What do you do when you’re a state without income taxes but also want more revenue? You impose a carbon tax as the legislature of the State of Washington has done. The editors of the Wall Street Journal complain:
Washington’s tax might reduce global emissions by all of 0.02% in 2035, and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change recently estimated a global carbon price of between $135 and $5,500 per ton would be necessary to forestall a climate apocalypse. This level of taxation would be a political nonstarter anywhere.
But if the Washington referendum passes, liberals will be emboldened to push carbon copies in other states and Congress. Some on the right advocate a national carbon tax along with a supposed “dividend†for taxpayers, but here all revenue is for Olympia politicians. The story in Washington shows that liberals care more about increasing tax revenue to spend than they do about reducing emissions.
Washington’s carbon tax is not only regressive but ineffectual both because it is so low and because carbon emissions increase geometrically with income.
Here’s a modest proposal. Impose a $10,000 per ton carbon tax, prebated on a varying scale based on income up to $300,000. That wouldn’t be nearly as regressive, would have the potential of generating a lot more revenue, and might actually reduce carbon emissions.
AGW is both a scientific fraud and a criminal fraud.
Go look at the chart that Al Gore likes to use, the Vostok ice core from Antarctica. The chart shows that temperature changes lead carbon dioxide changes by about 400 to 800 years. That is temperature is driving carbon dioxide, probably by causing outgassing from the oceans. So carbon dioxide does not drive temperature.
That pattern, of course, applies to ice age glaciations and melts. However, the recent heating from the Little Ice Age, which ran from roughly 1200 AD to 1850 AD, shows the same pattern, temperature rises (after 1850) precede carbon dioxide rises.
Unless you can repudiate ice core science as worthless and rewrite the temperature and carbon dioxide records of the 19th Century, you have no basis for AGW.
Whether AGW is a hoax or not a carbon tax structured like Washington’s tax is terribly regressive. Its weight falls most heavily on the poor.
Making the weight of the tax fall most heavily on the richest citizens will quickly put an end to insincere posturing.
Here’s a modest proposal. Let’s institute a 1% tax on incomes in the top 5%. I mean, c’mon, it’s only 1%. And anyway, making the weight of the tax fall most heavily on the richest citizens will quickly put an end to insincere posturing.
We already have that. It’s the effect of the graduated income tax.
Without Tom Steyer’s support initiatives like Washington’s carbon tax would probably never see the light of day and a steep tax that falls on him as opposed to falling on the poorest would take the whimsy out of it.
Uh, that was the (snarky) point. . I wondered how many would get the reference to the original argument for the circa 1913-1916 income tax.
I don’t live in Washington, so don’t have skin in this game, but I’m glad to see states experimenting. I’m skeptical of Washington’s carbon tax, but it’s a useful experiment that we should watch closely.
After the backlash over Seattle’s headtax on employees, an unpopular car tab tax increase, and one of the highest sales tax in the country; it would be interesting if Washington state will vote themselves a carbon tax.
FYI, outside of Seattle downtown and the Eastside, the rest of Washington state is heavily into manufacturing (Boeing/aluminum) or Agriculture.
Go look at the chart that Al Gore likes to use, the Vostok ice core from Antarctica. The chart shows that temperature changes lead carbon dioxide changes by about 400 to 800 years. That is temperature is driving carbon dioxide, probably by causing outgassing from the oceans.
True
So carbon dioxide does not drive temperature.
Not true. You’re confusing a forcing with a feedback. In the case of ice core samples, every climate scientist on the planet agrees that changes in the planet’s orbit induced ocean warming which resulted in CO2 outgassing. A skeptic didn’t figure this out by eavesdropping on some conspirators, it’s throughout the scientific literature. That change in orbital variables is called a forcing because it forces a shift in climate. Outgassing on CO2 from the oceans is a positive feedback because it amplifies the warming.
Over the last 150 years the forcing has been greenhouse gas emissions and land use changes from human industrial activities. The sun is stable, nothing is happening with the planet’s orbit. Different forcing, same positive feedback of heating oceans.
That pattern, of course, applies to ice age glaciations and melts. However, the recent heating from the Little Ice Age, which ran from roughly 1200 AD to 1850 AD, shows the same pattern, temperature rises (after 1850) precede carbon dioxide rises.
The earliest date accepted by scientists for the Little Ice Age period is 1300 AD. Evidence does not show this was a global phenomenon, rather that modest cooling occurred in the northern hemisphere.
Unless you can repudiate ice core science as worthless and rewrite the temperature and carbon dioxide records of the 19th Century, you have no basis for AGW.
You started by claiming that warming caused CO2 release and ended by claiming that CO2 release is caused by cooling. Until you acknowledge and understand the difference between a forcing and a feedback you’ll continue to be confused.
“Unless you can repudiate ice core science as worthless and rewrite the temperature and carbon dioxide records of the 19th Century, you have no basis for AGW.”
What can’t be denied is that we are pumping a lot of CO2 in the atmosphere and we can measure the resulting rise of CO2 concentration (along with other gasses, like methane). The effects are much less certain than climate alarmists would have us believe, but the notion that there is “no basis” for AGW is simply not true.
My own view is rather different from any expressed in this thread so far. I think it’s undeniable, as you note, that we’re pumping carbon dioxide out. Our ability to predict the effects of that is pretty limited. The measures proposed for mitigating the risk aren’t particularly effective and have lots of secondary effects. The secondary effects are so problematic no one wants to adopt the risk mitigation measures.
My proposals are for more palatable approaches to mitigating the risks.
I’m also a bit curious about the Europeans. Are they measuring their reductions in emissions or calculating them? I suspect they’re calculating them based on inputs. The problem with that is that we now know that their estimates of the inputs are wrong.
As I and many others have noted, the rate of increase in emissions in places like China and India overwhelm any reductions we might make even if we were to accept reductions. Just as the most significant reductions in emissions in Europe seem to have resulted from offshoring heavy industry (for a net increase in emissions) China’s reduction in emissions are heavily influenced by cooling growth.
True, the climate is warming, drastically. Here where we live in Lincoln, Ne. the Glaciers of the last ice age stopped miraculously 120 miles north of us years ago, and have been retreating ever since
The proof is in the rocks ground down south from the Canadian Shield popping up every year in South Dakota but nowhere in Nebraska. Catastrophe. I support a carbon tax, but only if the proceeds are distributed as welfare payments to the poor, (me), who will ultimately die of heatstroke, or, possibly boredom if the doom and gloom continues.
True, the climate is warming, drastically. Here where we live in Lincoln, Ne. the Glaciers of the last ice age stopped miraculously 120 miles north of us years ago, and have been retreating ever since
If you personally aren’t sweating,
the problem doesn’t exist.
And that’s the irrationality
that can’t be fixed.