A still incovenient truth...

[Blaidd Drwg]

On a side note, I think it should be job number 1 in the western world to make non-polluting, renewable energy as cheap and widely available as possible. Just about every problem we face can in some way be traced back to an energy problem. Much pollution is directly caused by the mining, refining, transporting, and burning of fossil fuels. Remove that and you've taken a major step in water and air quality, and you've had the side benefit of knocking out a huge chunk of AGW pollutants. Droughts (which are going to be worse if AGW is correct) can be alleviated with desalination and pumping once the infrastructure is there, and removing fossil fuel costs frees up a ton of capital to invest in infrastructure. Not to mention letting us deal with the Middle East in a much more open way with oil off the table as a strategic necessity.

The best way to do this is taxing the pollution. Tax credits and subsidies for whatever "clean" energy lobby spends the most time sucking off politicians is wasted money.

having tangential work in the energy sector I think this is as smart as it gets but will have two unintended effects. First, a new massive jobs program for folks like me to help polluters evade taxes along with the regulations. Second, a massive reshuffling in a number of related industrial users (think metal and glass recyclers) which operate on the tightest of margins. Like all new regs. in this country it would have the effect of consolidating power inot fewer players. Not saying this is either good or bad, but that is the way it rolls.

[Alfred_E._Neuman]

On a side note, I think it should be job number 1 in the western world to make non-polluting, renewable energy as cheap and widely available as possible. Just about every problem we face can in some way be traced back to an energy problem. Much pollution is directly caused by the mining, refining, transporting, and burning of fossil fuels. Remove that and you've taken a major step in water and air quality, and you've had the side benefit of knocking out a huge chunk of AGW pollutants. Droughts (which are going to be worse if AGW is correct) can be alleviated with desalination and pumping once the infrastructure is there, and removing fossil fuel costs frees up a ton of capital to invest in infrastructure. Not to mention letting us deal with the Middle East in a much more open way with oil off the table as a strategic necessity.

The best way to do this is taxing the pollution. Tax credits and subsidies for whatever "clean" energy lobby spends the most time sucking off politicians is wasted money.

having tangential work in the energy sector I think this is as smart as it gets but will have two unintended effects. First, a new massive jobs program for folks like me to help polluters evade taxes along with the regulations. Second, a massive reshuffling in a number of related industrial users (think metal and glass recyclers) which operate on the tightest of margins. Like all new regs. in this country it would have the effect of consolidating power inot fewer players. Not saying this is either good or bad, but that is the way it rolls.

If you first approach it from strictly the energy sector, I think it could work under two conditions:
1- The taxes would have to be at the consumer level. Classify carbon as a pollutant and levy a use tax on the end user. "Dirty" energy would be more expensive and "clean" energy would be a better alternative. This simultaneously drives users away from fossil fuels and spurs innovation in alternatives because the market now demands it instead of just thinks it's a neat idea for the future.

2 - Remove equivalent taxes from the tax burden, either by lowering taxes across the board or some form of credit for the amount spent on energy carbon taxes.

While this looks like a regressive way to go in that it hurts those who can't afford to pay more for energy, something like this has to be done. And the end result of hammering total energy prices into a non-issue helps everyone in the long run. It also removes the externalized costs of fossil fuel use that we all bear now - disease from polluted water and air, military costs to ensure oil security, etc. We're talking hundreds of billions of dollars a year taken off the table that can then be used for better purposes.

Attack the problem from an America first perspective. Fuck the rest of the world if they want to keep fighting over dead plants and breathing shit for air.

[Turdacious]

While this looks like a regressive way to go in that it hurts those who can't afford to pay more for energy, something like this has to be done.

A heavy handed solution that screws over the poor (both in our country and abroad) is not a good policy solution (either in terms of its consequences or it's enforceability). The poor here might not be able to do anything about a solution being put into place, but other relatively impoverished countries (some of them our neighbors) do not share those sentiments.

[Pinky]

On a side note, I think it should be job number 1 in the western world to make non-polluting, renewable energy as cheap and widely available as possible. Just about every problem we face can in some way be traced back to an energy problem. Much pollution is directly caused by the mining, refining, transporting, and burning of fossil fuels. Remove that and you've taken a major step in water and air quality, and you've had the side benefit of knocking out a huge chunk of AGW pollutants. Droughts (which are going to be worse if AGW is correct) can be alleviated with desalination and pumping once the infrastructure is there, and removing fossil fuel costs frees up a ton of capital to invest in infrastructure. Not to mention letting us deal with the Middle East in a much more open way with oil off the table as a strategic necessity.

