$100 per ton carbon price?

just_sayin

If you want details on what a carbon price is about and how it would be enacted please read this wiki for the basics

Pointing to a Wikipedia page is not a debate argument.  Links should SUPPLEMENT evidence for your argument, not BE your argument.  This is poor debating.

Your debate failed to identify what kind of carbon tax are you proposing.  There are at  least 61 different global pricing initiatives right now according to the World bank.  31 of these are ETS programs and 30 are carbon taxes (source World Bank 2019 data).  There are a wide variety of plans.  Would your plan be just for power plants?  Would it encompass gasoline?  What about other types of carbon emission?  Who would be excluded?  Would your plan be so called 'revenue neutral'  ***cough**** no such thing ***cough***.  You don't say, and you possibly don't know.

You don't explain your reasoning for why a carbon tax is needed.  Its just a vague generalization.  A carbon tax purpose is to induce pain; to financially harm someone so much that they will change their behavior.  Why is the whip approach better than the carrot approach?  Why should we induce more pain and suffering, rather than focus more money on research or mitigation efforts?  You don't make a case for why we should do this.

You don't identify why $100 per ton of carbon is the right amount or why a carbon tax is the right approach at all.  In doing a quick Google Search I could not find anyone advocating for a carbon tax this high for the US.  Why do you think that is?.  None went higher than $50 a ton.  The reason is that the economic impacts are severe.  According to the responsible investor, using Goldman Sach's research:

A $100 a ton carbon tax would take 100 of net income from 14.5 percent of businesses immediately.  In other words at least 14.5% of businesses would have to spend 100 percent or more of their net income just to pay the carbon taxes.  But it would economically devastate at least half of all businesses.  They go on to say that nearly one-quarter of companies would suffer a 50% drop in earnings and 60% of utility companies would lose all or more of their net income.  

Further, even under 'revenue neutral' schemes, costs are inevitably passed on to consumers.  Several studies for the Clean Power Plan which only dealt with energy companies found that up to 20% of the lowest quintile's take home pay would be lost due to increased energy and transportation costs.  

But the most damning piece of information that you omit is how much a $100 a ton of CO2 would change the global temperature by 2100.  Even though it would cost trillions of dollars annually with global participation,  Even the most extreme plans  would not get us to 0 percent of CO2 emissions.  And according to congressional testimony based on the UN's modeling tool  if there were ZERO CO2 emissions today

these regulations would result in negligible environmental benefits (<0.2°C temperature mitigation and less than 2 cm of sea level reductions)

So let me summarize my opponents position:

1) He doesn't know enough to even make an argument about the topic

2) He posted a link and thought that was "debating"

3) He is more concerned about virtue signaling that solving problems

4) He discounted alternative approaches out of hand without any justification

5) He is eager to inflict severe harm on businesses and poor people who will bear the brunt of his virtue signaling policies

6) His solution doesn't solve the problem

So inconclusion, Dreamer is ignorant of the issue he is debating and he wants to harm poor people (again).  

Is this approach of ignorance and evil the one we should take?  I argue that there is a better way to address the issue that will not inflict the massive level of harm on poor people that Dream is eager to do.  Focusing on research initiatives will help to lower energy costs and will then naturally cause people to change to methods that produce low or no CO2.  We saw this with how fracking led to lower natural gas prices which cut US emissions significantly.  It accomplished what 60 plus carbon tax schemes have not - it significantly lowered a countries CO2 emissions.  Now, it may take research and technology slightly longer to get to 0 CO2 emissions, but there will be a negligible temperature difference than the approach that destroys half of all businesses and takes away at least 1/5th of poor people's take home pay check.

Money is a limited resource.  Spending trillions of dollars a year for negligible temperature change difference may make virtual signalers happy, but it won't solve the problem.  There are many more problems in the world today than just global warming.  Wasting money on something where you will have a negligible difference is an irresponsible use of limited resources.

Dreamer

First, I want to thank Just_Sayin for accepting the debate.

