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JEleazarian
Trad climber
Fresno CA
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The most logical price adjustments, to me, are something in the nature of a severance and import tax for fossil fuels. Thus, for example, we could impose a 20% tax on the extraction of coal, petroleum and natural gas, and a 20% tax on the importation of same. The first difficulty, though is determining the amount. Using my example, 20% of what? The difficulty in determining effect has at least two aspects:
(1) distinguishing short-term from long-term effects. Observed rises in fuel prices in real dollars seldom have really long-term effects because the events that trigger fuel price rises and falls seldom last. As I'm sure BASE will attest, the long-term trend in fuel prices has been rather stable, when measured in constant dollars. Accordingly, I'm forced to make some rather arbitrary assumptions; and
(2) I have tried to make the models revenue-neutral, but I don't think that's realistic for two reasons. First, converting the tax base from income to, in effect, excise has regressive effects that would be politically impossible; and I cannot see any form of the federal government reducing taxes from one area merely because they were able to introduce a new tax in a different area.
Anyway, given these assumptions, I project that an excise tax of 20% of the sales price of fossil fuels would reduce consumption of those fuels by about 10%, although I suspect that if I had more long-term data, the reduction would be greater. The 95% confidence intervals get very large very soon, however. Unfortunately, though, this would also reduce growth of real GDP by about 1% -- not insignificant politically or economically but, in my models, insignificant statistically. The 95% confidence interval on this makes the projection rather worthless because it is plus-or-minus 2 by year three. In any case, I believe this overestimates long-term economic constractionary forces, which will lessen or even reverse as the economy adapts to the changing prices.
As you can see by my weaseling, there are a lot of unknown effects here, because we'd be heading into uncharted territory -- which, ironically enough, is rather like where we are headed with our climate while we dither so that people like me can try to measure the seemingly immeasurable.
John
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new world order-
climber
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I reckon we should just ban all non-emergency vehicles from the road, and move all the sheeple into the cities.
From there, we can outlaw meat eating, and private home/land ownership.
From there, mobile euthanasia/abortion/sterilization clinics that would make the rounds to help deal with over-population.
And from there, mandatory vaccinations, selective breeding, and sheeple cloning.
What the world, doesn't need now, is more breeders, and useless eaters. La,la,la,la,la...
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new world order-
climber
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At this point, my "type" isn't arguing for nor against climate change.
Rather, I look forward to the utopia that is Agenda 21 .
Do you like steak? How about owning your own home and the land it sits upon?
Would you rather see bike lanes on every other street?
Does the idea of legal euthanasia give you optimism or the shivers?
Planned-opolis... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7rCAYkoMT0 NTTAWWI.
So goes the new world order.
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bobinc
Trad climber
Portland, Or
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Mar 13, 2012 - 01:33pm PT
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The polling in today's primary states shows others who are right there with Inhofe. Notable: about 50% of those asked said Obama is a Muslim and another 35% or so are "undecided." Oh, well-- only 16 electoral votes in those states.
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GOclimb
Trad climber
Boston, MA
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Mar 13, 2012 - 04:32pm PT
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New scientific evidence continues to demonstrate that the ozone depletion
computer models -and the resulting ban on CFCs- are based on a Big Lie
http://www.mitosyfraudes.org/Ingles/Crista.html
Now that is just a blatant troll. I don't believe you actually find that credible, do you?
GO
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Lennox
climber
just southwest of the center of the universe
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Mar 13, 2012 - 06:52pm PT
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I don't know what is worse, Corni's usual habit of just pulling stuff out of his ass or those links of his.
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Elcapinyoazz
Social climber
Joshua Tree
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Mar 13, 2012 - 07:09pm PT
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It says "fraud" right in the www address. I gave it a quick read, and if you actually work in science or engineering, it's pretty comical.
Reminds me a lot of the kind of arguments The Cheeve makes. BTW, when is the Cheeve going to produce those photos he promised anyway?
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corniss chopper
climber
breaking the speed of gravity
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Mar 13, 2012 - 08:56pm PT
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Uh-oh! No surprise at the typical narrow minded Liberal comments.
Never question authority is your new motto I see. Especially when it
deals with making billion$ for unionized corps like Dupont,
Atofina Chemicals, Ineos Fluor, and Honeywell.
http://www.imcool.com/articles/aircondition/refrigerant_history.htm
Liberals know what they know and don't try to confuse them with new data.
Although tip of the hat to you for having sense enough to see how damaging it would be to the AGW scam if the CFC ban (based on a model) has now been found to be a worthless gesture (by new satellite and atmospheric measurements).
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rottingjohnny
Sport climber
mammoth lakes ca
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Mar 14, 2012 - 07:57am PT
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Is Corn and ozone from the same Hole...?
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k-man
Gym climber
SCruz
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Topic Author's Reply - Mar 14, 2012 - 03:27pm PT
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Well, blahWe're just not too worried about it. Capice?blah never did respond to my question about where he lived.
But, my guess is that he doesn't live in the Asia-Pacific:
Surge of Climate Change-Caused Mass Migrations to Hit Asia-Pacific
Inaction will lead to "humanitarian crises"
Over 42 million people in the Asia-Pacific region were displaced by environmental disasters in just the past two years, and a report issued today gives a stark warning that these nations are set to be hit with a surge of climate change-caused mass migrations and must act quickly to avoid future humanitarian crises.
