Language is not something that comes naturally to me, it takes much effort; from the age of about 8 months to just over 3 years I was strongly to profoundly hearing impaired and, despite having a vocabulary at age 1 year of 2 standard deviations above the norm, my language skills suffered accordingly.

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I do not know the details of Eli’s proposal and cannot find it up this thread, though I suspect I have encountered it in one of the threads I was only browsing (I prefer to leave the AGW debate to you as your knowledge far outstrips mine on the matter). The mark-up which I referred to as a part of the third may be used for such investment, though I do realize that I did not declare such.

I much prefer the system which works with governments as ‘brokers’ and a international clearing house as this way allows the blame for any inbalences to be placed on governments and thus any discrepancies resulting from fraud are made easily seen and matter which must be delt with internal to the country, the mechanism of distribution within the country being irrelevant. This approach, though, is most certainly not revenue neutral but does allow for investment and for governments to alter internal influences of the carbon price.

~

So,
Internationally
- An international body approximates the amount of sequestration in each nation.
- That same body approximates the generation of each country.
- This body compares approximations to government reports and the sales and purchases made by that country.
- This body may investigate any country.
- This body acts as the intermediatary in all inter-nation trades.
- This body collects opperating costs through a rate on all exchanges.
Nationally
- Government purchases and sells sequestration via the intermediatary.
- Government places a flat levy on all emissions.
- Government charges levy at Lemission = Pemission * Rmark-up where the mark up is never a major component (i.e. never larger than GST).
- Government responsible for policing internally.

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Interestingly, my IQ estimation at age one would seem, initially, to lend some degree of support to my environmental effect IQ belief but then given that there is a 4-month space between onset and testing it can be considered an inferior score to what I would otherwise have and thus may have otherwise reflected my present score. Seeming to support your arguement as to only a very weak effect of environment. Though, by that age cognitive styles are partially endowed so even that score does not represent one independant of environmental influence.

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There is more CO2 in the ocean than there was before the industrial revolution began.

The CO2 is not “sequestered” there except for the activity of plankton which absorb, die and fall to the sea bottom. This IS a sink. It is a small part of the total CO2 absorbed by the ocean.

Both are measured and counted in the natural cycle, and modeled as part of the process we are experiencing.

You missed the blend between 2 and 3 where the gummint does the tax (and I liked Eli’s “carbon added tax” notion, though I see a difficulty), and then uses the revenue to make the investments. Including the purchases of local sequestration.

Not as efficient as the government run market perhaps, not saying I favor it… but it is there. The problem with markets is clearly that they are subject to fraud. Tax or tariff is easier to administer.

The costs are as predictable as any government activity is, but would at least have some buffering built in by the government standing between the emitter and the market. The advantage is there if it is used correctly, or if as National has done it is there to be abused as we can clearly see it being abused.

Labour presented a more clearly market based model. National has gone to a corporate welfare state for its design inspiration.

respectfully
BJ

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~

To the ocean point, the 1990 point is trivial and needs to be at least pre-industrial revolution if we are to make any meaningful difference or else we are ultimately just delaying disaster rather than preventing it.

That we havint used it to emit is irrelivant, that it is natural sequestration is irrelevant, that we havint improved its ability to sequester is irrelevant; the point is that it does sequester and it is in our territorial waters. If we can get the other nations to recognise the sequestration of the ocean as that of the country then we stand to make money from that.

At any rate, the ocean point is of little consequence. I suspected it would not be wise to bring up as it would distract from my point, it would seem I was correct (rare, I know).

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Finding cause is survival positive. Sufficiently so that the question “Why?” is built into our brains. We call it “curiousity” but for a species which bases its success on preventing natural processes locally (INside my house it is warm in winter), it occupies an even stronger position.

To the extent that for many people an unanswered “Why?” is so uncomfortable that they are compelled to invent Gods and Demons. Which quell the “Why?” and bring inner peace and tranquility, but at a large cost when these explanations are misapplied.

From an old Aussie beer commercial slogan. “Why ask why?”

Which is why we have to ask. Aren’t you glad you did?

respectfully
BJ

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You can’t count the ocean. You didn’t use it to emit. You can’t use it to sequester as it is part of a natural carbon sink and circulating to boot. You can’t count it because it isn’t counted by anyone else and You can’t count it because there is nothing you are doing to improve its ability to sequester. Which is to say it is the same now as it was before 1990.

