It’s much more likely that me and 20 other people see 2x, those ten people over there see 3x, that five see 6x, and that one guy sees 10x. In that case, the "envy factor" would be much less apparent.

And yes, everything has been getting cheaper over the whole spectrum, so an average factor of 3.06 in income increase (using my hamfisted example) isn’t going to reduce the 2x folks to penury.

Bryan Lovely’s last blog post..Legislate In Haste, Repent At Leisure

But I don’t think anything "needs to be done" about either; global warming is, in plainest Anglo-Saxon terms, bullshit*. And "income inequality", so long as it’s not created and perpetuated by law intended to keep a group down, is not a problem.

(* By which I mean all of "it’s not human-caused to any significant degree, and thus human fixes are unlikely to be practical", "it seems to have stopped for now anyway – due to changes in solar input if nothing else – and now the chicken littles are worried about ice ages, just like in the 70s", and "we can’t really stop "climate change" even if we thought it would be worth paying for, which it isn’t, given how dramatically expensive it would be to even try and inevitably fail [Kyoto]."

And I’m not going to listen to Aziz on this, as he says, not because I’m "from the Right", but because the evidence is against him. Carbon simply doesn’t explain the data. The models are completely wrong. And even according to the UN, global warming has "stopped" for at least a decade.

What kind of madness would I have to be party to to believe in anthropogenic global warming that needed immediate action to remedy it, under these conditions?)

(Contra Elizabeth, my impression of happiness studies is that that result applies to "peers"; if my neighbor gets a lot richer than me starting from the same base, I might be unhappy.

But I’m not unhappy because Bill Gates or Magic Johnson are fabulously wealthy.)

Aziz: No, not really. <I>Real wealth</i> has increased dramatically over the past century and change, and everything has gotten, in fact, <I>cheaper</i>. If everyone becomes richer through actual wealth creation** <I>rather than monetary inflation</i>, nobody is priced out of necessities.

I imagine the confusion comes from the way that observable short-term "everyone makes more in raw numbers" surges <I>only</i> happen via inflation rather than real wealth creation.

** IE, improved productivity

I’ve been answering them in this thread by reminding people that the tax will automatically decline to zero if the solar input theory is correct. That doesn’t seem to satisfy everyone, and it doesn’t answer jaymaster’s argument of a natural long-term warming trend other than the sunspot cycle.

I could modify the proposal to make the offset of the initial tax permenant no matter what happens with the indexing, and to include in the indexing formula a sunset provision so the carbon tax gets fully repealed if conditions that contradict the anthropogenic theory occur (warming without CO2 increase, or CO2 increase without warming) over a period of several years.

With those modifications, I can tell my critics on the right:

1. It’s the easiest way to kill the left’s proposals. If your theory is right, this proposal automatically repeals the tax. This is much, much better than a cap-and-trade plan which is a net tax increase and doesn’t respond to new information about temperature trends.

2. If your theory is right, this is just a sneaky way to get Democrats to vote for a tax cut, as the carbon tax sunsets and the offsetting tax cuts are made permenant.

3. If your theory is wrong, a revenue-neutral carbon tax is the right thing to do, and this is the least harmful way to do it.

Lots of people refer to GISTEMP as a reference.  Unfortunately, according to Gavin Schmidt of NASA GISS, less than 0.25 FTE is spent maintaining the package.
http://www.climateaudit.org/?p=4325
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/11/mountains-and-molehills/

That doesn’t begin to address the problems with measurement.  http://www.surfacestations.org/ has a good rundown on the US stations, and it’s not good.  The rest of the world is in worse shape for measuring temperature.

We do have satellite data.  Unfortunately that data is not as well accepted, and it goes back less than one PDO cycle.

There are several countries with decent education systems but poor economies, largely due to excess government bureaucracy and bad attitudes about business.  The Philippines is the best example, along with India before Rao’s reforms in the late 1980s.

Education works, but you need to make a place a good place to start up businesses as well.

foobarista’s last blog post..Political discussions, trust, and logical argument

We should also drill domestically, and start improving the power grid to allow widespread use of cars with an electric powertrain component.

As for indexing it to AGW factors, determining this level is darn near impossible – after all, AGW may not be happening at all, or the level may be swamped by other factors.  (For example, maybe you have a 0.5C rise due to AGW, but a 2C drop due to insolation changes)

You’ll just have to take your best shot with the tax.

foobarista’s last blog post..Political discussions, trust, and logical argument

But the problem it faces is that, while punting on the cause of global warming, it accepts teh validity of the statement that warming is taking place. Someone who does not believe ther eis any genuine warming going on is going to argue, why bother having any carbon tax indexed to temperatures at all? We certainly don’t have a peel tax indexed to the price of bananas. How do you answer your critiques from the right on this? (the certainly arent going to listen to me).

There is another theory. Actually it’s more of a scientific fact than a theory. And it’s based on solid geological science, not unproven theoretical models. 

All evidence points to the fact that the earth has been warming for the past 10,000- 20,000 years.  

The melting Arctic glaciers that we see receding on TV today once extended through New York to PA on the East Coast, down across Michigan, and into northern California on the West Coast.  The evidence is undeniable. 

And these glaciers didn’t occur during some distant dinosaur era (when America was no doubt a festering swamp land, btw).  They began their retreat in what is little more than a geological blink of an eye.  And it’s very likely we’re living in the same age where that warming, whatever its cause, is still occurring.   

Now, whether we might be accelerating the warming trend is open to debate.  But the general warming trend is undeniable, and certainly not caused by man.