We could fix this problem easily with barely any significant change to our style of life. Sure there will be winners and loser, and the losers will be big oil/coal companies -- some of the most powerful institutions in the world -- and that's why nothing is being done. It is really easy to throw mud and claim there is "confusion" on whether AGW is happening. Meanwhile, they tell themselves a story about how CO2 isn't a pollutant, and doing anything would be communism, and therefore morally wrong.

AGW is easy to solve compared to the little lies we tell ourselves about what is moral, in order to protect our little empires.

I'm pretty sure that most people agree on most things, and even policy wonks can find a huge amount of common ground to move forward on. Alas that politics is all about fighting. I heard one GOP insider saying that they push some of the conspiratorial nonsense to distract the base from making up nonsense about the GOP leadership.

If you are a conservative, you may enjoy this 20thC history of economics. The analysis leaves out a few important details (like the role of the OPEC crisis, and Nixon's price and wage controls, as causal factors in stagflation), but I think the general idea is pretty accurate. But no one theory of economics can claim to describe the economy, so it's important to realize that you are looking at a point of view that has blind spots, even if it is mostly true.

Even that is overstating the case. Global cooling was *investigated* by a small number of scientists, including Steve Scheider (!). Time magazine and the media pushed it as a good story. Must have sold newspapers.

Cheaper things may or may not be better for the environment though. There can be a paradox, where you end up using more resources because there is more collective demand.

Also, you're ignoring externalities, which is kind-of the whole point.

Most Nobel Prizes for physics go to scientists who demonstrate an existing idea is wrong. There are some problems with Kuhn's analysis, in that at any point of time, you'll find multiple paradigms active in large fields, and you'll also see rather incremental changes in and out of dominate paradigms, for the most part. This is a pretty big flaw in his argument.

This is a rather sad point of view, because it is simply wrong. The strongest incentives are for the status quo. The largest industry in world (the energy sector) is staring down regulation, and they have the most to lose. If you care whether or not your beliefs are true or not, then do yourself a favour, and read "Merchants of Doubt" which chronicles in excruciating detail, the very real history of how companies manipulate the media to protect their interests.

Most scientists could make far more working in industry. (I sure could.) So they aren't chasing money. They are trying to understand cool new things, and leave a footnote in the lineage of human consciousness. You don't get that by being wrong. You get that by being new, innovative, and mostly: demonstrating the status quo is wrong. In fact, you've got the incentive structures completely ass backwards.

The reason for this is because the issue is now politically polarized. That means, roughly 50% of people will tend towards trusting different sources of information on the issue. We're talking tribalism, not argumentation.

Many GOP congress-critters and senators know that global warming is a real and present danger, but cannot hope to speak up in public, because of the super-polarized political dynamics, and the fact that the GOP depends on a rather paranoid and conspiratorial base. (In contrast, the Dems distance themselves from liberal crazies.)

It should be modded "sad". There are ways to green the energy system without raising the out-of-pocket costs to consumers, or having the government take on debt. If you knew something about the economics of the issue, then you'd already know that. Google is your friend. And an open mind.

Maybe. Coal emits a ridiculous amount of radiation... Also, according to the Torch report, 60k people died from Chernobyl, which is a tragedy, but a drop in the bucket compared to coal.

Oh Richy_T, in practice most people don't care if their beliefs are wrong or right -- because examining dis-confirming evidence is confronting. If you actually care if your beliefs are right or wrong, then I recommend reading "Merchants of Doubt" which analyzes (sometimes in laborious depth) the ozone whole, acid rain, and star wars, and the disinformation campaigns around them.

This is such a vapid statement. Obviously the rate of change is what is concerning. I assume you know that from the rest of your post, right?

Richy_T, this seems like nitpicking to me. Obviously a cost-benefit analysis of pollution is at the heart of assessing what to do. That means, we first have to identify problems (or potential problems) with compounds, and then see what the cheapest/most effective options (or research/demonstrate there is not problem).

The only real problem with this is corruption. But surprise, it's an imperfect world, and even corruption (esp. corruption) responds to incentive structures.

Right, but how could you tell for yourself if you are in denial? The cognitive mechanisms of denial make it nigh-on-invisible to the afflicted person. As such, deniers really believe science is on their side, and that they are being scientific. Crazy, eh?

I appreciate that immensely. To pick an example, every 9/11 truther says "educate yourself", and think that they actually know something about the issue, but they really have some deep knowledge on the issue. It's all madness of course. So can I'm explicitly acknowledging that.

The point is that, no matter how smart one is, you have to find the things that our cognitive defense mechanisms don't want us to find. It's easy to tell -- just find the thing you don't want to hear, that saps your motivation to listen, that makes you feel ungrounded. That's the thing that you are ignorant about, and that is specifically the thing that you need to educate yourself about.

Do you understand the point? I'm saying a 9/11 truther should understand *exactly* what the flaws are in their arguments -- not just search for "sound bite logic" to cover up perceived problems. I've noted that almost nobody can do this in practice, but this is specifically what I study, and have learnt something about how to do it. To have the motivation to do this, first you have to care if your beliefs are true or not. (Most people really don't care that much in practice.) Secondly, I believe you have to be an apostate of some sort.

My background is in (social) psychology and (artificial intelligence) engineering. I'm writing a book on this subject, and believe I know something about it. There is a reasonably good pop-psychology book "Vital Lies, Simple Truths" on the topic. Although not directly related, the real-psychology book "Mistakes were made: but not by me" is a 1st rate introduction into the world of cognitive blinkers.

The RGGI has better documents, but it's in this document. Poor people get rebates. Richer people get assistance winterizing their homes. Factories and businesses get similar investment assistance. It varies by state, and you can see the breakdowns of where the tax gets spent. Businesses get most of it (on average), and the document lists energy savings. The investments create jobs for construction and technology companies that provide measurable energy savings. The document lists (p5) that there have been $240million in saved energy bills to date, and lifetime projections for existing improvements of $2 billion.

This document gives some analysis on actual energy bills with the carbon tax in them, and you can see they hardly change. The analysis has assumptions in it, and this analysis is conservative. I've seen other analysis that shows on average that electricity bills are slightly less. The bill change is so close to zero that it simply fluctuates around zero over time.


This has created 1000s ongoing jobs directly -- far more than keystone will create. The improvement services are provided by the private sector, with individuals and businesses getting the investment money from the raise in their tax bill. (Money raised from the carbon tax.) The financial services industry is supposed to allocate investment dollars to businesses; however, they've failed miserably in doing this, and America's corporations are sitting on $1 trillion of cash looking for good investment opportunities. This program is doing something that the financial services industry has failed to do over the last 20 years.

As renewables come down in price (and solar is now only twice the price of coal, wind cheaper -- I'm talkin levelized cost), expect to see new financial instruments created as a threshold is crossed where it is cheaper for people to borrow money to pay 20 years of electricity bills at once (i.e., install solar). The carbon tax is a way of doing this without anybody borrowing money -- by putting a small price on carbon pollution. The net economic effect is (as demonstrated) less carbon pollution, which is what the world needs.

There is no economic catastrophe.