Chip Knappenberger writes in The Hill:
The social cost of carbon is a poor concept from the start. It is an ill-conceived, one-sided supposed measure of the damages associated with climate change resulting from human emissions of carbon-containing greenhouse gases (such as carbon dioxide and methane). Or, rather, it is a measure of the damages predicted to occur by a collection of computer models—computer models which themselves largely fail at capturing the climate evolution during recent decades.
Under normal circumstances, little attention would be paid to the esoteric squabbling of economists arguing about how to place a largely theoretical value on a measure which is imprecise and ever-changing by its very nature. However, the social cost of carbon has been elevated to the limelight by the Obama administration which has introduced it into the cost-benefit analysis that must be performed for new rules and regulations.
The social cost of carbon—or its converse, the alleged benefits conferred by reducing carbon dioxide emissions—has become one the administration’s favorite tools for counteracting the high costs associated with an ever-growing string of actual and proposed new rules governing everything from microwave oven efficiency to coal-killing power plant emissions standards.
It is very high if she sees those carets on someone else’s finger…
I would suggest getting a different car. My XLR gets much better mileage, there fore lower cost at 80 than at 50. It peaks at around 70-75 at 32MPG, but it is still 30MPG at 80. At 50 it is down to 27MPG.
This is why people should not just assume that lower speeds will save gas, or reduce pollution. Power and torque curves plus proper gearing will do more than anything else on the highway.
The SCC is darned high when the carbon gets over a couple of carets.
Let’s make up a new catch phrase, sort of like “social justice”, and give the great liberal minds something high sounding to pontificate about. That way the really enlightened people with have something to chatter about and the masses will know the elite is thinking of them. After a while, we will think up another catchy phrase and recycle the same great thoughts. Lot’s of sound and drama without much substance.
What is the social or any other cost of spending resources or taxing on purported solutions to a problem when the problem is not a problem? I think it is total: total waste of resources, person-power, tax revenue. Add to that the social cost of anxiety suffered by how many people about a problem which is not a problem.
Obama believes in a lot of very foolish things, or he uses them as an excuse to do wicked things (and that’s the word I mean), or some of each. The “social cost of carbon” concept seems to be ignoring the “social value of carbon”, just as the “social value of ‘green'” is being considered without the “social cost of ‘green’.”
Social costing has its place as a consideration in policy. There is a social cost of smog and there is a social cost if a river is polluted beyond community use. Quantifying social costs defies rigor as thoroughly as I defy the nanny-bullies, though. Even then, cost-benefit analysis has to consider costs AND benefits to be valid.
E.g. if I drove the company car at 50mph from here to Bozeman (we usually do 80 around here), I’d likely save something like $2 in gas. I’d also lose around $20 in wage equivalent or $90 in billable time, depending on how you want to figure it. The benefit of getting to Bozeman faster outweighs the cost of the gas. There’s also a safety-fatique question that would be very hard to quantify.