… a ball bearing perhaps?
0.4 percentage points is the estimate of the CPI impact of the carbon price, published in the Herald Sun (hardly likely to understate it). In the attempt to stop this catastrophe, the Australian political right has trashed its intellectual credibility, embraced lurid conspiracy theories, reduced its leading publications to laughing stocks, and promulgated a string of easily falsified talking points, each one more absurd than the last. So, now that their predictions of doom have come to this, what will be their response? My guess is that they will double down – Catallaxy and Andrew Bolt are already on the job.
Of course, a price of $23/tonne is just the thin end of the wedge. Most estimates suggest that we need a price somewhere in the range $50-100/tonne to produce a long run shift to a low-carbon economy. That might amount to a price increase of 2 or 3 per cent – about the same as the GST.
John Quiggin 
The climate denier Princesses (Bolt, Abbott et al) can tell when their mattress has a pea under it however.
The wrecking ball is not the cost added to everyones power bills just now, it’s the attempt to force the economy off a cheap and efficient power supply onto an expensive and inefficient power supply. If the “carbon tax”, as it’s ratcheted up, achieves what it’s suposed to, the elimination of CO2 emitting power supplies, its effects will be catastrophic; if it doesn’t it is a colosal waste.
in that classic story about tragedy of the commons
Labor is the guy who is making his family survive on just the one cow – insisting that the family has responsibility to save the commons
others in the family is yelling and screaming because they can see that nobody else is going to limit themselves to one cow
first they try and “prove” the commons is not at risk but as the evidence mounts they switch to focusing on the one thing that is true – that limiting a growing family to one cow is a recipe for family turmoil
those in the family that know the commons are at risk are also completely ignorant of the absolute reality that none of the other families are going to limit themselves to one cow
so they claim that limiting families to one cow does absolutely no harm to the family
it’s a sorry state of affairs
in the midst of all this the emergence of MMT is giving the vampire bureaucrats the opportunity to bleed as much as they can out of the dumb schmuck working and middle classes with yet another amazing new economics
what a sorry world it is
pop
J S Mill said “sharpen my adversaries wits and never ever read the Herald Sun” and is turning over in his grave.
I can make the case that a carbon tax is not in Australia’s interests (since I care equally about all of humanity please impose one). Carbon intensive industries are high wage industries. The wage differentials are rents not compensating differentials not returns on human capital or skill. A country which exports carbon intensive goods and imports non carbon intensive goods and services gets more than its share of those rents. So a carbon tax which is optimal for humanity as a whole is higher than optimal for the taxing country.
Note also that this reasoning implies that a country can increase the welfare of its residents by imposing tariffs on imports of high wage industry products (provided other countries don’t retaliate).
http://www.nber.org/papers/w2739
(here note that Summers told Katz that “Strategic Trade Policy” was uh embargoed from the title until after the election (of Bush Sr it turned out) . This is not a new argument. There has not been the shred of a trace of a convincing counter argument. The paper is completely ignored by influential economists very much including Larry Summers.
The general pattern of the general public believing things which economists generally agree are nonsense is generally explained by the fact that economists assume that labour markets clear, while the general public believes that high wage jobs are good jobs (in the sense of rents). As usual, the evidence overwhelmingly supports the idea that economists are especially confused about the economy.
@John Dawson
“The wrecking ball is not the cost added to everyones power bills just now, it’s the attempt to force the economy off a cheap and efficient power supply onto an expensive and inefficient power supply.”
Just curious John if your meaning of ‘cheap’ means you dont believe there are such things as externalities like climate change and ocean acidification. If we were a few million cave men around a fire I wouldnt disagree that burning fossil fuels is efficient and cheap. But we are 7 billion souls well on the way to 10 billion with a long term projected demand of 13 kW per person (DELONG, J. P., BURGER, O. & HAMILTON, M. J. 2010. Current Demographics Suggest Future Energy Supplies Will Be Inadequate to Slow Human Population Growth. PLoS One, 5, e13206.) if the Australian dream is to be achieved by all – about 8 times higher than at present.
This of course is not viable and such difficult truths are one of the reasons (your?) support for the exponential growth economy which underpins climate change denialism is so hilarious – its not credible outside of the stoned mind of a proponent of the General Equilibrium Theory and we will hit a brick wall one way or another in the next 10 to 20 years irrespective of what conventional economics says.
