http://www.climateoutcome.kiwi.nz/blog.html

True price of fossil fuels.

23/5/2016

If we started including the social and environmental damage that fossil fuels do into the selling price of oil and coal, what would be a fair price? The scale of the implication makes it very difficult to imagine how this can work or even comprehend the concept.
We understand that the burning fossil fuels is putting more CO2 into the atmosphere and that it is changing the climate and threatening our way of life. The main threats are rising temperatures, changing weather patterns, increased ocean acidity and rising sea levels and it includes the whole world, so should we put the cost onto the price of a litre of petrol and would anyone understand?

If we scale the problem down so that we take the City of Auckland as a closed system and said that the use of oil for transport will cause sea levels will rise by one metre by 2050 to 2070 and at that point Auckland airport will be flooded (which it will) and we will have to build a new one in another place.
How much social cost should we add to the price of a litre of petrol or diesel?
That is the problem but on a much bigger scale. At the moment there are no social or environmental costs included in fossil fuels but if there were, we would be a lot more responsible and aware of what we are doing.

23 Comments

David Smith

25/5/2016 02:32:35 am

Meanwhile, back in the real world:
Fracking has been such a success in the US that their gas prices have dropped. Energy is cheaper, which means a better standard of living for the poor.
I know if I was struggling to pay my bills I'd much rather have cheaper gas than be worrying about the "social cost of carbon".

Bob Bristow

26/5/2016 10:32:19 pm

Also in the real world there are studies suggesting fracking is responsible for introducing Earthquakes, uses a lot of precious water, and leaches dangerous and unhealthy chemicals in the groundwater around the sites. We have built an industrial revolution on fossils, but now it is time to wean ourselves off them and leave the rest in the ground and move on with the knowledge we have learnt.

David Smith

27/5/2016 08:32:48 am

Earthquakes? You mean minor tremors that go completely unnoticed.
Unhealthy chemicals in the groundwater? Potable aquifiers are WAY above the level that fracking takes place at.
You do realise that Josh Foxe's 'Gasland' film contained a whole host of outright lies, don't you?
You say it's time to wean ourselves off fossil fuels. Well, you'd better turn off your computer and chuck out anything in your house that's made of plastic, because all those things are there courtesy of fossil fuels. You'd better stop travelling anywhere too, unless you walk in shoes with no plastic in them. In other words, take yourself back about 500 years. I won't be joining you.

David Smith

25/5/2016 02:39:01 am

BTW Is that the widely discredited hockey stick curve I see at the top of this post? If so, no one should take the post seriously.

The hockey stick is a product of Mike Mann's feverish imagination where he managed to dissapear the MWP. In fact he got very upset about the MWP, as noted in the climategate emails:
" He also went crazy over my
recent NZ paper describing evidence for a MWP".

Bob Bristow

26/5/2016 09:39:13 pm

Where have you been ? what have you studied lately ? Sounds like the school of Anthony Watts. The Michael Mann hockey stick is from the end of the last century. Climate Science has moved on since then, various and completely independent academic teams have confirmed the hockey stick. The so called climate gate affair has long been dismissed. An attempt by criminal shills to discredit science by illegally hacking and incorrectly interpreting emails. Disgraceful. The effect of Carbon Dioxide as a radiation blocking agent was described in a 1895 paper by Svente Arrhenius as was the method for working out the effect on a planet's temperature. Exxon (and it's predecessors) have known and suppressed this knowledge since mid last century. Just to line their unscrupulous pockets. AT the expense of the poorest people in the world. Disgraceful absolutely disgraceful.

Get yourself into the 21st century.

David Smith

27/5/2016 08:01:34 am

I don't disagree that CO2 is a "blocking agent". Very few sceptics do. What I also believe is that its "blocking" abilities are completely overwhelmed and negated by other natural and more powerful effects, such as the sun's variability.
I can't beleive you're still trying to defend the busted hockey stick. Where did the MWP go? Steve McIntyre proved that MM's hockey stick graph was statistical junk.
All alarmists such as yourself get very touchy about Climategate, because it demonstrated what a self-serving and scientifically corrupt bunch of men the UEA CRU were.
As for the 'big oil' conspiracy, you're really moving into tin-foil hat territory there Bob. You talk about the poorest people in the world - if you really wanted to help them you'd be promoting the idea of building coal-fired power stations for those people so that they get the cheap power they desperately need. Inefficient windmills ain't gonna help them!

