Carbon tax proposals seem to be showing up more frequently of late. Now if we had strong evidence that carbon dioxide (CO2) was the cause of alleged global warming and that warming is undesirable and must be prevented from increasing, maybe such a tax would be worth consideration. But this is hardly the case. It is clear that increases in carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere in recent decades has not had a significant effect on temperatures, but rather that increases in CO2 are due to higher temperatures. So how would a carbon tax help anything?
The next question is whether global warming is desirable or undesirable. I argue that on balance it is desirable. In tropical oceanic areas maximum temperatures appear to be amazingly similar. If so, presumably any global warming is likely to be elsewhere. Many of these areas are colder than optimum for humans or their crops. So it is not clear that reducing CO2 emissions would be desirable even if they did decrease temperatures more than they would otherwise be.
So I see no positive effects of decreasing carbon dioxide (CO2) levels, the miracle molecule that makes life on Earth possible and stimulates plants to grow. If so, the question is whether increases in taxes on a new basis would be desirable. Many Democratic politicians seem to believe that tax increases would be good, particularly if the people paying the taxes do not object and would not vote for those promoting the taxes out of office. But such an outcome appears highly unlikely, especially given the yellow-vest riots in France last year.
The most important single reason for the huge increase in economic welfare in high income countries is the combustion of fossil fuels to obtain reliable, usable energy, which results in higher emissions of carbon dioxide. Without fossil fuels the Industrial Revolution would not have occurred. Taxing emissions of a molecule that is responsible for much of the modern world results in lower use of fossil fuels and lower benefits from the crucial molecule that made economic progress possible in the modern world. Doing so is surely one of the worst ideas ever proposed. And it is all based on junk science endlessly repeated by the Climate Industrial Complex.
Government taxation should be designed to minimize its adverse effects on the economy, not maximize these effects.
via Carlin Economics and Science
February 8, 2019 at 10:40PM
Iowa Climate Science Education 