The Global Warming Thread

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Tue Jul 17, 2012 8:41 pm

Interesting article about old school global warming predictions vs. real world data. Looks like they generally got things right.

In a piece back in April at RealClimate, guest bloggers Geert Jan van Oldenborgh and Rein Haarsma of the Dutch Meterological Institute (KNMI) look at back at a 1981 paper by the now famous James Hansen and others.

The Hansen et al paper includes (among other things) a plot of predicted global temperatures as a function of time. Oldenborgh and Haarsem take this figure and overplot the actual real world data gathered since the paper appeared. The fit between the Hansen et al predictions and the behavior of the Earth's climate is remarkably good.

Grey lines = predicted temp. Red lines = actual data.

Smoove_B · Post by **Smoove_B** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 12:15 pm

The Conversion of a Climate-Change Skeptic:

CALL me a converted skeptic. Three years ago I identified problems in previous climate studies that, in my mind, threw doubt on the very existence of global warming. Last year, following an intensive research effort involving a dozen scientists, I concluded that global warming was real and that the prior estimates of the rate of warming were correct. I’m now going a step further: Humans are almost entirely the cause.

...

What about the future? As carbon dioxide emissions increase, the temperature should continue to rise. I expect the rate of warming to proceed at a steady pace, about one and a half degrees over land in the next 50 years, less if the oceans are included. But if China continues its rapid economic growth (it has averaged 10 percent per year over the last 20 years) and its vast use of coal (it typically adds one new gigawatt per month), then that same warming could take place in less than 20 years.

Science is that narrow realm of knowledge that, in principle, is universally accepted. I embarked on this analysis to answer questions that, to my mind, had not been answered. I hope that the Berkeley Earth analysis will help settle the scientific debate regarding global warming and its human causes. Then comes the difficult part: agreeing across the political and diplomatic spectrum about what can and should be done.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 2:18 pm

Animals on the Move is a good, thorough overview from Science News about how animals and plants are coping with a warming world.

The gist of it:

Some animals are packing up and moving, generally heading toward the poles or up mountain slopes in search of more hospitable climes. Others are undergoing changes in physiology, behavior or body size — or they’re shifting the timing of seasonal events such as breeding, migration and emergence from hibernation to coincide with earlier springs and later autumns. Just last year, researchers reported seasonal shifts in animals ranging from snow geese in the Arctic to amphibians in a South Carolina wetland to penguins in Antarctica.

And though similar responses have been turning up in many sorts of animals, in many sorts of habitats, researchers are now finding that not all organisms are responding at the same rate or in the same direction. Long-standing associations between predators and prey, parasites and hosts, herbivores and food plants, flowers and pollinators are getting out of sync.

Communities are breaking up and reassembling with new mixtures of members, and it’s hard to predict the effects of such mash-ups, a team of environmental scientists concluded in a paper last year.

Lots of specifics with citations provided for the motivated.

silverjon · Post by **silverjon** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 2:24 pm

Did I mention the Monarch butterflies?

We have Monarch butterflies in Edmonton this year.

It's fairly unprecedented to see them this far north.

Jaymann · Post by **Jaymann** » Tue Jul 31, 2012 7:58 pm

silverjon wrote:Did I mention the Monarch butterflies?

We have Monarch butterflies in Edmonton this year.

It's fairly unprecedented to see them this far north.

Those scientists with an agenda are busing them in!

Kurth · Post by **Kurth** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 4:22 pm

Sort of old news (bill actually passed in June), but North Carolina is in the headlines again:

New Law in North Carolina Bans Latest Scientific Predictions of Sea-Level Rise

.

I like the quip from Colbert:

"If your science gives you a result you don't like, pass a law saying the result is illegal. Problem solved," he joked.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 4:54 pm

A projection map showing land along the coast underwater would place the permits of many planned development projects in jeopardy. Numerous new flood zone areas would have to be drawn, new waste treatment plants would have to be built, and roads would have to be elevated. The endeavor would cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars, Thompson said.

Whereas the feds will pick up the tab after the ocean washes all that development away. Gotcha.

