I was waiting for it... but you finally appealed to consensus. I shouldn't have to tell you that science isn't about consensus. "The science" does not say that climate change is manmade. A few scientists do, and they are controlled by politicians and oil lobbyists. The core of the climate change science is only produced and understood by a dozen or so people. Everybody else is put on a list that they agree with global warming. They have to sue to get off it, which most scientists don't dare for fear of their jobs. That's your consensus, a political fabrication.
This is interesting. Out of curiosity, what's your source for it?
Pentahedron, you're in blatant denial if you think India has never been socialist.
Richer countries like the US can afford to do something like enact a carbon tax on companies emitting large amounts of it.
With a $3.6 trillion deficit and unfunded liabilities to the tune of $100 trillion, no, it really cannot.
Freedom of markets is positively correlated with the degree of evolution in any society...
Jon Irenicus: I was waiting for it... but you finally appealed to consensus. I shouldn't have to tell you that science isn't about consensus. "The science" does not say that climate change is manmade. A few scientists do, and they are controlled by politicians and oil lobbyists. The core of the climate change science is only produced and understood by a dozen or so people. Everybody else is put on a list that they agree with global warming. They have to sue to get off it, which most scientists don't dare for fear of their jobs. That's your consensus, a political fabrication. This is interesting. Out of curiosity, what's your source for it?
Oh boy, I put it together from a bunch of sources, mostly talks by Lord Christopher Monckton. I admit that it's not entirely "sourced" but that I connected some dots. I knew that scientists in climate-related fields are pressured to sign up to those consensus lists because otherwise they lose grants and promotions, and possibly their jobs. That's rather well-known. I think it was in the movie The Great Global Warming Swindle where they presented a prominent global warming skeptic who was put on the consensus list against his will and had to sue to get off. That's when I realized that scientists in climate-related fields aren't just pressured to get on those lists, they are put on them by default and have to sue to get off. Which is kind of a big hurdle given that it's probably going to cost them their job to make that kind of fuzz, it's certainly going to ruin their careers. You have to have a lot of integrity to not just shut up and be on the list in that situation. Which is why I actually think it's astounding that so many scientists dared to come out against global warming.
Jon Irenicus:Pentahedron, you're in blatant denial if you think India has never been socialist.
People just aren't told that fact. I had a long discussion on another forum where the other guy kept using India as an example of capitalism (and Scandinavia as an example of socialism). The current state educators just aren't very eager to part with the fact that India was socialist, so most people just don't know. The current growth of China, India, Brazil and such is also often presented as something that just sort of randomly happened for no particular reason. It had nothing to do with their market revolutions.
Yes, you do get CO2 from burning fossil fuels.
You get incomplete and complete combustion. There are no patents for complete combustion technology, complete combustion requires high oxygen environments to create co2 from fossil fuels. Inside your car and your chimney during combustion it is not releasing CO2.
It used to be five official pollutants but now it is six, well as per the epa. http://www.epa.gov/oaqps001/urbanair/ Six common pollutants:
Ozone Particulate Matter Carbon Monoxide Nitrogen Oxides Sulfur Dioxide Lead
note there is no co2 on that list. Another source..http://www.purdue.edu/envirosoft/child/airq/o_six.htm
We might get co2 from cars due to catalytic converters but in the process of the catalytic converters it is turning CO to CO2 by reoxidising the CO. But carbon dioxide is not a by product of normal combustion.
edit: think about when someone puts a hose from their car exhaust in to their car with them in it, they die from carbon monoxide poisoning not co2 poisoning. You might get a very small amount of co2 being the result of combustion, depending on the fossil fuel. But then it would be insignificiant anyway because it is not a pollutant.
So industrialism, combustion engines, etc. don't actualy produce CO2? That's too good to be true.
EmperorNero: Wouldn't that just be cap and trade? Why not just make the atmosphere private property. Let the owner sue those who transgress on his property.
Wouldn't that just be cap and trade? Why not just make the atmosphere private property. Let the owner sue those who transgress on his property.
Air is overabundant and as such cannot be owned.
pentahedron:Why? The means don't match the end. The end is to curb emission levels by using the tax as an incentive to do so.
The end is to curb emission levels by using the tax as an incentive to do so.
Right, you aren't trying to curb emission levels, you are trying to curb emission levels by using a tax.
pentahedron:Even Robert Murphy said once that if human made global warming is indeed confirmed to be true and we will reach a tipping point then he sees Pigovian taxation as a sensible solution to mitigate it.
If global warming was confirmed true, people wouldn't need to be taxed to deal with it. Even now with people unsure of the status of the argument, they already are demanding changes towards green consumer products and green companies.
The notion of negative externalities is so tired, and what I absolutely cannot stand in these discussions is that the consequentialists, who are always trying to justify intervention in some way, never want to talk about the negative externality which is the state. Note, no one has dealt with my point that the state is one of the biggest producers of CO2. What solution do Messrs. Kling, Caplan and Cowen have for the negative externality of the US military?