Bob Bingham

27/5/2016 09:36:35 am

Don't bother to respond Bob. These are not 'real' people they are employed to troll climate web sites and pretend that there are lots of like minded people.

Bob Bingham

27/5/2016 09:34:08 am

Go and vote for Trump. You deserve everything that you will get.

David Smith

27/5/2016 10:19:09 am

Why would I vote for Trump? He's a maniac.
Besides, I can't vote for him even if I wanted to. I'm a UK citizen.

You seem to be getting a bit touchy Bob! You're just exposing your left-wing politics. CAGW was never about science. It was all about far-left politics.

David Smith

27/5/2016 10:25:01 am

"Don't bother to respond Bob. These are not 'real' people they are employed to troll climate web sites and pretend that there are lots of like minded people. "
Oh dear, here we go with the Big Oil conspiracy. I hate to disabuse you of the notion Bob, but I'm not paid to comment here or anywhere. I'm paid by a school to teach maths and science. And yes, there are lots of like-minded people. That's why WUWT is the most popular site on the net that discusses CAGW.

David Smith

25/5/2016 02:47:59 am

With regards to sea level rise in Auckland:
Around Auckland, the SL has been rising at a fairly steady rate of about 1.5mm per year for the last 100 years. That means by 2050 it will have risen just 5cm, rather than 1metre. I think the airport will be safe.
http://auckland.kingtides.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/Sea-level-change-graph.jpg

Bob Bristow

26/5/2016 10:39:48 pm

Just because the sea level rise has been near linear in the past, does not mean that it will continue to rise in a restrained state. See the evidence of past climate regimes as studied by oceanologists/paleoclimatologists . The latest evidence suggest we are nearing critical points with atmospheric CO2 at over 400 ppm, both in the Northern and Southern hemispheres, major glaciers and shelves are being reported as unstable.

David Smith

27/5/2016 07:51:39 am

Who plucked 400ppm out of the air as a critical point? You do realise the forcing effect of CO2 is logarithmic, don't you?
Who decided the sea level was going to stop rising linearly? Pure alarmist supposition.
You need to try harder Bob, you haven't concinced me yet!

David Smith

25/5/2016 02:50:52 am

I'll try html for the <a href="http://auckland.kingtides.org.nz/wp-content/uploads/Sea-level-change-graph.jpg"> link</a>

David Smith

25/5/2016 02:53:16 am

Never mind...

David Smith

27/5/2016 09:34:10 am

Bob,
It's been fun visiting your blog, but it's time for me to go, so I'll leave you with some thoughts of mine:

Years ago I believed, just like you do, that we were all going to hell in a very warm hand-cart. Then I did some more research and realised that CAGW alarmism was wrapped up in far-left politics and had very little to do with actual science. What little science there was turned out to be hopelessly wrong, with Hansen's ABC scenarios and Al Gore's awful film being two cases in point.

I visited all sorts of CAGW blogs and ended up siding with the sceptics such as WUWT, Jo Nova, Bishop Hill, Climate Audit, etc because the alarmists blogs such as Skeptical Science and Climate Progress were so shrill, censorious, and downright weird ( http://assets.patriotpost.us/images/2014-02-25-dc3a7593.png )

The sceptics were a much more relaxed bunch who could laugh at the alarmists who came to comment on sceptic blogs, whereas the alarmist blogs could get really aggressive and censored any comments that didn't tow the party line. For instance, you got in a complete huff and blocked me on twitter just because you disagreed with what I had to say. Personally, you're welcome to say what you like to me. I'll just laugh.

Perhaps the most important thing for you to realise is that the average man on the street could not give two hoots about CAGW. He's too busy earning a living, going to the pub, spending time with his family, and generally trying to enjoy himself. Unfortunately, he probably doesn't realise how much of his taxes are wasted on useless 'renewables' and other green boondoggles.

If it was just a bunch of lefties waving flags and listening to Vivienne Westwood giving rather misguided speeches I wouldn't care less about it all. However, trillions of dollars are being wasted on global warming alarmism. My taxes are being wasted on green fantasies and I resent that. That is why in my job as a science and maths teacher I make sure that my students hear about the sceptic position, so when their generation takes over the reins of power they will hopefully have the knowledge to bring this unwarranted and eye-wateringly expensive alarmism to a shuddering halt.

I will finish by quoting the late and great emeritus Professor of Physics Hal Lewis, when he wrote a letter resigning from the American Physical Society because of their overtly alarmist statement about global warming:
"It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist."
I couldn't have said it better.