As to whether the carbon tax will work now that is a more interesting question. If it doesnt it will indicate the market mechanisms are cobblers which I fear may be true once the financial speculators get into the act (I wonder what John thinks). That said to give the C tax its due I have yet to hear any alternative recently from the coalition which isnt vague and suggestive that they really deny there is a problem and their current comments are just a sop.
So how do you suggest we respond if not through taxes and government legislation (which dont thrill me either but I cant see an alternative)?
Trivial titbit – did you all know this is officially National Carbon Capture and Storage Week? At least thats what my email from the chemical engineering school says. And please note this is not April 1st.
That “tragedy of the commons” was solved by enclosures that gave individuals responsibility for their own land, which led to an agricultural revolution and a boom in population and prosperity followed by the industrial revolution.
Yes Newtowniar, that industrial revolution used fossil fuels to increase the carrying capacity of the earth from 1 to 7 billion, doubled the life expectancy, and give most of us opportunities pre fossi-fuel generations never dreamt of. Those who think that was a bad thing need to nominate which 6 billion+ should be dead.
No I don’t believe that the CO2 I breath out and plants breath in is an externality that must be eliminated at the risk of 6 billion+ lives.
A 0.4% CPI increase as a result of the carbon price? That’s not very much, is it? I wonder how much of that is due to an increase dry cleaning costs as a result of people pooping their pants over the issue?
Of course, modern Tort Law developed alongside the industrial revolution. That was good because those whose activities caused damage to others could be held to some degree of account. Not much, and usually only the wealthiest sued each other, but it was something and it lead to a general level of accessibility to claim for damages suffered by the actions of others.
Government also stepped in to regulate and police damaging activities for the good of the general public.
That’s why neo-cons and fascists more generally despise the rule of law and government regulation. They even have a catchy name for it: Tort Reform.
No no Megan, not neo-con fascists, get with the program, its sexist misogynists these days!
You choose your nomenclature and I’ll choose mine.
OK, my BS and faulty logic meter just blew a fuse. The first paragraph was an overwhelmingly partisan analysis of a complex series of legislation and events. The remaining part was ridiculously hyperbolic strawman garbage. At no point was a coherent argument formulated and instead of arguing with hard numbers you used, among other techniques, emotion, an appeal to tradition and a false dichotomy (“either we severely pollute or everyone dies”). That’s an F, I’m afraid.
Is John Dawson proselytising for the proposition that private ownership should be extended to the atmosphere? After all, that is the most important surviving commons.
I realise MG42 that my first paragraph wasn’t fashionably incoherent, for that fault I’ll accept your F grade, just put it down to my lack of a phd.
Which hard numbers did you want? Give me an example of a coherent argument!
About 90% of the world’s power emits CO2, so what’s false about this alternative? Either the carbon tax will reduce CO2 in the atmosphere or it won’t, if it doesn’t it’s a colosal waste, if it does its effects will be catastrophic.
Why is a tax necessarily inflationary? I don’t understand and I need an economist to explain it to me.
While a new tax must add to the cost of the item(s) newly taxed, these consumer monies are now not available to buy other items. The net effect on the full basket of goods should be neutral if the tax is revenue neutral and the velocity of money does not change. If the government hoards the new tax as a surplus then the net effect should be deflationary. If the government spends the new tax and “fiats” even more money into existence by running a deficit then the net effect should be inflationary but not because of the tax in itself. Hence the tax alone is insufficient “cause” for inflation without some further factor like deficit spending. The credit accelerator (banks lending more money) or credit deccelerator (debtors paying down debt) will also affect the equation.
Thus I reiterate my question in a slightly expanded form. Why assume a new tax is inflationary in the absence of a full assessment of all factors affecting money supply and goods supply in the economy? Isn’t it bad economics to makes such simplistic assumptions in a form abstracted and cut off from analysis of the full system?
@John Dawson
Let me reply to some of your statements on a point by point basis.
“No I don’t believe that the CO2 I breath out and plants breath in is an externality that must be eliminated at the risk of 6 billion+ lives.” – John Dawson.
The operative phrase here is “don’t believe”. Your beliefs are irrelevant. Belief or disbelief in the mind of any observer is irrelevant to the existent empirical facts. Scientists use repeatable verifiable quantitative measurements to assess material facts.
