Solution to climate change is simple, elegant

The scientific consensus is that man-made climate change is real, it's happening now. (Tea Party friends: don't send me an article about some scientist who stormed out of the IPCC in protest; that doesn't negate the IPCC's findings.)  And the consensus of economists is that a carbon tax is the easiest and cheapest way to rectify climate change.

Why?  Because of the free market, and all that.  As long as there is no market for CO2, then the market can't react to it.  Taxing CO2 emissions suddenly puts an economic cost on it, and then businesses can put their creative and technical genius to work at reducing their emissions, i.e. their production costs.

It's pretty simple.

The boringly mainstream solution to climate change

By Tim Worstall

April 9, 2014 | Pando Daily

URL: http://pando.com/2014/04/09/my-very-mainstream-solution-to-climate-change/

NOAA report: 2012 warmest year ever in U.S.

It goes without saying that all 384 of these scientists, not to mention the NOAA, are on the payroll of George Soros and the global academic-climate hoax complex:

Worldwide, 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record according to the 2012 State of the Climate report released online today by the American Meteorological Society (AMS). The peer-reviewed report, with scientists from NOAA’s National Climatic Data Center in Asheville, N.C., serving as lead editors, was compiled by 384 scientists from 52 countries (highlights, full report). It provides a detailed update on global climate indicators, notable weather events, and other data collected by environmental monitoring stations and instruments on land, sea, ice, and sky. 

“Many of the events that made 2012 such an interesting year are part of the long-term trends we see in a changing and varying climate — carbon levels are climbing, sea levels are rising, Arctic sea ice is melting, and our planet as a whole is becoming a warmer place," said Acting NOAA Administrator Kathryn D. Sullivan, Ph.D. 

Seriously though: Mom, please read this and stop assuring me the Earth is cooling:  "Four major independent datasets show 2012 was among the 10 warmest years on record, ranking either 8th or 9th, depending upon the dataset used. The United States and Argentina had their warmest year on record."

2012 was one of the 10 warmest years on record globally

August 6, 2013 | NOAA

URL: http://www.noaanews.noaa.gov/stories2013/20130806_stateoftheclimate.html

One-page solution to climate change

You know why this cannot work, politically?  Because it involves a tax.  That's it.  Economically, it makes the best sense.  It wouldn't require any expensive red tape or intrusive regulation of business.  Just a tax.  But Americans hate the word "tax," especially new taxes, so this could never fly.  Too bad.  

But at least you and I know the solution.  We won't let our politics make us dumber, right??....

Economists Have A One-Page Solution To Climate Change

By David Kestenbaum

June 28, 2013 | NPR

Climate change seems like this complicated problem with a million pieces. But Henry Jacoby, an economist at MIT's business school, says there's really just one thing you need to do to solve the problem: Tax carbon emissions.

"If you let the economists write the legislation," Jacoby says, "it could be quite simple." He says he could fit the whole bill on one page.

Basically, Jacoby would tax fossil fuels in proportion to the amount of carbon they release. That would make coal, oil and natural gas more expensive. That's it; that's the whole plan.

Jacoby's colleague John Reilly told me the price of gasoline might rise by 25 cents a gallon in the first year. Over time, that would increase. By 2050, Reilly figures the carbon tax would add about $1 to the price of every gallon. Across the economy, prices of energy-intensive goods and services would rise. This would encourage people and businesses to be more efficient.

This is why economists love a carbon tax: One change to the tax code and the entire economy shifts to reduce carbon emissions. No complicated regulations. No rules for what kind of gas mileage cars have to get or what specific fraction of electricity has to come from wind or solar or renewables. That's by and large the way we do it now.

Reilly says the current web of rules is a more complicated and more expensive way of getting the same outcome as a carbon tax. The current system "pretty much is one of the worst ways we could do it," he says.

As with any fix for climate change, a carbon tax would hit some people harder than others. People with long commutes would pay more. People who work in coal mines could lose their jobs.

But here is where Reilly brings up what is perhaps the most surprising thing about a carbon tax: If you do it right, he says, carbon tax can be nearly painless for the economy as a whole.

