Lord Moncton has published “Ten Killer Questions for Climate Extremists“. Here are the ten:
1. CO2 concentration has risen by 10% in the past 23 years, but the RSS satellite global lower-troposphere temperature-anomaly record shows warming over that period that is statistically indistinguishable from zero. How come?
2. Aristotle, 2350 years ago, demonstrated that to argue from “consensus” is a logical fallacy – the headcount fallacy. Some 95% of all published arguments for alarm about our influence on the climate say we must believe the “consensus”. Why was Aristotle wrong?
3. Aristotle, 2350 years ago, demonstrated that to argue that the “consensus” is a “consensus” of experts is a logical fallacy – the fallacy of appeal to authority. What has changed since 2350 years ago to make argument from appeal to authority acceptable rather than fallacious?
4. There has been 0.6 Celsius global warming since 1950. There are 5-7 times more polar bears today than there were in 1950. In what meaningful sense, then, are polar bears a species at imminent threat of extinction caused by global warming?
5. A recent paper shows that a naturally-occurring reduction in cloud cover has had four and a half times more warming effect than manmade increases in CO2 concentrations. Why are you so certain that the recently-published paper is wrong?
6. In the past 247 years – almost a quarter of a millennium – the trend in rainfall over England and Wales shows an increase of just 2 inches/year, or 5%. Why do you regard so insignificant an increase over so long a period as being beyond the natural variability of the climate?
7. Australia’s carbon tax, a typical measure intended to make global warming go away, will cost $150 billion over ten years. In that time, the tax is intended to abate 5% of Australia’s CO2 emissions, which represent 1.2% of global emissions. Do you agree, therefore, that at a cost of $150 billion the Australian scheme, if it succeeds, will abate just 0.06% of global CO2 emissions over ten years, at a cost of $150 billion?
8. The IPCC’s own climate-sensitivity equations show that abating 0.06% of global carbon emissions would reduce CO2 concentration from a predicted business-as-usual 410 microatmospheres to 409.988 microatmospheres, and that this would reduce global mean surface temperature by just 0.0006 Celsius degrees – if the carbon tax succeeded every bit as fully as its framers had intended. Do you consider that spending $150 billion to cut surface temperature by 0.00006 Celsius degrees is a sensible, proportionate, cost-effective use of other people’s money?
9. If Australia’s carbon tax were adopted worldwide, and if it worked every bit as well as its inventors had intended, it would cost $317 trillion to abate the one-sixth of a Celsius degree of warming that is predicted for the current decade. That is $45,000 per head of the global population over the period, or 59% of global GDP? Compared with the 1.23%-of-GDP cost of paying to abate the damage from 1/6 C of warming the day after tomorrow, is it worth spending 59% of GDP today?
10. In 2005 the UN said there would be 50 million climate refugees because of rising sea levels and other effects of global warming by 2010. Where are they?
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Is Mr. Moncton actually a Lord? Wasn’t he caught out on this a few years ago?
Nuke Gray
12 Feb 13 at 5:26 pm
Haven’t you heard? All those $millions paid out by wealthy countries for their sin by emission to the UN has stopped the seas from rising. That and Obama’s declaration that he could stop the rise in the oceans.
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 5:38 pm
He would have been a lord if they had not changed the law regarding heredity peerage in 1999.
His official title is Christopher Monckton, 3rd Viscount Monckton of Brenchley.
Yobbo
12 Feb 13 at 5:43 pm
The Lord business just irritates me to no end. Whether or not he is one, why would he insist on using the title? I am just as climate-change-sceptical as the Lord himself but am I the only one who thinks some his affectations are harmful to the cause?
Rob
12 Feb 13 at 5:44 pm
Yobbo, I believe what you were trying to say was, ‘He would have been eligible to sit in the House of Lords if they had not changed the law regarding heredity (sic) peerage in 1999.’
Sorry, he has always been a Lord. Not all lords are viscounts, but all viscounts are lords.
James in Melbourne
12 Feb 13 at 5:49 pm
Nuke, Rob, how about you address some of the questions posed instead of derailing the thread with inconsequential red herrings?
Winston SMITH
12 Feb 13 at 5:51 pm
Yes Monckton is a lord- he is the third Viscount of Brenchley, wherever that is. His grandfather was the first, his father was the second, and it is a hereditary title.
No he is not a member of the House of Lords. His grandfather was, his father was, and then they changed the rules, so he isn’t. He is no more a member of the House of Lords than you or I are members of the House of Commons, but (for what it’s worth) he is a lord.
And Aristotle has been dead for about two and a half thousand years. He was wrong about lots of things. So what?
Quoting Aristotle as some sort of authority smacks a little of insanity, or mental inflexibility or something. A bit like claiming to be a member of the House of Lords when you aren’t.
Monckton would be a lot more credible if he stopped trying to pretend ancient things are relevant just because they’re ancient, or in latin, greek or hebrew (but not arabic). He badly needs a minder.
gnome
12 Feb 13 at 5:53 pm
Rob…it’s the pommie class system plus an admirable desire to piss off the comrades.
He’s a Lord who can’t sit in the House, but the equivalent of the Clerk of the House says he’s a Lord and can use the title.
Alfonso
12 Feb 13 at 5:53 pm
No sea-level rise there then.
Population of Kiribati: 100,000.
