Global Warming Debate

[JohnRPollard]

Originally Posted by jackdale

John - what is your view on a carbon fee / tax?

I have always felt that Cap and Trade was a scam designed to line the pockets of investors and industries with deep pockets that could hire armies of lobbyists and politicians to shape the legislation and treaties to their financial and political advantage. The whole thing reminds me of those "everybody gets a share" schemes concocted by the character Milo Minderbinder in Joseph Heller's Catch-22.

But let's assume for argument's sake that MMGW exists and carbon emissions are the primary cause. The single most effective way to curtail carbon emissions is through conservation of "fossil" fuels. You can start conserving tomorrow morning -- you don't need legislation or treaties to do that. You and anybody else that believes in MMGW can make the pledge to not drive your cars one single mile more than you walk or ride your bike each year. Heck, I'm a skeptic, and I do that anyway. It's like your own personal cap and trade, with offsets no less.

But are there enough true believers?

I think the answer is: There are not enough true believers that are willing to modify their behaviour, no matter how loudly they cry for action. They want somebody else to fix the problem they helped to create and to which they continue to contribute. Turn down the thermostat? But it's cold out there.

Again, assuming for argument that carbon emissions are the cause of climate change, and assuming that even the MMGW zealots won't sell their mansions or change their behaviour, then the only other way I know of to ween people of fossil fuels is to raise their costs.

But I would not be in favor of any tax on end users unless the proceeds of that tax were allocated exclusively toward early reduction of U.S. national debt AND a balanced federal budget were in place that continued to pay debt obligations at the same rate as previous budgets. In other words, the tax proceeds could not be looted by congress for pork nor substituted for the normal, on-going debt payment -- it would need to be used in addition to it to achieve accelerated, early repayment of national debt.

Call it the Al Gore Carbon and Fossil Fuel Tax. All proceeds of which would go to the JohnRPollard National Debt Reduction Program. See now, carbon emissions go down, and so does the national debt. Everybody gets a share.

[NICHOLSON58]

This is nothing but a shell game. They would like to convince you that someone else is going to put money in your pocket if you let government get their fingers into it.

[jrd22]

JohnR- thanks for the link to the article, good explanation about why C/T is bad policy. It's classic example of government wanting to appear to be solving a problem when in fact they're just creating one (in this case a trillion dollar problem).

[NICHOLSON58]

I just posted a new album. http://www.sailnet.com/photogallery/...ry.php?cat=649
Please refer to the three slides and my post of a couple of days ago. One can only conclude the whole thing is a hoax. Our so-called leaders want us to believe the sky is falling and that we should, against real historical data, relinquish our life-style, re-distribute our wealth and suffer poverty willingly.

[kootenay]

Oh I have no doubt that at some point GW will bite us in the ass. The video post with the guy claiming issues with magnetics was interesting though and seemingly plausible. The problem is most of us just dont have the science backround to decipher the data. I can however tell something is going on from my own experiences. I have been farming for 30 years and its a different enviroment I operate in today than it was then. More extremes in both directions and more heat in summer today. We have bugs from the south that werent here 30 years ago and bugs that were here are acting differently too.

I dont think it would hurt one bit to cleanup our act as regards the enviroment and use a tax system to shift the cost to polluters. It seems to me that congress always seems to achieve the lowest common denominator when coming up with legislation. And then its more about the pork added in than the core legislation. Am I wrong there and why is it allowed to continue?

[erps]

I can however tell something is going on from my own experiences. I have been farming for 30 years and its a different enviroment I operate in today than it was then. More extremes in both directions and more heat in summer today. We have bugs from the south that werent here 30 years ago and bugs that were here are acting differently too.

I dont think it would hurt one bit to cleanup our act as regards the enviroment and use a tax system to shift the cost to polluters.

First off, I think it's constructive to want to do something. Realistically, I think the result will be that a lot of money will get shuffled around and the bugs will still be doing something different in 30 years and the weather will be doing something different too.

There was a show on the T.V. the other day about a group of scientists who said they could solve global warming for a fraction of the cost of all this legislation by pumping some sort of acid solution into the upper atmosphere.

"Hose-to-the-Sky:" Still Spewing SO2 Idea to Stop Global Warming? : TreeHugger

[kootenay]

Originally Posted by erps

There was a show on the T.V. the other day about a group of scientists who said they could solve global warming for a fraction of the cost of all this legislation by pumping some sort of acid solution into the upper atmosphere.

"Hose-to-the-Sky:" Still Spewing SO2 Idea to Stop Global Warming? : TreeHugger

Heard that line before. We have a local lake 110 miles by 6 miles long and had wonderful Kokanee salmon and Lake trout fishing. Some bunch of brainiacs claimed they could maintain the fish at a much lower cost than the Fisheries department if only they could release fresh water shrimp into the lake. The conservative government looking to save a buck let them do it. 20 years later the Kokanee are about toast because is turns out the young Kokanee compete with the shrimp for the same food source and the lake trout deprived of the young kokanee as prey are in decline.

I will always be wary of scientists trying to introduce a foreign element into the environment to fix something. It generally backfires.

Shifting the tax burden from incomes to Use systems/polluters etc isnt really the worst concept. You buy something you pay tax, you dirty it up you pay more. No cap and trade just a straight transfer of tax burden from income tax.

[erps]

I will always be wary of scientists trying to introduce a foreign element into the environment to fix something. It generally backfires.

I totally agree and I wasn't suggesting it as the solution, but it illustrates that we can do some things to offset climate change.

Shifting the tax burden from incomes to Use systems/polluters etc isnt really the worst concept. You buy something you pay tax, you dirty it up you pay more.

I see some merit in that strategy. I don't think it will affect climate change though. It will just shift who is consuming the fossil fuels to someone else who can either afford it or doesn't participate in the tax.

[Yamsailor]

ok--in my humble opinion, the only way for us to reduce our impact on the climate is to get a lot of Research and Development into alternative energies including solar, wave, hydrogen and wind.

There are a couple of problems we have here in the US: First, this type of research is very expensive and because investors want quick returns on their investments I am not sure we will ever get large enough Capital investments to make significant progress over the next 100 years. Second, even if we did have the money, the USA is not producing enough engineers and scientists to do the research because they are not paid that well in the first place.

In the USA especially, people spend/invest money on what they value and Americans value making more money quickly at the expense of long term stability.

I think we should be using a lot more nuclear power; and reduce our dependency on coal and oil.

Cap and Trade is a short to medium term solution---it is not a long term solution; Same with taxes. While I do believe GHGs have caused an increase in global climate change, I also think the damage has been done and there is nothing we can do in the short term to mitigate it's effects.

[kootenay]

Yam I dont disagree with you at all. I do think we tend to way over complicate things thanks to the political game of making lobbyists happy and getting campaign financing as a result. So we get this motley collection of rules that leads to a tax code that you couldnt load into the back of a Ford F150 instead of one volume that says above this level everyone pays X % of their income. We get a Cap and trade system that instead of a simplish system of straight tax on polluters with a grace period to phase in we get a way for polluters to buy their way out and not have to change as a result.

I just dont know if we can have an effect on GW but figure if the things we do make sense for other reasons and ultimately make economic sense then what is the harm. I do think we need to plan for the worst case senario also. What if GW makes present immigration from the south seem like a trickle with a flood to come as folks around the equator flee weather disaster. Are Americans prepared for Central americans flooding the border? Are Canadians prepared for refugee Americans? Are the inuit prepared for southern Canadians moving North? I doubt if there are even many plans being developed. Other than how to make it appear to have been seen doing something.