"Most of the environmental side say we're ignoring science, but the bill actually asks for more science," she said. "We're not ignoring science, we're asking for the best science possible, the best extrapolation possible, looking at the historical data also. We just need to make sure that we're getting the proper answers."

Well, that seems prudent. At what point do they have the best possible science?

"I urge the General Assembly to revisit this issue and develop an approach that gives state agencies the flexibility to take appropriate action in response to sea level change within the next four years."

Alrighty then. The science should be a little more solid four years from now...although not quite as good as it will be four years after that. At least they aren't categorically denying that the sea is rising.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 7:00 pm

Kurth wrote:
New Law in North Carolina Bans Latest Scientific Predictions of Sea-Level Rise

A terrible headline. The law itself probably makes sense for the moment.

Jaymann · Post by **Jaymann** » Thu Aug 02, 2012 11:07 pm

I understand Alabama is introducing legislation to outlaw thermometers.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sat Aug 04, 2012 1:09 pm

James Hansen (NASA) says

Our analysis shows that it is no longer enough to say that global warming will increase the likelihood of extreme weather and to repeat the caveat that no individual weather event can be directly linked to climate change. To the contrary, our analysis shows that, for the extreme hot weather of the recent past, there is virtually no explanation other than climate change.

(...)

Our new peer-reviewed study, published by the National Academy of Sciences, makes clear that while average global temperature has been steadily rising due to a warming climate (up about 1.5 degrees Fahrenheit in the past century), the extremes are actually becoming much more frequent and more intense worldwide.

When we plotted the world’s changing temperatures on a bell curve, the extremes of unusually cool and, even more, the extremes of unusually hot are being altered so they are becoming both more common and more severe.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Aug 05, 2012 9:09 pm

Three scary numbers and a quixotic call to action from Bill McKibben (via Rolling Stone).

This one will make that vein on msd's forehead throb.

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 5:53 pm

Record low for arctic ice as the melt season comes to a close:

Yesterday, the National Snow and Ice Data Center announced that the Arctic melt season was probably over. This year's melt had already set records back in August, so the only real question was just how low it would go. Assuming there's not a downward fluctuation during the next couple of weeks, the answer is 3.41 million square kilometers, or about half of the typical low point observed from 1980-2000. That's about 750,000 square kilometers below the previous low (set in 2007), an area roughly equivalent to that occupied by Texas.

In fact, as the NSIDC notes, every year since 2007 has seen unusually strong summer melts: "The six lowest seasonal minimum ice extents in the satellite record have all occurred in the last six years." Although weather has undoubtably played a role in making this year's melt unusually severe, the strong tendency toward record amounts of open water in the Arctic Ocean seems to lend credence to the ideas of Cornell professor Charles H. Greene, who has referred to recent trends as signs that we've entered what he called an "Arctic warm period."

One of the surprising aspects of all of this is that it's happening much faster than most climate models have predicted. Many of them had been indicating the ice would be relatively stable for most of the current century.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Thu Sep 20, 2012 6:07 pm

I'll see your record low and raise you a record high.

SUMMIT COUNTY — Federal ocean scientists said this year’s sea surface temperatures along the northeast coast of the U.S. set all-time records, with as-yet unknown consequences for marine ecosystems.

Above-average temperatures were found in all parts of the ecosystem, from the ocean bottom to the sea surface and across the region, and the above average temperatures extended beyond the shelf break front to the Gulf Stream, according to an ecosystem advisory issued by NOAA’s Northeast Fisheries Science Center.

...

Friedland said the average sea surface temperature exceeded 51 degrees during the first half of 2012, topping the previous record high set in 1951.The average sea surface temperature the past three decades has ranged around 48 degrees.

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Sun Sep 23, 2012 6:44 pm

A new study is out in Nature Climate Change by a friend of mine (and very rare poster on the board - fishsticks, I think):

The top ocean predators in the North Pacific could lose as much as 35 percent of their habitat by the end of the century as a result of climate change, according to a study published Sunday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The analysis, conducted by a team of 11 American and Canadian researchers, took data compiled from tracking 4,300 open-ocean animals over a decade and looked at how predicted temperature changes would alter the areas they depend on for food and shelter. Some habitats could shift by as much as 600 miles while others will remain largely unchanged, the scientists found, and these changes could affect species in different ways.