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 5:58 pm
…. and he wasn’t a climate scientist and neither is Monckton.
manalive
12 Feb 13 at 6:03 pm
manalive:
sic probo vestri penuria intelligendo.
Joe
12 Feb 13 at 6:11 pm
$15 million for one road! Carr is loony tunes.
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 6:14 pm
It makes lefty’s heads explode.
He’s an entertainer.
jupes
12 Feb 13 at 6:15 pm
Kiribati:
Population: 100,000
Revenues $55.52 million (2010 est.)
Expenses $107.1 million (2010 est.)
Economic aid A$36 million (2010/2011), largely from Australia, New Zealand & Taiwan
Plus $15 million of our money for one freaking road!
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 6:20 pm
1. Shut up.
2. Shut up.
3. Shut up.
4. Shut up.
5. Shut up.
6. Shut up.
7. Shut up.
8. Shut up.
9. Shut up.
10. Shut up.
C.L.
12 Feb 13 at 6:21 pm
Joe …
… vos quoque.
manalive
12 Feb 13 at 6:25 pm
Where else does kiribati get the goods?
All that money but they can’t even build one freaking road!
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 6:25 pm
Sir Paul Nurse disagrees with Aristotle. people should defer to experts.
His named two consensuses: global warming and GMOs.
On GMOs in His 2012 Dimbleby lecture is at http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/people/fellows/2012-02-29-Dimbleby.pdf where he calls for a re-opening the debate about GM crops based on scientific facts and analysis:
Many without blinking an eye rejects the science of GMO and hound from the temple anyone who defies the consensus they agree with on global warming.
Jim Rose
12 Feb 13 at 6:27 pm
Jupes, it makes my own head explode. Plenty of libertarian right-wingers have a healthy disdain of hereditary “nobility”. It dilutes the message. Anyway scrap them all except number 9. This is the point I hammer my lefty friends with. It takes a while for them to believe that this business could actually swallow up half of the entire world’s wealth but when they come round, it’s bloody convincing. There is NO counterargument possible.
Rob
12 Feb 13 at 6:28 pm
did they really say something that silly? where?
Jim Rose
12 Feb 13 at 6:32 pm
Cost to rebuild one road in Kiribati? $15million AUD
Population of Kiribati? 100,000
The feeling you get once these Labor monkeys are voted out? Priceless.
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 6:33 pm
Here. Jim Rose.
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 6:34 pm
see http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/feared-migration-hasn-t-happened-un-embarrassed-by-forecast-on-climate-refugees-a-757713.html
A UNEP web page showed a map of regions where people were likely to be displaced by the ravages of global warming has recently been taken offline
Jim Rose
12 Feb 13 at 6:38 pm
see http://www.justthinking.us/sites/default/files/image/Charts%20and%20Stuff/Fifty%20Million%20refugees.png
Jim Rose
12 Feb 13 at 6:43 pm
Your “$150 billion question” fails Econ 101. The $150 billion is a transfer; not a cost.
If this is representative of your “killer questions for for climate extremists”, the ‘extremists’ don’t have much to worry about. The ‘alarmists’ – ie people appropriately raising the alarm – have even less.
William Bragg
12 Feb 13 at 6:44 pm
If it ends up being just a transfer, Bragg, then it doesn’t work and abates no emissions.
If people do change behaviours, then it is a cost.
2dogs
12 Feb 13 at 6:58 pm
Bwaa…a ‘transfer not a cost’….depends on whether you are paying the cost or collecting the transfer…..give me strength.
Alfonso
12 Feb 13 at 7:08 pm
Once again Catallaxians showing their economic ignorance.
Maybe, but the $150 billion refers to the revenue collected – which is a transfer – not the compliance or other economic costs. Thus, the “killer question” is misplaced, which is no surprise since it comes from Monkton. What is surprising is that Kates, who purports to be an economist, should cite it so uncritically.
William Bragg
12 Feb 13 at 7:09 pm
Abatement measures against AGW are as useful as the Easter Island statutes. It is by no means clear that human emissions of CO2, ACO2, are even responsible for the increase in atmospheric CO2; and since AGW is predicated on CO2 increase causing AGW, if ACO2 ain’t responsible for the increase in CO2 then AGW is even more bullshit.
As for the global abatement cost of $317 trillion, an alternative calculation is more conservative and places it at only $76 trillion. At that cost the figures are meaningless because since most of that money would be going towards renewables, primarily wind and solar, which do not work, if the AGW fucking fanatics had their way the global economy would grind to a halt and there is no $ amount for what that would cost.
cohenite
12 Feb 13 at 7:13 pm
if the carbon tax is a transfer and not a cost, how does it change behaviour?
Jim Rose
12 Feb 13 at 7:16 pm
Good news from Cape Grim.
Poor Old Rafe
12 Feb 13 at 7:16 pm
The recent decline in atmospheric CO2 concentration at a time of surging ACO2 emissions, is really the killer blow for AGW; because it lends weight to the argument that the CO2 increase is not being entirely caused by ACO2.
cohenite
12 Feb 13 at 7:20 pm
Bob Carr is the new John Frum keeping Kiribata
climatecargo cultist’s dreams alive.Splatacrobat
12 Feb 13 at 7:20 pm
Braggs it’s over you idiot.