“Which hard numbers did you want? Give me an example of a coherent argument!” – John Dawson.
Since you have given no hard numbers (6 + billion is soft when the current number is more like 6.973 billion) and no coherent argument yourself, this fails as a riposte to your opponent’s argument.
“About 90% of the world’s power emits CO2, so what’s false about this alternative? Either the carbon tax will reduce CO2 in the atmosphere or it won’t, if it doesn’t it’s a colosal waste, if it does its effects will be catastrophic.” – John Dawson.
In 2006, 86.64% of the world’s energy consumption emitted CO2. I suspect the percentage is slightly less now. Saying “about 90%” is reasonable but saying “about 85%” might be more resaonable now. You say a carbon tax will either reduce CO2 or not. This is a truism. It does nothing to advance your argument or make any point.
You say, if the carbon tax does not reduce (or slow the increase one reasonably assumes) carbon tax in the atmosphere then it is a waste. Taxes are not wasted. They are either spent on goods and services by the government or held back as a surplus. A surplus is not “wasted” if it is used as a counter-cyclical measure to moderate inflation. Also, are you as vehemently opposed to fuel excise as you are to a carbon tax? The effect is the same no matter what the tax is called. Or is it just the words “carbon tax” that fire you up?
You assume outright catastrophe from a carbon tax reducing fossil fuel use yet assume no dangerous effect on climate change from increased atmospheric CO2. The latter assumption puts you at odds with the IPCC and about 99% of reputable climate scientists around the world. I don’t know about you but if some medically unqualfied person was offering me a remedy that 99% of qualified medical opinion said was dangerous, I would not be taking it.
You are assuming that no alternative to fossil fuel is possible. In fact, there are now demonstrable alternatives (solar and wind power mainly) that can do the job. Eventually, an electrical economy supplemented by methane IC (internal combustion) can run our world. The methane can be generated from waste and by solar nanotubes now being researched to produce methane. This methane cycle will be a loop essentially (excluding accidental out-gassings). Energy conservation, efficient energy design and scrapping the private car fleet for public transport will all have to play their part along with capping the world’s populations somehow.
I am not saying it will be easy. It will be more like a controlled rough landing on to a sustainable popuolation and production plateau. What you propose (endless growth and use of fossil fuels until exhaustion of same) will be more like a climb, followed by a stall, followed by a vertical plunge into the deck at great speed.
I used to strongly doubt that renewables could provide sufficient power. Upon researching it, I found they could do so provided we became energy efficient and frugal and stabilised population.
(From my admittedly biased observation I must be one of the few bloggers to change a view upon finding out the facts. J.Q.’s arguments played a role in that.)
Just for everyone this is what CBA economics
‘The ABS has noted that it is not able to quantify the impact of carbon pricing. But one back?of?the?envelope calculation is to compare the contribution from higher utilities prices with the average or “normal” contribution. Over the past two years higher utilities prices contributed an average 0.27ppts to QIII CPI growth. The contribution in QIII 2012 was 0.48ppts. The gap of 0.2ppts should represent the bulk of the carbon tax impact on consumer prices. This outcome suggests that the price impact will fall short of earlier Treasury modelling work that put the CPI contribution in 2012/13 at 0.7ppts.’
This makes a complete embarrassment f what Sinclair Davidson said at Catallaxy.
This is undoubtedly due to the fact Davidson is quite unfamiliar with understnding CPI statistics.
( For a good understanding go read Ricardian Ambivalence, Why isn’t he on your sidebar John?)
In more embarrassing news for Davidson he keeps on harping about Treasury’s forecast of 10%.
This forecast is based on CONSTANT prices not current prices as Davidson asserts. He is either ignorant of this having never actually read the Treasury document or just lying as he makes things up.
On this I just don’t know.
Davidson’s decline , like the rest at Catallaxy is sad . He did at one stage write economically literate stuff.
i too am looking forward to hearing john dawson’s plan to enclose the atmosphere.
@JB Cairns That is headline inflation only? Core inflation later on (CBA do say they expect indirect price effects to be quite small)
@rog General chat seems to be that core inflation due to carbon tax to be minimal and within RBA expectations. Certainly the hype generated by Hockey et al does not seem to be supported by any facts.
