I'm not sure what your point is. Carbon footprint scales with wealth (although location in the US can make a big difference in terms of household heating costs). This is true in the US, but it's even more apparent in global data where the richest 10% account for 49% of the world's carbon emissions.

Again, most proposals for a carbon tax either account for a 100% dividend given back in equal shares to the population, or offset other taxes, such as the payroll tax. The poor come out ahead on those plans.

Sure there is. It's incumbent open developed nations to assist developing nations. In the past, developing nations have been exempt from carbon restrictions, but I don't know if that's the best plan anymore. In any case, developing nations are the ones who will bear the brunt of climate problems even if it is limited to 2C.

There are carbon emissions when it comes to nuclear (mining, construction, etc.), so it's not the best solution, but I have no problem easing regulations. Nuclear will almost certainly be a part of any solution.

If you have a better solution, I'd like to hear it. "Just develop better technology," is not a valid plan.

Mining and construction will be involved in any solution you come up with, unless its living in a cave like I previously mentioned. Here is a picture of a toxic waste site in china used for rare earth processioning that is used to construct windmills:



I'm not sure what you think we need a solution to? Is right now not the best time in human history to be alive? Life expectancy is at all time highs while climate related deaths and poverty are at all time lows meanwhile we used more fossil fuels and emit more CO2 then ever. I think you are really under-estimating what cheap/reliable energy has done for humans over the past century. You should ask yourself if those trade offs are worth the risk of a hypothetical disaster based off climate prediction models that cant predict climate.

Here's a debate you should watch:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVue_UlCj_c

Transportation, housing, and various sorts of more or less fixed energy uses account for vast majority of the carbon foot print of lower income individuals and still a majority for all but the jetsetters. The CO2 per GDP/capita does still vary but it plateaus big time by the time you get to about 30k-40k/capita (national level) depending on dataset and definitions used. It's probably worth noting sub 8 or 10k/capita is subsistence so energy needs don't rise. But there is a huge growth spike (as witnessed in BRICS) once you break that line and people start moving into manufacturing and service industries from agrarian/subsistence farming.

I really don't know what you are trying to argue. I gave you a testable hypothesis that energy needs level out after reaching a threshold of income so you won't be able to tax the "rich" enough to pay for the subsidies on the poor to account for lower income individuals without some strange assumptions.

If you think I am wrong about diminishing needs for energy, find the data.

linking to photoshops from the daily mail, rofl

There are rare earth elements used in the manufacture of all permanent magnets. Some electric motors and generators, including those in wind turbines, as well as a lot of computer equipment include permanent magnets. Electric motors are ubiquitous and wind turbines, though very large, are not a large part of the electric motor/generator market in the world.

The rare earth scare is something that people with vast amounts of money to spend fighting against renewables make it very easy for reactionaries to find wherever they get any anti-environmental information. It comes from groups like The Institute for Energy Research which were created by people from The Cato Institute which is fossil fuel billionaire Charles Koch's think tank.

Still rare earth magnets do involve pollution. But, is the wind industry reliant on rare earths? Is a plan for rare earth free wind turbines a fantasy about some distant future? No! Not all wind turbines use permanent magnets or need rare earths at all and the 4th largest turbine manufacturer in the world doesn't use any.

http://yes2renewables.org/2012/03/06...re-using-them/

The point is that the relevant scale for renewables adoption is generally a power grid, not a country. Denmark can go to 50% renewables (by production), but they are dependent, in part, on French nuclear or Scandinavian hydro to cover the variability of renewable generation.

I was only able to easily find data from 2009, but at that point, Europe got 42% of its electricity from nuclear or hydro (compared to 25% in the U.S. for 2014), which is interesting to note.

.

Currently there are other sources of power, including renewable hydro, so of course they are used. The current amount of energy storage is more than sufficient for the current amount of renewables. Why would anyone increase storage capacity before it is needed?

OK, but the increase in storage capacity is the key scalability challenge. Denmark hitting 50% renewables production doesn't prove all that much if they need to draw on the entire continent's storage resources.

Interestingly, I think Germany may be a bit different due to their domestic laws about energy, but it's very hard, at least for me, to find information in English about how it works. Apparently their recently enacted energy law provides for the establishment of a government-subsidized power reserve of standby fossil-fuel generation to meet grid shortfalls.

http://e360.yale.edu/feature/for_sto...ed_hydro/2934/

More on increasing energy storage. Unsurprisingly, China has become the new leader in it and is growing quickly.

That's a really interesting link. They also talk about a non-dam project in the Pacific NW that's self-contained to avoid the environmental issues associated with dramatically changing the flow through dams on rivers.

I think it's a long time, if ever, before new dams are needed for pumped storage. There are many existing dams and reservoirs basically everywhere. All you need are two reservoirs at different altitudes.

But again, there are already many massive hydro projects existing and water just needs to be pumped the opposite direction.

In terms of CO2 emissions, wind is better than nuclear.

This is kind of like saying "Sure, I smoke three packs a day, but I'm the healthiest I've ever been!" Future problems associated with global warming aren't a mystery: sea level rise, increased ice/permafrost melt and ocean acidification are certain. Increased flooding/heat waves are very likely. Increased drought, disease and more powerful storms are plausible. Maybe we dodge a couple major problems, but we aren't dodging them all.

Climate models predict climate well enough, but even if you ignore them completely, the theoretical predictions still reach the same broad conclusions.