All the best, and I hope you come over to the "dark side". We have a lot more fun over here.

David

Bob Bingham

27/5/2016 11:27:28 am

Drivel.

Bob Bristow

27/5/2016 06:13:28 pm

Drivel indeed, yet another person who mistakes science for politics (or just a straight forward shill). I know I am unlikely to change his tune, but it worries me that some undecided "fence sitters" could be influenced by his cherry picked facts and general attempts to obfuscate. He is very out of date with his denial as the "Medieval Warming period" analogy, "climate gate" and hockey stick are well and truly busted now. And would Michael E. Mann be mad at him ? no way would the distinguished climatologist waste his time on a belligerent and bellicose Wattite.

David Smith

27/5/2016 08:55:45 pm

Well, that's a hell of a comeback.
It's worrying to see that you consider an emeritus professor of Physics is talking drivel.
As for the MWP, that was 'disappeared' from the IPCC reports after it made its first appearance. Too inconvenient.
http://www.global-warming-and-the-climate.com/images/climate-history-ipcc.gif

bob bristow

27/5/2016 10:09:00 pm

What is truly worrying is that if you are indeed a U.K based emeritus professor of Physics, who teaches maths and inflicts his view of climate science on his pupils, feels the need to converse in the columns of watts up with that, and far off New Zealand. Why do you not convince your peers in the usual academic avenues. Even Judith Curry does not do that. I'm skeptical that you are they you say you are, who are you trying to convince, have the U.K rejected you so you are looking further afield. Why do you not take your belligerence to other fields of science. Go argue about Higgs at Cern.

Andy Wilkins

1/6/2016 02:56:28 am

I didn't seem to be able to post a comment on here the other day.
Have you shut this cimment thread down cos David was running you ragged?

Andy Wilkins

1/6/2016 03:09:12 am

Oh, my mistake.
I can post!
Bob:
" What is truly worrying is that if you are indeed a U.K based emeritus professor of Physics, "
I don't think you read David's post carefully enough. He was referring to Hal Lewis. David didn't say he was a physics prof.
You should read Prof Lewis' letter of resignation from the APS in full. It is an honest dissection of the AGW movement from a learned man who has no "skin in the game":
-----------------------
From: Hal Lewis, University of California, Santa Barbara
To: Curtis G. Callan, Jr., Princeton University, President of the American Physical Society

6 October 2010

Dear Curt:

When I first joined the American Physical Society sixty-seven years ago it was much smaller, much gentler, and as yet uncorrupted by the money flood (a threat against which Dwight Eisenhower warned a half-century ago).

Indeed, the choice of physics as a profession was then a guarantor of a life of poverty and abstinence—it was World War II that changed all that. The prospect of worldly gain drove few physicists. As recently as thirty-five years ago, when I chaired the first APS study of a contentious social/scientific issue, The Reactor Safety Study, though there were zealots aplenty on the outside there was no hint of inordinate pressure on us as physicists. We were therefore able to produce what I believe was and is an honest appraisal of the situation at that time. We were further enabled by the presence of an oversight committee consisting of Pief Panofsky, Vicki Weisskopf, and Hans Bethe, all towering physicists beyond reproach. I was proud of what we did in a charged atmosphere. In the end the oversight committee, in its report to the APS President, noted the complete independence in which we did the job, and predicted that the report would be attacked from both sides. What greater tribute could there be?

How different it is now. The giants no longer walk the earth, and the money flood has become the raison d’être of much physics research, the vital sustenance of much more, and it provides the support for untold numbers of professional jobs. For reasons that will soon become clear my former pride at being an APS Fellow all these years has been turned into shame, and I am forced, with no pleasure at all, to offer you my resignation from the Society.

It is of course, the global warming scam, with the (literally) trillions of dollars driving it, that has corrupted so many scientists, and has carried APS before it like a rogue wave. It is the greatest and most successful pseudoscientific fraud I have seen in my long life as a physicist. Anyone who has the faintest doubt that this is so should force himself to read the ClimateGate documents, which lay it bare. (Montford’s book organizes the facts very well.) I don’t believe that any real physicist, nay scientist, can read that stuff without revulsion. I would almost make that revulsion a definition of the word scientist.

