Posted on 02/17/2013 2:54:59 PM PST by lbryce
Standard climatological and economic techniques, combined in an investment appraisal of the proposed Sanders/Boxer carbon dioxide tax (U.S. Senate, 2013), show that even at a zero inter-temporal discount rate the cost of the Bill’s proposed CO2 mitigation if applied worldwide over ten years is 15 times greater than the benefit in the cost of warming-related damage avoided by the intended cut in CO2 emissions, which is here assumed to be – but is in reality unlikely to be – achievable at the stated cost.
Fraction of global CO2 emissions abated: By 2023, on business as usual, U.S. CO2 emissions will be 5589 Tg CO2, 8.5% down (EIA, 2013) on the 6108 Tg CO2 (EPA, 2012) emitted in 2005. En route to Sanders/Boxer’s proposed 2025 cut of 20% compared with 2005, the cut in 2023 will be 18.5% against 2005, or an additional 10% or 611 Tg CO2, representing a cut of 10.9% in 2023 against business as usual. Since U.S. CO2 emissions represent 17% of world emissions (derived from Boden & Marland, 2010 and Boden, 2010), even if the tax succeeds as intended it will abate just 10.9% of 17%, or a mere 1.9%, of global CO2 emissions.
CO2 concentration abated: Without the carbon dioxide tax, CO2 concentration in 2023 would be 422 μatm (IPCC, 2007, Table 10.26) against 397 μatm in 2013 (updated from Conway & Tans, 2011). If the tax worked as intended, CO2 concentration in 2023 would be 422 minus 1.9% of (422 – 397), or 421.522 μatm.
CO2 forcing abated (IPCC, 2007; Myhre, 1998), would be 5.35 ln(422/421.522), or 0.006 W m–2.
A suitable climate sensitivity parameter is multiplied by the CO2 forcing to determine warming over the ten-year term. Garnaut (2008) is one of many who recommend keeping greenhouse-gas rises to 450 ppmv CO2-equivalent above the 280 ppmv prevalent in 1750, to hold 21st-century warming since then to below 2 K. So the implicit climate sensitivity parameter is 2 K / {5.35 ln[(280 + 450)/280] W m–2}, or 0.39 K W–1 m2.
Global warming abated by the tax from 2014-2023 would be 0.39(0.006) = 0.00237 K.
Projected warming over the term: CO2 forcing represents 70% of all manmade forcing (IPCC, 2001, 2007). Thus, warming officially projected for the ten-year term is 0.39[5.35 ln(422/397)] / 0.7 = 0.182 K.
The percentage of projected global warming abated over the ten-year term is 0.00237/0.182 = 1.3%.
The cost of abating global warming via the U.S. carbon tax over ten years is given as $1.2 trillion.
The mitigation cost-effectiveness of the tax, i.e. the cost of abating 1 K global warming by worldwide measures as cost-effective as the tax, is $1.2 trillion / 0.00237, or $507 trillion per Kelvin abated. The cost of abating the 3 K warming predicted by the IPCC to 2100 would exceed $1.5 quadrillion.
Global abatement cost: The cash cost of abating this projected 0.182 K warming over the term, again by measures as cost-effective as the tax, is 0.182 x $507 trillion, or $92 trillion, which, divided by the global population of 7 billion, is $13,200 per head, or, divided by $803 trillion global GDP over the ten-year term (from World Bank, 2011 assuming 3% annual GDP growth from $66 trillion in 2013), 11.5% of global GDP.
Benefit in averted warming-related damage cost: Stern (2006, p. vi), estimates that the cost of abating the 3 K 21st-century global warming expected by the IPCC will be 1.5[0, 3]% of 21st-century global GDP.
The cost-benefit ratio is 11.5/1.5 = 7.7. Accordingly, based on the optimistic assumption that $1.2 trillion will buy as much CO2 mitigation in the U.S. as Sanders/Boxer assume, and taking a zero discount rate, which maximally favors future generations, it is almost 8 times costlier to mitigate CO2 emissions by typical abatement measures such as the Sanders/Boxer carbon tax than to take no action at all and to endure the later cost of climate-related damage arising from the resultant warming.
The bottom line is that if global warming of 0.14 K/decade in the 22 years since 1990 (the least-squares trend on the monthly temperature anomalies in HadCRUt3gl, 2011) continues at half of the 3 Cº central estimate in IPCC (1990), so that only half the benefit in damage costs averted is achievable, CO2 mitigation today will be at least 15 times costlier than adaptation the day after tomorrow.
