I see that even you grudgingly acknowledge a human impact on climate. My own view is that this should not be startling, as it’s been clear that we’ve been altering our environment, both deliberately and inadvertently, on a large scale for millennia now. I think that we should be developing mechanisms to deal with some of the willy-nilly effects, especially those involving open access resources where lack of private or community property rights mean that individual incentives remain to exploit the resource without regard to consequences other than the direct costs experienced by the resource user. Emissions of GHGs are simply one of these problems, all of which concern me.

Libertarian economic theory makes it clear that the answers lie in taking advantage of changes in technology to provide for clear and enforceable property rights, so that conflicts over resource usage can be resolved via private transactions (and enforced in the courts). Maybe it is an unwarranted idealism on my part, but I think that there is a positive role to be played by government in addressing such issues, even where the solution may be imperfect.

The debate over climate change – and the name-calling, social pressure and political deadlock involved – is a classic struggle over resources that are unowned. There are a myriad possible technological adjustments that could help to resolve the problem, but the fact that GHG emissions remain free will dampen investments into and application of such technologies.

You say “it is simply wrong to say that there are not currently any ways that humans are pushing the climate cooler.”

I agree that in some ways we’re beginning to take our foot off the pedal, but as long as a net forcing is underway we are still pushing the climate just in one direction, and the absolute size of annual CO2 emissions is still growing. So we are still accelerating, even though there are other natural factors at work.

We will see what happens to both methane and soot, but CO2 emissions and concentrations continue to rise, especially in China and India (things have jumped again after 2000, no?). But I think that you have to admit that we don’t have brake yet of any kind – other than global dimming from particulates and sulfates (so perhaps we shouldn’t be cleaning those up so quickly?). In addition, even if we ceased all GHG emissions tomorrow, we’d still be expecting a 1 degree F temp increase on top of what we’ve already experienced.

You disagree with my statement that “Without coordinated action, actions by individual countries are not merely insufficient but come at a cost to their relative competitiveness.” and point to fusion research.

You’re missing my key point, which is that if GHG emissions are free, those nation that agree to impose costs on themselves while others don’t are shooting themselves in the foot competitively. This is why Kyoto was negotiated to kick in only after a certain number of major GHG emitters joined in, why it seemed to be dead letter when the US bailed, and why our decision irked everyone else.

While bashing my “authoritarianism” in arguing for a GHG emission permits scheme, have you failed to notice that you sound like you’re hooked on government pork yourself, by pushing government subsidies of technology to solve problems created by lack of clear property rights. That’s remarkably pragmatic, and certainly not libertarian.

Instead of asking the government to open up the spigots, why not focus directly on the source of the problem, by creating property rights that will then, because GHG emissions will be priced, have the effect of calling forth the investments that are needed? Why should the government be trying to choose winners and losers by subsidizing certain technologies but not others?

If the government is going to be involved at all, it should be helping to establish market-based solutions that will make it costly to emit GHGs and lucrative to capture them. Then businesses, the venture capital community and the world’s entrepreneurs will have market incentives to try all kinds of things to solve the problem, and the market can decide what is the cheapest approach. Without market incentives, no one has a profit motive (save that already inherent in the price of fossil fuels) that will drive the world’s engineering community to work on the problem. It might very well be that the easiest gains are on the sequestration side, which would allow offsetting amounts of GHG emissions.

As to the “questionable morality of trade sanctions”, without China and India involved they would be free riders that would undermine the incentives of developed countries to reduce emissions and viate any reductions achieved. Trade sanctions are simply one possible way to get China and India to play along. Another way would be to get them to agree to an emissions permitting scheme by pay them to forego their current rights. It’s only a matter of bargaining – and threatening to limit access to our markets if they are unwilling to cooperate seems perfectly fair.

I do share some sympathies with you generally, as the developing world has done little to contribute to AGW to date but is expected to bear the brunt of the climate change costs, even while their comparative poverty hamstrings their ability to adapt. I believe that any serious effort to deal with climate change should include serious measures to increase the wealth of lesser developed countries, by focusing on improvements in the rule of law and the clarity of property rights.

Many so-called “skeptics” allege their concern about how putting a market value on GHG emissions will endanger the development of these countries, but they seem to be completely silent on the need for the West to seriously work to improve the institutional and physical infrastructure in such countries, even while they also skate past the fact that we are exporting damages to them. One is forced to conclude that those who advance this type of argument are doing so only to block change for the benefit of their own personal financial and/or political interests, and with very little real sincerity or concern for the poor in lesser developed countries.

