Bishop Hill Hansen and the cost of carbon
Apr 13, 2012 Climate: WG3 I was in Edinburgh last week, for the ceremony to award James Hansen the Edinburgh Medal.
Hansen's speech after the event was not much to write home about, but one or two things made me take note. Among these was Hansen's much trailed call for a carbon tax in the USA. This in essence was to be a Pigou tax, with a cost per tonne of CO2 collected at source and redistributed equally among US citizens.
In Hansen's last slide, he mentioned a paper he and a bunch of the usual suspects have submitted to Science, setting out their case. Apparently the paper is struggling to find its way through peer review, although I have to say that if the excerpt we were shown was anything to go by the overwrought tone of the authors' prose would give any reputable journal pause for thought.
I was intrigued, however, by one name on the author list. Frank Ackerman appeared briefly on BH, when I noted his extraordinary inflating of the cost of carbon dioxide from the generally cited $20-30 per tonne to something more along the lines of $1000 or even higher.
Now Americans use 18 tonnes or so of CO2 per capita per year. So that's a minimum of $18000 of redistribution of income per year.
That's a lot.
Reader Comments (54)
...the response to which was to point to a book and say that "It is all explained here."
Just like Roger Pielke Jr?
I can't keep quiet any longer to the constant posts of MDGNN about "back radiation" and etc. I do have a masters degree in engineering (aerospace), but that doesn't necessarily mean that I know what I am talking about. Have had courses in Thermodynamics and Physics (heat,light, and sound), plus jet propulsion courses( basically thermo courses). Have spent a fair amount of time re-studying the second law of thermo and such lately.
I have to say that I generally agree with you that "back radiation" is a myth. However, that does not solely address the issue of whether increasing CO2 causes temps to rise or not. N2 (the primary component of air) will RADIATE if it is warmer than its surroundings just like CO2 will. What N2 will not do is ABSORB IR, as CO2 will! This has the effect of slowing the rate at which the Earth's atmosphere cools. Increasing CO2 slows the rate of cooling, and therefore should cause a rise in the average temperature. How much, I don't have a clue. I don't think it is very much. I do think, as Kim would agree, that warmer is "better".
I also agree with "omnologus" that you exhibit several characteristics of a troll. You are constantly posting the same s*** over and over to posts that are not concerned with the subject. You seem to have plenty of time to post on the net all your theories about back radiation, yet you have not, as some have pointed out, written up your scientific points in a paper that can be used as a standard of sorts. Get with it dude! We are all waiting with baited breath!
Nothing would tickle an alarmist more than to convince "deniers" that CO2 does not increase temps. Get it? I do. Do you?
James Hansen endorsed an extreme eco terrorist book by Keith Farnish calling for the destruction of industrial civilisation.
Farnish writes
"The only way to prevent global ecological collapse and thus ensure the survival of humanity is to rid the world of Industrial Civilization"
and
Unloading essentially means the removal of an existing burden: for instance, removing grazing domesticated animals, razing cities to the ground, blowing up dams and switching off the greenhouse gas emissions machine. The process of ecological unloading is an accumulation of many of the things I have already explained in this chapter, along with an (almost certainly necessary) element of sabotage.
http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/jamesdelingpole/100023339/james-hansen-would-you-buy-a-used-temperature-data-set-from-this-man/
Hansen
Keith Farnish has it right: time has practically run out, and the 'system' is the problem. Governments are under the thumb of fossil fuel special interests - they will not look after our and the planet's well-being until we force them to do so, and that is going to require enormous effort. --Professor James Hansen, GISS, NASA
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Times-Up-Uncivilized-Solution-Global/dp/190032248X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265053838&sr=8-1
E Smiff,
If true, those are pretty damning quotes.