• Tag Archives global warming

  • Crossing the Welfare State With the Carbon Tax

    Posted on by Azrael 1 Comment

    Crossing the Welfare State With the Carbon Tax

    I don’t have strong views on global warming. Or climate change, or whatever it’s being called today.

    But I’ve generally been skeptical about government action for the simple reason that the people making the most noise are statists who would use any excuse to increase the size and power of government.

    To be blunt, I simply don’t trust them. In Washington, they’re called watermelons – green on the outside (identifying as environmentalists) but red on the inside (pushing a statist agenda).

    But there are some sensible people who think some sort of government involvement is necessary and appropriate.

    The Carbon Tax

    George Schultz and James Baker, two former Secretaries of State, argue for a new carbon tax in a Wall Street Journal column as part of an agenda that also makes changes to regulation and government spending.

    …there is mounting evidence of problems with the atmosphere that are growing too compelling to ignore. …The responsible and conservative response should be to take out an insurance policy. Doing so need not rely on heavy-handed, growth-inhibiting government regulations. Instead, a climate solution should be based on a sound economic analysis that embodies the conservative principles of free markets and limited government. We suggest…creating a gradually increasing carbon tax…, returning the tax proceeds to the American people in the form of dividends. And…rolling back government regulations once such a system is in place.”

    A multi-author column in the New York Times, including Professors Greg Mankiw and Martin Feldstein from Harvard, also puts for the argument for this plan.

    On-again-off-again regulation is a poor way to protect the environment. And by creating needless uncertainty for businesses that are planning long-term capital investments, it is also a poor way to promote robust economic growth. By contrast, an ideal climate policy would reduce carbon emissions, limit regulatory intrusion, promote economic growth, help working-class Americans and prove durable when the political winds change. …Our plan is…the federal government would impose a gradually increasing tax on carbon dioxide emissions. It might begin at $40 per ton and increase steadily. This tax would send a powerful signal to businesses and consumers to reduce their carbon footprints. …the proceeds would be returned to the American people on an equal basis via quarterly dividend checks. With a carbon tax of $40 per ton, a family of four would receive about $2,000 in the first year. As the tax rate rose over time to further reduce emissions, so would the dividend payments. …regulations made unnecessary by the carbon tax would be eliminated, including an outright repeal of the Clean Power Plan.”

    They perceive this plan as being very popular.

    Environmentalists should like the long-overdue commitment to carbon pricing. Growth advocates should embrace the reduced regulation and increased policy certainty, which would encourage long-term investments, especially in clean technologies. Libertarians should applaud a plan premised on getting the incentives right and government out of the way.”

    Not So Fast

    I hate to be the skunk at the party, but I’m a libertarian and I’m not applauding. I explain some of my concerns about the general concept in this interview.

    In the plus column, there would be a tax cut and a regulatory rollback. In the minus column, there would be a new tax. So two good ideas and one bad idea, right? Sounds like a good deal in theory, even if you can’t trust politicians in the real world.

    However, the plan that’s being promoted by Schultz, Baker, Feldstein, Mankiw, etc, doesn’t have two good ideas and one bad idea. They have the good regulatory reduction and the bad carbon tax, but instead of using the revenue to finance a good tax cut such as eliminating the capital gains tax or getting rid of the corporate income tax, they want to create universal handouts.

    They want us to believe that this money, starting at $2,000 for a family of four, would be akin to some sort of tax rebate.

    That’s utter nonsense, if not outright prevarication. This is a new redistribution program. Sort of like the “basic income” scheme being promoted by some folks.

    And it creates a very worrisome dynamic since people will have an incentive to support ever-higher carbon taxes in order to get ever-larger checks from the government. Heck, the plan being pushed explicitly envisions such an outcome.

    I’ve made the economic argument against carbon taxes and the cronyism argument against carbon taxes. Now that we have a real-world proposal, we have the practical argument against carbon taxes.

    Reprinted from International Liberty.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.



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  • Climate Modeling: Settled Science or Fool’s Errand?

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    Climate Modeling: Settled Science or Fool’s Errand?

    I don’t know if you’ve had a chance to read Daniel Sarewitz’s recent piece Saving Science in the New Atlantis, but it is causing all sorts of ripples across the scientific community, and deserves even more attention from both scientists and policy makers. I interviewed Sarewitz for RealClear Radio Hour this weekend, and I would like to dig into one of the many issues we discussed, and that is the misuse of climate models.

    But first, a little background.

