Hansen: NYTimes business columnist ‘doesn’t understand basic economics’ | JunkScience.com
James Hansen hits back at Joe Nocera for today’s column.From Hansen's response (PDF):
The climate science is crystal clear...The economics is crystal clear. We are all better off if fossil fuels are made to pay their honest costs to society...So after ten years, each U.S. man, woman and child needs to pay $115 per ton of CO2 emissions? At 20 tons annually per person, for a family of four, that's $9,200 per year. If we've actually reduced per-person emissions by 30% in ten years, that's still $6400 for that family of four.
An economic analysis indicates that a tax beginning at $15/tCO2 and rising $10/tCO2 each year would reduce emissions in the U.S. by 30% within 10 years.
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5 comments:
The Hansen PDF says 15 dollars a ton while you used 115 dollars a ton. Where did you get the $115?
$15 initially + another $10 each year for ten years = $115 annually after ten years
a 30% reduction in 2012 US CO2 emissions is roughly 1.5Gt/yr. Using the formula:
1 GtCO2 emission =0.27/2.12=0.127 PPM of CO2 rise in atmosphere
we can see that we can expect .1905PPM less of atmospheric CO2 per year or 0.95PPM in sum over 10 years assuming linear trend.
When I plug that into the IPCC model average using sensitivity of 3.2 degreesC, the temperature reduction to the planet from our 30% CO2 reduction is 0.0023 degreesC.
China over the same period will add 1.78PPM to the atmosphere which will raise the temperature 0.021 degreesC roughly 10 times the the USA's reduction.
I do not believe Hansen et al are fools. I believe they know well the ramifications of what they propose.
Revolutionaries like Lenin, Guevara, Robiespierre inspired the masses to rise above the tyrants above them for the better future the changes would bring. The call for a de-fossil fuel overthrow of our current society is no less a revolution, and will have a similar outcome if allowed. But that is all right with the revolutionary: as we know, making an omellete requires breaking a few eggs.
The pain and dislocation of a couple of billion people is well understood by Hansen, Gore, Suzuki, Strong, the WWF and The Sierra Club - by the wealthy who will be personally shielded from the damage by their large, disposable income. They don't "care", as a Lenin didn't care: the future requires a sacrifice of the present.
We are not engaged in a dispute over global warming by CO2. We are engaged in a dispute with political revolutionaries whose charity is limited to those 100 years from now.
History has shown what happens when we follow the ardent dreamer. We should be afraid, very afraid.
The acolytes might not understand, but the prophets do. For shame.
From a WUWT posting -
Discover will be hosting climate simulations for the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City and Goddard’s Global Modeling and Assimilation Office (GMAO). Stimulus funds from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 will enable installation of another 4,128 Nehalem processors this fall, bringing Discover to 15,160 processors.
So unless Jimmy switches over and only uses renewable energy to run/corrupt his models he is going to get a very big power bill to spread his lies.
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