@rog Hockey becomes hysterical when inflation meets RBA expectations?
http://www.businessspectator.com.au/bs.nsf/Article/CPI-beats-expectation-in-Sept-quarter-ABS-pd20121024-ZD2GH?OpenDocument&src=hp1
rog,
The headlines rate was the one to be affected.
Large increases and decreases are automatically taken out of the RBA core inflation series.
I should have added above Davidson not only compared a constant price forecast to a current price outcome he also compared electricity prices in the CPI to a rise generated just by the ETS.
Yikes
@Katz
“Is John Dawson proselytising for the proposition that private ownership”
Katz I just checked out his link. He is in fact clueless about these issues in that what he presents is vague rhetoric rather than considered objections based on some credible theory or other from the other side of politics. So engaging with him here is not only a waste of time but it clearly encourages him to recycle what appear to be bar conservation based assertions which he has already put on his web site like the 6 million bit above.
Methinks perhaps he is revenging himself on the rest of us for the slights against his heroes who appear to include Andrew Bolt??!!! Need I say more.
Thank you Ikonclast
What “repeatable verifiable quantitative measurements to assess material facts” have you that the CO2 I breath out is pollution and that you have a right to penalise me for keeping warm, mobile and fed by emitting CO2?
I don’t have to give “hard numbers” or prove anything because it’s not me claiming the right to restrict your ability to live and prosper. But by advocating measures such as a “carbon tax” you are doing that to me, so the onus of proof is on you.
About 85% of the world’s energy supply emits CO2 – gotcha!
The forced conversion from cheap and efficient power to expensive and inefficient power is such a colosal waste. The carbon tax is an instrument of that waste, not to mention bureaucratic administration, ineptitude, and corruption involved. And not to mention that when it is converted into an ETS much of the cost will be sent overseas for carbon credits to make green chatterers feel beter about continuing to “pollute” as they jet off to their next talkfest.
99% of the world’s climate scientists do not agree that a carbon tax is a good idea, and if they did their opinion would be little better than yours or mine because science is only one of many factors involved in such a judgement. 99% of climate scientists probably agree that CO2 and temperatures rose during the 20th century and that humans have an effect on climate – but there is a long long way from there to a carbon tax or any government imposition.
We have a lot of empirical evidence about the effectiveness of power supplies. Wind & water & firewood power, but mainly muscle power, kept less than a billion people (for most barely) alive. Fossil fuel power (with the help of about 15% of other types) keeps about 7 billion (for most abundantly) alive. You do the math.
Thanks for your psychoanalyst Newtowniar. Let me know when you have some “considered objections” to what I’ve said, apart from it being “clueless” as far as the water mellon narrative goes.
John Dawson, before I address any points you mention, I’d like to check if you agree with me on the following two points:
1. Human activity has increased the amount of CO2 in the atmosphere by over a third.
2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Ronald
1. CO2 has increased by over a third and human activity has contributed to that.
2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas.
Thanks for the replay, John Dawson. I see you are wrong on the first point. Human activity alone is responsible for raising the level of CO2 in the atmosphere by over a third since the start of the industrial revolution. We know this because the amount of CO2 released from burning fossil fuels and land clearing is more than sufficient to account for the entire increase. It is the action of carbon sinks that has prevented CO2 levels from rising higher. We also know from the change in ratios of carbon isotopes in CO2 in the atmosphere. Carbon in fossil fuels lacks the C14 isotope and so its ratio to C12 and C13 has been reduced as CO2 from burning fossil fuels has been released into the atmosphere.
Many scientists disagree Ronald, but FOR THE SAKE OF THE ARGUMENT, let’s assume all the increase in CO2 is man made, where do you go from there?
John Dawson, do you think that not enough fossil fuel has been burned to release enough CO2 to more than equal a third of the CO2 currently in the atmosphere? If so, then you either disagree with the theory of combustion, that is, one atom of carbon burned in an excess of oxygen produces one molecule of CO2, or you believe there is some sort of vast conspirousy to make people think that much more fossil fuel has been burned than actually has been. Do you believe either of these things, John?
@John Dawson
John your shot at ‘watermelons’ got me wondering where you are coming from so I checked your website (one tick for transparency) – From your web site:
“my fresh fruit exporting company, for which I developed an on-line marketing project. My passions include Objectivism the philosophy of Ayn Rand, and writing.”
I suspect this lies at the heart of your perceptions and until this changes there isnt much point me raising objections to your specifics.
Some comments .
