Educated" opinions on climate change - Part 4 27

[SnTMan]

NewtonFP, rich, meaning "has an income"

I am getting so cynical of government and quasi-governmental entities that I don't believe the real goal has anything to do with "helping" the enviroment (a term I find a little curious), but rather with increasing the scope and power of govenment and the quasi-governmental entities.

The expansion we have seen due to "economic relief" is bad enough...

Mike

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> with fewer parasites able to make a buck from it.
Except for those in government who have the privilege of deciding who and what to subsidize.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[ewh]

"yet another federal branch of government to enforce new building standards:
I also read that they are going to include legislation to require that all real estate (houses) have to be upgraded for efficiency before they are allowed to be sold.
What planet are these people from? Someone who is fighting to not be foreclosed upon won't be able to sell because of the expense involved, so it's just another plum for the banks.

"Good to know you got shoes to wear when you find the floor." - [small]Robert Hunter[/small]

 

[zdas04]

I just finished my annual re-read of Atlas Shrugged it is scary how much Mr. Obama's administration is starting to look like Mr. Thompson's. I expect the head of the new department will be named Wesley Mooch.

David

 

[cranky108]

You just don't understand.
You haven't been using your energy and money in the right way. That's why the goverment and the UN have to make you do it the right way.

You need the CHANGE that only more goverment can give you.


Actually goverment has shown us the way. Just look at the TVA, which is one of the dirtest emitters of carbon, and what have they done? (Not to pick on them, but a good example of Federal goverment electric companies).

 

[SomptingGuy]

"one of the dirtiest emitters of carbon"

How sad. The brainwashing is complete when engineers start to describe carbon (dioxide) emissions as dirty. CO2 may or may not affect our global climate, but dirty it is not.

- Steve

 

[csd72]

A whole lot of scaremongering.

I see it as, those companies that have been polluting for free now have to pay the price for it.

When this comes in, you will be amazed at how quickly industry will be able to cut their emmisions in order to stay competitive. The bottom line is always a good motivator.

Communist this is definately not - it relies on capitalist market forces in order to work!

 

[zdas04]

Sorry, but no force on earth will allow this to "work". The grand ideals (which I find amazingly wrong-headed) will quickly be ground into the muck but the profiteers. The small percentage of companies that see carbon reduction as their duty will be swamped by the rest that feel their only option is to lie, cheat, steel, and hire progressively sleazier lawyers. Cap & Trade is going to be yet another windfall for the legal "profession".

David

 

[moltenmetal]

Csd72: capitalism has always had a problem with communal resources like air and water, because they so easily cross private property lines. Making sure we all get along with respect to these communal resources is the legitimate role of government- I think even zdas04’s heroine Ayn Rand would agree with that.

The problem right now is that peeing in the collective swimming pool is free of charge, yet we all foot the bill for the water treatment costs.

A carbon tax will fix that, assigning a portion of that collective cost of dealing with negative impacts of emissions to those who are doing the consuming- directly in proportion to their consumption. The beauty of it is that it doesn’t really matter whether or not you consider CO2 to be an emission of concern: it just so happens that the other, undisputedly toxic and harmful emissions associated with fossil fuels happen to be very closely related to their carbon content, with methane being the cleanest and coal being the dirtiest fuel choice.

A carbon tax makes sense whether or not you believe in AGW.

We can argue about what to spend the tax revenue on- what sorts of projects to support etc. Personally I wouldn’t waste any of it on carbon sequestration projects- I’d sock it all into energy efficiency improvement projects because these reduce ALL emissions, not just CO2, as well as preserving the fundamentally non-renewable fossil fuel for higher value future use (i.e. as feedstocks rather than mere fuels). But the carbon tax will work to deter wasteful consumption even if the tax revenue is “wasted” on schools and hospitals- something else that most of us view to be a legitmate public good.

 

[KENAT]

Plus, unless it's somehow compensated for imported items from countries not doing similar won't it place US (or other countries that do similar) industry at even more of a disadvantage? Though this starts Tarif talk & free trade which gets messy so forget I said anything.

KENAT,

Have you reminded yourself of faq731-376 recently, or taken a look at posting policies:

http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?

What is Engineering anyway: faq1088-1484

 

[CajunCenturion]

==> A carbon tax makes sense whether or not you believe in AGW.
I have no objections in theory to a carbon tax, provided the tax is based solely on carbon consumption and no other criteria. Where is becomes difficult is exactly who to charge and how much. It's not a problem if it's levied at the gas pump on a per gallon basis, but it's quite another to do something like tap it onto someone's utility bill. Especially if you don't understand the source of that electricty.

The TVA is a good example. Yes, they run some coal plants which have emissions that are legitimately taxable, but the TVA also runs around 30 hydroelectric plants that do not have have those emissions, as well as I think three nuclear plants. So if a consumer buys power from the TVA, is that consumer buying the clean hydroelectric or nuclear power, or the not so clean coal generated power? So how do you measure that consumer's carbon consumption so as to appropriately and fairly assess the carbon tax?

As far as how the revenue is spent, yes, that is a separate discussion.

Good Luck
--------------
As a circle of light increases so does the circumference of darkness around it. - Albert Einstein

 

[zdas04]

Moltenmetal,
You are correct, sir. There are legitimate roles of government (not many, but some), and one of them is to protect the "common areas", which include air and water.

I've been saying for many years that another legitimate role of government is to "stay the hell out of commerce". They have failed to do this. Gasoline should currently sell for $8-10 USD/gallon, and would if the governments of the world had not provided trillions of dollars of incentives to accelerate energy production far beyond the requirements of supply and demand. They did this knowingly, with malice aforethought to keep energy prices outrageously low to act as an economic catalyst. It worked. We've had a golden era of sustained growth since WWII. Now the piper must be paid, and the price is going to be excessive.