It's easy to point at me and hiss "Rothbardian!" (not that you do specifically Pentahedron) but it is really difficult for me to take consequentialists seriously when they ignore the most persistent and dominant force in modern economic life except as some benevolent tool to achieve some other end. What are the costs of pigovian taxation? What are the consequences of eroding the concept of property rights? This isn't a moral question, this is a serious question to consequentialists everywhere. How do you expect to solve negative externalities when your solutions create more? Is the existence of the state so necessary to solve these other problems that we should have to endure war and oppression? How does anyone calculate the utility of such a course?
Conflicts are typically resolved one of two ways. The market devises mechanisms like law and title to sort out conduct compatible with increased prosperity or someone uses overwhelming force. I think too often consequentialists see the state as a hammer, and go looking for nails to pound on.
It is hard to debate with people who assume the answers.
Taxing is not even a shortcut to a solution, it is a non-solution.
Merlin:Air is overabundant and as such cannot be owned.
Owning air doesn't have to be the only solution. The producers of waste own the waste they produce. The [sic] problem isn't with unowned air, it is with CO2 produced.
liberty student: Merlin:Air is overabundant and as such cannot be owned. Owning air doesn't have to be the only solution. The producers of waste own the waste they produce. The [sic] problem isn't with unowned air, it is with CO2 produced.
Agreed
The car and the plane and the boat do not have complete combustion. Indoor propane heaters, propane grills they have complete combustion, but then the complete combustion for propane is done by adjusting the amount of air mixed with the propane and the level of the heat. When you make a wood fire there is no complete combustion occuring there, i am not aware of any technology that can burn wood at complete combustion. If propane was not complete combustion then they can give off CO which for indoor heaters would be deadly and this ia major safety consideration with indoor propane and natural gas heaters. So yes from what i have found the idea that CO2 is the result of industrialised air pollution is incorrect and if we are going to pick a pollutant from industrialised air pollution it will be CO not CO2. Because CO2 is not even a pollutant, plants use it and plants optimum ppm when growing is usually several times higher than is natural occuring. well 400-600ppm compared to 1500-1800ppm. This means that people use co2 generators and you do get gas co2 generators that use combustion. But you can not burn some petrol or wood and expect co2 ppm to increase. Not something i have tested though as the co2 testers start $500. If we could get every form of energy to produce co2 as a by product then we could safely say that we have won the war on air pollution.
@ Jack Roberts: Interesting. Do you know whether CO2, once released by humans, goes up into the atmosphere, or whether it is available for plants on the ground? In that case, even if humans did emit CO2, it would merely cause more plant growth, and additional CO2 would merely be tied up in new forests instead of causing mayhem in the atmosphere.
Merlin: EmperorNero:Wouldn't that just be cap and trade? Why not just make the atmosphere private property. Let the owner sue those who transgress on his property.Air is overabundant and as such cannot be owned.
EmperorNero:Wouldn't that just be cap and trade? Why not just make the atmosphere private property. Let the owner sue those who transgress on his property.
Clean air is not abundant, it is scarce since we don't have enough of it.
Humans do produce CO2 when they breathe out, so half the time when they talk about carbon taxes they are talking about a tax on breathing, on exhaling. But even if we can agree that we have "too much" CO2 in the atmosphere then there is no evidence that the CO2 is reflecting the suns rays in what is called the green house effect. If anything is causing a green house effect of some kind it is the trails from the planes, See BBC documentary "global dimming". But i would not disagree completely that there is a chance that man made air pollution could be affecting the climate, but then i am not talking about CO2, i am talking about pollution.
EmperorNero: Clean air is not abundant, it is scarce since we don't have enough of it. I disagree but I realize that there is no strict way of determining when some good ceases to be overabundant. It’s just clearly visible to all, I suppose. Still, as Liberty Student wrote, we do not need property rights in air (which, anyways, would be nearly impossible to define and enforce) to breathe non-toxic air: you need property in your body, and that you have. So, let’s not delve into the thorny issue of property in clean air, because is difficult, inconclusive and unnecessary. The Regression theorem is a memetic equivalent of the Theory of Evolution. To say that the former precludes the free emergence of fiat currencies makes no more sense that to hold that the latter precludes the natural emergence of multicellular organisms. | Post Points: 5
I disagree but I realize that there is no strict way of determining when some good ceases to be overabundant. It’s just clearly visible to all, I suppose. Still, as Liberty Student wrote, we do not need property rights in air (which, anyways, would be nearly impossible to define and enforce) to breathe non-toxic air: you need property in your body, and that you have. So, let’s not delve into the thorny issue of property in clean air, because is difficult, inconclusive and unnecessary.
EmperorNero:Clean air is not abundant, it is scarce since we don't have enough of it.
Everything is scarce at the margin. The point I was making is that if someone changes the atmosphere and it affects your capacity to breathe, they are the ones creating a rights violation, just as if someone's soot landed on your house from their smokestack.