UK Researchers: Tax Food to Reduce Climate Change (Get Ready To Be Hungry)

WUWT ^ | 11-19-2016 | Eric Worrall

[blam]

Eric Worrall
November 19, 2016

A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change.

“ Pricing food according to its climate impacts could save half a million lives and one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions

Taxing greenhouse gas emissions from food production could save more emissions than are currently generated by global aviation, and lead to half a million fewer deaths from chronic diseases, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.

The study, conducted by a team of researchers from the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food at the University of Oxford and the International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC, is the first global analysis to estimate the impacts that levying emissions prices on food could have on greenhouse gas emissions and human health.

The findings show that about one billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions could be avoided in the year 2020 if emissions pricing of foods were to be implemented, more than the total current emissions from global aviation. However, the authors stress that due consideration would need to be given to ensuring such policies did not impact negatively on low income populations.

“Emissions pricing of foods would generate a much needed contribution of the food system to reducing the impacts of global climate change,” said Dr Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food, who led the study. “We hope that’s something policymakers gathering this week at the Marrakech climate conference will take note of.”

(snip)

[exDemMom]

Hmm. Considering that all food is carbon based, I fail to understand how it is even possible to differentiate between "carbon-intensive foods."

Dr Marco Springmann of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Future of Food

I did a quick Google search, and found out a little about this guy. Although he has a PhD, and he claims to do research, he is not a scientist. I didn't think he was, otherwise he would know that CO2 is essential for all life, it literally is the stuff that living things are made of. He does have a master's in physics--but that does not qualify him as a scientist, much less qualified to speak in a field related to life science.

What I learned is that he is a vegetarianism/veganism advocate. And, like many sociologists who claim to do research, he comes up with a basic belief and then cherry picks data or creates logical arguments to support it. This is far removed from real science, in which the researcher asks a question and does experiments or makes observations that either support or refute the question.

I would bet that he cannot name a valid method for differentiating between "carbon rich" and "carbon poor" foods. Furthermore, I doubt that he could devise a workable scheme where food would be heavily taxed without heavy push-back from the people affected.

Not all PhDs are created equal. Some, in hard sciences like mine is, are extremely valuable and benefit humanity. Others, like in sociology, are mostly useless and can be, in the case of someone like this guy who wants to control humanity, harmful.

[Pollster1]

Excellent idea! If any working people still support liberalism, heavily taxing food will solve the problem. Go for it liberals, anywhere you still have power.

[Nifster]

Good luck collecting it

Pull out of the UN now

When the mini ice age is in full swing will they let us burn coal to help break it?

[mjp]

A group of researchers in Oxford University, England have suggested that imposing a massive tax on carbon intensive foods – specifically protein rich foods like meat and dairy – could help combat climate change.

thank God we have brilliant libtard elites that are smarter than we are, and can control us and make us do what is right. NOT

[spokeshave]

Not to worry. ....the coming ice age will wipe them out.

[metmom]

Taxing greenhouse gas emissions from food production could save more emissions than are currently generated by global aviation, and lead to half a million fewer deaths from chronic diseases, according to a new study published in Nature Climate Change.

It's not going to stop a thing.

All it's going to do is line someone's pocket.

[super7man]

lead to half a million fewer deaths from chronic diseases

But wouldn't this be a good thing for the world carbon footprint?

[ptsal]

Tax home gardens

[Thibodeaux]

there will beno climate change problem if such researchers are eliminated

[palmer]

man is responsible for just 3.4% of that or so-

Before industry and cement there was about 280 ppm, now there is 400 ppm. If that rise were natural it would have to come from volcanoes or similar geology, or from warming or a combo. The Greenland ice cores with annual resolution show no prior spikes in CO2, so volcanoes would be ruled out. If it were from warming it would require 12C of warming in the last few centuries to release that much CO2 from the oceans. That has not happened. So the only real explanation for the rise from 280 to 400 (and 2 ppm more each year) is fossil fuels and cement.

One other possibility is deforestation or plant reductions. They usually add a factor for deforestation into the manmade CO2 from fossil fuels and cement which confuses the numbers but they still chalk that up as manmade. If there were large natural reductions in plant matter, particularly in the oceans, that could lower CO2 naturally. But that doesn't seem like a better explanation or even a combo of that, volcanoes and warming. In short, it is not natural.

The pertinent question is whether the source of the CO2 matters and the answer is no. It causes some beneficial warming.

[Toughluck_freeper]

The North African countries, Canada and a Russia should sue the UK and Oxford for trying to keep temps low. A few degrees increase would bring back precipitation to North Africa making the deserts the lush vegetation it once was. Siberia and Canada would then become the great agricultural areas of the world.

Climate change is just a scaremonging scam to tax people.

[indthkr]

Made In England bump for later....

[AlaskaErik]

My question is, how big of a carbon footprint do cows make in relationship to all the rest of the animals in the world? I want to see a pie chart.

[Yollopoliuhqui]

Vegetarianism is a hippie-Hindu strategy to Soylent Green the population into low vitamin stupefying Dachau quality dietary intake.

[TruthInThoughtWordAndDeed]

FU UK Researchers

[BradyLS]

Well, that’s it, isn’t?

