A Carbon Emissions Tax That Makes Sense

Economist Ross McKitrick has written a logical answer
to the dilemma of AGW in the Financial Post, part of Canada.com.
Title and sub-title are

Call their tax

Why not tie carbon taxes to actual levels of warming?
Both skeptics and alarmists should expect their wishes to be answered

He points out that the most recent computer models forecast a warming trend that will make itself known early in the area known as the tropical troposphere, and posits a tax based on the temperature increases, if there are any, that will occur there. Temps, according to the models, will rise in that part of the atmosphere only as a result of excessive carbon dioxide increases as opposed to fluctuations in solar activity.

The IPCC predicts a warming rate in the tropical troposphere of about double that at the surface, implying about 0.2C to 1.2C per decade in the tropical troposphere under greenhouse-forcing scenarios. That implies the tax will climb by $4 to $24 per tonne per decade, a much more aggressive
schedule of emission fee increases than most current proposals. At the upper end of warming forecasts, the tax could reach $200 per tonne of CO2 by 2100, forcing major carbon-emission reductions and a global shift to non-carbon energy sources.

Global-warming activists would like this. But so would skeptics, because they believe the models are exaggerating the warming forecasts. After all, the averaged UAH/ RSS tropical troposphere series went up only about 0.08C over the past decade, and has been going down since 2002. Some solar scientists even expect pronounced cooling to begin in a decade. If they are right, the T3 tax will fall below zero within two decades, turning into a subsidy for carbon emissions.

While I understand the reasoning behind the "science" of AGW, I more fully "get" the manipulative hysteria. The proposed tax is exquisitely formulated to make the side that is more accurate happy.

Under the T3 tax, the regulator gets to call everyone's bluff at once, without gambling in advance on who is right. If the tax goes up, it ought to have. If it doesn't go up, it shouldn't have. Either way we get a sensible outcome.

But the benefits don't stop there. The T3 tax will induce forward-looking behaviour. Alarmists worry that conventional policy operates with too long a lag to prevent damaging climate change. Under the T3 tax, investors planning major industrial projects will need to forecast the tax rate many years ahead, thereby taking into account the most likely path of global warming a decade or more in advance.

I was not aware of the "tropical troposphere" early warning, probably because it
tends to break the sense of urgency needed for emotional manipulations which the
press depends on to sell advertising. This tax clearly depends on all sides
agreeing that the climate change computer models be accurate on this point.
Not that this would ever happen.

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