Santorum: Democrats are anti-science

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Keystone pipeline - Tar sand oil extraction is not an energy efficient way to get oil for one. Second the oil attained this way is very dirty and prone to causing more pollutants than other more traditional oil sources. So if it can be avoided (and I think it can be) it should be. So we really shouldn't be encouraging its use.

Problem is, stopping Keystone XL will not stop the development of the oil sands.  What it will do is make the transit of that oil to where it will ultimately be used be more expensive and energy intensive, thereby actually contributing to that global warming the NIMBY environmentalists claim they are trying to stop by blocking it.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Problem solved if it exists, and the global economy is not destroyed in the process. Personally, I am supremely confident we will eventually have technology to get greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere. Short of a huge hit to the world's population soon (maybe a virus), it is the only way CO2 emissions will get back to pre-industrial levels within the next one hundred years.

Global warming is not the only potential problem from high CO₂ levels.  The acidity of the oceans is increasing and the primary suspected culprit for that is CO₂, tho not the other greenhouse gases IIRC.  That acidification is a problem for a number of organisms that make hard shells as it makes it more difficult to make them.

There's enough evidence that high CO₂ levels are affecting the ecology that I think we need to deal with it, but not with the command-and-control bureaucratic boondoggle that is cap-and-trade.  A phased in carbon tax, with the tax revenues used to cut other taxes is the best option in my opinion.  A carbon tax provides the incentives to reduce carbon use in an easy to administer form, while phasing it in and using it to offset other taxes minimizes the economic impact of doing so.

Problem is the coal and petrochemical industries would be adversely affected so they lobby against a tax, preferring that a cap-and-trade system with a high cap be imposed, while industries that emit a lot of carbon are hoping to make a buck by gaming cap-and-trade, and I expect they will in a manner that does little to actually reduce carbon use.  Last but not least, there are the alternative energy folks who want the sure thing of government subsidies instead of taking a risk that a higher price on carbon encourages people to be more efficient in their energy use instead of switching to their subsidized product.

(Personal trivia.  Back when I last bought a car, 2000, I considered one of the VW diesel cars, but determined that even if I bought a VW, the added up front cost of the car was not worth the savings from having a more fuel-efficient vehicle.  Plus there was the fact that to have a diesel (in my price range at least) I'd have to buy a VW and that was unattractive for several reasons, not least of which was the distance to the nearest VW dealer was much more than that to a Toyota or Honda dealer.  Now if fuel prices had been considerably higher, I might have been tipped into buying diesel VW.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I suspect the increased acidity of the oceans does not warrant the introduction of a global carbon tax, especially given the ramifications upon international trade. How often do you hear about the problem of increased acidity of the oceans, anyway?

Most people like to eat fish, and some people have to;

We can farm fish. Besides, if the problem is so dire that we might no longer be eating fish soon, I think we would be hearing about it more than we have heard about climate change. Of course this is not the case.

You do realize that fish farms generally feed their fish with fish meal made from fish we humans don't like?  Fish farming mainly serves to turn 2 or more pounds of fish we don't like into 1 pound of fish we do like.  The main problems aren't with fish themselves, tho they will be impacted, but on diatoms, shellfish, and corals.

Something to contemplate for folks who support cap-and-trade and/or a carbon tax: What if an international taxation scheme does not solve the problem, but also prevents some scientists/entrepreneurs from finding funding that would have otherwise created a technology that gets CO2 out of the atmosphere/oceans, solving the CO2 conundrum? One of those "what ifs" for you to chew on.

And what if once that technology is created because we weren't willing to pay for the best known methods of reducing CO2, we still aren't willing to pay for it?  After all, the future will have better and cheaper technology, won't it?  What you are suggesting is that we play a perpetual game of kick the can under the optimistic scenario that we'll be able to see when there is no more road in time for us to stop kicking.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I suspect the increased acidity of the oceans does not warrant the introduction of a global carbon tax, especially given the ramifications upon international trade. How often do you hear about the problem of increased acidity of the oceans, anyway?

Fairly often, but then I get a good dose of  my news from public radio and none from cable tv since I don't pay for cable. There's not enough that I would want to watch on cable to worth the cost.  I can pull in tv signals from three different media markets with a decent antenna.  (Augusta, Columbia, and Greenville-Spartanburg-Asheville)

Lastly, it would be absurd for us to implement a carbon tax if China does not agree to do likewise.

Depends on how high the tax is set and how the money is used.  In any case, a carbon tax will do less economic harm than cap-and-trade does for the same amount of carbon reduction.

It would need to be a global carbon tax, and is that possible? This is the biggest problem with throwing out these global "solutions": They just do not appear economically/politically feasible no matter how dire things become, so efforts need to be diverted elsewhere (e.g., technology to get CO2 out of the atmosphere and oceans). I am sure human ingenuity will find a way, especially in light of the technology advancements of the past century. I would say it is almost infinitely more likely that technology will solve the CO2 problem rather an international taxation scheme.

And who pays for this hypothetical technology when we get it?  You're saying that because it is too difficult to get people to pay for a solution that could be used now to do something, we'll wait until we have something else we can do, but still have the same difficulties in getting people to pay for it.

In the interim, the best thing America can do is start building nuclear plants again.

A carbon tax that makes fossil-fuel electricity more expensive certainly would induce the construction of more nuclear plants.  Right now, the higher construction costs of nuclear outweigh the lower operating costs of nuclear, so except for a few subsided units like the two being built at Plant Vogtle, they aren't going to be built.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

In any case, a carbon tax will do less economic harm than cap-and-trade does for the same amount of carbon reduction.

Why? At the very least, this is not an obvious statement, could you clarify you reasoning?

Several reasons.

Greenhouse gas C&T (cap-and-trade) is modeled after the successful system of sulfur dioxide C&T, but there are major differences between the two.

Sulfur dioxide emissions came primarily from a small number of large industrial emitters.  That meant that establishing a market for the emissions was fairly easy to do.

Unlike the sulfur dioxide emissions that were curbed using cap-and-trade, greenhouse gas emissions primarily come from a large number of small emitters.  There's no way we're going to establish a C&T scheme that operates at the personal level, because if we did, it would be way too costly and bureaucratic.  Now, it would be possible to target most emissions upstream by requiring refiners to buy emissions quotas for the gasoline and other fuels they sell, but at that point the effect on the end users is the same as a carbon tax, just under another name, and with a lot more bureaucracy because of where the C&T permits come from.

So lets look at where these permits for CO2 emissions come from under C&T.  While it would be possible for the government to simply auction off the permits, that ain't gonna happen, and not just because current emitters want a piece of the action.  Altho getting free permits based on your previous emission levels is definitely one thing the various established actors want, the other major reason for doing so is so as to gradually phase in emissions targets in a way that is less harmful economically.

But what's worse are these carbon "credits".  Verifying them is bureaucratic and a number of them are of dubious merit.  They provide ample opportunities for fraud, waste, and abuse.

A carbon tax is simpler and cheaper to implement.
There is one other major difference between the two.  With C&T it is easier to set a desired level of carbon emissions, but the economic effect is harder to judge.  A carbon tax lets the economic impact to be more precisely chosen, tho the effect on emissions levels is less certain.

We are not yet at the point where we need to adopt emissions controls that may have an excessive economic impact, which is another point in favor of a carbon tax.