    The differences in the way scientists and engineers use mathematics can have profound political consequences.Like the quip about England and America often misattributed to George Bernard Shaw, science and engineering are two professions divided by a common language. That language, of course, is mathematics, a symbolic abstraction through which we can describe, explain, and sometimes transform the natural world. That purpose matters because the differences in the way scientists and engineers use mathematics can have profound political consequences when those calculations drift too far from observable reality.

    When mathematics jumped from paper to computers, elegance was turbocharged with brute force. This allowed scientists and engineers to develop computer models that simulated physical phenomena. Eventually, some of these simulation models became good enough that “what if” experiments could be conducted more rapidly and conveniently on a computer than by performing physical experiments. Propelled by Moore’s Law, improvements in computing delivered billions of calculations per second, and the most advanced simulation models took on breathtaking levels of sophistication.

    Engineering, Tech-Based

    In the engineering world, we got semiconductor physics models that attempted to simulate the behavior of integrated circuits. In the beginning, these models were very crude, and the circuits were correspondingly simple. But the integrated circuits slowly co-evolved with the tools used to design them in a tight feedback loop, creating a cycle that eventually yielded models that could flawlessly predict the behavior of electrons traversing single atomic layers of material.

    Whenever the models made predictions that deviated from measured results – sometimes ruining a batch of chips – the model parameters got adjusted. This was often done with the help of scientists whose research followed technological developments, as engineers asked them to help figure out what went wrong. Companies that got that process right thrived. Those that didn’t went out of business. For the rest of us, this ongoing process meant better, faster, cheaper gadgets, as the transistor radios of yore evolved into today’s powerful smartphones.

    Science, Funding-Based

    In the science world, we have climate models that attempt to simulate the combined behavior of the Sun, along with the Earth’s atmosphere, ocean, cloud, and biosphere, as one giant integrated system. In the beginning, these models were very crude, and the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change unequivocally stated that “the climate system is a coupled non-linear chaotic system, and therefore the long-term prediction of future climate states is not possible.” But that didn’t stop environmental activists from using these models to make alarming predictions of runaway global warming decades in the future.

    The only feedback loop that informed scientific development was the funding feedback loop.It was the perfect advocacy narrative, because the models were never used to build anything, and could not easily be tested. One could hardly ask engineers to whip up a batch of planets with varying levels of carbon dioxide (CO2) to see whether the model parameters reflected reality. So the only feedback loop that informed scientific development was the funding feedback loop, as pleasing the funding agencies became paramount. When funding became politicized, climate change became a partisan political cudgel. Scientists who made alarming forecasts thrived, while those who didn’t were forced to seek greener pastures. For the rest of us, it’s meant an intractable, toxically polarized political controversy that is roiling major segments of our economy.

    Meanwhile, published estimates of climate sensitivity – the critical parameter driving the models – have been trending ever-downward as time has proven old alarming climate forecasts spectacularly wrong. And scientists who want to test technologies to cool the planet, like spraying reflective particles into the atmosphere, know that after all the billions spent, the models still aren’t anywhere near good enough to predict the consequences of such interventions.

    Which brings us back to Daniel Sarewitz, Co-Director of the Consortium for Science, Policy, and Outcomes at Arizona State University. Sarewitz, who was trained as an earth scientist, is terrified that “science is trapped in a self-destructive vortex” that is endangering both science and democracy. In his blockbuster analysis mentioned above, he nails his thesis to the laboratory door, challenging Big Science to get its act together. Politicizing science, he argues, leads to debates about science being substituted for debates about politics. So we end up fighting over unverifiable forecasts about what might happen in the future, rather than wrestling with the complex tradeoffs that attend political decisions on what we should – or could – do about carbon emissions under all the potential future scenarios.

    But rather than get discouraged, Sarewitz believes there is a way out of this conundrum. His advice is, “Technology unites while science divides.” He recommends that science “abdicate its protected political status and embrace both its limits and its accountability to the rest of society.” Despite calling long-range climate forecasting “a fool’s errand,” he thinks dumping too much CO2 in the atmosphere will make anthropogenic global warming a long term problem that will eventually require the decarbonization of our energy industries. But he sees this as a process taking many decades, one that can be best addressed not with politicized science, but by letting adaptation, innovation, wealth creation, and economic growth lead the way.

    You can listen to a podcast of our complete RealClear Radio Hour interview here.

    Bill Frezza


    Bill Frezza

    Bill Frezza is a fellow at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and the host of RealClear Radio Hour.

    This article was originally published on FEE.org. Read the original article.