No one gives a flying toss about AGW. Europe’s ‘carbin’ markets have basically cracked. Russia walked off from Kyoto and the Japanese have too. Germany is adding more coal plants.
Typical of the Liars Party the seem to hit the top of pretty much everything.
They hit the peak with the commodity markets when they imposed their thieving tax on miners. They hit the top of the AGW panic. NSW Liars party hit the top when they imposed a wealth tax on housing.
You’re a peaker.
You’re an idiot Braggs.
Jc
12 Feb 13 at 7:25 pm
Nice try Jim, but I didn’t say that the carbon tax does not entail costs; I said the $150 billion cited by Monckton and Kates is not the cost.
The $150 billion is a revenue entailed, which per se is a transfer from companies to the government. The cost is the compliance costs (inc any adjustments to processes and paperwork burdens etc).
William Bragg
12 Feb 13 at 7:26 pm
You fucking moron Braggs. What do you think a tax is if not a cost which eventually becomes a transfer.
Oh hang on, I’m fine. That quarterly cheque I have to cut isn’t a cost to me “per se” according to Braggs. It’s a mere transfer then and everything is right with the world.
You, fucking fucking idiot, Braggs. You’re stupider than Homer and he is a truly stupid person.
Jc
12 Feb 13 at 7:33 pm
Gawd almighty… It’s a “transfer” “per se”, not a cost.
I’ve heard it all now.
Braggs has to be a Liars Party adviser. No one, not even an APS douchebag could be this stupid.
Jc
12 Feb 13 at 7:40 pm
Typo: “Lord Monc-k-ton has published…..”
JamesK
12 Feb 13 at 7:40 pm
Make up your mind JC; or is it twins?
cohenite
12 Feb 13 at 7:41 pm
AGW alarmism is the clearest confirmation of Blair’s Law so far.
(Blair’s law states that the various idiocies in the world will aggregate and coalesce into one giant idiocy)
blogstrop
12 Feb 13 at 7:43 pm
That’s an insult to Homer JC.
Homer is mad and his stupidity isn’t comparable top Bragg’s
William and his hero’s namesake Billy are both Trotskyists, very very stupid and very very loud with bad teeth
JamesK
12 Feb 13 at 7:46 pm
It’s was added for emphasis, Cohenite.
Braggs highlights the problem we have with the left these days. They actually try to pollute the language with insane bullshit.
This fucking two bit turnip is attempting to spin the idea that cost lines in a P/L statement no longer exist… like firms wouldn’t account for the disgusting carbin tax as an expense item… “it’s a pre-transfer” item in the P/L account according to him.’
Fisk is right. Leftist need to be banned from ever offering an opinion.
Where’s my revolver when I need it the most?
Jc
12 Feb 13 at 7:47 pm
Yes it is. You’re right James.
Sorry Homer.
Jc
12 Feb 13 at 7:59 pm
What Perfidious Braggs is trying to suggest is that transfers, not being costs, don’t really matter thereby absolving the carbonic tax of all it’s sins.
Braggs, if transfers “per se” don’t matter, then why limit the transfer to 23 bucks a ton? Why not go the whole hog and raise it to 4,000 bucks a ton.. 1,000,000 dollars even.
You have to audacity to question real life economists quals, Perfidious? FMD
Moderator, ban the stupid bastard. Show ruthlessness and ban him in cold blood.
Jc
12 Feb 13 at 8:08 pm
Gnome:
So being dead means your discoveries are invalid?
Why?
Erm, Aristotle and a bunch of other long-dead Greeks discovered, refined and defined the rules of logic and rhetoric. They did such a good job that nobody has ever, repeat ever, been able to add anything more. So they are indeed the authorities on logic and rhetoric.
So quoting and utilising the authorities on logic acknowledged as such for well over 2,000 years ‘smacks of insanity’?
Gnome, do you take your car to a mechanic for repair, or to a hairdresser? If the former, then you are utilising the expert in the field… and by your own words this “smacks a little of insanity, or mental inflexibility or something”.
So you think that using the acknowledged experts in the field is wrong.
Why?
Where and when has Monckton ever claimed this?
Profoundly unsubtle suggestion of racism, there. Projecting, eh? Nuff said, gnomesayin!
This paragraph also reveals both your abysmal ignorance and deeply inferior knowledge. “
HeYou badly needsa mindera decent education.”There. FTFY!
Mk50 of Brisbane
12 Feb 13 at 8:28 pm
That would have to be the stupidest thing I have ever read here. The ENTIRE POINT of the tax is to “put a price on carbon”. This means imposing a COST on people equivalent to the COST of the damage they are doing, i.e. costing the externality and making the party responsible pay the COST- Clear now?
If not, that’s fine; just transfer your wealth to me.
rob
12 Feb 13 at 8:40 pm
Tough but fair.
C.L.
12 Feb 13 at 8:40 pm
Where is Homer these days? Does he have a site we can visit? What is Harry Clarke saying about our friend Christopher?
Poor Old Rafe
12 Feb 13 at 9:00 pm
If you read the earlier part of the thread, you will see that I was clear that the carbon tax entails costs before. BUT, and this is the point that you and the other usual suspects here are willfully overlooking, it was Monckton who said that the cost of the tax was $150billion, and he is clearly wrong. It was his “killer question” which, to any economic literate audience (and that does not appear to include most on Catallaxy), does little more than expose his own ignorance or willingness to distort for political purposes.
