Call their tax [possible agreeable global warming solution]

Financial Post ^ | Tuesday, June 12, 2007 | Ross McKitrick

[chipengineer]

Why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming? Both skeptics and alarmists should expect their wishes to be answered

[chipengineer]

Something most honest parties could agree on.

[Just another Joe]

Ahhh but you put it in a nutshell right there. Honest partys.

NOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!! WE CAN NOT WAIT!!!!!!! WE MUST DO SOMETHING NOW!!!!!!!!! WE CANNOT AFFORD TO REACT!!!!!!!! WE MUST BE PROACTIVE!!!!!!!!!!!!!! </global warming lib>

[TheMightyQuinn]

The first problem with this is who controls the data? Do they have a vested interest in whether there is warming?

Second, has anyone proved that warming is bad? What has happened to civilizations in the past when it was warmer than it is now?

[P-40]

Under the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once, without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we get a sensible outcome.

I have to admit that does sound interesting.

[chipengineer]

Good points.

All the data needs to be open and auditable.

>...has anyone proved that warming is bad?

For many of the effects, no. Sea level rise is an almost certain effect if warming occurs, and would be very costly, though.

[verum ago]

Prove anthropogenic CO₂ emissions are the cause, that warming is actually bad, and that we can even do anything about it first, then we'll talk.

[chipengineer]

Did you read the article?

Nothing happens unless the tropical troposphere warms (which most informed skeptics agree is only likely from CO2).

[pankot]

It would be far more profitable to tax every sex act. Think of the revenue!

[P-40]

Did you read the article?

Comment first, read later! :)

[verum ago]

I did read the article (previous incidences of failure-to-read followed by insert-foot-into-mouth upon actually reading ensure that I read 'em all now)

the problem is that tropical troposphere warming isn't so simple an indicator as the author suggests it is (long story short, the satellites are calibrated to notoriously inaccurate radiosondes, data in general for the tropical troposphere shows a slight cooling trend, and if the earth is warming the tropical troposhere will too (I know the tax is based on warming anomolies, but the whole concept of what to consider a base period or reading (such as an average temperature or the period from 1979 to 1998 raises thorny questions of who's right and is simply arbitrary in the long run anyway)

[chipengineer]

There is good historical info in that link. However, I think if it became important to have these measurements, a very accurate method could be devised. Then the present to near future would become the base period.

[chipengineer]

Good discussion here:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1700#comments

[Zon]

Under the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once, without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we get a sensible outcome.

It may be brilliant. If it's not much ado about nothing. In the previous paragraph McKitrick writes... 

At this point the global-warming alarmists would leap up to slam the proposal.

Just as when Michael Crichton suggested that environmental research and testing use double-blind studies to ensure accuracy environmentalists slammed it. Why? Because it is undeniable accountability. Science and medicine in particular are indebted to the double-blind method.

Here's an excerpt of a testimony from Crichton:

"Thus, when adhered to, the scientific method can transcend politics. And the converse may also be true: when politics takes precedent over content, it is often because the primacy of independent verification has been overwhelmed by competing interests.

Verification may take several forms. I come from medicine, where the gold standard is the randomized double-blind study, which has been the paradigm of medical research since the 1940s." http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/senate.html

And this...

And I can tell you that if there were a double-blind assessment of climate models, the global warming debate would have been over yesterday. I can tell you further that if a blue-ribbon panel of disinterested non-scientists were convened to review the global temperature record, we would also witness a swift end to the current debate. Why? Because at the moment climate science is an insider's game, and serious outside scrutiny has never taken place.

I find this inexplicable. We're talking about spending trillions of dollars to control carbon emissions on a global scale because computer models of climate predict a dangerous future. And yet nobody is willing to subject these climate models to the kind of rigorous testing that we require to license a drug. http://www.crichton-official.com/speeches/speeches_quote08.html

How free market competition deals with uncertainty. It can further expose the fraudsters for creating problems that need not exist in the first place. Global warming is not the problem. The global warming hoax, propaganda and hysteria is the problem.

And best of all, the T3 tax will encourage private-sector climate forecasting. Firms will need good estimates of future tax rates, which will force them to look deeply, and objectively, into the question of whether existing climate forecasts have an alarmist bias. The financial incentives will lead to independent reassessments of global climate modelling, without regard to what politicians, the IPCC or climatology professors want to hear.