Conclusion: More complex analysis would be unlikely to change the outcome sufficiently to render the U.S. carbon tax, or any policy to mitigate CO2 emissions, at all cost-effective. Removal of some of the simplifying assumptions would tend to worsen the cost-benefit ratio still further, for most of them lead to understatement of it. Results from other case studies broadly confirm the outcome in the Sanders/Boxer case. Therefore, future adaptation where needed is sensible, but present-day mitigation is unjustifiable. Congress should reject the Bill, which would reduce the current $2 trillion U.S. annual deficit by only $30 billion, or just 1.5%.
References
Boden and Marland, 2010a. Global CO2 Emissions from Fossil-Fuel Burning, Cement Manufacture, and Gas Flaring, 1751-2007. Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA. Boden et al., 2010b. Ranking of the world's countries by 2007 total CO2 emissions from fossil-fuel burning, cement production, and gas flaring. Carbon Dioxide Information and Analysis Center, Oak Ridge, Tennessee, USA.
Conway, T., & P. Tans, 2011, Recent trends in globally-averaged CO2 concentration, NOAA/ESRL, http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/global.html#global.
Energy Information Administration (EIA), 2013, Annual Energy Outlook 2013, from Annual Energy Outlooks 2009-2013. Environment Protection Agency (EPA), 2012, Inventory of U.S. Greenhouse Gas Emissions and Sinks, 1990-2010 (Washington, DC, 2012 April).
Garnaut, 2008. The Garnaut Climate Change Review: Final Report. Cambridge University Press, Port Melbourne, Australia, 680 pp, ISBN 9780521744447.
HadCRUt3gl, 2011. Monthly global mean surface temperature anomalies, 1850-2011. http://www.cru.uea.ac.uk/cru/data/temperature/hadcrut3gl.txt.
IPCC, 2001. Climate Change 2001: The Scientific Basis: Contribution of Working Group I to the Third Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [Houghton, J.T., Y. Ding, D.J. Griggs, M. Noguer, P.J. van der Linden, X. Dai, K. Maskell and C.A. Johnson (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
IPCC, 2007. Climate Change 2007: the Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working Group I to the Fourth Assessment Report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2007 [Solomon, S., D. Qin, M. Manning, Z. Chen, M. Marquis, K.B. Avery, M. Tignor and H.L. Miller (eds.)]. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
Murphy, 2008. Some Simple Economics of Climate Changes. Paper presented to the MPS General Meeting, Tokyo, September 8.
Myhre et al., 1998. New estimates of radiative forcing due to well mixed greenhouse gases. Geophysical Research Letters 25:14, 2715–2718, doi:10.1029/98GL01908.
Stern, N., 2006, The Economics of Climate Change: The Stern Review. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, United Kingdom, and New York, NY, USA.
U.S. Senate, 2013, Sanders/Boxer Climate Legislation, www.sanders.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/021413-2pager.pdf.
World Bank, 2011. Gross Domestic Product 2009, World Development Indicators. http://siteresources.worldbank.org/DATASTATISTICS/Resources/GDP.pdf.
Just to mention a few of what he has planned, the implementation of Obamacare and its much higher costs than imaginable designed to hit small business, the very backbone of the US economy,the federal budget running amok, purposely allowed to be out of control,the implementation of the Global Warming initiative, the taxes it promotes, and the wholesale effect on the economy by severely limiting the amount of carbon the US economy will be allowed to use, even his use of predator-drones are solely to sow hatred, vehemence globally by allowing the wanton death of entire families through the collateral death of innocents, the hatred against the US remaining for generations, as the recent article that 92% of Pakistanis dislike America, are all just a few of Obama's initiatives to destroy the country, that when fully put into place, will combine to exponential effect in its synergistic destructiveness of the US.
The carbon tax will monetize thin air and completely destroy your freedoms.
Your furnace isn’t efficient enough, there’s a tax for that. Your car doesn’t get enough mileage, there’s a tax for that. Your house has insufficient insulation, there’s a tax for that. You don’t have a smart meter on your house, there’s a tax for that...........
It is all about taxes and a collapsed economy followed by strong man rule. This is what the huge ammunition purchases are about IMO.
Typical RAT behavior.
According to the article, the so-called carbon tax would impact the average Earth temperature by less than 0.2 Celsius. Statistically, that order of magnitude of change is considered “noise”.
As usual, the “progressive” Senators Boxer and Sanders pulling out the same old disproven pseudo science canards of anthropogenic global warming (blizards, record cold temperatures are due to global warming! The sky is falling!). Throw in the canard that “There is a consensus, the science is settled”. BOVINE SCAT! Science is based on fact, not some consensus enforced by political commisars. This has been exposed by even Peter Moore, founder (no longer member) of Greenpeace.