If you want stupid, read Monckton, and the other twits on this thread trying to defend the indefensible, or divert attention from it, as usual.
William Bragg
12 Feb 13 at 9:15 pm
I think defining Ball Bagg as an idiot is an appalling insult to idiots.
If he studies really, really hard, maybe, just maybe, in a decade or so he will advance to the point where he’s an idiot.
But really, ascending to such intellectual heights from the abyssal depths where he is now is a task worthy of Sysiphus.
Mk50 of Brisbane
12 Feb 13 at 9:28 pm
@ Gnome
And Aristotle has been dead for about two and a half thousand years. He was wrong about lots of things. So what?
Newton has been dead for a while too, and he was wrong about stuff. So according to your logic calculus and laws of motion should no longer apply??? I’d suggest that you don’t fly anywhere coz you might be in for a rude shock.
grumpy
12 Feb 13 at 9:30 pm
LM’s estimate of the CO2 tax of $150 billion is very conservative if, as should be done, the effect of the tax on GDP is included. Even treasury thinks the tax will shrink GDP by $900 billion by 2050; although that figure may be as high as $2 trillion.
By 2020 the GDP shrinkage or cost will be in the order of $180 billion.
These costs are in addition to the direct impact on the balance sheet of businesses.
I really don’t understand Bragg’s point
cohenite
12 Feb 13 at 9:35 pm
Apparently if you add up enough ‘costs’ they become a transfer.
Driftforge
12 Feb 13 at 9:49 pm
You know, I’ve studied a lot of company accounts in my time, and they all seem to have tax listed as a cost.
I think Braggs has discovered the missing link in accounting. All those companies that went broke. Clearly their mistake was failing to include a new type of account called ‘transfer’.
What a monumentally stupid line to try and run. Even the government in its most mad, schizophrenic rushed press release hasn’t tried to pass that sort of turgid spin off as facts. And believe me, they’ve tried some pretty stupid lines in the last couple of years.
You should tell Wayne Swan Braggs, he’ll be pumping out the Springsteen when he finds out he can list all those welfare payments as transfers and rediscover his lost surplus.
brc
12 Feb 13 at 9:57 pm
Bragg, I really am trying to work out what you are getting at and failing. I admit, I personally am starting from the assumption that the carbon tax has no benefits whatsoever, given that the temperature of the earth will not drop as a result, and the effects of climate change will be as they will.
Given that that is the case, the tax is a dead-weight cost.
Your initial comment suggested that the $150 billion figure was correct, but that it was a transfer not a cost. Are you now arguing about the amount? My understanding that some government forecast was that it would raise 8 billion per year, so half of the $150b figure. Although I don’t think this government is very accurate when it comes to revenue forecasts.
dan
12 Feb 13 at 10:00 pm
i keep saying, being a socialist is a mental illness. and reading braggs bollocks comment you’d have to say incurable. there’s no way back from stupidity of that extent.
Harrys on the Boat
12 Feb 13 at 10:04 pm
What the hell is the trade minister doing calling up Andrew Bolt on talkback and arguing about global warming?? Have I lost my mind? Is he as dense as he sounds?
Maybe he should be back in the study reviewing his minerals rent taxation PhD thesis given recent events
dan
12 Feb 13 at 10:18 pm
Okay children, so once the businesses pay the tax, where do you think it goes?
a) to the government
b) to the government
c) to the government
OR
d) I’m a Catallaxian trying to defend the indefensible, so I’m going to maintain that it just disappears.
Apparently, you think the $150billion transferred from businesses to the government is in fact lost to the economy. As I said, that the $150billion is a transfer is Econ 101. Then again, given that most Catallaxians behave as if they are still be in nappies, perhaps its not surprising that intellectually they haven’t advanced that far.
William Bragg
12 Feb 13 at 10:28 pm
Moncktons point about carbon tax isn’t really valid.
The carbon tax was simply to raise money to fund payments to families because the Labor government had completely blown their budget.
mundi
12 Feb 13 at 10:32 pm
Pink batts and laptops?
Kiribati?
Overseas emissions permits?
Eddystone
12 Feb 13 at 10:37 pm
Anything transferred to this fucking government is lost forever.
Why don’t you transfer yourself?
cohenite
12 Feb 13 at 10:43 pm
Kiribati! My God, $15million to rebuild one freaking road for 100,000 people! Don’t get me started!
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 10:47 pm
$15 million for 40 – yes 40 – kilometers of road! FFS Carr is mad.
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 10:52 pm
A road, just the one,
So what’s the bleedin’ point of spending $15million to rebuild the road ?
Gab
12 Feb 13 at 10:55 pm
Gab,
Thanks for the list of aid $ posted, fascinating.
Perhaps like St Kits and its shore line which receded, and similar rent seeking protected areas, Kiribati will need the one road to the sea-vessel port for tourists seeking cultural experiences and off-shore bank accounts.
The one serviceable unsurfaced road into East Arnhem NT is the only one allowed by ?Northern Land Council. This ensures monopoly of cartage and supplies. And of visitors/residents.
Splatacrabat at 7.30, a take on Frum. One poor lil’un could not leave as had ‘scissors and hand cream packed’. Buckin’ the consensus!