You posit three questions for which you require answers before you would appoint me king of the world; let me confess that these are excellent questions that fall outside my expertise.

I think that there are serious damages already being experienced in the US and around the world, with more already built in and even more on the way as the forcing gets bigger. I concede my inability to persuade you on the size of the problem; you will have to persuade yourself.

Some of the damages being felt to day are apparent in the increase in the rapid warming in the Arctic, unusual rain events, and ecosystem changes as seasons shift. For example, Japan’s seasons have been very irregular, there have been record downpours over the past few years (with great flood damages and loss of life), ski seasons have greatly suffered, etc. But rather than try to give you any kind of litany, I would just note that if clear property rights relating to GHG emissions existed and could be enforced, any “damages” would be compensable and thus GHG emitters would have incentives to reduce their emissions.

Here are some sites on the difficult issues of determining/calculating damages:
http://www.cbo.gov/showdoc.cfm?index=6061
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/49/37117487.pdf
http://www.ibtimes.com/articles/20060926/economists-climate-global-warming.htm
http://www.usgcrp.gov/usgcrp/Library/nationalassessment/overview.htm

Here’s a link to someone who seems better suited than me to discussing with you the scale of climate change: http://www.theoildrum.com/story/2006/2/3/0394/97545#more

As to how GHG permits could be distributed, establishment of GHG pricing mechanisms globally is a political discussion between nations, and your link shows that the parties that would need to be initially involved would be quite limited. We are basically looking at the Annex I Kyoto Protocol nations and adding in the US, Australia, China and India. If each country establishes a GHG emissions permitting and trading system, this would allow least-cost realization of emissions reductions/sequestration programs.

Domestic allocation is also political; there are good arguments that either permits should be auctioned (on the basis that the government is selling rights that belong to citizens) or distributed free of charge to existing users (on the basis that such users have not violated anyone’s property rights and have “homesteaded” their claims. Clearly fossil fuel producers and users have incentives to block any change from the open-access system, and some have been actively investing in blocking policy. I can understand those who believe that social pressure is one way to move these firms; another is to simply minimize the costs to them of moving by giving them the rights that they would need.

You suggest that your proposed fusion award plan “is far less expensive, and far more likely to succeed, than your concept”; perhaps, but I would hope that we could come to a shared understanding as to how the absence of clear or enforceable property rights lies at the source of the AGW problem (as well as other environmental problems). I understand quite well that government is itself frequently in the way of long-term solutions to resource conflicts (by rewarding rent-seeking), but I fail to see how this problem will solve itself.

Regards,

Tom

You write, “…the reason why we’re having this discussion is because it’s become clear that mankind is influencing the climate in ways that are expensive to use…”

No, Tom, that’s the reason *you’re* having this discussion. The reason I’m having this discussion is that it is *not* clear to me that “mankind is influencing climate in ways that are expensive”. Not only do I not see the “expensive,” I think it’s likely that influence of anthropogenic GHG emissions on global climate has been, so far, slightly *positive* on net. (Though I think the actual numbers are so small, they’re almost completely lost in the “noise.”)

“…but we’ve developed no ways to manipulate the controls except to push them in one direction – hotter.”

No, Tom, that’s simply wrong. Jesse Ausubel’s research shows definitively that mankind has been “decarbonizing” for centuries, without a single government mandate (including GHG emission trading systems).

In fact, look just at the last few decades. Here are CO2 emissions each decade from 1950 onward (per the Worldwatch Institute “Vital Signs” series). The format is year, emissions (GtC), % change over previous decade:

1960, 2.535 GtC, 57%

1970, 3.997 GtC, 58%

1980, 5.155 GtC, 29%

1990, 5.931 GtC, 15%

2000, 6.299 GtC, 6%

Notice how the percentage increase were huge from 1950 to 1960 (57%) and from 1960 to 1970 (58%), but declined dramatically, to only 6% from 1990 to 2000.

You’re also neglecting the fact that atmospheric methane concentrations appear to have *already* peaked, and actually appear to be headed downward.

Finally, and perhaps even most importantly, you’re neglecting the fact that worldwide fossil fuel black carbon emissions (e.g. soot emissions from diesels, soot emissions from coke ovens) appear to have already peaked, and will likely be headed down very steeply in the next 10-20 years (as European/U.S. technology for control of diesel particulates and coke ovens are established worldwide).

