Doing the maths on Copenhagen

Turn the heating up

One thing I'm sure of is that methane from steak production is not man made. It comes out of a cows arse.

As for the rest of the article, Bollocks, it's bloody penguin weather out there.

Cost of polution

I've got a simple question for you, but it is not simple for me to work out.

The article says about the "cost of polution" and puts a currency value to it. What this value is, and how it is worked out is beyond the article, and I'm OK with that, but for there to be any cost, someone must have worked out where that cost needs to be spent to offset the polution (e.g. the cost to plant enough trees to counter the 1 tonne of CO2).

The "tax the poluter the cost of the polution" idea will only work if that tax is paid to whoever the cost is imposed on (e.g. tree planter). If the tax is just used to boost governments spending on CCTV or ministry of love databases, IT WILL NOT WORK.

If you take money to pay for the polution, it must be used to pay for the polution.

Who do I write to with my suggestion?

Excellent

Absolutley spot on Tim. You have not only hit the nail on the head but so eloquently set out the critical decisions needed of our generally pathetic politicians.

The only weakness that I would like to point out is that it is for more attractive for politicans to slap on green taxes on to everything without calculating the true costs of carbon damage and then going a step further to reduce other taxes. Can you really see them reducing taxes elsewhere especially when they have a ballooning deficit? No.

What they are more likely to do is to enjoy sticking their fingers into free market regulation to make it more robust and less prone to causing problems such as the credit crunch. In fixing the markets, at least one small step at a time, increases the prospects for ETS / Cap and Trade schemes to work well. At least they allow the markets to determine the most effective reductions and what should be cut and where....albeit with the right targets and equal across all sectors.

In fact, if you took a closer look at Copenhagen then you'd have noticed that the much pilloried aviation sector has proposed a global "sectoral" approach for aviation in favour of the EU ETS. Firtly that makes a lot of sense because in aviation many / most flights and therefore emisions are truly global. They go on to propose that the sectoral scheme should not be enclosed with its own permits but interchangeable with other schemes. Whether this proposal would then truly allow the market to correctly price aviation emissions, then the answer is of course no, since it is sectoral. But at least, as a first step, it introduces the concept of a global cap and trade in favour of the EU ETS.

A global cap and trade would be a great idea, but again, can we really imagine 190 countries agreeing? It was hard enough to do with the EU 27. How is it really going to happen? Only when New York, LA, London, Shanghai, Hong Kong, Bombay and St Petersburg are under several metres of water will these politicians finally wake up and then it will be too late.

Oh dear.

You might have taken a good look at the existing trading schemes to make sure that it actually works in the Real World as well as in the Magic World, where economics works the way it should, without those nasty, greedy people around.

The scheme suggested will absolutely have unintended consequences, as we have seen with the existing schemes. Think those through and maybe, just maybe,* such a scheme will work.

* - with the probability of a lottery win.

You are making some big assumptions here about CO2 etc...

We have been told, almost non-stop for the last 20 years CO2 is the cause of the planet heating up, then nature throws a curve ball and starts cooling down for the last 10, so if CO2 is still going up why is global temp going down and we're still being told CO2 is causing us to heat up?

Also Hansen has just done an about face almost, he's gone from singing the CO2 song, to now claiming soot is responsible for at least 50% of melting slabs of ice. So again if CO2 is such a boogyman why are we suddenly being told it mostly isn't any more?

I agree we need to clean up our activities on this planet, but targeting CO2 probably won't have any effect what so ever, in fact some are claiming the increased CO2 has increased plant diversity and all the wonderful things that go with it, like potentially less people starving.

The planet will be here long after we're gone, something else will evolve to be the dominate species on the planet so we need to be honest what we're doing here, saving our selves, not saving the planet.

Then of course there is the little matter of SO2, which has the opposite effect to CO2 by cooling the planet, but they aren't properly measuring most emissions so we don't really know what is going on here, just a lot of people jumping up and down crying wolf. All they really care about is their on going funding to further research things that may be of no consequence.

If these politicians were serious about saving people on this planet why are they doing nothing about funding people starving? A sub-org of the UN was asking for 45billion to feed the starving, but no one gave a cent. What about all the curable dieses in less wealthy nations, how much is being done about that to save the 1-3 million or so people that die just from malaria a year?

Copenhagen failed for the same reason it existed, it was created out of greed and the lure of billions if not trillions of fresh tax dollars, but no one trusted anyone else with the money so it fell over.