Jessie
13 Feb 13 at 12:03 am
With all the money they receive from foreign aid and for various projects – ffs they have a new Japanese Causeway that links South Tarawa to Betio – it’s amazing the 100,000 people aren’t all millionaires by now. Btw, the 40 km road that is being destroyed by the imaginary ocean rising is on South Tarawa, population 50,000.
Gab
13 Feb 13 at 12:17 am
It is when it is transferred to this government…
…and based upon their track record they’ll only collect $150million though the compliance costs imposed upon business with be in the $10s of Billions.
Token
13 Feb 13 at 12:39 am
The Japs have plenty of experience with construction at Tarawa . The yanks also, they raised the Island’s height by 2 feet with all the Japanese they buried.
Splatacrobat
13 Feb 13 at 12:43 am
It’s a damn shame you never made it past 101, but I guess you do what you can with what you have.
wreckage
13 Feb 13 at 1:12 am
Thank goodness! I thought it would go into an endless rabbit-warren of competing bureaucracies and interest-groups, with the little that escaped vote-buying and moral posturing being spent with a repeatedly demonstrated sub-normal cost effectiveness to produce repeatedly demonstrated sub-standard services at greatly inflated cost.
wreckage
13 Feb 13 at 1:16 am
If the government levied a 101% income tax we would actually generate income!
Rob
13 Feb 13 at 9:41 am
Bragg, when I go down to my coffee shop and get a coffee, are you telling me it no longer costs $4. It’s just a transfer to another part of the economy?
Actually, I think I get where you are coming from … you’re one of those idiots still running with the line ‘only the big businesses will pay’.
MattyB
13 Feb 13 at 10:05 am
“The $150 billion is a transfer; not a cost.”
Maybe for you William – I don’t get compensation, so for me its definitely a cost.
Not all of us are on the Gillard welfare-go-round.
ugh
13 Feb 13 at 10:27 am
MK50 of Brisbane-
19 July 2011 at the National Press Club- here
http://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3Dma6cnPLcrtA&sa=U&ei=2MwaUZ2EJ9GziQel14HgCQ&ved=0CBkQtwIwAA&sig2=Lu5fARGHWtkKGrD0F49VeA&usg=AFQjCNGXd5o1yyCOalZA1bmKKUvymE2A9w
The Question asked was to the effect of “why do you persist in your claim that you are a member of the House of Lords. He doesn’t deny it, he persists with it.
Being dead doesn’t invalidate your ideas, but being dead for about twoandahalfthousandyears means everything you ever said has been either abandoned or absorbed. The world has moved on. You have become irrelevant- a footnote for history. You have no authority. You aren’t allowed to keep slaves anymore and the perfect heavens no longer move in their crystal spheres.
I wouldn’t take my car to Gottlieb Daimler, Henry Ford or Walter Chrysler- would you?
Even the Catholic church has moved on from “Divine Aristotle”.
And when I see Monckton backing up “Pastor Danny” Nalliah launching his anti-muslim political party I feel quite justified in hinting that he might be anti-arabic. Profoundly unsubtle message taken there.
gnome
13 Feb 13 at 10:38 am
“So what’s the bleedin’ point of spending $15million to rebuild the road?”
This is what AGW mitigation entails – literally stop-gap measures. Even these can be unaffordable for some. Speaking of which…
“it’s amazing the 100,000 people aren’t all millionaires by now”
Somehow they’ve managed to hide it from the IMF, who estimate per cap GDP PPP around $5,700, and from the UN, who put them 122nd by HDI. Must have something to do with living on shitty spread-out atols in the middle of nowhere with almost nothing to offer and dependent on actually viable nations since modern times.
Jarrah
13 Feb 13 at 10:40 am
We’re still on the transfer thing? All taxes eventually get back to someone, so if you insist on calling a cost a transfer then that applies to all income taxes.
By your logic, removing the government completely would have no impact on GDP because taxes are just transfers.
Let’s go further.
If we went and smashed 150 billion worth of windows, this would have no cost to the economy, right? Just a transfer to the glaziers of the world,right?
brc
13 Feb 13 at 10:42 am
“Okay children, so once the businesses pay the tax, where do you think it goes?
a) to the government
b) to the government”
When a business is forced to pay a tax it must legally be recorded in their books as:
a) a cost
b) a cost…
Otherwise it wouldn’t be deductible from profits.
ugh
13 Feb 13 at 10:49 am
Ah, so money paid to the government through tax isn’t actually a ‘cost’ on the economy, it’s just a ‘transfer’ now. Great, so I guess that old broken window fallacy now isn’t a fallacy any more, as we are just ‘transfering’ the cost of the broken window onto someone else! It’s so simple!
Maybe we should just ‘transfer’ ALL of our money to the government, I mean, it’s not getting taken out of the economy or anything so what’s the harm?
Honestly, there needs to be a new word/phrase for stupid, because sometimes complete and utter braindead moron just doesn’t cut it.
MattR
13 Feb 13 at 11:36 am
The Global Warming Scam Continues
Hot days in summer!
Storms, and cold days in winter!
Strange days indeed.
“Unprecedented!”
yell the followers of the
global warming creed
despite the lack of
warming. Wherefore, then, do their
rotten scams proceed?
Cicero’s words* help:
who benefits, and whither
do the profits lead?