At required prices, people would have a real incentive to conserve. At actual prices, people bitch but don't conserve. Consequently we have urban sprawl, more vehicles than people, and horrible public transit which is often dangerous. These problems are all directly related to a clandestine energy policy by that payed the Oil & Gas industry to develop far more hydrocarbon resources than the world needed. Call the "fix" a "carbon tax" or an "energy policy" and if it reduces the $500 million USD/day that is bleeding out of our economy to oil-exporting countries then I'm for it. Many countries have realized the risk of importing a major portion of their energy requirements and have applied tax policy to the problem--these countries on average have a much smaller trade deficit than the ones that didn't and even a smaller "carbon footprint". Both the "carbon tax" and "cap & trade" are a continuation of clandestine energy policies and could drive imports in the right direction, but the price will be an amazing amount of inflation and a bunch of sleazeballs getting pretty wealthy.

Hard nosed economics I can buy, if mushy "save the planet" rhetoric is required to implement it then I guess I can try to control my gag reflex.

David

 

[SnTMan]

I am sure we can all agree that improved efficiencies are desirable, we'd be pretty poor engineers if we thought otherwise.

I am also sure we can all agree it is better to pay as we go, and not defer the costs of cleaning up our messes. Sometimes it is better done through the market, sometimes better through the government.

But, subject to the above, I find it odd that the only thing anybody ever says is "too cheap" is energy.

I have said before, I happen to think that cheap, abundant energy is the answer to a lot of life's problems

Regards,

Mike

 

[csd72]

moltenmetal,

When they talk about CO2 they really mean CO2 equivalent, other gases such as methane are far worse per ton.

zdas04,

I agree, here in the UK gas is much more expensive and people are also much more efficient with their gas consumption (smaller cars, used less).

 

[ornerynorsk]

You may not wish to call it communism, maybe people have a hard time admitting that it is precisely the direction that the "free" world is heading. Shall we call it forced redistribution of wealth, or financial incentive to do what is "right". (who defines "right"?) Perhaps we can even call it chopped liver, or better yet, a pig with lipstick???? Sadly, too many people subscribe to the theory that the government knows what is best for the poor illiterate slobs known as "citizens". Sorry folks, not to rant, just a particularly sore spot with me. I'll have my liberty, thank-you. I already drive a car that gets 35 mpg, without having some gladhand bureaucrat in my pocket pushing me toward their Orwellian utopia. I have the latest thermal windows in my home, the water heater turned down to the low limit, etc, etc. I'm intelligent enough to know how to conserve my monetary resources. Rather than slapping all of humanity with these fines and taxes, perhaps promotion of research would be a better end.

 

[josephv]

To me the communism analogy does not work. If you look at the past few decades, you will see that the communist governments of the past were among the worst polluters. Actually, the communist governments of today have a terrible record of contamination and lack of health and safety standards.

 

[SnTMan]

josephv, true, when eveybody owns things, nobody owns them.

Recommend "All The Trouble In The World", by P.J. O'Rourke for a look at the environmental record of the Soviet block.

Regards,

Mike

 

[ornerynorsk]

Communism in a philosophical and political view, not historical, gentlemen. We will shortly see that the "politburo", whether Russian, American, whomever, will be the worst offender of any of their own rules.

 

[csd72]

I just love this American tendency to call any manipulation of the market communism. It is a typical political statement that tries to engage the emotional part of the brain before the logical part sees the reality.

If you use a piece of land that is not yours, you pay rent for it. If you use up clean air, you should pay rent for it.

Dont give me this nonsense about communism, if it was truly communism then there would be no market to manipulate. The US is still the farthest away from communism of any country I know of.

 

[moltenmetal]

Cajun: it’s obvious how you get the utility to figure out what to charge their customer for their electricity. The utility would pay the carbon tax on ALL the fuels they buy. The end user pays what the electricity cost to generate, which includes the effect of these FUEL taxes. You tax the FUELS, not the energy!

Do that and all of a sudden, wind and solar and tidal and geothermal and hydro and anything else you can do to generate electricity WITHOUT fossil fuels starts to make economic sense- but ONLY if the apparatus to make use of that energy- all of it- is worth the investment. All this argument about “embodied energy” and “lifecycle costing” would go away. If solar PV cells actually contain more fossil energy than they displace in their useable life, it would be easy to determine that based ENTIRELY on their purchase cost, which would include the carbon tax on all their fossil energy inputs. No more complex, politically charged lifecycle calculations with unjustified assumptions or inputs or outputs forgotten accidentally on purpose to provide the most palatable answer...and preferably, no more governments attempting to pick technological winners and losers based on lobbying effort, buzzword-worship and the vain hope of a magical “technological fix” for our energy woes at some point in the future.

Zdas04: how I ever got to agree so completely with someone who reads Atlas Shrugged once a year like the bible is totally beyond me, but there you go- I agree with your last post pretty much in its entirety. Don’t for a moment take that as any kind of endorsement of Rand’s “objectionableism” though! I suspect we’re WORLDS apart in regard to what each of us thinks is the limit of the legitimate role of government, for sure.

Any attempt to solve the problem of fossil fuels which does NOT use the market as its primary tool will be an abject failure. But creating an artificial “carbon credit” cap&trade “market” is a recipie for speculation, hoarding, price manipulation, fraud, graft and corruption- the worst features of real-world capitalism. A tax is far easier and cheaper to administer and suffers from these problems to a far smaller extent, though it is not immune to them. How to deal with the revenue from the tax is another matter entirely- but we at least have a chance to control it via our democratic institutions, and the object of the tax (consumption-reduction) will work even IF the money is squandered or stolen.