...
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yosemite 5.9
climber
santa cruz
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Mar 16, 2012 - 11:14pm PT
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I read the UN report on global warming. Have you? It devoted less than one page to solar warming.
The most abundant greenhouse gas is water vapor. A 1% change is said to have more effect than all this hoopla about carbon dioxide. If the oceans die, its because we fished out everything from plankton to whales.
The current 13 year solar cycle is expected to peak in 2013. Just in time for us to panic and spend more money trying to fight it.
About the same time the approx. 100 year solar cycle also peaks and declines for the rest of this century, resulting in expected cooler temperatures. OOps! Why were we worried about global warming?
Is the above true? I don't know. But you may want to consider it before being firm in your belief, like you believed in the value of tech stocks before the dot.com bust or in the value of your home, or in the presence of WMD's in Iraq or the current scare of nuclear energy in Iran.
Personally, I think we need to spend a lot less money in a lot more ways. Spending money that we don't have on the belief that we need to fight global warming for the next 100 years is not a priority for me.
Supposedly 75% of stock trades are performed by only 2% of stock trading firms, the ones with advanced algorithms and super computers competing against other super computers. Supposedly these firms are moving a few blocks closer to the NY web hub in order to be 5 milliseconds faster in analyzing web traffic than they would be on Wall Street.
You're gonna die, poor. Enjoy the warm weather while you can. It's free.
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Mar 16, 2012 - 11:34pm PT
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I read the UN report on global warming. Have you?
Why yes. I've got the IPCC Fourth Assessment Report right here, and just opened the thousand-page volume by Working Group I (The Physical Science).
It devoted less than one page to solar warming.
Which page is that, Yosemite 5.9?
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Chiloe
Trad climber
Lee, NH
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Mar 17, 2012 - 05:04pm PT
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^^^^ ((crickets))
Maybe I can help out. The AR4 WG1 report (2007) has 11 chapters covering ~1,000 pages. Anybody can browse through it if they want, it's right here.
It mentions solar warming in just about every one of those chapters, sometimes in passing (like albedo and atmospheric moisture effects in the snow chapter) but often in more depth. For example, Chapter 1 section 1.4.3 is about "Solar Variability and Total Solar Irradiance." Chapter 2 section 2.7.1 is about "Solar Variability." Chapter 3 among other things discusses the evidence on "global dimming." Chapter 6 on paleoclimate, and Chapter 9 on attribution are particularly heavy with solar material. And throughout, what you see in the report is just the tip of the research iceberg, summarizing results cited from hundreds of original studies by thousands of scientists.
One example ... Figure 9.1. Plot a is height/latitude/temperature change predicted from solar forcing; c is same for greenhouse forcing; f is all combined. As this and many other analyses show, solar forcing does not help much to explain modern global warming.
Figure 9.1. Zonal mean atmospheric temperature change from 1890 to 1999 (°C per century) as simulated by the PCM model from (a) solar forcing, (b) volcanoes, (c) wellmixed greenhouse gases, (d) tropospheric and stratospheric ozone changes, (e) direct sulphate aerosol forcing and (f) the sum of all forcings. Plot is from 1,000 hPa to 10 hPa (shown on left scale) and from 0 km to 30 km (shown on right). See Appendix 9.C for additional information. Based on Santer et al. (2003a).
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BASE104
Social climber
An Oil Field
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Mar 17, 2012 - 10:20pm PT
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This is a big topic to jump into the middle of, but I was surprised to see a post on anoxic oceanic events.
The most powerful anoxic events created conditions in which organic carbon could be preserved. Yep. Oil and gas comes from organic rich shales, and they are very specific and very well correlated in date.
There is a fair amount of good literature out there, some having nothing at all to do with global warming, that shows a high concentration of CO2 during the mid-mesozoic hot house.
A really interesting one can be found by googling "Gingko Balboa" and "Stomata Density."
There has been some really interesting things recorded in the stomata density of leaves. The Gingko has been around forever relatively unchanged. You can grow them today under differying CO2 partial pressures and get some numbers that are very coicident with past climate.
With higher CO2 concentrations the leaves have a lower stomata density count than when grown under lower concentrations. You can put Gingko's in a lab and recreate this quite easily today.
Water vapor is the number one gas. I am close to a guy who is one of the top cloud physicists in the world and we have discussed this. In a nutshell, water vapor will increase, but it depends on what types of clouds form. Very high thick cirrus or stratus or very low cumulus. One will reflect heat and the other will trap it. I need to email him for a refresher.
Since he is top dog, he reviews many papers, including the climate papers that have included cloud physics and microphysics in the papers. He cleans it up, which is the way peer reveiw works. Checks the math and stuff or says it is flat out wrong. Ed probably has to review other papers as well.
The story of global oceanic anoxic events is key to petroleum geology, so I know it reasonably well. I will go read and catch up so I can contribute. High CO2 has run amuck in the past, that much is fairly evident. The concentrations during those periods is easily achievable today, if we finish off the oil and get a good chunk of the coal burned.
Earth was born with a CO2/Nitrogen atmosphere. Where did all of that C02 go? It is gathered in the tests (shells) of tiny little bugs whose skeletons rain to the ocean floor and collect. There are truly massive limestone rock sections locking up lots of carbon.
If life on Earth died today, the oxygen would be gone in a million years or so. It is too reactive to hang around for long.
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