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  • A Physics view of Climate Change

    Posted on by Azrael Comment

    You may propose an idea, like our CO2 causes dangerous climate change. You may show evidence to support your idea. But the defense only needs to show your idea has one mistake or one incorrect prediction to prove your idea is wrong.

    Some climate alarmists’ claim their idea is true because of a “preponderance of evidence.” This is not the scientific method and it leads to the wrong conclusion.

    The scientific method says we can never prove an idea is true. We only can prove an idea is false. To approach truth, we discard fiction. Since we can never discard all fiction, science is never settled.

    Let’s drop in on another fictitious trial.

    The prosecution claims human CO2 emissions cause climate change. The prosecution introduces the following evidence:

    • Humans have burned carbon-based fuels in meaningful quantities since 1950.
    • Global temperatures have been mostly rising since 1950.
    • Climate models embody the alarmist idea.
    • Climate models predict human CO2 will cause future temperature rise.
    • Consequences are dangerous sea levels, hurricanes, etc.

    Looks bad for CO2 but let’s hear from the defense.

    The defense requests dismissal of consequential evidence, like sea levels, because consequences do not prove causation. The judge agrees. Consequential evidence dismissed.

    The defense calls its witnesses.

    Dr. Richard Feynman, Nobel Laureate in Physics, explains the scientific method. You get an idea or hypothesis. You use your idea to make a prediction. If your prediction is wrong, your idea is wrong.

    Dr. Albert Einstein testifies we must compare predictions of climate models to new data. Einstein’s relativity idea predicted our sun’s gravity would bend light from a star by a precise amount. Einstein said of the scientific method, “Many experiments may prove me right but it takes only one to prove me wrong.”

    Dr. John Christy compares climate model predictions since 1979 with real data. Climate models do not agree among themselves, and the model average predicts global temperature will increase 3 times faster than recorded climate data. This inaccuracy is like missing your deer shot by 3 deer lengths. Both points prove the models are wrong.

    So, like Smith, human CO2 is innocent. Climate changes but CO2 does not cause the climate change. Case closed.

    In only 603 words, we proved the alarmists’ climate hypothesis is wrong.

    Therefore, it is a cult religion. The US government and its agencies like the EPA have forced the alarmists’ climate cult religion on the American public in opposition to the First Amendment to our Constitution.

    However, for your entertainment, the defense continues with some atmospheric “rocket science.”

    The defense calls Dr. Judith Curry. She says the real issue is “What causes climate change? Humans or nature?”

    Dr. Ferenc Miskolczi explains his peer-reviewed papers that show water vapor and clouds adjust to changes in CO2 to keep Earth’s greenhouse effect constant. His predictions match observations. Therefore, CO2 can’t change the greenhouse effect and can’t cause global warming.

    Question: Would Earth be an ice-covered planet if it had no CO2?

    Miskolczi: The water phase diagram shows ice sublimation would add enough water vapor to produce today’s greenhouse effect, with or without CO2.

    Dr. Murry Salby is the author of the 666-page, 2012 textbook “Physics of the Atmosphere and Climate.” He uses advanced physics and math to analyze CO2 data. Salby proves temperature, not human CO2, causes the change in atmospheric CO2. Salby’s conclusion does not depend on theory. It results from proper data analysis.

    Dr. Willie Soon is lead author of a 2015 peer-reviewed paper that shows our sun, not CO2, drives climate. He shows plots of temperature, total solar irradiance, and CO2 from 1880 to present. The plots show Earth’s global temperature correlates with total solar irradiance but not with CO2. The lack of correlation of Earth temperature with CO2 proves CO2 does not drive temperature.

    Dr. David Evans, an expert mathematician, found climate models contain a serious error. Climate models use the old Arrhenius assumption that Earth responds to CO2 change like it responds to change in solar radiation. The Arrhenius assumption is incorrect. Climate responds much differently to changes in CO2 than it does to changes in solar radiation. When Evans corrects for this model error alone, climate model temperature predictions decrease by 80 to 90 percent.

    Dr. Ivar Giaever won the 1973 Nobel Prize in Physics. He is a Democrat who puts scientific truth above partisanship. He testifies the alarmist climate change idea is pure pseudoscience. He says climate alarmists have made their idea a new religion and therefore can’t question it. He shows many conflicts of the alarmist climate idea with the real world of physics.

    The defense rests.

    The prosecution can’t produce any witnesses to counter the testimonies of Feynman, Einstein, Christy, Curry, Miskolczi, Salby, Soon, Evans, or Giaever.

    Source: A Physics view of Climate Change


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