‘Carbon Tax Temperature-Savings Calculator’ shows futility of carbon tax, emissions cuts

A year ago former Republican congressman Bob Inglis famously predicted the facts on global warming will “overwhelm” GOP resistance to climate change action, and alter the party’s stance.  In response, he proposed a carbon tax.

Thanks to this, we provide you with a calculator that may overwhelm the entire notion.  It’s our handy-dandy temperature savings calculator.  Mr. Inglis insists that his carbon tax will be “revenue neutral,” meaning, in toto, it will do nothing to the taxpayers’ bottom line.  Our calculator will show you that his tax also does nothing about global warming.

So, why bother?

We leave it to you the user to specify how much to reduce U.S. emissions of dreaded carbon dioxide.  The greater the reductions, the greater the tax.

You can access the calculator here.

Now, here’s all you need to do:

First, enter in the amount of emissions you want to eliminate. Our calculator will input your reductions gradually, reaching their full value in 2050, much like what was in the 2009 cap-and-trade bill that passed the U. S. House. That got rid of 83% of them, but, for fun, let’s just make it 100%.

Then, choose to apply it either to the U.S. only, or to all of the OECD-90 countries, as a surrogate for “the developed world,” which is also closely related to all of the nations that had “obligations” under the United Nations’ Kyoto Protocol.  It specifically did not include China and India, and neither is going to embrace a substantial tax—essentially a development tax—in any foreseeable time. India does have a tiny levy on coal of about a dollar a ton, but it has expressed no serious inclination to limit its usage for power production.

Again, for grins, let’s just look at the U.S.

Finally, choose the climate “sensitivity,” or how much you think temperatures will ultimately warm for a doubling of the atmospheric carbon dioxide from its “preindustrial” concentration. The United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s (IPCC) modestly-educated guess is 3.0°C,  but a collection of reports from the recent scientific literature puts the value around 2.0°C, and based on recent global temperature behavior, a value of 1.5°C may be most appropriate.  Not wanting to leave firebrands like former NASA employee James Hansen out of the fun, we include the option of selecting an extremely high climate sensitivity value of 4.5°C.

Even though it’s very likely too big a number, let’s use the UN’s value.

Now we calculate, and you decide.

And the answer is:

0.052°C by 2050 and 0.137°C by 2100.

For what it’s worth, there’s obviously no way anyone is going to measure anything having to do with global temperature to three significant digits, but we have to put them in because some of the differences between different inputs are so small as to require that third digit.

Anyway, absent our action, according to the UN, if an exponential increase in emissions continues (technically, their “Scenario A2”), temperatures would rise 3.44°C between 2010 and 2100. Completely zeroing out our emissions changes that number to 3.30°C (rounded up), or a difference of 0.137 rounded to 0.14.

Looking at the IPCC’s annual temperature history, which contains over 150 years, the year-to-year variation (standard deviation) is +/- 0.11°C, which means a change of  0.14 is going to be very hard to detect.  The amount that is “saved” is less than what normative science would call a “significant” difference, or two standard deviations.

That’s right—a carbon tax that completely eliminated our emissions would not be scientifically detectable in global temperatures in the year 2100.

This “overwhelms” any carbon tax.

N.B. Of course there are a bunch of details relating to our calculator.  Clickhere to view the fine print.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/patrickmichaels/2013/07/25/reduce-u-s-carbon-emissions-to-zero-and-the-temperature-decrease-by-2100-will-be-undetectable/