“They’ll have to travel farther and farther every year just to get to their food,” said Elliott Hazen, the study’s lead author and a scientist with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Southwest Fisheries Science Center.

Some species with a relatively narrow temperature range — such as salmon, and blue and mako sharks — fared poorly as well.

At the same time, some highly mobile species such as tuna and seabirds may benefit from the changes because they will either be able to adjust more easily or have wider foraging opportunities.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 2:57 pm

New data shows that Global Warming stopped 16 years ago

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:09 pm

Here are the graphs from the Met Office Hadley Center.

Figure 7 - Comparison of annual, global average temperature anomalies 1850-2010 (deg C, relative to the long-term average for 1961-90) for the HadCRUT4 median (red) and HadCRUT3 (blue). 95% confidence intervals are shown by the shaded areas.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:19 pm

msduncan wrote:New data shows that Global Warming stopped 16 years ago

That would be good news, if it were true. Not to mention surprising, since it contradicts such clear evidence of warming as this year's record-low Arctic sea ice, not to mention less dramatic effects that are reported weekly in Science News. "The new data...was issued quietly on the internet" makes me suspicious, though. Real science is published in peer-reviewed journals.

I'll let you know if I see any mainstream scientific discussion of this report. Preferably discussion that doesn't quote anybody referencing "‘the high-flown theories of bourgeois Left-wing academics."

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:28 pm

I'm curious that the article points out the folly of arbitrarily choosing 2010 as an "endpoint" to show an upward trend, but breezes right past the obvious subsequent point which would be to point out the equal folly of choosing 2012 as an "endpoint" to show a plateau.

Also, GA Tech is prestigious?

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:41 pm

GreenGoo · Post by **GreenGoo** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 3:48 pm

Problem solved.

Phew.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:18 pm

This plateau being news to me, I did a little reading. It looks like the data are real.

I found a 3-year-old interview with the scientist who did the research. His take:

RAZ: What is causing this? Why hasn't there been an increase in the Earth's temperature since 1998?

Dr. LATIF: Well, we believe that a change in ocean current, especially in the tropical Pacific and in the southern oceans on the Southern Hemisphere, cooled the sea surface temperature, and this then led to an offset, you know, to global warming, and so the net effect is basically that there was no additional change.

RAZ: So based on your research, if I have this right, climate change, particularly a warming of the Earth's climate, is still the trend. It's just been slowed down for the last few years because of ocean currents, changes in ocean currents.

Dr. LATIF: Exactly. So - and this is the reason, because we have the short-term climate fluctuation, therefore, it doesn't make sense to look at short periods to assess the human impact on climate. So you have to consider several decades. Only then you see basically the long-term warming trend, and therefore, we can't really draw any inferences from this hold in the last 10 years or so, you know, with regard to global warming.

RAZ: So when do you expect the Earth to start warming again at an accelerated rate, what year?

Dr. LATIF: Well, we did only forecasts for the time until 2015. However, if we look further, then we have some indications that there are after, say after 2015 or 2020, you know, global warming will accelerate again.

RAZ: And how much warmer do you estimate it will become over the next sort of two or three decades?

Dr. LATIF: I think maybe .2 or .3 degrees, but it may accelerate thereafter. So it basically depends on, you know, how we behave during the next decades, right? So if we emit - or if we continue to emit these greenhouse gases at the present rate, you know, then the warming trend will be faster.

I also found a subsequent report attributing the warming hiatus to pollution in China.

Scientists have come up with a possible explanation for why the rise in Earth's temperature paused for a bit during the 2000s, one of the hottest decades on record.

The answer seems counterintuitive. It's all that sulfur pollution in the air from China's massive coal-burning, according to a new study.

Sulfur particles in the air deflect the sun's rays and can temporarily cool things down a bit. That can happen even as coal-burning produces the carbon dioxide that contributes to global warming.