So what has the APS, as an organization, done in the face of this challenge? It has accepted the corruption as the norm, and gone along with it. For example:

1. About a year ago a few of us sent an e-mail on the subject to a fraction of the membership. APS ignored the issues, but the then President immediately launched a hostile investigation of where we got the e-mail addresses. In its better days, APS used to encourage discussion of important issues, and indeed the Constitution cites that as its principal purpose. No more. Everything that has been done in the last year has been designed to silence debate

2. The appallingly tendentious APS statement on Climate Change was apparently written in a hurry by a few people over lunch, and is certainly not representative of the talents of APS members as I have long known them. So a few of us petitioned the Council to reconsider it. One of the outstanding marks of (in)distinction in the Statement was the poison word incontrovertible, which describes few items in physics, certainly not this one. In response APS appointed a secret committee that never met, never troubled to speak to any skeptics, yet endorsed the Statement in its entirety. (They did admit that the tone was a bit strong, but amazingly kept the poison word incontrovertible to describe the evidence, a position supported by no one.) In the end, the Council kept the original statement, word for word, but approved a far longer “explanatory” screed, admitting that there were uncertainties, but brushing them aside to give blanket approval to the original. The original Statement, which still stands as the APS position, also contains what I consider pompous and asinine advice to all world governments, as if the APS were master of the universe. It is not, and I am embarrassed that our leaders seem to think it is. This is not fun and games, these are serious matters involving vast fractions of our national substance, and the reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at sta

Andy Wilkins

1/6/2016 03:15:02 am

.... reputation of the Society as a scientific society is at stake.

3. In the interim the ClimateGate scandal broke into the news, and the machinations of the principal alarmists were revealed to the world. It was a fraud on a scale I have never seen, and I lack the words to describe its enormity. Effect on the APS position: none. None at all. This is not science; other forces are at work.

4. So a few of us tried to bring science into the act (that is, after all, the alleged and historic purpose of APS), and collected the necessary 200+ signatures to bring to the Council a proposal for a Topical Group on Climate Science, thinking that open discussion of the scientific issues, in the best tradition of physics, would be beneficial to all, and also a contribution to the nation. I might note that it was not easy to collect the signatures, since you denied us the use of the APS membership list. We conformed in every way with the requirements of the APS Constitution, and described in great detail what we had in mind—simply to bring the subject into the open.

5. To our amazement, Constitution be damned, you declined to accept our petition, but instead used your own control of the mailing list to run a poll on the members’ interest in a TG on Climate and the Environment. You did ask the members if they would sign a petition to form a TG on your yet-to-be-defined subject, but provided no petition, and got lots of affirmative responses. (If you had asked about sex you would have gotten more expressions of interest.) There was of course no such petition or proposal, and you have now dropped the Environment part, so the whole matter is moot. (Any lawyer will tell you that you cannot collect signatures on a vague petition, and then fill in whatever you like.) The entire purpose of this exercise was to avoid your constitutional responsibility to take our petition to the Council.

6. As of now you have formed still another secret and stacked committee to organize your own TG, simply ignoring our lawful petition.

APS management has gamed the problem from the beginning, to suppress serious conversation about the merits of the climate change claims. Do you wonder that I have lost confidence in the organization?

I do feel the need to add one note, and this is conjecture, since it is always risky to discuss other people’s motives. This scheming at APS HQ is so bizarre that there cannot be a simple explanation for it. Some have held that the physicists of today are not as smart as they used to be, but I don’t think that is an issue. I think it is the money, exactly what Eisenhower warned about a half-century ago. There are indeed trillions of dollars involved, to say nothing of the fame and glory (and frequent trips to exotic islands) that go with being a member of the club. Your own Physics Department (of which you are chairman) would lose millions a year if the global warming bubble burst. When Penn State absolved Mike Mann of wrongdoing, and the University of East Anglia did the same for Phil Jones, they cannot have been unaware of the financial penalty for doing otherwise. As the old saying goes, you don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. Since I am no philosopher, I’m not going to explore at just which point enlightened self-interest crosses the line into corruption, but a careful reading of the ClimateGate releases makes it clear that this is not an academic question.

I want no part of it, so please accept my resignation. APS no longer represents me, but I hope we are still friends.

Hal

==========================================================

Harold Lewis is Emeritus Professor of Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara, former Chairman; Former member Defense Science Board, chmn of Technology panel; Chairman DSB study on Nuclear Winter; Former member Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards; Former member, President’s Nuclear Safety Oversight Committee; Chairman APS study on Nuclear Reactor Safety Chairman Risk Assessment Review Group; Co-founder and former Chairman of JASON; Former member USAF Scientific Advisory Board; Served in US Navy in WW II; books: Technological Risk (about, surprise, technological risk) and Why Flip a Coin (about decision making)

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