# You appear to like philosophy but where you are coming from has me very worried – specifically Rand’s deceptively named ‘Objectivism’ “that one can attain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation and inductive logic” to quote Wiki (corrections welcome).
Assuming this roughly describes your perspective I can see how you might conclude there isnt a climate problem. Marshall a collection of information and opinions from people and sources you respect because they align with your perceptions and philosophy – presumably neo-liberal let the market do what it pleases with no interference.
But are you really being objective?
This is exactly question that science, the most objective of our analysis systems, and itself based on induction or so it was thought, asked itself between 1940 and 1960. Or should I say some really smart people explored some crucial misapprehensions. The conclusion was induction is a useful tool but the pedestal of such anthropocentric reasoning of Rand’s kind was toppled.
There are mountains of literature out there about the story but the following is a good introduction:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/aug/19/thomas-kuhn-structure-scientific-revolutions?INTCMP=SRCH and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Popper
The fact is Randian thought has been obsolete for decades and only in the powerful culdesac of economics and managerialism is this approach still taken seriously – though maybe this now also is changing slowly following the economic disasters of 2007/2008, the oil crisis and that many businessmen and economics have been mulling over the puzzle posed. Turnbull is one useful example from the right.
The critical point here is you dont reject inconvenient science (findings and model predictions) because it doesnt comply with your personal reasoning, ad hoc commentary from peers or ‘balancing’ the arguments you are aware of. Science is not as as Stephen Schneider put it ‘A Contact Sport’. But that is how you are treating climate science in your arguments.
# How can you move forward as they say. My suggestion is this – forget about the now or the next ten or 20 years but have a look what the longer term holds given business as usual like:
– Have a look at how much additional CO2 is going into the atmosphere now.
– Estimate how much more will be added when you add the increases from those 7 or 10 billions say 50 to 100 years down the track given unconstrained business as unusual.
– Have a look at the basic energy balance equations and the rising role of CO2.
– This basic stuff is back of the envelope calculation stuff and was possible to do and was done by the great chemist Arrhenius 100 years ago.
– Finally read a bit about Venus.
Or if you feel inclined do a science course and go into the literature in detail with near first hand knowledge to refine you position rather than trying to reason it out.
# Your business is probably being killed as much by the free market economics that Ayn Rand espoused as by any future carbon tax impacts – whether the latter will cripple Australian and NZ exports is another matter. While the cost of transport will go up climate change impacts + rising population seems likely to lead to food shortages so I wouldnt panic yet if you can hold out.
# Finally your previous comments suggested you dont quite understand ‘externalities’ in the form that concerns social democrats (the nominal audience of this blog). I suggest if you are interested in remedying this, reading Fred Pearce’s ‘Where my Stuff comes from’ – it should give you pause for thought.
John Dawson,
My electricity bill has gone up by 70%. Less than a third of that increase is due to the Carbon Price. And your electricty bill will have done much the same if you are connected to the town supply.
What I want to know from you is………where is your outrage at the 70% rorting of the electricty consumer?
You have not said boo about that!
Does this mean that when McDonalds put up the price of the ice cream cone from 30 cents to 40 cents you are going to howl the house down,……. while happily paying an extra $2 for your Angus Burger???? Are you for real? or is your ire purely determined by the weather?
Ronald – it’s not simply a matter of the amount of CO2 released by man, it’s far more complex than that, but if our fossil fuel were responsible for all of the CO2 rise, so what?
BilB – If you want cheaper electricity: get rid of the “carbon tax”, and all the green energy schemes, then deregulate the industry. That’s the way you got cheap potatoes, hamburgers, iphones, air-flights, entertainment etc.
Well, no John D. It’s not complex. Not on the simple question of whether or not enough CO2 has been released from burning fossil fuels to increase its concentration in the atmosphere by over a third. If you don’t know the answer to that then you aren’t in possession of very basic information about our atmosphere and I’ll have to teach you some basics before you’ll understand the points I want to make. So, I’ll ask you, have humans burned enough fossil fuel to release enough CO2 to increase its concentration in the atmosphere by over a third? If you don’t know, that’s okay. I can show you how to find out.
If you like cheap consumer goods and being able to buy cheap consumer goods is your only ambition, the John Dawson is absolutely correct.
