Climate Politics

Because shopping shouldn’t require matrix algebra

A lot of people ask why carbon permits or taxes should be levied as far upstream as possible. Why tax or auction permits for pumping or importing oil, rather than burning it?

One obvious answer is: red tape. Regardless of where a tax is levied, you will pay. But if it is collected at the wellhead, you don't have to have a separate line on every gas receipt under the sales tax. Your local supermarket does not have to buy a major upgrade to it's software, slowing the line you are in as their system crashes, and the checkers switch to hand calculators.

Al Gore slideshow tidbit

From Al’s Journal: The trainees thus far have already given my slideshow more times collectively in the last six months — 3,000 — than I have been able to give it in 20 years.

The public doesn’t really need all that much science

While I was on vacation, science journalist Chris Mooney and social scientist Matthew Nisbet came out with a short commentary in Science. Their thesis was that scientists should pay attention to how they frame their public communication, so as to most effectively reach their target audience. To me this is obvious to the point of […]

Save the Martians!

GLOBAL WARMING ON MARS!

I just read the Nature paper entitled "Global warming and climate forcing by recent albedo changes on Mars," by Fenton et al.

I suspect it will make the rounds in the blogosphere in fairly short order, so here are a few things to remember about the paper.

A follow-up

My last article made the point that in fighting climate chaos, only a refundable carbon tax, one that returns revenues directly to the population, mitigates regressivity in way that benefits those hit hardest by such a tax.

It concludes by pointing out that just about everyone who pays serious attention to the problem of climate chaos concludes that carbon taxes or cap and trade systems -- methods of putting a price on carbon -- cannot by themselves solve the problem. This post will explore in a bit more detail what additional measures can help reduce emissions.

We could institute rule-based regulations in the following areas:

Another conservative attack on motives

I’m always excited when people on the right address climate change, even if they say stupid things. At least they’re starting to think about it. On National Review, Ken Green of AEI says that Gore’s carbon tax proposal is great, but the rest of his proposals are both redundant and sucky. After listing them, he […]

Good interview on climate change

Good interview with Rep. Wayne Gilchrest (R-Md.) in Foreign Policy in Focus this week. Gilchrest, chair of the House Climate Change Caucus and co-sponsor of the Climate Stewardship Act, was not appointed to the Select Committee on Energy Independence and Global Warming last month because he refused to deny that humans are causing climate change. […]

This time, it’s personal

(Continued from parts I and II.)

Last but not least (actually, what quite literally hits closest to home!):

North America

Oh, the anticipation!

The IPCC report I’ve most been looking forward to is from Working Group III, on mitigation. It looks like drafts of that report are already leaking — Reuters has a (poorly written) rundown. From what I can tell through the muddy writing, the IPCC lays out a range of mitigation scenarios, which would run anywhere […]

A visual comparison

When the IPCC WGII summary was released last week, there were media reports on last-minute clashes between scientists and political types — the former pushing for the original strong language, the latter pushing to water it down. George Monbiot’s column yesterday addressed the subject, in characteristically outraged tones. For those interested in the details, DeSmogBlog […]