Libertarian: Hansen belittles models, cap-and-trade, Kyoto

Hansen belittles models, cap-and-trade, Kyoto; calls for coal-destroying carbon tax. By Marlo Lewis
Master Resource, March 2, 2009

Last week (February 25, 2009), Dr. James Hansen, the most influential scientist in the alarmist camp, testified before the House Ways & Means Committee on “Scientific Objectives for Climate Change Legislation.” In oral remarks, Hansen, who spoke as a faculty member of Columbia University’s Earth Institute rather than as an employee of NASA, said the scientific objective of climate policy should be to lower atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide (CO2) from 385 parts per million (ppm) to 350 ppm or less. This, as he surely knows, is an impossible goal barring radical breakthroughs not just in energy production but also in air capture of CO2.

Even if by 2050, the United States, Europe, Canada, Japan, and former Soviet Union achieve zero net emissions and developing countries reduce their carbon intensity to 62% below 2005 levels, this would only be enough to reduce CO2 concentrations to 450 ppm by century’s end (see pages 8-11 of this presentation).

Dr. John Christy of the University of Alabama Huntsville testified that datasets he and his colleagues have built contradict the climate model hypotheses and surface temperature records on which alarmism rests. Specifically, Christy said that: (1) climate models do not include the negative cloud-feedback (cooling) mechanism revealed by satellite data; (2) the observed warming trend is below the mean of model simulations of the IPCC mid-range emissions scenario; (3) IPCC surface temperature data are skewed upwards by local heat effects of urbanization and agriculture; and (4) all three model projections of global warming presented by Dr. Hansen in his now-famous 1988 congressional testimony, including the projection in which drastic CO2 cuts are assumed, overshoot observations.

Hansen did not challenge any of those four points directly. Instead, he asserted without offering specifics that his estimate of climate sensitivity is based not on models but on “paleoclimate information,” which “has improved enormously in recent years.” He also said his views are based on “what’s happening in the real world”—loss of Arctic sea ice, methane releases from tundra regions, and negative mass balance changes in ice sheets. Asserting that the science is “crystal clear,” Hansen said Congress should ask the National Academy of Sciences to produce a report and then accept its conclusions as “authoritative.”

The third witness, Dr. Brenda Ekwurzel of the Union of Concerned Scientists, picking up on Hansen’s “real world” argument, said that climate models are too “conservative” and underestimate Arctic ice loss and species migration.

Christy countered that many variables affect Arctic ice behavior, the Arctic had even less ice 5,000 years ago, and models are not good at simulating ice dynamics. One might add that if species are migrating more rapidly than forecast, it means they are more adaptable than models assume.

Hansen and Ekwurzel’s remarks are noteworthy because they reveal how alarmists are dealing with data and analysis showing that the models underpinning the whole IPCC/UNFCC/Kyoto enterprise are too sensitive and “in the process of failing,” as Patrick Michaels put it recently. No matter that Hansen launched the global warming movement with model projections that have been falsified by observations. Hansen now says his views are not based on models and the science is “crystal clear” from “paleoclimate information” and the “real world.”

Ekwurzel, for her part, effectively redefined climate sensitivity to mean climate impacts per a given increment of warming rather than temperature change per a given increment of CO2. This way she gets to claim that less warming than the IPCC warned us about leads to worse impacts than the IPCC warned us about. There has been no net warming since 2001, but we should be more worried than ever! As I observed in another place, warming or no, alarmists predictably predict that climate change is worse than predicted.

From a policy standpoint, the most novel part of the hearing was Hansen’s attack on “Cap & Trade” and advocacy of what he calls “Tax & Dividend.”

Cap & Trade is the main climate policy championed by Al Gore, the Obama Administration, the European Union, the IPCC, and just about every environmental group. It should actually be called “Tax & Trade,” said Hansen, because it places a hidden tax on carbon-based fuels and all goods and services produced with those fuels. Indeed, “Part of the reason for the pseudonym is to avoid the stigma of a tax, under the presumption that the public is too gullible to figure it out.”

He continued: “Other parties support ‘Cap & Trade’ because they hope to profit – it is a give-away to special interests, who feel, based on extensive empirical evidence, that they will be able to manipulate the program through their lobbyists. Except for its stealth approach to taxing the public, and its attraction to special interests, ‘Cap & Trade’ seems to have little merit.”

Contrary to proponents, the Clean Air Act’s Acid Rain trading program is not a model for climate policy, because “it was a program that required existing facilities to employ a relatively simple low-cost solution [scrubbers and low-sulfur coal],” whereas carbon trading would “require massive investments in new infrastructure and innovation.” A cap produces price volatility, discouraging investment in new technology. Trading programs don’t actually reduce emissions, due to special interest loopholes and creative accounting. The Kyoto Protocol has been an “abject failure.”

Finally, cap-and-trade is politically unsustainable. The public will soon learn it is a tax. They’ll see people on Wall Street making millions at their expense. And because they’ll bear all the cost and reap no dividend, “the public will revolt before the cap tax is large enough to transform society.”

Energy realists have made the same criticisms (see, e.g. here, here, and here), but when the doyen of climate alarmism bashes Kyoto and carbon trading, it is truly a “Man Bites Dog” story.

Instead of Tax & Trade, Hansen proposes a carbon tax initially set equivalent to $1/gallon of gasoline, or $115 per ton of CO2, with 100% of the proceeds refunded on a per capita basis to the American people.

At the 2007 level of fossil energy consumption, this would generate about $670 billion per year, Hansen estimates. “If we give one share to each legal resident age 22 and over, one half-share to college age youth (18-21), one half-share to the parents of each child up to two children per family, that yields about 224 million shares in 2007.” Here’s how it works out:

* Single share: $3000/year ($250 per month, deposited monthly in bank account)
* Family with 2 children: $9000/year ($750 per month, deposited monthly in bank account)

The total tax would be returned to the people as dividends, and dividends would increase as the tax increases. The dividend component would not only make the tax acceptable to the public, Hansen argues, but would create incentives for purchases and investments that reduce emissions. The person or household with a carbon footprint less than average “would obtain more from the dividend than paid in the tax.”

This is all quite clever. However, Hansen did not address several obvious problems.

[See full post here.]