So it is simply wrong to say that there are not currently any ways that humans are pushing the climate cooler.

You continue, “China and India have to be part of the solution to this, as well as the US and Europe. Without coordinated action, actions by individual countries are not merely insufficient but come at a cost to their relative competitiveness.”

I do not agree with that statement, either. For example, if the U.S. develops non-tokamak fusion power to the point where it will be taken to commercialization, then Europe, India, China, Japan, and the whole rest of the world will use it, because it will be *better* than existing energy sources (coal, oil, nuclear fission). There will be no need to force them to limit their emissions (and I question the morality of that).

“Your tongue-in-cheek comments about light pollution show you are getting the hang of things.”

It isn’t a matter of “getting the hang of things,” Tom. Problems related to the environment—especially air pollution–are what I do for a living. And until the Secretary of State of North Carolina dissolved the Libertarian Party of North Carolina and forcibly changed my voter registration to “Independent,” I was a registered Libertarian. So I’m almost certainly as familiar with emission trading and libertarian concepts as you are. In fact, it is because of my familiarity with both those things that I don’t think your plan makes sense. I think you are either naively or disingenuously minimizing the difficulties in setting up and maintaining your concept. And I don’t think it’s at all libertarian; I think it’s even more than a little authoritarian. (The fact that you casually brush aside the questionable morality of trade sanctions certainly doesn’t support the notion that your concept is libertarian!)

“Here is something more to show you where I am coming from in terms of the need for clear property rights to resolve disputes over open-access resources.”

Once again, I don’t see much similarity at all with the examples of disputes over open-access resources mentioned in that article (e.g., water, open sea fish) and human emissions of GHGs.

Here are some questions of mine you have not yet answered, and for which I definitely need good answers in order to be convinced of the reasonableness of your concept:

1) What do you think are the top 5 damages to date resulting from emissions of GHGs (and even better, do you have some estimate of their approximate worth)?

2) How much of the warming from 1880 to 2005 do you think was caused by GHG emissions (i.e., *not* solar, and *not* black carbon, and *not* albedo changes)?

3) You have said you’d set the permit levels for free. I want you to actually give me an estimate of what you would do, if you were King of the World. Here is a figure showing world GHG emissions (GtC) by region. If you were King of the World, what permitted levels would you give for each of the 9 regions in the graph, for the year 2010?

http://www.manicore.com/anglais/documentation_a/greenhouse/evolution.html

If you can’t convince me that GHG emissions are causing signficant economic damage (or even more important, significant numbers of deaths), and you can’t tell me how much of the warming since 1880 has been caused by GHGs, and you can’t tell me what permits you would give for the year 2010 if you were King of the World, then I don’t see why I, or anyone else, should support your concept.

Best wishes,
Mark

P.S. And even all that doesn’t address why I think my plan is far less expensive, and far more likely to succeed, than your concept.

Here it is: http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/delpf/articles/delpf10p73.htm.

Tom

Your tongue-in-cheek comments about light pollution show you are getting the hang of things. Now just turn your understanding to the problem at hand (we do need to priorize, after all).

Here is something more to show you where I am coming from in terms of the need for clear property rights to resolve disputes over open-access resources. It includes ammunition you can use against me: Terry L. Anderson & J. Bishop Grewell, Property Rights Solutions for the Global Commons: Bottom-Up or Top-Down?

Regards,

Tom

You write, “The potential market that would be created by capping GHG emissions is enormous and likely much closer to $1 trillion over several decades, so a $4 billion prize seems paltry by comparison to the royalties a company could stand to collect. If anything your arguments support the creation of a GHG market…”

My arguments “support the creation of a GHG market…”?!

It appears we have different goals. My goal is to develop a low-polluting, inexpensive, and inexhaustible energy source for the LEAST possible cost to society.

If my “paltry” prizes totaling $4 billion result in the development of an energy source to the point where the world will use it *willingly* to replace coal, nuclear fission, oil, and natural gas, why should the world attempt to go with your emissions trading system that is politically completely impractical (in that you will almost certainly never get worldwide agreement on what the “fair” GHG emissions are from each country), and will cost (by your own admission!) “closer to $1 trillion over several decades?”