Fuggedabowdit

As for your problem with the paragraphs… since you are cutting and pasting from an editor, one suspects that the editor is leaving its little paragraph signals in place of the spacing you desire, a trick that saves electrons and disk space but can be wearing on the nerves. There may be a setting in your editor that is appropriate to change this behaviour ( so I suspect that a programming editor might behave rather differently than OpenOffice or Word). First tell me what your set up is, I might have some suggestions. First one though, is to try a programming editor.

respectfully
BJ

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I can assure you that my commitment to academic integrity ensures that my ‘may’ are always well backed by theory and research, even if cross-field at times. If a psychologist ever says ‘will’ without a ‘most likely’ or ‘in some cases’ then they are being, quite simply, dishonest (postmodern/feminist?).

I changed to the heuristic science which is psychology because the shear complexity of the system is similtaniously a nightmare and a wet-dream, it is a journey of intrigue. While physics (string theory exempt) is beutiful in its simplicity and logical penetration, the mind is stunning in its complexity and situational, heuristic based, logic.

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Mainly because it it used to blame something onto an cause even if there are no correlations.

Witnessed this natural occurance

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2006/01/0119_060119_jellyfish. html

and the resultant blame

Another theory suggests that seas heated by global warming are better suited for breeding, turning the Nomura’s otherwise modest numbers into an armada.

For some reason we have to find cause in every occurance. Cant we just accept something as happening?

What I find highly encouraging is that smart people are turning an opportunity into a localised bonanza.

What to do with all the jellyfish they’ve caught? So far, resourceful anglers have turned their unwanted catch into crab food, fertilizer, and novelty snacks—served dried and salted.

What a positive occurrence for the jellyfish harvesters. Just the local fishermen will have to change from catching fish with nets to using poles and hooks or spears.

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It is only when I reached first year that there started to be a difference between my ’sentences’ and my ‘paragraphs’. Sentences are poorly suited to my way of thinking (thus my tendency for long sentences with lots of commas).

As to my prose, that may be attributed, variably, to one of two things; primarily my personal amusement (plus that some words just feel better than others in a given circumstance), or on occasion sleep deprivation. . My actual academic writing is, according to my supervisor and the like, well suited to the purpose; my engineer flatmate disagrees with my writing style (mostly my use of ‘may’ and my large use of qualification in my writing [he thinks it disqualifies it as science, I think it enhances the scientific integrity and differentiates me from the terrible post-modernist strains of psychology]), but psychologists deal with systems far more complex than engineers (no offense intended) and a different approach is thus necesitated. There is far more arse to cover when you use so many heuristics. Far less rules, much more intuition.

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I dont think the sea will count as a carbon sequester as it has been one since time began. How much more can it absorb?

Are the great oceans already filled with as much carbon as it can store? Where is the science to quantify the oceans storage capacity?.

The fourth way a carbon emmision reduction could work is not taxing or trading it at all. Simply let nature take its course and let global climate change (and the upcoming ending of the industrial age) remove humans ability and need to emit carbons to the degree we do.

Totally dont give a damn and let a natural progression of the new ages upon us (salvage and relocalisation) and a reduction in population take care of global climate change.

A simple double tap of the enter key is all you need between paragraphs. Indeed some of your longer sentences are paragraphs in themselves.

As an aside (and please dont take this in a slight on you but more as an obsevation on my part) it is interesting to see that your writings are generated to suit a particular market (university student? impressing a tutor with expansive prose) whereas others more attuned to getting a messeage across to more people may use far fewer and simpler words to say the same thing.

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All the alternatives are ugly. I think the least ugly is ~.

Okay, so:
Double-enter replaces single-enter as my first level distinction. (different leaves)
Enter-~-enter replaces double-enter as my second level distinction. (different branches)
Enter-HR-enter remains the third level distinction. (different trees)

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There are three major ways that a carbon tax can work, the first being the revenue neutral approach, the second being the investment approach, and the third being a pseudo-market approach via government.

The revenue neutral approach sounds nice and will reduce emissions as a result of putting a price on carbon but since this is revenue neutral any money which is to go to investment or to carbon sequestration must ultimately come out of the same tax pool as all services previously did and thus entails some major cuts to the funding of other services provided by government. Effectively a massive cut in social spending without any coresponding decrease in taxation. Additionally, since not all, or even none, of the money thus generated goes toward paying the owners of sequestration there is a large, to infinate, dissonance between the price paid by emitters and the price received by sequestration operators thus resulting in a deficit of carbon sequestration relative to carbon emission; the carbon sequestration having no relation with carbon emission should, as most such schemes propose, sequestrators not be paid at all. Thus under this scheme we will always have large net carbon emissions and no way to remove that emission other than by raising the tax (levy likely a more accurate description) level; something that will result in much economic and social degredation as we attempt to make the emissions ever lower.