As Nancy Reagan said “Just say no”
This is not about the effects of carbon dioxide on the relative warmth of the earth’s atmosphere, and it never was.
This is a tax on producers, and indirectly, a consumption tax on everybody. Its singular purpose is to REDUCE the amount of energy generated by combustion of carbon-based fuels, by making any such power production so very costly, that solar and wind power generation, as irregular and unreliable as they are, somewhat competitive in cost to the consumer, as compared to coal, natural gas or petroleum put to use in heat production, whether for power generation, transportation, or home heating purposes.
Neither wind or solar power will ever be much more than scientific curiosities, in the same league as perpetual motion machines or the mining of the sea for gold. The costs are simply too great for the value of the product recovered.
There is a way to use nuclear energy for power generation, with far fewer of the undesirable end products that result from using U-238 as the power source, or “fuel”. There is great potential for using a thorium-based nuclear power plant, but because it cannot be made into a fission bomb, the technology has largely been stalled for perhaps the last sixty-five years or so.
Some 97% of the energy available still remains in “spent” uranium power rods, energy that can be mostly released using the thorium-powered atomic piles, which would vastly reduce the atomic “waste” that is now moldering away in various storage dumps all over the world.
Yet this technology will not be pursued, because of superstitious fears that are fed endlessly by the anti-power crowd, those who do not WANT widespread prosperity and cheap energy, for whatever reason.
As if letting warming happen is bad in the long term.
An assumption, and a dangerous one.
There is no global warming.
If you were somehow able to remove all 0.03% of our atmosphere that’s made up of CO2, all you’d do is kill off 99.9999% of the life on the planet.
Oxygen levels have been dropping for millions of years as it is. We need more CO2 so more plants will make oxygen. We just can’t seem to produce any.
I doubt that they accounted for the BENEFITS of a warmer globe in their cost/benefit analysis — fewer people dying from cold, more temperate climate for growing crops, open arctic sea lanes averting billions in fuel costs through the Panama canal, earlier backyard BBQs in the springtime, improved beer sales.
The reason?
Because when you are prosperous you can tell them to s*** in their hats and pull it over their ears and call it curls.
They can't have that. Even the most blue collar of types unless their is no rudder or keel get it when they come into wealth. And then they begin to vote differently.
More important is they may not want all that gooney-goo's for Government Programs when they could pay it themselves.
Their greatest enemy IMHO at this point is some land owner in PA, VA or OH that has been doing ok or eeking out a living and now has a net worth of over 7 digits because they have a ton of Gas on their land because they allowed it to be Fracked.
They didn't get it via via an Apparatchik at Harvard or Yale, or they never were down with the struggle. How dare they extract Wealth from Mother Gaia. Which is were real wealth come from, raw minerals & materials turned into products via engineers that develop products that make people happy. How dare they! Only Guberment can make you happy!!!
Besides you can't be a surf to the utopian control schemes, with Fracking, Thorium Pebble Reactors small enough that maybe they are even in their neighborhood, getting royalties from coal because Fluidized Beds finally took off, etc etc etc. Why Only Soro's can buy stocks in those companies or him and Bwaney Fwank are the only ones getting in on the IPO's. How dare us peasants try to make our lives better!!!
If it would only stop there. You are allotted 1,000 miles per year in your ICE-powered auto or truck. There’s a tax for 1,000 to 5,000 miles. Nobody is allowed to drive more than 5,000 miles per year. Then, you aren’t allowed to leave your state. After that, you are required to live your entire life within a 50 mile radius of your birthplace. AC is banned. Offices are kept at 85F in the summer and 62F in winter. You’ll be charged $5,000 per year for a single parking place in the company parking lot if you drive to work — better carpool to share the pain. Driving solo will cost you a $4,000 per year permit. Cities all have “congestion fees” to prevent autos from entering.
Welcome to Dystopia...designed and engineered for you by Democrat commies.
I do agree with the other comment that the large ammunition purchases being made are 1) to lessen citizens' ability to get ammo and 2) for the gov't to use on the people within 10 years, if we make it that far.
Term 2 for 0bama is about gun confiscation and controlling Americans with insane regulations "for the Earth's sake". It's all about destruction and control.. 0bamacare will be disastrous and term 2 'climate change' regulations will be the final nail in Uncle Sam's coffin.
That is an excellent summary! And I doubt that Obama is thinking this up all by himself. Valerie Jarrett and the Muslim Brotherhood are helping him bring down our nation. He is no more than Jarrett’s Parrot.
Taxing us back to the stone age is much more effective and will receive less attention than if zero actually tried to legislate us back to the stone age.
And, conservatives are so weak and complacent, we’ll do nothing about it!
Why, thank you so very much! Your kind words are most appreciated.
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