If you like driving very fast and all you want to do is to drive very fast, then you would reduce the weight of your car as much as possible. One way to do that is to remove the brake system, which is a heavy component.
No sensible person would do this, course, because even the dumbest hoon knows that he must slow the car down occasionally.
@John Dawson
No. As far as I can tell, hardly anyone (perhaps nobody) with relevant qualifications in climate science and actively publishing in this field disagrees with the conclusion that human activity is responsible for all of the post-1750 increase in atmospheric CO2. Some who were leery of attribution of all climate change to CO2 increases have now embraced this conclusion — most recently in the BEST study. There is no serious dispute about this in science.
The terms “cheap” and “efficient” in this context lack the specification needed to make this claim useful. Efficiency is neither a good thing nor a bad thing. It merely describes the relationship between one input in a system (here it could be money, chemical energy) and outputs (work, useable power, dispatchable power or something else). Cost to end users is misleading if the externalities associated with harvest of the chemical energy go uncounted, or undercounted. A highly inefficient process of extracting energy that supplied abundant power on demand at low cost (including externalities) would still be very good.
Forcing the internalisation of externalities is not “forcing everyone onto an expensive and inefficient” source of power. It’s simply an example of the principle of “not living in a fool’s paradise” or, following Hockey/Abbott “lving within our means” and avoiding the passing of debt onto our descendants. If the Liberals saw these phrases as more than hollow slogans for to beguile the gullible, they’d support cost internalisation too.
Making stuff up is a bad idea. It’s a recurrent problem with those favouring inaction on mitigation. There’s simply no clear evidence on what 99% of climate scientists would prefer public policy to look like in detail. One suspects though, that most of them would agree that some public policy aimed at decarbonising energy supply and minimising destruction of carbon sinks would be a good idea. Indirectly and/or directly, this would mean putting a price on CO2-derived energy harvest. Whether one regulates or direct invests or levies the usage or forces a cost on dumping of effluent from the carbon fuel cycle, it all amounts to the same thing. Some methods may be more effective and cost-efficient at decarbonising than others, or some mix of all of these may be required, but that is a quite separate argument.
and if they did their opinion would be little better than yours or mine because science is only one of many factors involved in such a judgement.
@BilB Those with shares in infrastructure, like Spark Infrastructure, get the price rises back in the form of dividends.
@Ikonoclast
I still want my tax and inflation question answered. Any takers?
Ikonoclast, the GST reduced tax on money we earn and stuck it on stuff we buy, so the price of stuff went up. The carbon price has a similar effect, just much, much smaller.
But, John Dawson,
if we deregulate industry (if you deregulate one then you will have to deregulate them all) then the waste collection business up the road will dispose of their sludge down the gutters into the storm water drains, the coffee business in the next row will not replace their odour filters and the whole area will reak of burnt coffee all day, the tyre business around the corner will dump their tyres in the nearby bushland, some of the hardup businesses in the area will hookup to the power lines with with uncontrolled connections and we will start to get brown outs at various times in the day, The lead and tin foundry a block away won’t bother controlling the lead oxide spewing out of their chimney stack, nearby housing developments will all use open fires in winter to save on energy costs and start hacking trees out of the world heritage national park here. We will start to resemble US industry of the 19th century and large parts of China today. And all of that just to save a few desperate dollars? Desperate dollars as incomes would be considerably lower leading to the building of several shanty communities on the edge of the industrial area leading into the park land.
I really don’t think that you have thought this through. I’ve looked at your blog. You’re just picking on silly things that seem to make some sort of point to support your lopsided arguments. Isn’t that right?
@BilB John Dawson seems to have hit a nerve, he is an Ayn Rand nutter nuff said.
To repeat, it’s not as simple as adding up the man made CO2 and assuming it accounts for all of the increased CO2 in the atmosphere (which has been fluctuating for millions of years). But while I’m happy to be educated Robert, let’s assume for the sake of this argument it were as simple as that so we can get to my question: so what?
As I’m sure you know Fran, fossil fuels provide the cheapest power in most places in the world and in many places they’re many times as cheap as alternatives, why else would about 85 per cent of the world’s power be supplied in that way? In some places the difference between cheap and expensive power means the difference between overseas or stay-at-home holidays, in other places its the difference between life and death. Inefficient power supplies include those that stop when the wind stops blowing or when the sun goes down.