If you want to use up vast sums of money, why don’t you simply put $50 billion in a pile each year for the next several decades, and burn it for heat? (Note: Per standard GHG accounting, that emits no GHGs.)

You write, “Trade carrot and sticks are perfectly appropriate tools. If these countries want access to our markets then they should be willing to agree to certain GHG emission restrictions.”

I don’t understand. Why should we punish them (and ourselves!) with GHG emission restrictions? Who are they hurting? And to what extent?

Previously, you made the comment, about the climate change problem, “Well, even if you and I disagree about that, we ought still to be able to discuss, at least conceptually, the economics and institutional failures that underlie the problem (even though you may consider the problem to be insignificant).”

Yes, let’s also discuss the economics and institutional failures that result in light pollution. When I was a kid growing up, I could always see many stars, and even the Milky Way pretty clearly. Now I can’t see many stars or the Milky Way at all. (Of course, now I’m living in a medium-sized city, and growing up I was in a small town.)

So I think we should also discuss setting up a permitting system to allow trading in the right to operate lights outdoors. First, we could issue enough permits to freeze the level of light emissions, and then over a period of a few decades, we could cut allowable light emissions by 80 percent. After the initial permits were issued (a small matter), we’d of course let the market decide who got to emit how much light.

Sound good?

For detailed information on what GHG permit schemes would look like, I recommend you take a look at the extensive resources presented at the April 2006 conference by Pete Domenici’s Senate’s Energy & Natural Resources Committee:

http://energy.senate.gov/public/index.cfm?FuseAction=Conferences.Detail&Event_id=4&Month=4&Year=2006
http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=109_senate_hearings&docid=f:28095.pdf

In principle, the permits should be established at the level most easily administered, and the markets and pricing signals created as a result will do the rest in terms of rolling out the program to the rest of the economy. I think that upstream production and imports are the easiest level. Alternative energy sources that have no GHG emissions (biofuels, hydro, nuclear & solar) would have no direct costs, other than indirect costs reflected in fossil fuels used and in products using fossil fuels. Markets would be created for upstream and midstream GHG sequestration since these projects would offset emissions, thus providing an alternative to emission rights.

Trade carrot and sticks are perfectly appropriate tools. If these countries want access to our maters then they should be willing to agree to certain GHG emission restrictions.

Yes, we are decarbonizing, but only because there is a price to using fossil fuels – which price does not reflect the social/ecological costs of climate change or of adapting to such changes. Samuelson does not acknowledge this, nor you. Economists generally acknowledge that pricing is the chief factor driving consumption and investment decisions, and I would hope that even engineers could understand this point.

As to the role of government, I have two observations. First, I am neutral to how emission permits would be distributed; the main goal is that they are distributed, so that pricing signals can start to work. Permits could either be auctioned or distributed free; there are good arguments to be made on both sides. Second, a good libertarian will never acknowledge the legitimacy of a government role in protecting private property – but I am not a good libertarian. Of course the government would need to be involved in monitoring emissions and certifying sequestration, but theoretically the whole permitting system could be established through a corporation, which could use litigation and private other tools (such as revocation of permits) against violators. There is no theoretical need to keep the government directly involved.

Regards,

Tom

Oh my. I can see I’m not going to be able to keep up with you AND Marlowe. Here are my responses to some of your remarks…even though they aren’t the latest remarks.

1) “Linkages between systems would be very helpful for making sure that low cost emissions are reduced first and permits are allocated to highest valued uses. This is not so difficult.”

Ho, ho, ho! That’s a joke, right? Look how difficult the Kyoto Protocol was to negotiate! And its reductions in emissions are miniscule! What makes you think reductions 20+ times greater, involving many POOR countries, is going to be “not so difficult?”

2) “The tough nut is getting China and India to join, but both carrots (like the subsidies Bush and Japan are already throwing at them) and stick in the form of trade sanctions are available.”

“…stick in the form of trade sanctions…?” I don’t understand the morality of that at all. The people of China and India are dirt poor! How in the world is it moral to punish them with trade sanctions? Who are they hurting? For whose benefit would you impose trade sanctions?

“I think that emission levels today would be a natural cap (and note that for the government to raise the cap would directly lower the value of existing permits and would be a “taking” that it would have to compensate existing holders for).”

The whole idea of “takings” is that the government is compensating people when the government takes something that those people own. But in this instance, the very thing that the people “own” is something THE GOVERNMENT gave them! The GOVERNMENT gave them the permits in the first place. It’s not like they earned them through hard work.