"People normally just focus on the warming effect of CO2 (carbon dioxide), but during the Chinese economic expansion there was a huge increase in sulfur emissions," which have a cooling effect, explained Robert K. Kaufmann of Boston University. He's the lead author of the study published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Science.

But sulfur's cooling effect is only temporary, while the carbon dioxide from coal burning stays in Earth's atmosphere a long time.

Chinese coal consumption doubled between 2003 and 2007, and that caused a 26 percent increase in global coal consumption, Kaufmann said.

Now, Chinese leaders have recognized the effects of that pollution on their environment and their citizens' health and are installing equipment to scrub out the sulfur particles, Kaufmann said.

Sulfur quickly drops out of the air if it is not replenished, while carbon dioxide remains for a long time, so its warming effects are beginning to be visible again, he noted. The plateau in temperature growth disappeared in 2009 and 2010, when temperatures lurched upward.

Indeed, NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, have listed 2010 as tied for the warmest year on record, while the Hadley Center of the British Meteorological Office lists it as second warmest, after 1998.

That sounds awfully familiar to me. As in, I already linked that news on page one of this very thread. The plateau was only news to me because I have such a lousy memory.

Nothing to see here.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 8:03 pm

Ah ok... so a 16 year pause that was unexpected and contrary to scientific predictions is scientifically predicted to end in a couple decades and the left will once again have it's political tool upon which to push it's socialist green agenda.

I got it. Can we close this thread until 2016 or so when things start to supposedly accelerate again?

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 8:31 pm

Or go back to using it to document new scientific evidence as it is published. Gives you something to scoff at.

Captain Caveman · Post by **Captain Caveman** » Sun Oct 14, 2012 8:32 pm

Where is the actual study? Do you have it (or a link to it), msd? The linked article is terribly written and doesn't even mention the study authors. It just discusses comments from two individuals who apparently were not part of the study. Honestly, I don't even know how you find this stuff. (edit: nevermind, I do now. I just checked Drudge).

And yeah, if "issued quietly on the internet" doesn't set off alarm bells....

I'd like to see the article. On the surface, it seems like it might utilize the ol' "cherry pick end points" fallacy.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:45 pm

September matches record for hottest ever

WASHINGTON (AP) — The globe last month matched a record for the hottest September.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Monday that September was 60.2 degrees Fahrenheit worldwide, which is 1.2 degrees above normal. That matches 2005 for the hottest September. Records go back to 1880.

For most of the year, world temperatures were warmer than normal, but not near record levels. At the same time, the United States kept setting heat records. But that reversed in September. It was a record hot month for the world, but the United States ranked as only the 23rd hottest.

This is the 331st consecutive month with global temperatures above the 20th century average.

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 1:21 pm

So what constitutes "normal" now? The article Kraken posted says for the year it is warmer than normal? What does that mean? At what point in time since these things have been measured are we referring to as normal? Anyone know?

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 3:48 pm

Ralph-Wiggum wrote:So what constitutes "normal" now? The article Kraken posted says for the year it is warmer than normal? What does that mean? At what point in time since these things have been measured are we referring to as normal? Anyone know?

I think they are using "normal" and "20th century average" interchangeably.

RunningMn9 · Post by **RunningMn9** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 5:46 pm

msduncan wrote:Ah ok... so a 16 year pause

Just to clarify, there is no "16 year pause". Choosing 2010 (would show a 14-year increase). Choosing 2012 and declaring it a "pause" because it ended at roughly where it began isn't any more enlightening. What if next year is unseasonably warm? The 16-year pause instantly disappears because it was never there to begin with.

Ralph-Wiggum · Post by **Ralph-Wiggum** » Mon Oct 15, 2012 11:08 pm

And here is the Met Office's response to the article:

An article by David Rose appears today in the Mail on Sunday under the title: ‘Global warming stopped 16 years ago, reveals Met Office report quietly released… and here is the chart to prove it’

It is the second article Mr Rose has written which contains some misleading information, after he wrote an article earlier this year on the same theme – you see our response to that one here.