Besides reducing carbon emissions, a carbon tax brings in a bunch of money — it's a tax after all. So, Reilly says, you can reduce, say, income tax to balance out the new taxes people are paying for carbon emissions. People pay more for gas, but they get to keep more of their income.

I called around and talked to a bunch of economists about this, and they said the basic idea was sound: If you give the carbon-tax money back by cutting income taxes, you can probably offset a lot of the pain.

President Obama has indicated he would support a market-based solution to climate change. But a carbon tax would, of course, require an act of Congress. And right now, that seems unlikely.

Try EPA's new greenhouse gas data tool!

This tool from the good folks at the EPA is kind of neat. It allows you to see what enterprises are emitting the most greenhouse gases in your area, whether it's carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O) or others.

So it lets me see, for example, that the biggest polluter near me in my home state is a coal-fired Duke Energy power plant spitting out 4,117,452 metric tons (MT) of carbon dioxide, 10,219 MT of methane and 21,942 MT of nitrous oxide a year.

Using their handy-dandy equivalencies calculator, I can see that amount of greenhouse gas equals the amount emitted by 1.98 million passenger vehicles a year, or the CO2 emitted by consuming 23.5 million barrels of oil.

EPA ghgdata

URL: http://www.ccdsupport.com/confluence/display/ghgp/Home

MMGW is a BMBISF -- TGIF!

Now we all know MMGW isn't real, and even if it is real it's only GW, not man-made, and all those climate scientists at dozens of universities and agencies are in a global conspiracy to milk research money; meanwhile, the poor oil/coal/gas companies and CO2-belching corporations can't spare their pocket change to fight these powerful nerds, but anyway...

... I just thought it was interesting that these discredited scientists are now trying to tell us that walruses are now living on land instead of ice, and spiders, birds, mice, etc. are moving north at the rate of several feet/miles a year to flee warmer temperatures.

Yeah, right! Spiders!? And pikas!? What the hell is a pika? Who cares? Give us a break, scientists!

The real problem is getting people moving again. And since cash-strapped Americans spend more money on transportation than food, we need to bring back cheap gasoline, damn the CO2. Wait!... Michelle Bachmann to the rescue! If we elect her, she promised to bring gas down to $2 a gallon. She didn't tell us how in the world she'd do it, but who cares? We need answers, not solutions!

What's that you say? This is like Nixon's "secret plan" to end the war? Oh, don't be so skeptical. That is, when it concerns MMGW, be skeptical, be cynical, but when it comes to the bright future of cheap and plentiful fossil fuels -- burn, baby burn!

Bearded climate scientists? No, it's Siemens

This is from Siemen's web site, a document called "The Company 2010:"

Megatrends that shape our future

Climate Change

• The average global surface temperature has increased by 0.76 degrees C compared to the 18th century.
• 11 of the 12 years between 1994 and 2005 rank among the 12 warmest since weather observations began.
• Greenhouse gas emissions have risen dramatically since industrialization. Today we face the highest CO2 concentration in the atmosphere for the past 350,000 years.

This is a multi-billion dollar mutli-national corporation saying this. And they're making big-money bets with shareholders' money that these facts mean something.

Obama's emissions targets not so costly after all?

So, estimates of the cost of Obama's goal to reduce CO2 emissions by 17% below 2005 levels vary from -$40 a year for an average family of four, to $1,539 per year by 2020. It all depends on who's doing the estimating. Conservatives will say that the EPA and the CBO harbor a dastardly liberal agenda so their estimates can't be trusted; liberals will say that Big Business is only looking out for itself, and scaring up some big numbers.

Personally, I would go with the CBO's numbers: the poorest households would save $40 per year; while the richest households would see an increased cost of $245 a year. In either case, emissions reductions would hardly cause the sky to fall on consumers' heads.

What we should not forget in all of this is that (1) reducing CO2 is a good thing, no matter what, because emissions are waste which equals inefficiency, both physical and economic, and (2) there is the untold health/human cost of greenhouse gases (aka air pollution) which increases heart and lung disease. Less CO2 in our atmosphere could save thousands of U.S. lives a year.

