More prosaically, and more accurately, I can predict the Sun will rise in the morning, or that it will be colder here in a month.

However the U.S. has the distinction as being the third most populous country, as well as the third largest in geographical size...

The USA is only the fourth largest country by area (Russia, Canada, China).

Aren't cows a leading cause of CO2?

No, that's methane. Any carbon dioxide cows produce will be transient. Methane will eventually decay to carbon dioxide, but it will take decades. Still, that's short enough that I don't particularly care about cows.

It's an academic problem.

True enough, and perhaps the scientists think so, but it's being reported as "...this will directly correlate to an exponential rise in the levels of atmospheric" carbon dioxide (from the article).

I don't think so.

How is this supposed to be a problem? The plants are sucking out more carbon dioxide from the atmosphere while they are growing, then releasing as they decay. It's interesting that it is noticeable, and bravo for measuring it, but I don't see any troubles that this will cause.

I can agree the gas tax needs to go up, particularly the federal one. Will congress agree? I doubt it.

Then the question becomes, what to do with all that tax money... :)

Everyone gets an equal share of it back. Trying to keep the government's hand out of it is the hardest part.

Gallium, indium, and tantalum are not rare earths. They are all much to rare for that.

What carbon would you like to tax?

All fossil carbon.

The electricity people use? Or just some portion based on percentage of generation?

Only the part that comes from fossil carbon.

Or do you include everyone with wood-burning fireplaces? Do you buy wood pellet stoves for everyone?

No. Whether they are allowed is a separate issue.

More for coal? Less for nuclear?

More tax on coal and less tax on nuclear, yes.

Who is poor? What about the middle class - sounds like AGAIN they get to pay the VAST MAJORITY, when they have already been squeezed and squeezed and have lost the value of their wages for 40 YEARS and now you want to take MORE?? Not only that, you want them to pay more for power AND more for power for the POOR that they are already helping support???

The middle class should, on average, break even. We need to discourage the use of fossil carbon while doing as little harm to the economy as possible. Cap-and-trade is worse.

No, I want people who use more energy to pay more for the environmental consequences. The fact that the rich use more on average means that some poor may gain. I'm ok with that.

Somebody should go to jail over this.

It won't happen, though.

There are no Libertarians on my ballot. I did vote mostly for them in the primary, but with the ballot changes in California none of them made it to the general election.

Mind you, I support the change. We just need to be more successful in the primary.

I don't know what the answer is, but adding more taxes to everything, and raising prices on all of it, doesn't seem like a workable plan.

I think a carbon tax is the only workable plan. If you rebate the tax on a per capita basis the poor should end up with more.

Finding the political will to do this may be difficult.

It seems to me they are more interested in whining about the problem than doing the hard work of finding a solution.

Finding a solution is easy. In fact, there are several of them. Getting everybody follow one is hard, and many don't see the need for any of them.

As I recall even thorium will only provide several centuries at 100%, though we could increase that by an order of magnitude by developing seawater extraction technology.

You don't get thorium from seawater; there isn't enough there. Uranium can be recovered from the ocean, and there is enough thorium on land to last nearly forever.