To address some of the points in the article published today:

Firstly, the Met Office has not issued a report on this issue. We can only assume the article is referring to the completion of work to update the HadCRUT4 global temperature dataset compiled by ourselves and the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit.

We announced that this work was going on in March and it was finished this week. You can see the HadCRUT4 website here.

Secondly, Mr Rose says the Met Office made no comment about its decadal climate predictions. This is because he did not ask us to make a comment about them.

They then go on to show their answers to questions the author of the Daily Mail article asked for a previous article. Additionally, they provide the following graph which seems to indicate pretty clearly that the 2000s were pretty unusually warm.

Enough · Post by **Enough** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 4:43 pm

We may be leaving the denial stage and be moving on to the how do we profit from geoengineering the planet to fix this stage. A researcher has gone rogue and dumped 100 tons of iron dust to fertilize the ocean. Apparently the researcher misled NOAA and other agencies into providing support (but no oversight) for the experiment.

The entrepreneur, Russ George, said his team scattered 100 tons of iron dust in mid-July in the Pacific several hundred miles west of the islands of Haida Gwaii, in northern British Columbia, in a $2.5 million project financed by a native Canadian group.

The substance acted as a fertilizer, Mr. George said, fostering the growth of enormous amounts of plankton that were monitored by the team for several months. He said the result could help the project meet what it casts as its top goal: aiding the recovery of the salmon fishery for the native Haida people.

But marine scientists and other experts said the experiment, which they learned about only in news reports this week, was shoddy science, irresponsible and probably in violation of international agreements intended to prevent tampering with ocean ecosystems under the guise of trying to fight the effects of climate change.

While the environmental impact of Mr. George’s foray could well prove minimal, they said, it raises the specter of what they have long feared: rogue field experiments that could one day put the planet at risk. Mark L. Wells, a marine scientist at the University of Maine, said that what Mr. George’s team did “could be described as ocean dumping.”

Noting that blooms like those that the team observed occur regularly in the region, Dr. Wells said it would be difficult for Mr. George to demonstrate what impact the iron had on the plankton. And Dr. Wells said it was “extraordinarily unlikely” that Mr. George could prove that the experiment met another crucial goal of the project: the permanent removal of some carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Yep, just leave it to free enterprise without governmental programs or oversight and we'll be fine!

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 4:44 pm

Freezer-TPF- · Post by **Freezer-TPF-** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 5:12 pm

What's next? Opening gigantic boxes of baking soda next to chemical plants? Dumping a billion Shamwows into the North Atlantic to combat rising sea levels?

Isgrimnur · Post by **Isgrimnur** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 5:25 pm

This has actually been theorized to have an impact.

Another leading theory, "ocean fertilization," entails scattering iron powder throughout the world's seas, providing nutrients to boost the amount of phytoplankton that thrive in the water's upper layers. Through photosynthesis, these plants absorb CO2, which in theory stays with them when they die and fall to the ocean floor. Initial experiments have not lived up to the hype, however, but more research is underway.

And there have been other experiments.

msduncan · Post by **msduncan** » Thu Oct 18, 2012 8:49 pm

It's asinine to believe that a handful of individuals could do anything on a large enough scale environmentally to 'put the planet at risk'.

Redfive · Post by **Redfive** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 12:55 am

msduncan wrote:It's asinine to believe that a handful of individuals could do anything on a large enough scale environmentally to 'put the planet at risk'.

LordMortis · Post by **LordMortis** » Mon Oct 22, 2012 9:07 am

Isgrimnur wrote:This has actually been theorized to have an impact.

Another leading theory, "ocean fertilization," entails scattering iron powder throughout the world's seas, providing nutrients to boost the amount of phytoplankton that thrive in the water's upper layers. Through photosynthesis, these plants absorb CO2, which in theory stays with them when they die and fall to the ocean floor. Initial experiments have not lived up to the hype, however, but more research is underway.
And there have been other experiments.

This scares me. While we need to protect plankton (as far as I know, algae population(?) is shrinking and that's trouble), If we encourage enough plankton growth to pull that much CO2 out of the atmosphere, how much plankton are we talking?