In the larger picture, none of this should be a problem in the first place. It's already a humongous waste of resources. So, while free market competition can out compete the status quo on the global warming hoax, if not to save our butts, the economy and standards of living, the whole thing is a waste of resources.

But here we are and free market competition is the best choice to dump salt on the leeches. Free market competition is parasitical-elite repellent.

[Myrddin]

Something most honest parties could agree on.

It's not honest if the "warming" is a completely normal consequence of astrophysics and not related to anything "man made". I believe it is a completely normal physical consequence of the movement of our solar system through the galaxy. As such, I'm not willing to fill the pockets of a snake oil salesman claiming that humans are "at fault".

[Myrddin]

For many of the effects, no. Sea level rise is an almost certain effect if warming occurs, and would be very costly, though.

Sea level isn't going to rise so fast that humans can't adapt. Another other claim is just scare mongering.

[verum ago]

There is good historical info in that link. However, I think if it became important to have these measurements, a very accurate method could be devised. Then the present to near future would become the base period.

which brings me in part back to original, cynical comment- "prove it." We simply can't right now, either way.

Also, why would the present or near future be the base period? Aren't atmospheric CO₂ levels already supposed to be so high that using said time period would skew your results away from anthropogenic Global Warming unfairly? To extend the problem at the heart of that last question, what is the Earth's climate "supposed" to be doing? The notion that it's supposed to not change is clearly BS, so the question is "how is it supposed to be changing?" I'm not going to actually argue it either way here, but it is worth noting that, generally speaking, for every piece of evidence that the Earth is warming due to man there is an equally convincing rebuttal. And that's the reason we're at an impasse- both sides hold dogmatic beliefs. Neither can actually prove their case scientifically; all they can do is predict (and to prove a theory requires sitting around for about 100 yrs and seeing what actually happens). The pro-anthropogenic G.W. side of the debate has tried to end the debate by claiming consensus; which is absurd because 1) there isn't a consensus and 2) the notion of consensus has no bearing on the validity of their theory- there's been consensuses that the Earth was flat, the center of the universe, that we're about to plunge into a catastrophic ice age, that the electrons in an atom follow Bohrlike well defined orbits etc. The claim of consensus failing, the other pro-anthropogenic G.W. tactic is to claim horrible things might happen and that therefore it's only prudent to act now. On the surface it ight seem that way, but that too is dogmatic. It's the equivalent of Hell- we're sinning, and unless we repent, we're doomed to horrible things. The rebuttal is that G.W. will improve life- by putting more water into the air and bringing rain to dry areas and also by increasing the amount of habitable land at high latitudes and vastly increasing the productivity of plants. In other words, the rebuttal says we're doing it right- why change our ways if we're being virtuous and bound for a dogmatic climate Heaven?

[chipengineer]

Do you have a better solution?

At least McKitrick’s proposal is fairly harmless if there is no warming. If Gore gets his way...

[verum ago]

frankly, without going into trying to actually argue my case- I'll just come out and say I don't think man is responsible for the warming. Therefore there isn't a problem, and if there's no problem, no solution is necessary.

The planet is warming- that much is undeniable. But the temperature trends on which McKitrick's proposal rest are vague and completely open to being skewed, intentionally or not, one way or the other. His proposal is harmless if it works as simply as he suggests it should. But that requires an accurate means of measuring the temperature anomolies in the tropical troposhere, which we don't have. And it also requires both sides to refrain from fixing their data or models or even lying outright, which both sides are clearly doing already. And I still haven't seen a single argument for why any time/temperature period should be used as the baseline for measuring the temperature anomolies- it's all been just arbitrary choices so far without justification as to why that choice is a "normal" trend- and if we can't assure a truely "normal" baseline, than the whole thing is worthless anyway. Especially if that baseline is arbitrarily chosen- then it is as open as ever for someone to choose a baseline that isn't "normal" but instead provides the results that they want.

[AFPhys]

If anybody saved a copy of this full article, I would appreciate them FReepmailing the text to me. It has been moved over to “subscriber only” status.

[chipengineer]

I do not have it, but you might ask at:

http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=1700

The author has posted comments there.