Certainly, one thing
never changes: the sooth of
the awarmists’ greed.
* cui bono.
Deadman
13 Feb 13 at 11:36 am
ThanksCcats for confirming that Econ 101 really is way beyond your cognitive capabilities. MattyB, while you might want to learn up on the difference between cost and price, supplying cups of coffee entails real resource costs, so no I am not telling you that there is only a transfer involved. Likewise, brc, smashing windows involves a real resource cost to the economy; and is a cost rather than a transfer, so your attempted analogy fails. This is all elementary economics, but seems to be beyond the grasp of most commentators on the Cat.
(BTW, while the less unintelligent among you appear to have worked out that you’re on a hiding to nothing on this one, that probably won’t stop the rest of you from continuing with the empty insults and frothing. Feel free to continue, I suppose, but just don’t expect to be taken seriously by anyone in the know.)
William Bragg
13 Feb 13 at 12:54 pm
Bragg, thanks for proving you didn’t understand Econ 101 and totally missed Finance 101.
Token
13 Feb 13 at 12:58 pm
Whatever is happening re climate would someone bite the bullet and just say that the horse has fucking bolted.
face ache
13 Feb 13 at 1:37 pm
So now we find out the difference between a cost and a transfer is a real resource cost. Where does peoples time factor into that? Is that a resource, or merely something at whim of a costless transfer?
Tell me, if the government passed a law mandating that everyone had to do a chicken dance for 10 minutes every day at 10am, this would be costless, no? No real resources are being used, right?
Econ101 was never this exciting! Whole new fields of thought being created before our very eyes!
‘My attempted analogy’ is one of the oldest and most important economic fallacies around – and it wasn’t attempted, it was completely correct. You appear to either be completely clueless or willfully ignorant as to why I and other commenters would refer to it.
brc
13 Feb 13 at 1:39 pm
You first have to prove that there ever was a horse, and if it’s even a bad thing that it ran away.
Then you have to analyse if it’s worth spending 150 trillion dollars a year on more secure gates on your stable, or whether or not it’s just better to live with the possibility of bolting horses.
Yobbo
13 Feb 13 at 1:46 pm
We could, MattR, just use the old standby, “Intellectual.”
Winston SMITH
13 Feb 13 at 4:33 pm
The changed behaviours (if they occur) incur the real resource costs you mention, Bragg.
The new ones would be (excluding to the effect of the transfer) more expensive than the old ones. That’s why they would not have been undertaken without the tax.
“but the $150 billion refers to the revenue collected – which is a transfer – not the compliance or other economic costs.”
Yes, so try looking up the effect imposing a tariff or excise has in the microeconomics section of your Econ101 textbook. The combined reduction in the supplier and consumer surpluses is at least as great as the amount of the revenue raised. $150 billion is then the lower bound of the cost.
2dogs
13 Feb 13 at 7:13 pm
the costs of the carbon tax are the deadweight losses from the changed behaviour and green rent-seeking over who is taxed and who benefits from the revenue.
not a good a sound bit as the carbon tax will cost $150b
Jim Rose
13 Feb 13 at 7:19 pm
Ok, so the revenue/transfer is the $x/t of the tax times the amount of CO2 which is not abated, while the cost is the $x/t times the amount of CO2 which is abated, plus the compliance costs.
2dogs
13 Feb 13 at 7:54 pm
It’s clear that the reason we can’t find any refugees from the rising tides is because they have drowned …
Gerry
13 Feb 13 at 8:06 pm
Nice to at last see some Catallaxians engaging the with economics, rather than defending the simplistic banalaties of accounting. I am glad 2dogs, along with Jim Rose, acknowledge that the $150billion figure is not the cost of the carbon tax. Clearly Mocnkton (and Kates who cited him approvingly) were wrong.#
But 2dogs then scores another Catallactic own-goal by wrongly suggesting the the reduced producer and consumer surplus must exceed the revenue transferred via tariffs and excises. Where there are of course deadweight losses associated with such taxes, these quantities of course depend inter alia on supply and demand elasticities, which will vary, and there is NO REASON to believe that 2gods conjecture is necessarily true, either in the case of a tariff or excise or the case of a carbon tax.
Thus, the $150billion figure used by Monckton (and repeated by Kates) is neither the cost of the carbon tax or a lower bound on the cost of the carbon tax.
(# BTW, according to JC on another thread today, I am “beaten to a pulp” every time I write on Catallaxy – like on this thread presumably. LOL. Thus, while JC and his Libertarian mates have definitely been beating something with their invisible hands, it hasn’t been me.)
William Bragg
13 Feb 13 at 10:53 pm
A quick clarification, albeit a technical one. 2dogs statement that the reduction in consumer and producer surplus combined exceeds the revenue gained is correct in that those surplus reductions include the revenue obtained.
What is not correct, however, is that the revenue obtained therefore represents a base line for the cost of the tax. The revenue is a transfer, from producers and consumers to the government. It is the reduced producer and consumer surplus on the units no longer produced, consequent upon levying the tax, that yield the deadweight loss, and there is no reason why this should equal or exceed the level of revenue obtained.
William Bragg
13 Feb 13 at 11:16 pm
You’re such a punce Braggs. You’re one of the worst I’ve ever seen here.
You’re glad, like you’re some sort of teacher? Fuck off. You don’t even understand basic economics at 11th grade level.
