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I'm going to come out and say that I consider most of those "X results in Y grams of CO2 emissions" posts/calculations/activities to be utter bullshit and a com

by swombat 17y ago

I'm going to come out and say that I consider most of those "X results in Y grams of CO2 emissions" posts/calculations/activities to be utter bullshit and a complete waste of time. These calculations are necessarily based on very hand-waving maths. They try to focus on only one specific facet of what is absolutely and completely a systems problem. The only level at which it makes sense to talk about emissions is on a large scale like a country or even the whole world. Otherwise, you risk turning the "effort" into one of externalising carbon costs to other people's counters. But, that's too complicated, so people will go and calculate the emissions produced in the fabrication of a cheeseburger, as if that was a useful thing to know. And then they'll write countless blog posts about it. I submit to you that there is absolutely no value whatsoever in that calculation, or in the result of it. Even if the calculation could be relied on, what does it mean? Is there any actionable element to this calculation? Should we do something about it? Should we care? Counting the grams in a cheeseburger, or in a Google search, is a gimmick used to get people excited about CO2 for no particularly good reason, and with no specific result in mind. It achieves nothing other than to waste our time and provide yet another vague, shapeless concept with which people with an agenda can manipulate others into doing whatever they want.

Retric 17y ago
IMO, the only reasoanble way to deal with the carbon issue is a small "sin" tax at the point where fuel is mined / imported. There are still a few corner cases, but they represent such a minute fraction of output that they are ignorable. The advantage is automacticaly account for output on everyproduct and stage of production without atempting to calculate what it's carbon history is. [You mined/imported 10 million tuns of carbon x, which you can collect from the person you sold it to and on down the chain. They can ignore the tax as it's just an increase in fuel costs to be passed to the customer.] I also suspect the impact would on coal would be much larger than that on gas. Which is a great thing because coal is far more replaceable than gas at this point in time. You can then subsidize non carbon energy production / carbon storage equaly and let the market deside what's most effecent. You can also ignore hybrids as the government focusing on a specific solution is less effecent over time.
- pfedor 17y ago
  I heard Jeffrey Sachs saying the same thing you say: tax at the point of mining, not at the point of emission. He then went on to explain that the current focus on emissions comes from the fact that some laws or proposals regarding CO2 (carbon credits) were, without much reflection, copied from corresponding regulations about sulfur, and for sulfur you are stuck with emissions because you don't mine sulfur.
- patrickg-zill 17y ago
  I commend you for your honesty. It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world (since energy is used to produce all items including those that are exported). It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment, just fill government coffers; the money will be use to fly VIPs around to environmental confabs on private jets.
  - aneesh 17y ago
    > "It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world ... It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment" Actually, it will. The use of taxes to influence consumption is well-documented. It's basic economics: price increases, demand decreases (because demand is not completely inelastic). As less products are made, less resources will be used, which helps the environment.
  - mlinsey 17y ago
    You don't believe that a tax on certain types of energy will incentivize various industries and processes to consume less of that energy?
  - Retric 17y ago
    "TAX on every energy consumer" (FALSE). Not all forms of energy invovle extracting a stable form of carbon from the earth. Nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, all provide electricity and the "carbon tax" need only apply to energy sources that are a net carbon gain. The tipping point between wind and coal is really close so a tiny subsady over several years could replace all coal power plants with wind farms over time (think 40+ years). You might suggest that effing with electricity production is a bad idea but there are huge discrepency's between the cost of electricity around the county and it does not have much impact.
fauigerzigerk 17y ago
You have a point, but what such comparisons do achieve is to introduce a very rough sense of proportion in a debate that is inevitably taking place and is equally inevitably irrational.
vrandom 17y ago
And i bet it doesn't even take into account the methane that came from the cow that partly ended up in this particular statistic.
baguasquirrel 17y ago
I think my biggest gripe was that Google searches are largely a fixed cost that scales roughly with the size of the Internets. From what I understand, the actual lookups don't add much to the energy cost. And yet, the greens would try to make people feel sinful every time they perform a Google search. Don't get me wrong, I support being green. But if you don't have some economic sense while going about it, you're just going screw everything up for the people and then the people won't listen to you anymore.

by swombat 17y ago

Retric 17y ago

IMO, the only reasoanble way to deal with the carbon issue is a small "sin" tax at the point where fuel is mined / imported. There are still a few corner cases, but they represent such a minute fraction of output that they are ignorable. The advantage is automacticaly account for output on everyproduct and stage of production without atempting to calculate what it's carbon history is. [You mined/imported 10 million tuns of carbon x, which you can collect from the person you sold it to and on down the chain. They can ignore the tax as it's just an increase in fuel costs to be passed to the customer.] I also suspect the impact would on coal would be much larger than that on gas. Which is a great thing because coal is far more replaceable than gas at this point in time. You can then subsidize non carbon energy production / carbon storage equaly and let the market deside what's most effecent. You can also ignore hybrids as the government focusing on a specific solution is less effecent over time.

pfedor 17y ago
I heard Jeffrey Sachs saying the same thing you say: tax at the point of mining, not at the point of emission. He then went on to explain that the current focus on emissions comes from the fact that some laws or proposals regarding CO2 (carbon credits) were, without much reflection, copied from corresponding regulations about sulfur, and for sulfur you are stuck with emissions because you don't mine sulfur.
patrickg-zill 17y ago
I commend you for your honesty. It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world (since energy is used to produce all items including those that are exported). It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment, just fill government coffers; the money will be use to fly VIPs around to environmental confabs on private jets.
- aneesh 17y ago
  > "It will be a TAX on every energy consumer in the world ... It won't actually DO anything to fix the environment" Actually, it will. The use of taxes to influence consumption is well-documented. It's basic economics: price increases, demand decreases (because demand is not completely inelastic). As less products are made, less resources will be used, which helps the environment.
- mlinsey 17y ago
  You don't believe that a tax on certain types of energy will incentivize various industries and processes to consume less of that energy?
- Retric 17y ago
  "TAX on every energy consumer" (FALSE). Not all forms of energy invovle extracting a stable form of carbon from the earth. Nuclear, hydro, wind, solar, all provide electricity and the "carbon tax" need only apply to energy sources that are a net carbon gain. The tipping point between wind and coal is really close so a tiny subsady over several years could replace all coal power plants with wind farms over time (think 40+ years). You might suggest that effing with electricity production is a bad idea but there are huge discrepency's between the cost of electricity around the county and it does not have much impact.

fauigerzigerk 17y ago

You have a point, but what such comparisons do achieve is to introduce a very rough sense of proportion in a debate that is inevitably taking place and is equally inevitably irrational.

vrandom 17y ago

And i bet it doesn't even take into account the methane that came from the cow that partly ended up in this particular statistic.

baguasquirrel 17y ago

I think my biggest gripe was that Google searches are largely a fixed cost that scales roughly with the size of the Internets. From what I understand, the actual lookups don't add much to the energy cost. And yet, the greens would try to make people feel sinful every time they perform a Google search. Don't get me wrong, I support being green. But if you don't have some economic sense while going about it, you're just going screw everything up for the people and then the people won't listen to you anymore.