You seem to confuse deregulation with anarchy Bilb If someone dumps his sewage on my front lawn etc etc he has violated my property rights and should be prosecuted.
@BilB
Though BilB is perhaps a little harsh on our friend John Dawson the Ayn Rand connection does explain a lot about where his arguments come from. One item I found from a quick google of Ayn Rand and Air Pollution was:
http://capitalism.aynrand.org/capitalist-secrets-capitalism-improves-our-environment/
Here are some vignette’s
“Undeveloped nature is a brutal, filthy, dangerous place for human beings. It’s filled with dirt, disease, uncooperative weather, unfriendly creatures, and occasional natural disasters…..What were the results? Population exploded, life-expectancy more than doubled, and for the first time in history each generation lived better than the generation that came before.”
“Laissez-faire Capitalism is concerned with the constant improvement of the human environment. It is not, however, concerned with the non-human environment—it is not concerned with preserving untouched wilderness at the expense of human beings. If, under capitalism, someone wants to protect a given patch of land or a given animal, he is free to do so using his own property.”
These seem pretty representative and other items seem to correspond to John’s comment and in turn seem to be mostly reworded versions of the various ‘Thoughts of Ayn’.
Instructively like their precursors in history like the Vatican, they are also remarkably blind to inconvenient sciences (no John not just mad watermelons) that show we evolved from said brutish nature, are completely dependent on it for our survival, water food, timber, inert natural resources via biogeochemistry (coal iron ore phosphorus probably oil) and if we trash our environment like the Easter Islanders are believed to – we will pay dearly.
Curiously in all this while they also say capitalism should be totally free, while also saying pollution noise etc. must be regulated by laws and litigation – they are also excellent at saying laws have no effect but that environmental improvements were inspired by a sort of capitalist altruism. This disconnect and the doublethink involved is nicely summed in Matt Taibbi’s book Griftopia.
Its got me wondering how much of this strange anthropocentrism underpins other climate change deniers.
Wholly cow!
@The Peak Oil Poet
John D, so are you saying that you don’t know if enough CO2 has been released from the burning of to raise its concentration in the atmosphere by over a third?
@Ikonoclast
Reducing tax on incomes and increasing it on prices is not inflationary. It does not result in more money chasing the same output.
However, when these changes occur, people play games and there is a period of adjustment when individual profit maximisers hike prices to counter a new tax.
Capitalism is such a bodgey economic system, that any change in either taxes or subsidies always tends to inflation – ie credit expansion. This has nothing to do with basic economic theory. It is political economy.
Of course, by far the worse tax is capitalist profit. It is absolutely inflationary – exponentially so.
Not the same output, as the particular goods and services may change – the same value (although a different basket).
It’s not a matter of how much is released by humans Ronald but about how much CO2 stays in the atmosphere for how long. There’s about 780 Gt C in the atmosphere of which about 90 Gt is exchanged with oceans pa and 120 Gt is exchanged with plants, so about a quarter of the CO2 is circulated each year. As part of that circulation humans add about 7 Gt pa and about half of it stays long enough to raise the total. So a simple calculation leads to the conclusion that 3.5 Gt is added by humans to the 780 Gt, (i.e. 0.45%) pa which is more than enough to account for the total rise in CO2 observed in recent decades. But it is not that simple. The IPCC work on a long half life of CO2 in the atmosphere whereas many scientists theorise that it is less than ten years, which alters the calculations and lowers the significance of human emissions. Then there is conflicting empirical evidence, e.g. CO2 was rising before emissions were, the amount of CO2 released by subterraneous volcanoes is problematic, CO2 levels fluctuated long before human emissions were a factor, etcetera.
Now, can we get to my question, IF humans are causing the entire rise in CO2, so what?
@John Dawson
JD, you raise a smokescreen by citing a minor dispute at one end of the science spectrum. I suspect this is your intention, but assuming your bona fides, you would of course acknowledge that other related sciences give a much worse prognosis of the climate than is contemplated in the dispute you mention. For example, there is a germane debate in paleontological circles about the cause of the devastating Permian/Triassic extinction event. Some scientists believe it was caused by combustion of the Carboniferous peats, that is, an experiment in CO2 enhancement that we appear to be repeating.
In reality, as opposed to what passes for debate in denier circles, the significant scientific debate is between the pessimists and the apocalyptic pessimists. That is, if we continue on the present emissions trajectory.