You ignoramus, you don’t understand the concept of a cost and have the hide to talk down to people. You really are a loser, Braggs.
Sure it is. The lost economic activity resulting from this decrepit tax is a drag and it’s the lower bound estimate. It’s there alright. It just gets hidden in the lower growth potential
It’s every single time Braggs. You in fact have a perfect score and the bruises to show for it.
Punce.
Jc
13 Feb 13 at 11:20 pm
Presumably that was you “beating me to a pulp” again, JC.
LOL.
As I’ve said elsewhere, you are clearly beating something with your invisible hand, but since you haven’t laid a finger on me – I just watch your content-free posts with their empty insults float on past – I think you’ll find the thing you’re beating closer to home.
William Bragg
13 Feb 13 at 11:30 pm
This must be really getting to you Braggs as it’s now the third time you’ve made the same comment.
You have no basic understanding of economics and it’s funny how you really try to imply otherwise. We’re starting to own your tiny brain like all the other lefties that show up here. Pretty soon you will go mad like the others and ready for the mental ward.
I laugh at yours. Anyone who could suggest a tax is simply a mere transfer is an economic illiterate; an imbecile, basically.
Jc
13 Feb 13 at 11:38 pm
Well, you’ve misrepresented me again. I never said a tax is “simply a mere transfer”; indeed, I’ve explicitly acknowledged that taxes have costs. What I said is that the %150billion cited by Monckton and indirectly Kates is a transfer, and not the cost of the carbon tax.
2dogs and Rose have at least had the good grace to effectively acknowledge that the $150b is a transfer. You lack both the grace and either the intelligence and/or honesty to do so.
Keep frothing away though, JC, if it makes you happy and keeps you off the streets. The people who matter know your game.
William Bragg
13 Feb 13 at 11:48 pm
I’ve not read what Rose and Dogs said, but if they suggest a tax is a transfer like you have they would be wrong too, Braggs, you numbnut.
The $150 billion that Monckton is talking about is real. It includes a loss of growth potential. It gets hidden because it’s difficult to dissect but it there.
Making our energy costs some of the highest in the Western world has hobbled us, you fuckwit.
.
And
It’s truly fuycking amazing that an energy importer like Japan has lower energy costs than we do.
You’re fucking dickhead Braggs. If this isn’t a red flag, nothing will ever register in that tiny brain of yours. Now fuck off.
Jc
13 Feb 13 at 11:57 pm
Yea? Really?
this is what you said as a response to me suggesting you do not understand what a cost is referring to it as a transfer.
another blood nose.
Jc
14 Feb 13 at 12:01 am
As I said, keep frothing away if it makes you feel good. But given your continual misrepresentations of those you disagree with, and your inability to conduct an even moderately civil and rigorous argument, don’t expect to be given much credence where it counts. The people who matter know your game.
William Bragg
14 Feb 13 at 12:04 am
Lol. I’m not of of course. I’m making fun of you while plucking you till you look like a skinny featherless chook.
Na. Not true. You’re lying. I’ve represented you in the clearest way.
You mean like this, you appalling dickhead.
You’re a dishonest unaware piece of shit, Braggs.
Jc
14 Feb 13 at 12:14 am
And that’s the best you could find of me being uncivil – LOL! But really JC, stop beating yourself up so much about me and letting me get under your skin so easily. I’m only a troll, after all.
William Bragg
14 Feb 13 at 12:21 am
That’s just one thread, you dickhead. It’s you demanding civility and raising an issue about my incivility to you.
You really are fucking stupid , Braggs. A complete imbecile. You trip over a rake when there isn’t one.
We know and a very stupid one too.
Jc
14 Feb 13 at 12:24 am
All together now. An entire country paying higher taxes leading to higher energy costs for no other reason than to satisfy a fictitious problem is a transfer, not a cost. It all works out in the wash.
As I already posted, we might as well force everyone to do the chicken dance at 10 am. That will be costless as well, right?
Excuse me while I go smash my neighbours windows to make them richer. They won’t mind, because they’ll rejoice in the transfer.
When I’m done I’ll post some words I overheard from a treasury briefing and call everyone else stupid. I learnt on this thread that’s the way it’s done.
Not one positive economic outcome arises from the carbon tax. Not one. $150 billion, if that is the figure, is just the starting point.
brc
14 Feb 13 at 12:24 am
Time to resolve the problem by experiment.
We burn the witch and see if our taxes start generating some slightly valuable goods or services and we live happily.
If not, we grant a posthumous pardon to the witch and we still all live happily
Apart from the witch.
WhaleHunt Fun
14 Feb 13 at 12:27 am
Sorry brc, but the problem with your window analogy in this context has already been pointed out. Breaking windows involves a real resource cost (just as does forcing people to go dancing); aside from the transactions costs, transferring money from one part of the economy to another does not of itself cost resources.#
Now, whether a positive outcome arises from the carbon tax or not is not relevant to the point of whether the cost of the carbon tax is $150b, as Monckton in his supposedly “killer questions” wrongly claimed. Nor is it the ‘starting point’, for the reasons explained above.
Now, if you have some solid arguments for rebutting the points I made, then feel free to bring them forward. But otherwise, just repeating simplistic and discredited talking points, JC-style, adds little of value to the debate.