From your article:

EDIT: I suppose here they are talking about traditional dams just backing up waterflow to reduce their own generation, but it sounds like they are talking about getting maxed out in terms of how much water existing reservoirs can hold back at all just from natural flow, let alone actively pumping water upstream.

Obviously I'm kind of oversimplifying it. It's very complicated because energy storage is a local issue that will be handled differently everywhere. I might suggest that not many of the existing dams have pumped storage hydro, so if you are trying to do all of it at the few that do you may be overloading them. Storage capacity needs to grow along with renewables, it doesn't need to be way ahead of them.

In a 100% fee and (equal) dividend plan, anyone with a below average carbon footprint would see a net gain in income. This source uses gasoline use as a proxy for total carbon footprint and finds that 2/3 of households would gain or see no change. That's not a perfect estimate, but it's good enough to show that the poor are not going to be hurt by this policy.

What you are proposing is effectively a forced income transfer with very high efficiency and nearly no overhead. This is a very different beast than what gasoline/fuel/CO2 taxes actually do today (reinvested into infrastructure projects and green investments/R&D). But I'll entertain your version anyway. As a sidenote, I am actually a fan of tax and distribute. My problem is cloaking this particular form of redistribution has a high probability of ends up being counterproductive.

The tax hurts the poor disproportionately, even as implemented by your suggestion. Furthermore, as implemented by your suggestion, it does not lower CO2 consumption significantly.

It does not lower CO2 consumption significantly because, with your implementation, the after tax income of those on the more income elastic part of energy demand curve increases while after tax income of those on the less income elastic parts decreases. In practice the tax would just move the "plateau" a bit to the right (plateauing at higher income) and really only significantly lower consumption for those at the margins (given current income levels and data, that would suggest the shift happens at ~20% (that would be ~100k income in US), putting most "winners" with increased income in the elastic part of their demand curve and most "losers" in the inelastic part of their demand curves. The more of the tax is returned as dividends, the more likely for the net CO2 effect of the tax to be positive (as in increased CO2 consumption).

The CO2 tax would also disproportionately hurt the poor in numerous ways. I will only name 2. First, this form of CO2 tax strongly encourages CO2 emission exporting, which leads to even more CO2 emission (transportation and weaker regulations in exporting countries). Second, related to first, is this CO2 tax most likely will raise prices on necessities, increasing the share of necessities of after-tax income for poor individuals.

And oh, by the way, nuclear is still technologically and economically the most viable alternative to carbon fuel. Geothermal is probably the most mature renewable technology that actually works (see Iceland and western US)

Nuclear power's problems are mostly political and emotional, not the least of which is distorted markets encouraging dead end technologies.

This would only be true if consumers simply spent their entire dividends on extra carbon energy. That's not a realistic outcome. In addition, increased energy prices would lead to consumers adopting more efficient behaviors. Some consumers would choose greener energy as it becomes price-competitive. Higher emissions products would become less attractive as the cost of carbon is reflected in pricing.

A carbon tax isn't a long term solution, obviously, but it allows renewable energy to compete, encourages efficiency and is better, imo, than direct subsidies on research and development.

First, an import/export adjustment is usually paired with a carbon tax. Second is a valid concern, especially when it comes to food and home electricity in certain areas. I don't think that's a fatal flaw, but any serious proposal would have to deal with that issue in some way.

This is most likely false.

At least in the short and medium term, price elasticity of fuel consumption is low. On the other hand, for lower income individuals, income elasticity of fuel consumption is high.

This on balance means, for the most part, higher fuel consumption when you hike costs by $97 but increase income by $200.

I actually think carbon tax has to be part of the long term solution.

I just don't think carbon tax alone would have led to the proliferation of solar and wind power to the extent we see today. In fact, we know carbon tax, even when fuel prices were sky high, did not lead to such developments. It wasn't until 2007 or 2008 when the government went all in that the solar industry began to take off. (btw, the industry as a whole still underperformed for the venture capital funds).

That strongly suggests there is over investment in solar and wind. They are viable under limited circumstances and can be stop gaps until we find a true (or accept nuclear) alternative to carbon fuels. This is why I think the money needs to be in R&D, and I mean basic R&D at universities and not the government as venture capitalist kind of R&D.

You're talking about carbon tariffs. It's a pretty old idea that never gained traction and likely would be stuck in all kinds of trade courts.

Definitely agree. The government doesn't have to pick a winner, not even an industry, and especially not a particular company. But, if you want to create a new market for something like zero-emmission energy production, an incentive which is large at first and then goes down as the industry grows is massively more cost effective than taxing the humongous industry and trying to affect price enough on that to get anyone to choose an alternative.

10 years ago solar cost more than 4 times as much as it does now. Taxing carbon to get people to use solar would have been impossible. Creating a very small market and letting it grow until it became competitive was relatively easy.

That said, treating the atmosphere as a dump is a huge subsidy that shouldn't be allowed any longer than absolutely necessary.

No, its not like saying that at all. Those events all happen now and humans can adapt to them better then ever mostly because of fossil fuels.

Those events are happening now, but they often lag tempertaure increase and the effects get worse in the future.

These are middle tropospheric temperatures. Models reproduce surface trends more accurately:



And they have actually underestimated ocean warming:

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought CMIP5 models were the latest models who have only been in use since 2011. So those last 2 graphs only show how well those models mapped the past and say nothing about their predictive abilities yet.

Not that hard to get your model to map to the past as long as part of the model is parametrized which is true for all climate models.