James Hansen is in New Zealand at present, lecturing at various places.
He has got one thing right and that's carbon taxes instead of cap and trade swindling.
Way back in 1984, talking with my boss Nelson Cull in BP Oil [New Zealand] in regard to CO2 as a potential problem, I said that there wasn't a need to worry because if there did turn out to be a problem, governments could just swap taxation from everything else to carbon combustion and hey presto, the problem would go away.
If more tax was needed than was necessary to run the government, the profits from carbon taxation could be distributed to citizens.
Nelson said "Sssshhhhh", we don't want that idea getting out and about because that would cut our business to ribbons.
So James Hansen has finally agreed with me on one aspect of Global Warming and The Greenhouse Effect = the way to solve the problem is by carbon taxes.
I have yet to see a Greenhouse Effect Doomster answer the argument that Gaia is a suicidal maniac who has stripped the planet of carbon and buried it in permanent graves, thereby causing the ice age which continues to this day, with imminent threat of reglaciation in 2020. The current interglacial has reached the end of its life.
Greenhouse Effect Doomsters also make the false assumption that Earth is in Balance. It has never been in balance. Over short spans of limited human lifetimes it appears to be sort of stable, if we ignore details like hurricanes, floods, droughts, volcanoes, tsunamis, earthquakes and locust plagues, not to mention plain rotten weather. Over 2000 years, let alone geological time, there is no balance at all.
The CO2 theories about Global Warming only apply if we first make the false assumptions they make about 'Nature loves us and wants things good', 'Earth is in balance of happy cosmic harmony', 'All that missing carbon should naturally be buried in the ground rather than in the ecosphere'.
Even if 500 parts per million of carbon dioxide could mean some adjustments in ways of life over a period of 100 years or 200 years, those changes are not going to be significant in the life spans of people. I have moved many times. Houses don't last 50 years let alone 100 years or 200 years without substantial maintenance if not total replacement. Roads have life cycles of 20 years, not centuries. Sewerage is a 19th century idea which boomed in the 20th century.
The Greenhouse Affectation also presumes that CO2 is bad whereas it's obviously good because plants love it, growing prolifically with more CO2 instead of the pathetically thin gruel they have struggled to cope with as the carbon was stripped from the ecosphere. We depend on plants growing prolifically as do all other animals. Deserts are deserts because there are no plants.
Not only do plants grow much better with CO2, then need a lot less water so desert fringes will grow more plants and irrigation costs are reduced. People go on about "our precious water" - if they are serious, they should welcome more CO2. Water isn't actually precious - deionized water costs about 1c per litre, which is a lot less than 100c per litre for petrol which is more like a precious resource.
Also, the Greenhouse Affectation ignores the fact that filling a leaky bucket - the atmosphere - is more and more difficult the more it's filled. It leaks out faster. The Gulf Stream subduction of CO2 increases, radiolarian ooze deposition increases as do other carbonaceous oceanic deposits.
If James Hansen would answer these objections, I might be persuaded that there is a problem that needs more carbon taxation. In New Zealand, we already have very hefty carbon taxes on petrol though not on diesel. Trucks are charged per kilometre run, not on the fuel they use. Hefty tax is levied on computers which use negligible carbon for the value they produce, but coal burned in power stations is not taxed much at all other than with a few standard taxes such as goods and services tax. Same for methane out of the Taranaki gas fields.
There appears to be nobody left in SI who thinks The Greenhouse Effect is valid [nobody who uses reason rather than abuse and insult as a means of thinking].
I'd start swapping taxes now, from benign things to carbon, because while 400 parts per million isn't a problem, and is in fact good, by the time we get to 450 parts per million or 500 parts per million in 100 years, it might be. Peak People and technological revolution will reduce CO2 production even without taxation because people don't burn carbon for fun - it's to achieve other things which are better done in other ways. So there's unlikely to be a problem at all, but since taxes are being collected anyway, they might as well be charged on things like stinking diesel combustion which pollute the air instead of Cyberspace, which doesn't.
Mqurice |