William Bragg
14 Feb 13 at 12:40 am
Braggs you are a fuckwit for many reasons, not the least of which for supporting the CO2 tax and therein the scam of AGW.
In economic terms your ‘transfer’ is meaningless because you have not addressed the main consequence of the tax which is GDP shrinkage.
Most taxes do not kill the goose they are taking eggs from; however, the purpose of the CO2 tax is to increase energy costs and inevitably that will reduce economic activity.
That shrinkage, which I linked to before, vastly exceeds the $150 billion and will run into the trillions.
cohenite
14 Feb 13 at 9:53 am
Smashing windows relates to the broken window fallacy, you ignorant buffoon.
Making people pay extra for energy for no reason is exactly the same kind of waste of resources as making people dance for no reason.
How anyone can try and defend the carbon tax is beyond me. There is not one redeemable feature about it.
Even Labor politicians are trying to run away, at least the ones facing election. Watch for the stampede after September 14th. Then merry travellers like Braggs will be posting with a striaght face ‘Oh, I always knew it was a bad idea’.
brc
14 Feb 13 at 9:56 am
Cohenhite and brc, where in any of the above 13 comments I have made on this matter have I supported or defended the carbon tax? What I have done is point out the false basis for one of Monckton’s (and Kate’s) “killer questions” on the tax.
Nor, contrary to the thrust of cohenhite, have I denied that there may be shrinkage from a carbon tax: indeed, I have explicitly acknowledged that taxes have deadweight costs associated with reductions in output of the taxed item. But this does not in any way invalidate the point I made about the erroneous basis for Monckton’s supposedly killer question.
Thus, as usual, unable to rebut the specific criticism I made, Cats resort to seeking to divert attention by attacking straw men of their own imagine’s creation, as well as wrapping that in the usual profanities and empty insults one uses to try to put down opponents when one lacks sufficient wit. (Actually, to be fair, Cats aren’t completely without some wit. JC, for instance, probably has 50 percent’s worth).
William Bragg
14 Feb 13 at 6:09 pm
Ok, condemn the carbon tax then. Tell us it is a useless, regressive, pointless tax. Or defend it. Take a stand, tell us what you think and end the conjecture.
The broken windows fallacy is hardly a straw man. It’s fundamental to understanding the impacts of regulations and taxes. But you already knew that.
To recap : you insist the tax is not a cost, merely a transfer, with a tiny bit of cost around the edges. Apart from the idiotic statement that a tax is not a cost because it just shifts money from one person to another.
It has been pointed out repeatedly that it is a very real cost on the economy, as stupid and pointless as tossing virgins into volcanoes or smashing windows. These points have not been addressed, you have responded with your usual reply of ‘youse cats dunno whats your talkin’ about’.
There is a cost, it is very large, and there are no benefits. Transfer that.
brc
14 Feb 13 at 6:45 pm
No, once again you misrepresent me. I have acknowledged a number of time above (for example, my comments of 7.26 Tuesday and 9.15 yesterday) that the tax involves costs as well as the transfer component. What I said is that the $150b transfer is not a cost.
Again, as noted above, I have in fact acknowledged that the tax entails costs. However, the point I was making was that the figure Monckton used for those costs is wrong. There is no need for me to address the merits of the tax, or the specific size of those costs, to sustain that point.
And yes, through their responses, Cats have indeed shown that they don’t know what they’re talking about.
William Bragg
14 Feb 13 at 6:58 pm
Braggs, you idiot.
We have close to the highest energy prices in the world now thanks to the Liars party when they should be the cheapest as we source essentially from brown coal which doesn’t carry a world price. In other words the raw material is basically free for fuck sake. It’s a mortal sin what’s going on and if there’s a heaven and hell the supporters of our artificially record high prices will end up in Dante’s 9th circle of hell for what they’ve done.
$150 billion in costs and lost potential would actually be a fraction of what our true economic costs are.
And answer BRC’s question. Don’t shirk away like a scolded varmint.
You moron Braggs.
Jc
14 Feb 13 at 6:58 pm
You mean comments like this one?
You were referring to costs then, you impudent fool. Costs aren’t banal, doofus. They are real.
Jc
14 Feb 13 at 7:01 pm
As I said, and through you’re own words you’ve confirmed, JC, you have neither the rigour or honesty to engage in serious debate, and only about 50% of the wit necessary to divert attention from your obvious deficits.
As for responding to challenges that are irrelevant to the veracity of the points I have, from Black Knight impersonators like brc and you, I could but have neither the need or desire. Keep frothing away if you must though, and maybe even try claiming “mission accomplished” again if it makes you feel better. But be aware that everyone who matters knows your game.
Fare well and rest in as much peace as your psychosis allows, Black Knight.
William (the conquerer) Bragg
William Bragg
14 Feb 13 at 8:11 pm
Oh please, let it be true, another dickhead gives it away.
blogstrop
14 Feb 13 at 8:16 pm
Asked to condemn the carbon tax, and won’t do it.
Even alp politicians are happy to codemn the carbon tax these days. Just wait until thye cop an electoral flogging over it. The rusted on useful idiots will still be fighting this war for years to come, like lost Japanese soldiers.
“it was a good policy” they’ll sob, while calling everyone else rednecks who just don’t understand.
brc
14 Feb 13 at 10:10 pm