“Demented thinking: Copenhagen didn’t work – but taxes will“. Climate economist William Nordhaus says in the January 2011 issue of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that carbon taxes are the best approach to achieve significant emissions reductions. Anthony Watts says “no way! Taxes are always bad!” and then posts the press release. Thus disproving Global Warming. Anthony’s readers supply the elaborate economic and political insights.
From the press release:
[William Nordhaus] says that it is necessary to raise the price of carbon to implement carbon policies so that they will have an impact on everyday human decisions, and on decision makers at every level in every nation and sector. At present, incentives and levels of involvement vary, and where some countries have implemented strong emission control measures, they only cover a limited part of national emissions. – Eureka Alert Press Release, Jan 5, 2011.
I really don’t know what the best political solution is for reducing our greenhouse gas emissions, but I’m willing to try anything that seems effective.
Funny, Anthony didn’t draw attention to this article from the same issue – Global warming: How skepticism became denial. Here’s the abstract:
The conversation on global warming started in 1896, when a physical chemist estimated that the mean global temperature would rise several degrees if the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere was doubled. The topic eventually became one of the most passionate in the history of science. The author points out that climate experts were initially strongly skeptical of the theory of global warming; it took a variety of evidence to gradually convince them that warming due to human emissions was likely. The public, however, was guided away from this conclusion by a professional public relations effort, motivated by industrial and ideological concerns. Deniers of the scientific consensus avoided normal scientific discourse and resorted to ad hominem attacks that cast doubt on the entire scientific community—while disrupting the lives of some researchers. The author points out that scientists have failed to mount a concerted public relations campaign to defend their position. When trust is lost, he asserts, a determined effort is needed to restore it.
Wott's Up With That? 
“carbon taxes are the best approach to achieve significant emissions reductions.”
It’s not necessary to do this. Presently the US Fed is printing money by the bazillions of dollars, thus reducing the value of each dollar. It’s called Qunatitative Easing. As a result, the price of oil will rise since it requires more of these devalued dollars to buy a barrel. This in effect is the same as a carbon tax. However, as interest rates rise again and the dollar regains some of it’s value, the price of imported oil will fall again, effectivly a reduction of this carbon tax. In the end, a carbon tax or a devalued dollar still only hurts low and middle income people, the wealthy will not notice. I don’t know why the Left like to hurt the poor so much. I don’t know how they sleep at night.
[Thus disproving Global Warming? Your economics lecture seems rather simplistic too. – Ben]
The wealthy will not notice. Huh!
Since when did the wealthy notice the price of anything that eats away at the paltry incomes of the poor or mangles the carefully managed expenditures of the middle classes.
The only thing that the wealthy notice is taxes. Taxes, shock, horror! No matter how derisory, no matter how feeble, taxes always get the attention of the wealthy. They will happily spend many multiples of the actual tax costs on legal fees – rejoicing in the fact that the money outlaid didn’t “go into government coffers”.