New climate targets may not change daily life much

By Seth Borenstein

November 26, 2009 | Associated Press

URL: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091126/ap_on_go_pr_wh/us_climate_costs;_ylt=AiZLD1mnG4EZftMnPAVaA5as0NUE;_ylu=X3oDMTNoM3MwNG85BGFzc2V0A2FwLzIwMDkxMTI2L3VzX2NsaW1hdGVfY29zdHMEY2NvZGUDbW9zdHBvcHVsYXIEY3BvcwMzBHBvcwMxMARwdANob21lX2Nva2UEc2VjA3luX3RvcF9zdG9yeQRzbGsDbmV3Y2xpbWF0ZXRh

Carbon Disclosure Project

The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP) is a registered charity set up by 385 institutional investors managing more than $50 trillion in assets. In 2008, 1,550 companies from the S&P 500, Global 500, and FTSE 350 voluntarily reported to the CDP their CO2 emissions accounting, and emission-reduction strategies.

Why are they volunteering this information? According to PricewaterhouseCoopers: "Increasingly, [industry] analysts are placing a premium on information provided about environmental, social, and governance issues, expecting greater visibility into the performance of supply chains."

Moreover, smart companies are not waiting for gov't regulation on CO2 emissions. They are getting out ahead of regulation and their competition. They are measuring their emissions (and their suppliers' emissions) and finding ways to reduce them, and then reporting this data voluntarily to investors and other stakeholders. Emissions of any kind, after all, are wastes, which represent inefficiencies and hence opportunities to cut costs and/or increase productivity. Smart companies realize that belching gases into the air and spewing toxic liquids into our soil and waterways create hidden costs for society, which we are increasingly less willing to tolerate; but companies also recognize that these wastes represent direct costs to the company. Thanks to the "lean" movement in manufacturing and supply chains, we know that any kind of waste is a drain on profit.

Thus, when we do a proper accounting of costs and lost opportunities, we see that there is very little opposition between environmentalists who lobby for reduced emissions, and businessmen who strive for bigger profits. But if an industry is inherently, hopelessly inefficient, it will be overtaken by competitors using more more efficient processes and technologies.

Re: Cow farts & energy costs

Yep, cap-and-trade of cow farts is next on Obama's agenda.

Seriously though, eating less meat is very good for the environment. The meat supply chain takes a lot more grain to feed, and fuel and energy to process livestock than it does to bring vegetables and grains to market. Livestock also require lots of inputs: it takes 5 kilos of grain to produce 1 kilo of meat. Raising livestock and processing meat also generates a lot of waste -- including direct runoff into our water supply. This is not to mention all of the (sometimes illegal) steroids and antibiotics they feed livestock nowadays, which go into us.

Check out this extremely interesting analysis from the NYT, which compared meat to oil:

"... if Americans were to reduce meat consumption by just 20 percent it would be as if we all switched from a standard sedan — a Camry, say — to the ultra-efficient Prius. Similarly, a study last year by the National Institute of Livestock and Grassland Science in Japan estimated that 2.2 pounds of beef is responsible for the equivalent amount of carbon dioxide emitted by the average European car every 155 miles, and burns enough energy to light a 100-watt bulb for nearly 20 days."

And, as usual, the poorer countries suffer the most because of our high consumption:

"Though some 800 million people on the planet now suffer from hunger or malnutrition, the majority of corn and soy grown in the world feeds cattle, pigs and chickens. This despite the inherent inefficiencies: about two to five times more grain is required to produce the same amount of calories through livestock as through direct grain consumption, according to Rosamond Naylor, an associate professor of economics at Stanford University. It is as much as 10 times more in the case of grain-fed beef in the United States."

It's also healthier and cheaper to eat less meat: there is a growing "meatless Monday" movement. Americans eat about 8 oz. of meat a day, twice the global average. If China starts eating beef like we do, the world will be in trouble.