Here is the story, via Megan McArdle; an excerpt:
“On global warming, the problem is
ideologically I suspect it did cause me to …discount evidence which cut
against the way I wanted it to be in that case. My justification to my
self would be that I had seen [the environmentalists] be so wrong so
many times before, why should I trust them this time?” he says.But when the science appeared irrefutable, Bailey changed.
It is important to distinguish two claims. The first is that a revenue-neutral carbon tax is, in expected value terms, a good idea. If nothing else, we cannot emit accelerating rates of carbon forever. The second and more dubious claim is "a carbon tax is likely to solve the problem." That’s not so clear. China and India may not follow suit, the oil may be pumped and used anyway, and the elasticities may be working against us. I give the carbon tax about a thirty percent probability of significantly ameliorating global warming and that is assuming that we engage China in a constructive manner. A pessimistic view, however, does not refute the case for trying. Addendum: Here is an interesting post on whether more information about global warming causes people to worry about it less.
Libertarianism demands private property rights. No one has yet come up with an even slightly persuasive argument for how one could possibly have property rights in the atmosphere (or the oceans, for that matter). The atmosphere is a natural commons, and the standard libertarian arguments don’t apply. And I suspect most libertarians know that, otherwise they’d be proposing “free market” solutions rather than continuing to deny the problem. (I have my own lingering skepticism about many “global warming” scenarios, but you can’t tell me they’re all wring.)
Bailey is exactly right: Once the science is settled, libertarians should look for the “least bad” regulatory solution.
“But when the science appeared irrefutable, Bailey changed.”
What a joke. The “science” of global warming is about as refutable as it gets. China just had its coldest winter in 100 years, Baghdad had snow for the first time ever, record snow cover in North America, etc. Anyway, a carbon tax is the least of it; the emerging global warming regime wants power, and they won’t stop there.
As a first step, shifting tax to carbon seems like a very good idea. When we get down that road a little ways we can confirm that warming is still happening & etc.
Should it come to it, repealing a tax is not hard. It is certainly better than “oops, we should have done something 20 years ago.”
(On practical economic harm … regional models for western water resources are pretty scary.)
On the “cooling” this answer is suitably rude. (This other one is longer on math.)
the issue was never whether people believed what the thermometers might be saying — though they might quibble over which thermometers should be read — but rather whether, when the thermometers showed higher temps, we could conclude that (i) this was anthro driven; (ii) we could reverse the warming if we wanted; (iii) doing so was politically (and economicly) feasible; and (iv) the cost/benefit analysis justified doing so. even for those who think there’s a consensus on (i), there are few honest folk who won’t admit the remainder are questionable propositions, at best.
why these obvious complications are ignored in almost every story and report is beyond me (it’s generally framed as though people actually denied the thermometer was showing whatever it showed). actually, the answer’s obvious — it’s much more fun to present your opponents as crackpots.
I think there is a suspicion that people who pack “i … iii” are making a sliding defense. When the constant is “let’s do nothing” but the logic and rationale changes … you’ve got to wonder.
If nothing else, we cannot emit accelerating rates of carbon forever.
Why.??
But we don’t want to *stop* global warming anyway. We want the *right amount* of global warming, the socially optimal amount. Stern’s basic approach was correct (it’s easy to argue with the specifics though, like the discount rate), how much is global warming going to cost? We should therefore be willing to spend up to that amount to avoid that damage. But not more than that amount.
Since production of crude and condensates peaked in 2005 (the recent rise in all-liquids production comes from other liquid hydrocarbon sources) it sure looks like we are near Peak Oil. So how are we going to keep heating the planet?
The biggest question in the global warming debate ought to be “how much coal is left?” But we can find orders of magnitude more people worried about AGW than about coal reserves.
If we have a lot of coal then, yes, we can melt the polar ice caps. But if the Energy Watch Group, CalTech’s David Rutledge, and a few other analysts are correct then Peak Coal is coming in 20-30 years too.
The question about coal is a subset of a bigger question: Is our bigger problem anthropogenic global warming or Peak Fossil Fuels? I’m inclined to think the latter is the bigger problem. So Ron Bailey has moved from one wrong position to a different wrong position.
Another consideration.
Our tax system serves to provide the data that economists and government need to monitor economy.
Switching to a simpler system may leave us in the dark.
Yes, it is because the more informaton you get on global warming, the less alarming it is. The first hand information basis are exaggerated news paper claims mostly showing off catastrophic end-of-the-world scenarios, but when you look at the actual science, it doesn’t look so bleak (considering conervative estimations – which incidentially were the right ones for the last years).
As with many news paper storys on science the extremist views are bound to lose in contrast to the actual science.
Even if you are giving carbon tax cuts a chance, I doubt that will have any effect on net buying behaviour or carbon emissions. Easy example:
A house with solar cells on top needs 20 years to bring in the net carbon emission that it has used for being produced and it is hard to see how solar cells can do that with a degration of efficiency due to wearing off over time.
Also, I doubt that anyone can raise taxes on products so high without being punished, that people won’t buy them in contrast to more local products or “low carbon” products.
There is a huge difference between weather, climate, and geology. Some people seem to misunderstand the different relevant timelines of each.
Just because it occasionally rains in the desert doesn’t mean it is not a hot, dry and arid climate . . .
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