The investment approach proposes that we place a levy on carbon and that we use the procedes to fund measures to reduce carbon production. Good in principle, not overly effective in practice, terrible when combined with the revenue-neutral approach of the Greens. This puts a price on carbon and thus causes a shift in supply and demand, in this way it decreases carbon emission. It also makes the transition to a less carbon-heavy infrastructure more readily done and thus achieves a greater emissions reduction than the revenue neutral approach. However, it suffers from the same problem, and for the same reasons, as the revenue neutral approach in that it it fails to achieve anywhere near zero net emissions; catastrophy delayed but still inevitable.

The third approach is less of a tax than a carbon trading market in which the government acts as the broker. In this approach all emissions are taxed and that tax is then used by the government to purchase carbon sequestration, the mark-up being a source of revenue. This carbon sequestration being purchased internally or externally. This works little different than a full-market and has advantages in that the bodies which need to be looked at are fewer in number though has disadvantages in that it opens the scheme up to political pandering and special tax rates bellow the actual market price. This scheme provides a motive for the emitter to reduce emission as a price has been put on carbon and allows a strong mechanism by which sequestrators are paid to sequester (read nulify) the remaining emissions. Under this scheme a full reduction to zero net emissions is not only possible but almost guaranteed upon full implimentation as a result of simple market dynamics. Under this scheme we can not just delay catastrophy but stop its arrival. This is the approach that I support, though a more pure market is also an option but comes with a whole different set of ‘perks’.

It should be noted that many countries have reserves which will provide substantial revenue to the government even in the absence of a surcharge on transactions. In New Zealand not only do we have reserves but also large territorial waters which annually sequester massive amounts of carbon; a potentially very large source of revenue for the government under a trading scheme as profits from the purchase of sequestration thus produced go straight to the governments pocket to be used on carbon efficency or whatever else the government decides to do with it. These are our terretorial waters, our juristiction, we have every right to claim the credits thus produced even if the major kyoto parties are not so well endowed.
______________________________________________

Okay, that seems to work to me. I think I will adopt the double-enter, triple-enter, and HR formatting. (I do wish I could just use the [HR] tag though)

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Can they fumble on for another year – or will their house of cards come tumbling down?

When their popularity stalls will they sacrifice Nick Smith as a distraction?

- move along now… nothing to see here…

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Did you want me to reformat the large post?

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Just a small quible.

Can you break your posting sentences into paragraphs?

Most difficult to read as is with endless sentences all flowing from one to the other.

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I don’t think the problem will be as difficult as you (or they) think it will be. I have a passing familiarity with the sort of resources that can be applied and the ability to cheat once the information goes through a central point will be markedly curtailed… except at that central point or by outright forgery. The tools exist to fight both of these and are fairly well understood.

Mind you.. I WOULD have preferred a simpler system. I don’t have any ability to get one.

BJ

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As Gerrit points out but I didn’t note explicitly, the trading isn’t set up yet. There are organization that are providing “credits” but without the central trading nexus, the organizations can double deal without much difficulty… and they STILL get caught because we are watching for it, but the policing of the system isn’t organised.

BJ

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As to your second post; irrelevant. I have said that such reduction measures can be taken and I have said that if one intends to keep it revenue neutral you must cut funding to other areas. The investment does not produce immediate windfalls and even if it did that too would be irrelevant as, since the tax is based on emission, the government would actually be collecting less tax relative to its carbon liability as Ptax = Pcarbon * Mark-up. If the sector is emitting less carbon we are collecting less tax from it and thus do not have that income and thus any gains by eliminating the bill for those emissions is nulified and given that there would likely be a mark-up over the market rate for credits it would actually be less revenue. Overall the ROI to the government will be tiny compared to those to the businesses as it is only the higher profit margin that will offer any such return while we are stuck with the consequences of, assuming revenue neutrality, interest on the loan to pay for it or the detriment to social services.
In the end we may get bellow our prescribed levels and thus be able to sell carbon credits but those levels are feel good nonsense and even if we were half those levels we would still be killing ourselves; we need zero net carbon emission globally or we are royally screwed and the first two options will never achieve that, not even with a price of $1000 per ton. We need the market mechanism and 100% carbon accountability. Unfortunately no politician has the insight nor the gonads to do anything about it.

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