50 to 1 Climate mitigation costs 50 times more than Adaptation

This coming from someone whose standard may actually have improved with a CO2 emission reduction.

 

It depends by how much, and who.

We can see that the Euro cap and tax regime is likely to have hurt standards of living in many of the countries participating, while not really dropping carbon dioxide emissions very much. The cost of the energy did not spike, but there was a large transfer payment from middle and lower income consumers to a handful of large corporations. The rules of how to reduce matter quite a bit. I believe that the cap and tax plan that came out of the house would have even been worse than the one in the EU, but the politicians that would have passed it would have claimed the countries now lower ghg emissions were entirely caused by the awful plan, instead of the other factors that have been in effect.

In the UK higher energy taxes appear to have caused a number of old and lower income to cut back on heating. The result seems to have been a great increase in illness during last years cold winter. If you are freezing in your home becaue of a government policy, then definitely that policy has hurt the quality of your life.

But yes we can slowly reduce without affecting the quality of life of the middle 60%. If we want to hit the top 20% there needs to be some pain and some shame. The gore's between them use as much energy as a chinese village. Both al and Tipper have their own energy wasting mansion. The karma that was part of payback to al for getting private and public funding to fisker, probably required the energy of 100 prii to produce, and the private and public plane rides consume so much more jet fuel in a year than most american families use in a lifetime. It was particularly shameful at copenhagen climate talks that even though the degates were all going from the same start to the same destination, they each took their individual limosean. That top 20% have many people with efficient homes and cars, but the worst 10% of them waste so much fuel, that we will never get to reasonable figures unless they are shamed and exposed, and taxed.

 

Good analysis of governmental policies.
But don't confuse pain of policies with pain on an individual level for lowering carbon.

My neighbor replaced 8 60 Watt outdoor floodlights with 8 13 Watt CFLs.
He went from 12 kWh a day (yes, he leaves them on 24 by 7) to about 3 kWh.
He saves about $27/month or $324 a year. He will need to replace the bulbs less often resulting in less 'pain', more money in his pocket, and less CO2 into the air.

On a large scale level, I agree governmental policies are not the best and could be much much better, both in effectiveness and in lower cost.

 

More AG BS.

Gore was prevented from putting up PV by his idiotic neighborhood assn. (Read: Repukes). From the time that policy was finally defeated Gore has been producing an amount to offset his entire home and business ventures.

You should do half as well before you open your pie hole.

 

We should be more understanding. For denialists, turning off a light when not being used is more than they can handle.

 

I'm disappointed that the interesting idea presented in this thread is not being discussed, and instead all manner of insults are being lobbed. Clearly those most bent out of shape from those who disagree with their point of view have a religious conviction about the topic.

I made 2 claims that have not been argued against:

1. Relatively cheap fuel will be consumed, if not by us, then by someone else. The only way to significantly reduce worldwide fossil fuel use is to have access to cheaper (non-subsidized) alternative energy.

2. The most effective way to reduce human hardship is to directly address them with available resources instead of indirectly spending those resources on influencing the weather. For example, if someone has malaria, it's cheaper and more effective to medically treat the malaria instead of spending the same resources on slowing warming -> slowing mosquito population increase -> slowing malaria proliferation.

That is counter-intuitive. Do you have evidence to support this claim? Most people on the "global warming is a huge problem" extreme of the spectrum advocate for increasing fuel taxes and implementing cap and trade, etc. This affects price, and therefore standard of living.

Now, if you are saying that people just need to replace light bulbs and turn the climate control off when not in the house, then yes, CO2 can be reduced without lowering the standard of living.

 

I suppose that if we discuss subsidies for renewable E, we should also discuss subsidies for fossil fuel E. The IEA surely has a 'thing' about the latter.

 

One clue is how the Prius improved a great many things in addition to greater fuel economy. Pollution, Reliability, Eliminated Brake pad replacements, etc. etc. were certainly counter intuitive advantages to the anti-hybrid crowd. Home solar power would be another area worth exploring. It counter-intuitive to an astonishing number of folks that greater up front cost can result in vastly lower life cycle costs. That issue scales all the way up to the planetary level.

 

Agreed. I say, end all subsidies. The corruption and overhead involved in subsidies are just part of the many inefficiencies of creating artificial markets.

Good point. It takes money to make (or save) money. The poor are often the ones driving older and less efficient vehicles. Although the Prius may have a long term cost benefit, the poor have difficulty financing the initial price. Going back to my previous comment about ending all subsidies, perhaps the right way to make efficiency affordable to lower incomes is to offer subsided loans with longer repayment terms.

It makes no sense offering a $7,500 tax credit for electric vehicle purchasers because anyone with that much adjusted tax liability is already able to afford the car. Basically, it's a tax credit for the rich, when it's the poor that have limited means for making efficient purchases.

 

Are you including fossil fuels? Those industries get some pretty big subsidies, and the prices are artificially low.

 

That is just silly. How are you going to get alternative energy cheaper than fossil fuel, with out either rasing the price of the fossil fuel or lowering the price of the alternative energy. No one can wave a magic wand and drop the cost of a solar panel and installation lower than a ccgt plant and natural gas. Now we can call aditional taxes on fossil fuel something other than taxes, but you aren't going to magically drop the cost of materials and labor for solar or wind.

Now say global warming doesn't exist. The world won't substitute until resources get very scarce, creating shortages and price spikes. This has already started to happen with oil. The cost to a country is lower if they substitute before useing too much of a reasource.

Now say global warming is real, would you not attempt to substitute even faster. The free market didn't really work for the buffalo. They were hunted until near extiction, now only exist because of the demand of meat. Do we want to burn all the easy oil? Then wake up with rising sea levels and $190/bbl oil, and say, damn it we should have conserved.

Ummm. The fight against maleria has been most sucessful when people were given inceticide treated nets, pesticides, and draining the breading grounds of misquitos. It is most effective to prevent malera than to treat it. This is just like aids prevention is most effective with condoms and education so it is not spread, than to treat it after it spreads. I don't quite get why you would treat maleria with weather? Reducing man made ghg is unlikely to reduce maleria.