead of 100 percent will impose a cost penalty on abatement of 250 percent.
In other words, if only 50% of emissions are captured in the carbon pricing scheme, the cost penalty for the participants would be 250%. The 50% participation could be achieved by, for example, 100% of countries participating in the scheme but only 50% of the emissions in total from within the countries are caught, or 50% of countries participate and 100% of the emissions within those countries are caught in the scheme (i.e. taxed or traded).
Given the above, we can see that the assumptions are theoretical and totally impracticable. To recognize this, try to imagine how we could capture 100% of emissions from 100% of emitters in Australia (every cow, sheep, goat) in the CO2 pricing scheme, let alone expecting the same to be done across the whole world; e.g. China, India, Eretria, Ethiopia, Mogadishu and Somalia.
Lastly, I have not seen a proper, objective, impartial analyses of the probability that the proposed mitigation strategies (like CO2 tax and ETS) will have the desired effect on climate or sea levels. Have you?
Something i think Greg Craven has forgotten, or oerhaps never understood, is that the strength or passion of a belief has little to do with whether that belief corresponds to the facts. Science is still about conjecture -> test -> refute or verify.
In Cancun it’s margaritas but they probably had flaming lighthouses.
Vaughan Pratt,
I don’t understand how that constitutes an argument against my “if instead the $30T were used to incentivize use of lower-carbon energy sources you would have to argue that CO2 was harmless in order to demonstrate no beneficial change whatsoever.”
That argument seems nonsensical to me. The second part does not follow logically from the first. There is s much wrong with this, I don’t know where to start, and frankly, can’t be bothered wasting the time on your proposition. First, there is a great big “IF” which is not what happens in reality and even if it was wouldn’t mean that the expenditure would cut CO2 emissions (as is demonstrated by the failure of our enormous expenditures on wind and solar making virtually no difference to emissions). The argument about whether or not to spend $30T on a policy should be made on cost-benefit grounds. The decisions whether or not to incentivise low carbon energy should be made on cost-benefit grounds. To argue, as you do, that rejecting economically irrational decisions is equivalent to arguing
that CO2 was harmless in order to demonstrate no beneficial change whatsoever.
makes no sense to me whatsoever.
After wading through C,H&L to get to Nordhaus, and then that opening paragraph, I felt I had completely lost track of the reasoning in whatever argument you were trying to make.
…
Instead of throwing out numbers left and right, just assume there are two, three, or four key numbers, call them A, B, C or whatever without worrying whether they’re in the billions, trillions, or quadrillions, and say something reasonable about them, meaning something where your reasoning is clear, ideally some general principle governing them.
As it stands any logic in your reasoning is drowned in a barrage of large numbers.
OK. I take your point that you lost track of the reason I linked to the Nordhaus versus Cohan, Harper and Lindzen debate. The reason for the link was to substantiate the $3.5 trillion net benefit of optimal carbon price policy to 2050 (claimed by Nordhaus, based on the academic but impracticable assumptions used the modelling).
Is the difference between acting now and waiting fifty years indeed “insignificant economically”? Given the importance attached to this question, I recalculated this figure using the latest published model. When put in 2012 prices, the loss is calculated as $3.5 trillion, and the spreadsheet is available on the Web for those who would like to check the calculations themselves. If, indeed, the climate skeptics think this is an insignificant number, they should not object to spending much smaller sums for slowing climate change starting now.”
I’ll try to address your complaint /comment / question in a different way. I am not going to repeat it all here, so I’d ask you to instead look at one article and three comments. These explain why carbon pricing will not and cannot work in the real world.
What the Carbon Tax and ETS will Really Cost
http://jennifermarohasy.com/2012/06/what-the-carbon-tax-and-ets-will-really-cost-peter-lang/
stevepostrel’s comment @ August 20, 2012 at 8:46 pm
http://judithcurry.com/2012/08/19/week-in-review-81812/#comment-231248
The ultimate compliance cost for the ETS</i?
http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=13578&page=0
Response to the above Nordhaus quote:
http://www.skepticalscience.com/news.php?n=1325#80611
We can also take a different approach to seeing that carbon pricing is not going to be able to be implemented in the real world. The elites in the western democracies have been trying to impose economically irrational polices like Kyoto Protocol, EU carbon trading system, cap and trade, mandated renewable energy and world government on the world for at least 20 years. They have utterly failed. The record of the past 20 years suggests it is not going to happen. Copenhagen conference demonstrated that and Cancun, Durban and Rio+20 should have removed any lingering doubts in all but the most dedicated elites, greens, zealots, and CAGW alarmists.
Carbon pricing cannot work for the many reasons listed in the linked articles.
Sheep like to congregate in flocks and will follow a leader w/out question.
Ref ter me Catalogue of Collectives …
Peter Lang,
You do seem to be a sad bitter old man with nothing better to do in retirement than rail against “left-progressives”.
I might just remind you that we aren’t all against the nuclear option. For instance, the UK’s Labour party recently came around to the conclusion that the only way they could meet emissions targets was to expand their nuclear capability, so to say that we all reject “economically rational solutions”, and are “are not even prepared to debate the facts” is just silly nonsense.
That said, it has to be acknowledged that a worldwide expansion of nuclear power isn’t a simple straightforward problem-free option, but these problems have to be overcome to allow a switch to a high-tech low CO2 economy. So, everyone who is in favour, left-progressives and conservatives alike, do have to be able to discuss the issue rationally.
It doesn’t make any sense for conservatives to say that it’s all the left’s fault for being against a solution to the problem, when they’ve previously said there is no problem, that CO2 is not a pollutant, its just a plant food etc , and that the IPCC is part of a UN conspiracy to impose a world government.
It does need a more intelligent line of argument than that to shift anti-nuclear public opinion, much of which exists on the conservative side too.
Precisely! Climate Etc needs to be a projection-free area. A few trends may be gleaned from the data but any conclusions must necessarily be taken with copious amounts of salt.
Mr, Doormann -
I would assume that it is a lot easier to get very precise predictions for solar eclipses than it could ever be to predict the weather (isn’t that ultimately what climate is – the weather?) generations from now – the math is relatively easy and there are many years of experience with precise and successful predictions of eclipses.
But for climate, I don’t think we could ever get beyond saying something like, “based on past experience we expect a cooling trend to begin about X years from now and last about Y years, with a possible dip in average temperatures of up to Z degrees.” While that is hugely better than the
@#$%&*!! being put out by the leftist-reactionary AGW false advertisers, I don’t see how we can get any more precise than that – and at least it’s honest and is better science to accept the possible sigmas in this sort of prediction than it is to buy into the faux certainties of AGW fabrications.
There is something telling about the fact that weather forecasters are frequently off the mark by many degrees and many inches of precipitation, with only a day or two of a forecasting horizon. Do we really expect anyone to accurately forecast the weather on, say, August 22, 2331 or for that matter, on August 22, 2013? Ain’t happenin’, bro.
I like Prof. Hug’s estimate that climate models err by a factor of 80, except that it seems to me that if anything the magnitude of the errors is greater than that. But it certainly helps to have someone pointing out the futility and uselessness of climate modeling