Basically, states have hit upon the idea austerity measures against the people should be enacted under the rubric of “stopping/forestallng ‘climate change’.” Because “science.”

You can be sure the state will never stint on its own “needs.”

[Let_It_Be_So]

“Tax, tax, tax. Do they not have any other ideas?”

I realize your question was rhetorical, but here is the answer anyway...
How best to implement social engineering schemes which result in substantial ongoing wealth transfers from producers to consumers, than via taxation?

[Bob434]

[[It causes some beneficial warming. ]]

It can’t there isn’t enough- the ppm is meaningless- we are nowheres near the ‘cut-off’ point at which we ‘enter dangerous levels’ - ppm in the past have been 8000 or better- and again- ice core samples prove that CO2 always rises AFTER temps rise- 800 years after- proving that rising temps are what cause rising CO2- not the other way around-

You and i have been aroudn and aroudn on this issue in the past-

I’ll ask again- can you explain how 0.00136% of the atmosphere is capable of trapping enough IR and converting to heat and then back radiating to earth to cause global warming? Even slight global warming? Some figures would be nice ie: What is the % of back radiated heat compared to our earth’s 6 quadrillion tons of atmosphere? & please explain how the insignificant amount of back radiated heat wouldn’t quickly reach equilibrium as it gets engulfed by the massive amount of cooler surface temperatures that the heat gets back radiated to-

the 0.00136% figure comes from the fact that the atmosphere contains 0.04% CO2 and other stuff that is suspected of causign ‘warming’ - man’s production of CO2 amounts to just 3.4% of that 0.04%- so 3.4% of 0.04% = 0.00136%- that is how much atmosphere that man’s CO2 takes up- There is no thick blanket of CO2 trapping all the heat

[[If it were from warming it would require 12C of warming in the last few centuries to release that much CO2 from the oceans. That has not happened. So the only real explanation for the rise from 280 to 400 (and 2 ppm more each year) is fossil fuels and cement.]]

[[The natural CO2 flux to and from oceans and land plants amounts to approximately 210 gigatons of carbon annually. Man currently causes about 8 gigatons of carbon to be injected into the atmosphere, about 4% of the natural annual flux. There are estimates that about half of man’s emissions are taken up by nature. But is that true? Are there variations in the natural flux? Could those explain the CO2 increase?...........

It is ten times as likely that atmospheric CO2 is coming from natural sources, namely the warming ocean surface, as it is likely that it is coming from anthropogenic sources. ]]

http://notrickszone.com/2013/03/02/most-of-the-rise-in-co2-likely-comes-from-natural-sources/

[Bob434]

7) The 0.7C increase in the average global temperature over the last hundred years is entirely consistent with well-established, long-term, natural climate trends.

2) Man-made carbon dioxide emissions throughout human history constitute less than 0.00022 percent of the total naturally emitted from the mantle of the earth during geological history.

3) Warmer periods of the Earth’s history came around 800 years before rises in CO2 levels.

4) After World War II, there was a huge surge in recorded CO2 emissions but global temperatures fell for four decades after 1940.

http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/146138/100-reasons-why-climate-change-is-natural

[Bob434]

[[Before industry and cement there was about 280 ppm, now there is 400 ppm.]]

Yup- we were in the ‘little ice age’ from around 1400 to about 1860 or so- then temps began warming again, and bingo- CO2 began rising again 100’s of years later- infact, we’re now almost about where the ‘medieval warming’ period was- (Which I’m sure i don’t have to point out was entirely natural)

Sources of rising CO2 due to warming?

1: Cycles of solar variability which later caused rises in CO2 from ocean s as described in previous post http://www-das.uwyo.edu/~geerts/cwx/notes/chap02/sunspots.html

2: 21,000 year cycle Earth’s combined tilt and elliptical orbit around the Sun http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/why_glaciations1.html#precession

3: 41,000 year cycle: Cycle of the +/- 1.5° wobble in Earth’s orbit http://www.museum.state.il.us/exhibits/ice_ages/why_glaciations1.html#tilt

4: 100,000 year cycle: Variations in the shape of Earth’s elliptical orbit http://www.homepage.montana.edu/~geol445/hyperglac/time1/milankov.htm

(2) Atmospheric Causes warming (and consequent rises in CO2 many years later?)

Solar Reflectivity

Heat retention due to greenhouse gases

3) Tectonic causes of warming (and consequent rises in CO2 many years later?)

Land shifts/Continental drifts causing major disruptions in oceanic current patterns throwing everything out of kilter, causing warming, and contributing to later CO2 increases as the world warmed

ocean displacement

http://www.geocraft.com/WVFossils/ice_ages.html

To suggest that there are no reasons why CO2 would rise as it did except by the hand of man ignores these possible causes-

But even if the rise is solely due to man- it’s still so insignificant an amount compared to the 6 quadrillion tons of atmosphere, that it can’t possibly be responsible for causing climate change- there isn’t nearly enough to accomplish such a task- there is no thick blanket of CO2 preventing heat from escaping- only a tiny fraction of hte atmosphere has man-produced CO2 in it-