The social cost of carbon is zero — as an open and transparent process would demonstrate.
Greenwire reports:
Industry groups last week petitioned the White House to scrap its estimate for the social cost of carbon and revise it through a “transparent, public process.”
Seven trade groups — including America’s Natural Gas Alliance, the American Petroleum Institute and the National Association of Manufacturers — wrote in the Wednesday letter to the Office of Management and Budget that the administration had followed an inappropriately obscure process when revising its social cost of carbon, or SCC. The new estimate for the incremental cost to society of each ton of carbon dioxide was released in May and replaces a lower 2010 version.
The interagency working group responsible for the new estimate worked in private without giving outside parties an opportunity to comment, the petitioners note in their letter. This violates OMB’s own guidelines, they said, which call for a “high degree of transparency about data and methods” when developing “influential information,” including a requirement that third parties be able to reproduce the information independently.
Science searches for the answer to whether there is such a thing as transparent bullshit?
Howdy Anymoose
Not being a physicist or chemist myself, I acknowledge I’ve accepted the authority of my own chemistry textbooks and of the scientists — neutral, skeptic and alarmist alike — linked from this site to say that CO2 is a heat-trapping gas.
Your point about it being a small part of the atmosphere is correct. If it were a powerful heat forcer, that small part might be important. But it’s weak. If its effect was linear, it would be more important, but its effect is logarithmic — weaker with each unit of CO2.
Perhaps most important, human production of CO2 has risen steadily since around 1750 and especially since around 1950. Temperatures have not risen steadily, especially not since 1996 or 1998. That shows pretty clearly that other weather and climate components are far more important than human production of CO2.
Great theory! Where is the proof? Our troops in North Africa during WW2 used CO2 fire extinguishers to cool their beer. Every gas, CO2 included has a specific heat, its natural resistance to heat transfer. Any gas can only be as warm as the energy which was transferred to it. Much of the theory of energy transfer to gasses relies upon supposed transfer from radiation. Anybody who buys that does not understand the development of the Franklin stove. In any event, 4 molecules of CO2 out of every 10,000 molecules of air is not much of a heat source. Further, heat energy is not a stealth product. It is manifested as temperature and can be measured. When any gas molecule bumps into another gas molecule there is a transfer of heat energy from the warm one to the cool one.
Howdy anymoose
The physics of CO2 make it a heat-trapping gas. It’s weak at the job and the effect is logarithmic, but the heat-trapping is true. All other things equal (which, in nature, they ain’t) an atmosphere with more CO2 will be slightly warmer than an atmosphere with less CO2.
The first item on the agenda is to prove that carbon dioxide traps heat energy. Without that proof the whole theory is kaput.
Howdy DP
You’re right that even if there were a quantifiable social cost of carbon dioxide, and there is not, there’s certainly a quantifiable social benefit and it’s a LOOOOTTTT larger than the alleged social cost.
SOCIAList costs to us? Plenty, and all negative.
I have it on good authorities that the earth has a fevor, it will burn to a crisp, there will be/are massive climate refugees, wars, sea level rise and increased vulcanism if we don’t rid ourselves of this unnatural addiction to carbon. Now, what number would you like for the Social Cost of Carbon? I can calculate any number I wish based on future events because not only do I have models that predict the future, I can control the climate.
And people are asking for an open, transparent process so we can have input? If it weren’t controlled by the EPA, I have some swamp land to sell them.
What about the CO2 released to power schools, hospitals, or to transport food and keep it from spoiling? That’s seems like a net benefit to me.
There is no known instance in which carbon-dioxide-related warming has cost anyone a nickel.
There are plenty of instances in which carbon-dioxide reduction actions have cost people money (higher fuel costs), jobs (coal shutdowns, cost of energy), food and other consumer goods (fixed-income pensioners in fuel poverty), and the list of “social costs of carbon reduction” goes on and on.