I can think of no better way to set up a bad incentive for the temperature data to be fudged to the the benefit of government. Isn’t it bad enough that they feed us bad numbers on inflation now? Understating it so they can bilk old folks out of their inflation increases, and not pay higher rates on Treasury Inflation Protected Securities.

Do “climate predictions” (I guess you mean models) even predict a day out? Can you even measure “global temperature” over periods shorter than a year given the fact that we need a complete seasonal cycle to get an average? Nope, doesn’t work. You can’t go back and compare with one year ago at the same season either. There is no such method.

So how can you imply or even believe that “climate predictions” are accomplishing anything at all? They are no good for any length of time long or short.

“Even if we feel 99% certain that a catastrophe will not occur, we should be looking really hard at how to prevent or mitigate it in the 1%. The more dire the consequences, the harder we should try.

How about this. Let’s say we don’t do the impossible and reduce CO2 levels back to preindustrial level and say we merely completely stop current and future CO2 production. How many people would die then, and how certain are we that they would die? I’d say billions and I’d say the certainty approaches 100%.

On the other end of the spectrum we have the scare that maybe someday someone might be too stupid to evacuate his house during a hurricane warning (a warning made available by burning CO2). Funny thing is that this is not a new problem. This happens now and is due to weather, and not climate.

In addition CO2 is a plant fertilizer and an important one because it is a limiting factor in plant growth in many areas, and one that agriculture can’t cheaply enhance. Our most fertile crop lands will become more productive. Increased temperatures will also give us longer and warmer growing seasons, plus additional rains.

“The aggregate effects of global warming are also hard to predict, but at the very least we can be pretty sure that many people will die, through famine, lack of clean drinking water, disease, drowning, and a number of other factors. “
Drowning? Do you think people are going to be spending more time in their swimming pools due to warm temps?

One can make all sorts of scary predictions. How about this. If temperatures remain constant there is a danger that disease will adapt to the more constant temperatures and spread more rapidly.

How is this any different than Pascal’s Wager? Better believe in God because well the dangers are so high and the costs so little. However in this case the costs of not using fossil fuels are enormous, and the dangers are not only speculative, but are dangers that we already cope with. Yep, people in the Neatherlands have coped with lands subsiding into the seas at a much greater rate than predicted rates due to these faulty models. Yep, we have been dealing with hurricanes, tornados, rainfall, floods, etc. long before we even started mining the first fossil fuels.

More people die in 3rd world countries from the weather than in those countries that use lots of fossil fuels. Perhaps if they used more they wouldn’t have such problems.

The data is clear that global warming has been happening, nobody really refutes that anymore. “

Refutes? I guess you meant disputes. Sure there are people who dispute it because it’s such a vague concept. What does “global warming” mean? Does it mean that temperatures have warmed since the last Ice Age? Does in mean that temperatures have warmed since “The little Ice Age”? Does it mean that temperatures have warmed since the ’60s. What precisely does it mean? Does it mean that humans have so influenced the environment that we have affected it by an order of magnitude above natural fluctuations?

All other things being equal, well more CO2 is going to mean higher temperatures. What’s in dispute is how much. What’s also in dispute is whether it is cost effective to make an attempt to prevent something from changing that has a long history of changing. We certainly don’t want the natural course of events to take place and for the next ice age to start on schedule. Now that would be a disaster that would dwarf any problems due to higher temperatures.

But before you take the bet, you should be clear that, …”no matter the cause.” isn’t exactly right. The tropical troposphere is expected to warm much less if warming is driven by the sun or current oscillations (which may in turn be driven by the sun).

So the tax is likely to only ameliorate warming damage if humans truly cause it. We’d still need to take steps towards adaptation if there is substantial warming or cooling due to natural factors.

My impression is that, among scientists who study climate for a living, ~95% of them believe global warming is human-related. For me, that’s good enough. Yes, group-think is always possible, but I wouldn’t bet humanity’s future on the possibility that climate scientists are all deluded.

That said, I would have no objection the proposal above. Under that scheme, we’d be taking effective steps against global warming damage no matter what the cause. Hooray!

I’m the skeptical friend in question, so I agree with you both in some Platonic sense. However, what we have right now is not a rational debate, it is an ideological debate–a wasteful, harmful ideological debate that I don’t think skeptics can win in a reasonable amount of time.

What I like about the T3 tax is that it allows me, as a skeptic, to bet against the catastrophists. I think I’ll win the bet. They think they’ll win the bet. Terrific. We can just make the bet and move on to to a hopefully more rational debate about something more important.

The costs of the disaster scenario are not going to be infinite.