The best way to do this is taxing the pollution. Tax credits and subsidies for whatever "clean" energy lobby spends the most time sucking off politicians is wasted money.

having tangential work in the energy sector I think this is as smart as it gets but will have two unintended effects. First, a new massive jobs program for folks like me to help polluters evade taxes along with the regulations. Second, a massive reshuffling in a number of related industrial users (think metal and glass recyclers) which operate on the tightest of margins. Like all new regs. in this country it would have the effect of consolidating power inot fewer players. Not saying this is either good or bad, but that is the way it rolls.

If you first approach it from strictly the energy sector, I think it could work under two conditions:
1- The taxes would have to be at the consumer level. Classify carbon as a pollutant and levy a use tax on the end user. "Dirty" energy would be more expensive and "clean" energy would be a better alternative. This simultaneously drives users away from fossil fuels and spurs innovation in alternatives because the market now demands it instead of just thinks it's a neat idea for the future.

2 - Remove equivalent taxes from the tax burden, either by lowering taxes across the board or some form of credit for the amount spent on energy carbon taxes.

While this looks like a regressive way to go in that it hurts those who can't afford to pay more for energy, something like this has to be done.

I think this is right. Carbon or other pollution taxes should be part of more comprehensive tax reform. Among other things, that would allow the taxes to pay for an expansion of EITC, a refundable tax credit or something else to counteract the effects on the working poor.

Of course, none of that is going to happen. Obama and others will continue to spout nonsense about "green jobs" and idiotic subsidies for the industry-of-the-week, while people simultaneously fight for misguided policies aimed at making fossil fuels cheaper than they should be. Like all other issues, politicians view the environment and tax reform as little more than props to pose with when journalists are around.

[grip junky]

Have we reached the temperature we were at before the little ice age? The little ice age was still going strong in the 1860s and at its coldest then just 152 years ago.

Lets think about what has happened in the last 152 years. Massive amounts of black top being laid, large build up of suburbia, the loss of farm fields and wood lands. Why is radiated heat not the problem? What does heat cause again? Is it beacause their is no way to tax it and no way to make people feel guilty over it and that means less grant money?

[Holland Oates]

Have we reached the temperature we were at before the little ice age? The little ice age was still going strong in the 1860s and at its coldest then just 152 years ago.

Lets think about what has happened in the last 152 years. Massive amounts of black top being laid, large build up of suburbia, the loss of farm fields and wood lands. Why is radiated heat not the problem? What does heat cause again? Is it beacause their is no way to tax it and no way to make people feel guilty over it and that means less grant money?

So you don't think the stuff we are pumping into the atmosphere is affecting the climate at all?

[grip junky]

Very little. Why so sure that it is?

Heat creates co2 not the other way around. So with all the heat being stored and radiated from structure why would that not be the cause? Stand in a empty parking lot at the hottest part of the day, stand in the woods or a meadow, wich one is the hottest? At sun set which one is the hottest which one is still radiating heat?

For me the earth has been hotter, it has been colder so I am not kept up at night by the thought of the earth warming. The do gooders and thier tax plans I am not happy about. The book on why the earth is warming is still open, radiating heat is a much better explanation. So the incovenient truth would be that it is hard to make money radiating heat.

[Testiclaw]

Heat creates co2 not the other way around.

[Holland Oates]

I'm not denying radiant heat doesn't play into general temp issues but green house gases are created naturally and unnaturally. And it just so happens that since the advent of the industrial revolution the unnatural production has increased significantly.

[Fat Cat]

Every time I see the title of this thread I think, "Obama".

[grip junky]

Take green house gas out of the equation.

If you acknowledge stored and radiated heat. The little ice age cooled the earth off very fast, came to an end less than 150 years ago and we have not reached the same temp as before it. How could you not expect the earth to be getting hotter.

