Mark Lawson here

Ken Fabos - I didn't say a single word about the science in this article. Nor did I say anything about whether cutting carbon emissions is a good idea. I merely pointed to the practical difficulties of this policy which are huge. Its no good moaning that because my previous article didn't say the right things, as far as you were concerned, then this article must somehow be wrong.
Attempts to cut carbon world wide are just never going to work - at the very most reduce the rate of growth in emissions - and the article points to just one part of this inescapable conclusion.

The sooner activists grasp this basic, obvious point the better off we will all be. However, they can take comfort from the fact that the IPCC's emissions projections are almost certainly wrong in the first place - the methane projections are already completely wrong - and a closer look at the accepted wisdom on how long carbon hangs around in the atmosphere yields some uncomfortable truths. But that's for another article.

The goal of a carbon tax -- apart from raising obscene amounts of money -- is to encourage people to 'own' the struggle against 'global warming' by sacrificing some of their income to it. It is the same reasoning which led the British government to ask its citizens to donate their iron railings and metal cookware to the war effort during WWII. These were then shifted to huge dumps out of sight and used for nothing whatsoever: but people felt warm and committed because they had had a chance to 'do their bit'.

So 'do your bit' for climate science, and encourage the government to impose more futile and meaningless sacrifices upon us all in the name of 'sustainability'. Try and forget that your stake in the world of 2200 or so is negligible, and be prepared to trade your present quality of life for an incalculably small chance that your great-great-great-great grandchildren might be four-tenths of a degree cooler than they would be otherwise.

Mark Lawson here.
Jon J - good point about the ironware.

Jedimaster - sorry but you are hopelessly deluded. I don't know where you got the figure of more solar water heaters per capita than Aus but, in any case, the stat is meaningless. Australia's solar water heating capacty barely registers. The problem is that the Chinese are building immense numbers of coal fired plants. In fact, more than the total capacity of the Aus network in a single year.

You managed to focus on the water heaters and forget entirely about the coal fired plants. Endearing but not impressive.

As for the business about spending the money raised from the tax on carbon saving initiatives that just makes the tax politcally harder to sell. You have to remember you are not dealing with activists but with ordinary voters who see money going out of their back pocket to fund wild schemes.

Ken, since you raised the question of the science, you may have the science which shows that human emissions have any measureable effect on global warming.

Even the IPCC does not have any such proof, or they would not stick to the pathetic refrain of "very likely" that human emissions cause global warming.

Why are we discussing a tax on carbon dioxide, which has no scientific justification, if it is meant to counter global warming?

It might as well be a tax on breathing. It would be just as dishonest.

Leo

It is not difficult to find these figures - just google "human CO2 emissions. The following quote is from http://www.gcrio.org/doctorgc/index.php/drweblog/C53/

"Humans exhale about 1 kg of carbon dioxide per day (http://cdiac.esd.ornl.gov/pns/faq.html). The exact amount depends on age, sex, size, and most importantly activity level. Multiply that by a world population of six billion and you get a very large number.

However, human exhalation of carbon dioxide is part of a closed system. There can be no net addition of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere because the amount of carbon dioxide we exhale can’t be greater than the carbon we put into our bodies by eating plants, or eating animals that eat plants. The plants got the carbon from the atmosphere via photosynthesis.

This closed system is true for any animal, not just humans. It is also true for a growing population. You simply can’t have more animals than there are plants to support those animals."

The point that I make here is that most of these discussions go on as "data-free discourse". My shearer-father used another expression.

Similarly, Mark. I was at the world solar congress in Beijing in 2007, where I first heard that China had about 100 million square metres of solar water heaters. Wikpedia has similar figures and they seemed credible, as one can see them on many rooftops in Shanghai, Xian and Beijing. As the CEO of Suntech, an Australian-trained PhD is one of China's richest men, one might ask where he gets his money, if not selling solar water heaters and PV panels.

Water heating in Australia is about 10% of all final use energy demand, and half of that comes from electricity. Primary energy demand would therefore be about 15-20%. This is not trivial.

As well, China is presently installing about 100GW of wind power- about twice all of Australia's electricity production.

Of course China is gobbling energy and is polluted- on some days you can't even see across the streets, let alone along them. That does not contradict the fact that they are making huge strides towards improved energy intensity.

What is lost in this debate is the effectiveness of a carbon price to reduce emissions in the electricity sector – which, everyone seems to accept, is one of the major target industries. I, and some colleagues, have recently produced a paper looking at how carbon pricing changes the relative competitiveness of low-carbon generating technologies. The paper will be published shortly.

The general expectation is that with a carbon price, the electricity utilities will switch from coal to lower-carbon fuels. In our paper, we targeted baseload technologies as they produce about 75% of Australia’s electricity (similar around the world).

The results were that below US$30, the utilities will do nothing and just pass the cost on to the consumer so the Greens A$20 will do nothing to reduce GHG emissions from the coal power plants. We would need a price over US$40 before considering building new coal plants with carbon capture and storage. To switch to baseload concentrated solar power would need a price over US$150. Needless to say the least cost solution was nuclear but we are not allowed to seriously consider that in Australia.