That said. 100 tons of iron dust? Will that help? Really? Between pollution and sunken ships, I'd figure there's literally tons of iron oxidizing every year close enough to the surface that plankton would be feasting on it.

Kraken · Post by **Kraken** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 2:48 am

Could it be...Republicans talking about taxing carbon?

The whole issue of climate change was virtually absent during the presidential campaign until Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. The devastating superstorm — a rarity for the Northeast — and an election that led to Democratic gains have shoved global warming back into the conversation. So has the hunt for answers to a looming budget crisis.

So the carbon tax idea has been revived by some on both the right and left and is suddenly appearing in newspaper and magazine opinion pieces and in quiet discussions.

"I think the impossible may be moving to the inevitable without ever passing through the probable," said former Rep. Bob Inglis. The South Carolina Republican lost his seat in 2010 in a primary fight, partly because he acknowledged that global warming exists and needs to be dealt with. Now he heads a new group that advocates a carbon tax and the idea is endorsed by former Ronald Reagan economic adviser Arthur Laffer.

jimbo · Post by **jimbo** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:09 am

msduncan wrote:Ah ok... so a 16 year pause that was unexpected and contrary to scientific predictions is scientifically predicted to end in a couple decades and the left will once again have it's political tool upon which to push it's socialist green agenda.

I got it. Can we close this thread until 2016 or so when things start to supposedly accelerate again?

realclimate.org has a good article that discusses short term trends. Here is my favorite plot showing several "periods where warming stopped" and demonstrating that each is warmer than the last.

The rest of the article is worth reading.

LawBeefaroni · Post by **LawBeefaroni** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:34 am

Kraken wrote:Could it be...Republicans talking about taxing carbon?

The whole issue of climate change was virtually absent during the presidential campaign until Hurricane Sandy hit the East Coast. The devastating superstorm — a rarity for the Northeast — and an election that led to Democratic gains have shoved global warming back into the conversation. So has the hunt for answers to a looming budget crisis.

So the carbon tax idea has been revived by some on both the right and left and is suddenly appearing in newspaper and magazine opinion pieces and in quiet discussions.

"I think the impossible may be moving to the inevitable without ever passing through the probable," said former Rep. Bob Inglis. The South Carolina Republican lost his seat in 2010 in a primary fight, partly because he acknowledged that global warming exists and needs to be dealt with. Now he heads a new group that advocates a carbon tax and the idea is endorsed by former Ronald Reagan economic adviser Arthur Laffer.

A carbon tax is not the answer. It doesn't reduce emissions, it just makes money off of them. And selling carbon offsets is a scam on the scale of mortgage derivatives. Even with just a carbon tax, fossil fuels will remain cheaper and thus will continue to be used. The revenue from a carbon tax won't be put to alternative energy sources, it will be put to paying budget/debt, after the carbon brokers get their share. The average person paying $0.12 more per gallon of gasoline won't change their behavior. An electric bill that goes up $4 won't get people to reduce consumption.

Carbon taxes are also a regressive tax. The bankers who make money off them and the politicians they pay to institute them will have the lowest burden. Corporations will pass the cost on to consumers.

I like Bob Inglis and the stance he took in 2010 but he's now just another victim of the feel-good scam of taxing carbon. Any other Republicans are getting on board because they've been let in on the deal. Or more likely, their donors/overlords did the math and told them to get in line.

Global warming climate change exists and man has at least some responsibility for it. But we can't just make it go away by throwing money at it. There's going to be some pain involved, and some real sacrifices.

noxiousdog · Post by **noxiousdog** » Wed Nov 14, 2012 11:41 am

LawBeefaroni wrote: Carbon taxes are also a regressive tax. The bankers who make money off them and the politicians they pay to institute them will have the lowest burden. Corporations will pass the cost on to consumers.

I'm not sure I follow. Regardless of offsets, clean businesses will have lower expenses than dirty businesses. The taxes just have to be high enough to offset fuel costs.

That's a economics problem, not a scheme problem.