“Given the damages and ecological changes we`ve seen simply from the warming already evidenced,…”

What are the damages? Can you name the top five damages you think have occurred from the warming already evidenced? (And what percentage of the warming already evidenced do you attribute to GHG emissions?)

3) “The emissions level to be permitted would have to be agreed internationally.”

Heh, heh, heh! Yeah, right! China and India and every other developing country will say, “We should get to emit whatever we want, and you rich countries should adjust your emissions to get to the agreed level.” What will you say to that? Trade sanctions?

4) “e) & g) Permits could be rolled out either at the narrow upstream level (producers) or midstream (industrial users). Offset could be allowed for verifiable sequestration elsewhere.”

Let’s look at two examples: gasoline and electricity. Where would you issue the permits? For gasoline, would you issue the permits to the petroleum companies? If so, what would you tell Archer Daniels Midland, or whomever makes ethanol (or biodiesel)? Would they not got any permits because they don’t make petroleum? Or would they get permits for being “good guys” for ALREADY producing fuels that don’t emit GHGs?

If you gave permits to electric utilities, what would you do with the utilities that produce most of their electricity with nuclear or hydropower? Would they get permits, or not?

5) “f) Mark, who protects my property? I do, directly and through many organizations that the market develops to provide them.”

Tom, I guess we’re not living in the same country. Here in Durham, NC, the government protects my property. If my house is burglarized, I call the police. If someone swindles me, I also call the police. Now, I MAY also hope to get some or all of my money back through insurance. But without the government, the insurance companies would face essentially infinite claims (since no one would be punished for stealing things) so they’d have to charge essentially infinite premiums.

6) “As a practical matter, I`d be happy to distribute the permits without charge.”

Yeah, I’d agree to be King for a Day, too. Let me know how you’d address all the issues with issuing permits for ethanol producers and nuclear/hydropower electricity generators.

7) “I`m happy to hear you think developing non-CO2 emitting technologies isn’t such a big deal. $20 billion is not much and is probably way to low, and cannot represent the levels of investment eventually needed to replace existing stocks of GHG-emitting equipment.”

I don’t think you understand what I’m proposing. Let’s take non-tokamak fusion. Here are the technology rewards I think the government should offer:

a) Five prizes of $10 million each for generating 10 fusion watts for 1 hour, within a factor of 10 of breakeven.

b) Five prizes of $50 million each for generating 100 fusion watts for 1 day, within a factor of 3 of breakeven.

c) Three prizes of $100 million each for generating 1000 fusion watts for 1 week, within a factor of 2 of breakeven.

d) Three prizes of $200 million each for generating 10,000 fusion watts for one month, above breakeven.

e) Three prizes of $1 billion each for generating 1 megaWatt by fusion, for one year, at at least 10 percent greater than breakeven.

IF all the awards were made, the total cost would be $4.2 billion. I’m not proposing that the government any further awards, and I’m not proposing any investments in research of any kind. (For example, I would immediately stop U.S. funder of the ITER…the International Tokamak Experimental Reactor…so the savings from that alone would make up for the technology prizes, even if all the prizes were awarded.
“My point about Samuelson is that he totally ignores the fact that the market is NOT working to address climate change issues…”

Here’s someone who disagrees (as do I):

http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=7

Best wishes,
Mark

You ask what I consider to be an acceptable frame. As I noted much earlier in the thread, it makes more sense to frame GHG reductions from automobiles in terms of tonnes or megatonnes, or $/tonne than ppm. Now if the initiatives are global in scope (i.e., impact of Kyoto as a whole) then a ppm metric might be more appropriate. For initiatives that are national or sub-national in scale this doesn’t make sense. To me it’s obvious, but I’ll agree to disagree if you don’t see it that way.

“I’d guess that, in the period from 1985 to 2000 in the U.S. fully 80% of the new electrical generation was fired by natural gas, and less than 20% was fired by coal.

Mark I’m pretty sure that coal will always be cheaper than natural gas for baseload generation for the simple reason that there is much more of it around and there are far more value-added uses for natural gas (which leads to higher demand and higher prices).