All the politicians are greedy hypocritical sods that shouldn't be given a cent more in money while they keep lying to us about caring about people and/or "the planet"

Absolute codswallop!

Might I suggest that you engage brain before opening mouth. There is more and more research coming out, both peer reviewed and not (disregarding that the peer review system has been seriously abused), that the data provided via CRU and IPCC and the "consensus" opinion arising from it is wrong. It has been generated through politics and not science. Whenever rank amateurs investigate critical details the doubts multiply until they exceed any reasonable doubt.

Examples:

The US climate records are claimed to be the worlds best, but their measuring stations fail the minimum standard in 89% of cases, merely for siting. They do not adequately account fot Urban heat Island effect, but "adjustments" are made that always give a rise in temperature that raw data ( if available) does not. Upward adjustments without adequate explanation have also occured in Australia and New Zealand and these adjustments account for all of the claimed temperature rise in the stations investigated. In fact it was pointed out in a paper published in 1980 that NZ data was not suitable for long term monitoring or for temperature trend analysis.

The infamous Mann "hockey stick" graph was invalidated by McIntyre and McKitrick in 2003 but is still often seen, including in IPCC publications and presentations. The Medieval Warm Period which was warmer than today definitely existed otherwise how were grapes grown in Northumbria, Greenland and Newfoundland?

The Briffa tree ring analysis from Yamal, Siberia has been shown to depend upon cherry picking of data and ignoring the majority of the data points, and even then *one* tree skewed the results towards the desired end. If either this tree was excluded or all of the others were included then the temperature series changed character completely. There was also the infamous "Mann 'Nature' trick" of not including in the graph data that did not conform to the required result and hoping that it would not be noticed in the spaghetti graph.

I could go on but enough is enough but the present warming trend, assuming that it is still with us as there has been no warming for 9 years, cannot be put down to anthropogenic causes as both temperature rise and rate of rise are not uncommon in recent geological history.

Haven't we had enough economists already?

After the financial crisis I thought economists would be listened to less, since greed is good and all, how does that help me?

Also before making sweeping statements did you notice the corruption in Denmark from their cap and trade system?

Basically it doesn't matter what happens going forward someone will game the system, especially because of so much money being involved.

The TPA has already done the math....

The Case Against Further Green Taxes - Report and Poll

GOVERNMENT RAISING £10 BILLION MORE FROM GREEN TAXES THAN REQUIRED TO COVER COST OF UK’S CARBON FOOTPRINT

EVERY UK HOUSEHOLD ALREADY OVER-PAYING GREEN TAXES TO THE TUNE OF MORE THAN £400 A YEAR

NEW POLL SHOWS BIG MAJORITY BELIEVE POLITICIANS ARE USING GREEN TAXES AS A REVENUE RAISING MEASURE

FIRST EVER AUDIT OF UK GREEN TAX POLICY REVEALS EXCESSIVE BURDEN OF ENVIRONMENTAL LEVIES THAT FAIL THEIR OBJECTIVES

http://tpa.typepad.com/research/2007/09/the-case-agains.html

That is all.

*applause*

A sane and rational article on climate change. Thank you, sir.

Although these days I take exception to the claim that economists know anything about anything. Economic models may be appealing, but there is no proof that they match reality to any meaningful extent, and plenty of indication that they don't.

OTOH, this article doesn't use anything very contentious from economics to make its point.

All round good show.

I don't really care whether climate change is real/man-made or not

It seems to me that regardless of whether it's happening and regardless of who or what is causing it, if it is, it is just plain common sense to stop raping the planet and polluting our environment.

Or.. as discussed elsewhere on the interwebs

Lets spend $180 Billion a year to slow down global warming by 7 years by the end of this Century.

Or lets spend the $180 Billion each year on trying to fix the here and now problems so that there might actually be some people left that global warming may affect. You know, Aids, Cancer etc.... it's all well and good stopping global warming but if there is no-one left alive it's a bit of a waste isn't it.

Why don't they try having these conferences via web conferences as well, rather than having to fly in 1000 extra limo's to ferry the diplomats around... cos that's helping isn't it.

It's all utter, utter bollocks.

Best El Reg Climate Change Article Ever

That is all.

A tax reduces consumption, does it?

So tell me - to what extent did the 23p Kyoto levy affect petrol usage in the UK? Approximately 0%?