[dead man walking]

[quote="grip junky"

Heat creates co2 not the other way around. So with all the heat being stored and radiated from structure why would that not be the cause? [/quote]

co2 traps heat. that's why it is call a greenhouse gas.

the warming contribution of urban heat islands has been studied and the effect is minor.

[grip junky]

On the other hand, the "global warming" and "climate change" movement are as worthy of my rage. They have absolutely ruined decades of progress on educating and reducing waste. They chase nebulous abstractions that are impossible to prove (it is a well-known, non-biased theory that warming creates CO2, not the other way around).

I google seems to check out.

[Turdacious]

D. Climate Change Is Not Anthropogenic.

On the scale of the instrumental record of Earth's surface temperature over the last 160 years, humans have had no effect, and the Solar Global Warming model advanced here would predict none. To the extent that IPCC might presume that human activities have altered Earth's temperature record, the effect is imaginary, absent some sentient extraterrestrial force that managed to keep the Sun synchronized with Earth's average surface temperature.

IPCC claims to have evidence of the fingerprint of man on Earthly gas and temperature processes are unsubstantiated. Each has a basis in graphical trickery. Two of these claims falsely demonstrate relationships known mathematically: the rate of CO2 increase compared to the rate of O2 decrease, and the rate of fossil fuel emissions compared to the rate of decrease in the isotopic weight of atmospheric CO2 based on mass balance principles. Other claims rely on investigator-manufactured data from ancient records blended into modern records, where the former are averages by a process requiring a year to centuries, while the latter are relatively instantaneous. The records requiring a year are tree ring reductions, while the others are measurements from ice cores that average gas concentrations over a range of couple of decades to a millennium and a half.

E. Greenhouse Gases Do Not Cause Climate Change.

Just as the Earth's temperature record following the Sun eliminates humans from the climate equation, so is the fate of the greenhouse effect. To the extent that the greenhouse effect is correlated with Earth's temperature history, the cause must link from the Sun to the greenhouse gases. The alternative is the silly proposition that solar radiation variations might be caused by changes in greenhouse gas concentrations.

F. AGW post-mortem.

AGW is dead. Here are some topics for the post-mortem. Forensic analysis of proxy reductions for correlations caused by data set sharing, and subjective smoothing into the instrument record. Forensic analysis of whether proxy temperature reductions have any validity. An à priori model for the tapped delay line representation of climate based on ocean currents. An à priori model for cloudiness as it responds to short wave radiation.

http://www.rocketscientistsjournal.com/2010/03/sgw.html

[Andy83]

It's snowing and the snow flakes are going up instead of down.
One ttrilion turkeys have been slaughtered and that's why because the earth is short on CO2.

[Gene]

If you first approach it from strictly the energy sector, I think it could work under two conditions:
1- The taxes would have to be at the consumer level. Classify carbon as a pollutant and levy a use tax on the end user. "Dirty" energy would be more expensive and "clean" energy would be a better alternative. This simultaneously drives users away from fossil fuels and spurs innovation in alternatives because the market now demands it instead of just thinks it's a neat idea for the future.

2 - Remove equivalent taxes from the tax burden, either by lowering taxes across the board or some form of credit for the amount spent on energy carbon taxes.

While this looks like a regressive way to go in that it hurts those who can't afford to pay more for energy, something like this has to be done.

I think this is right. Carbon or other pollution taxes should be part of more comprehensive tax reform. Among other things, that would allow the taxes to pay for an expansion of EITC, a refundable tax credit or something else to counteract the effects on the working poor.

Of course, none of that is going to happen. Obama and others will continue to spout nonsense about "green jobs" and idiotic subsidies for the industry-of-the-week, while people simultaneously fight for misguided policies aimed at making fossil fuels cheaper than they should be. Like all other issues, politicians view the environment and tax reform as little more than props to pose with when journalists are around.

....cause when Money talks ideology walks....

Now the problem for the German grid has become even worse. Thanks to a flood of subsidies unleashed by Angela Merkel’s government, renewable capacity has risen still further (solar, for instance, by 43 per cent). This makes it so difficult to keep the grid balanced that it is permanently at risk of power failures. (When the power to one Hamburg aluminium factory failed recently, for only a fraction of a second, it shut down the plant, causing serious damage.) Energy-intensive industries are having to install their own generators, or are looking to leave Germany altogether.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/comment/9559 ... he-UK.html