It’s interesting that you chose the 1985-2000 time “frame” – sorry couldn’t resist . During that period natural gas was extremely cheap and you are correct that most new generation was natural gas not coal-fired. However, since then the price of natural gas has sky-rocketed compared to coal; from 1993 to 2004 the price of coal decreased by a cent and a half to $1.36/ million BTU. In that same timeframe the price of natural gas increased from $2.56/million BTU to $5.96/million BTU. In other words, fuel costs for NG plants are about four times higher compared to coal.

Don’t take my word for it though. Here’s what the EIA has to say http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/aeo/pdf/trend_3.pdf

“Coal-fired capacity is generally more economical to operate than natural-gas-fired capacity, because coal prices are considerably lower than natural gas prices. As a result, new natural-gas-fired plants are built to ensure reliability and operate for comparatively few hours when electricity demand is high.

With natural gas prices rising in the reference case, coal-fired plants make up most of the capacity additions through 2030. Coal-fired power plants (including utilities, independent power producers, and end-use CHP) continue to supply most of the Nation’s electricity through 2030. Coal-fired plants accounted for 50 percent of all electricity generation in 2004, and their share increases to 57 percent in 2030.

Because of comparatively high fuel prices, naturalgas- fired plants are not used as intensively as coalfired plants. Natural-gas-fired plants provided 18 percent of total supply in 2004, and their share declines slightly to 17 percent in 2030. Natural-gas-fired generation increases initially as the recent wave of newer, more efficient plants come online, but it declines toward the end of the forecast period as natural gas prices continue to rise.”

“I have proposed total technology prizes for non-tokamak fusion of about $4 billion…Would private companies invest that kind of money on something that might not ever be commercial? It seems unlikely…ESPECIALLY if success resulted in a cannabalizing of existing business (e.g. the oil and coal companies, or electric utilities).”

Private firms will always seek to maximize profits. Your point about the inherent reluctance of oil and car companies to invest significant funds in R&D is well taken but there are plenty of other large corporations out there with incentive and financial resources (e.g. DuPont). But that is really beside the point.

The issue here is what policy approach creates the most effective incentive to spur innovation. Both options involve large sums of money. The potential market that would be created by capping GHG emissions is enormous and likely much closer to $1 trillion over several decades, so a $4 billion prize seems paltry by comparison to the royalties a company could stand to collect. If anything your arguments support the creation of a GHG market…

I’m a little puzzled that you decline to discuss how property rights faiilures and the concomitant lack of pricing signals are at the core of the climate change problem, even in principle. There are currently no property rights in the air, right? And no incentives per se to reduce GHG emissions, right? And no incentives, for the purpose of reducing such emissions to modify one’s consumption behavior or to invest in new technologies, right?

Instead you present your own strong view that the various projections presented by the IPCC are wrong, so we need not worry about climate change. Well, even if you and I disagree about that, we ought still to be able to discuss, at least conceptually, the economics and institutional failures that underlie the problem (even though you may consider the problem to be insignificant). I believe that there are quite substantial costs from the forcing that is already built in, and that it is worth a substantial investment to prevent further rises in GHG concentration. http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/threattalk_complete_05Sept2006.pdf.

BTW, I do think it is entirely appropriate, indeed, necessary, to discuss whether the benefits of any use of government policy will be swamped by the costs. I do not concede a prior that they do, but I recognize that there are alternative policy instruments that might be more efficient thna GHG emission permits. This of course is being considered by the Administration and Congress, both of which for now prefer to combine denial with pork barrel approaches.

As to the IPCC, I hope you will recognize the following. First, they are NOT a “government”. Second, they are certainly not the US government, which has ignored them over the past six years. We should of course be doing our own projections, threat assessments and cost-benefit analyses, etc. Third, the US government DOES have its own scientists doing precisely these things, and it has mechanisms in place to make sure the news doesn’t get out too much. Fourth, fossil fuel producers and major users of course can do their own projections – where are all the ones who disagree with the IPCC? Exxon itself has explicitly acknowledged that, even with uncertainties, GHGs pose a significant threat that warrant government action now.

As to what actions may be appropriate, I find it ironic that the very same government you think should do nothing to regulate the manner in which private economic activity imposes costs on the rest of society should seek to remedy the problem by investing in technological solutions. Should it then give the technologies away free? Even if the technologies are free, what incntives will investors have to use them, if there is no cost associated with GHG emissions?

I think it is clearly strongly preferable that we leave investments up to private investors. We simply need to help create the market that then call forth the investments.

Regards,

Tom