This my round one. The interlocutor seems confused about what I wrote before which is just a description which I attempted to keep neutral while giving basic information to set the foundation for the debate.

The first source Just_Sayin uses is unknown to me and is behind a paywall. The second source is overtly bias having the anti-climate change action Heritage foundation logo on the page and written by the author Dayaratna which a quick search will reveal contributes many articles to the same foundation.

"The Heritage Foundation has been criticized for taking positions that are favorable to the tobacco industry as well as for blocking action on climate change."

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/heritage-foundation/

As for which plan to use, that depends upon the region. Some plans will worker better in some countries than others.

Just_Sayin then talks about how much money this will cost. Exaggerating the costs and relying upon bias links. 

The cost of inaction is much higher than action. There is still scientific variance in exactly how much the social cost is but this peer reviewed journals says $185.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-022-05224-9

 Another has $3,000 social cost of carbon per ton as linked below.

 

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1748-9326/ac1d0b

That being said a $100 carbon tax is generous and if any criticism is to be had it is simply too low. We need to stop the industry freeloading of co2 pollution.  Healthcare costs, loss of productivity, and deaths all cause by pollution.

Even a $20 carbon tax would help.

just_sayin

@Dreamer
In my statement in the first round I said Dreamer  doesn't know enough to even make an argument about the topic.  I want to thank Dreamer for helping me to once again prove this point with his second statement.  Even though he was asked to identify the approach he is arguing for he does not.  One is left to wonder if we are debating cap and trade, carbon taxes or ETS programs and if these are just for electrical plants or gasoline.  He does not explain the feasibility of these taxes, nor where the money goes.  He was specifically asked why $100 carbon tax was the right amount and he does not give specifics.  Instead he gives an ominous and vague "The cost of inaction is much higher than action. There is still scientific variance in exactly how much the social cost is but this peer reviewed journals says $185."  And as always Dreamer uses a web link to make his argument, while he provides no details.

Dreamer claims my links are 'biased' because one site argued against an outrageously high vaping tax.  How this matters to the figures cites is anyone's guess.  I doubt Dreamer even knows what he meant.  The congressional testimony link is from a climatologist who has been asked to testify over half a dozen times to Congress about the issue of Climate Change.  It really doesn't matter if he shares Dreamer's politics or not, because the number of less than 0.2 Degree Celsius is not his invention, but comes from the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change modeling tool.  This tool is available tor anyone to use.  Citing it is not 'biased' as Dreamer says, 

What does the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) say about carbon taxes, specifically high carbon taxes?  Well, even they have not done the calculations for the outrageous amount of $100 a ton.  Why is that?  Professor Richard Tol—a contributing, lead, principal, and convening author for the IPCC - showed that a high global CO2 tax starting at the lower amount of $68 a ton (designed to limit temperature rises to less than 2°C) could reduce world gross domestic product by a staggering 12.9 percent in 2100—the equivalent of $40 trillion a year—costing 50 times the expected damage of global warming (Tol, Richard S., 2009, “An Analysis of Mitigation as a Response to Carbon Change”).

Further Pol's numbers came from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum. About half the models found it impossible to keep temperature rises lower than 2°C with carbon cuts, so the $40 trillion price tag comes from the models that could. Gee, I don't remember Dreamer mentioning that literally half of all climate models say it is impossible to keep the 2 degree Celsius increase goal with carbon taxes.  

Wow, so even the UN doesn't recommend this global high carbon tax as Dreamer falsely claimed.  Its economic cost would devastate the global economy, doing more damage than the cost of global warming.  Wonder why Dreamer didn't mention that?  I suspect it goes back to my first point, that Dreamer is ignorant of this issue and doesn't understand the nuisances of it.   

Now had Dreamer not been ignorant, he would have known that even with implementing his draconian carbon tax that non-carbon emitting energy sources are not yet sufficient to power the globe.  Economists Chris Green and Isabel Galiana (Green and Galiana, 2009)  examined non-carbon-based energy sources such as nuclear, wind, solar, and geothermal and found that, taken together, alternative energy sources would get us less than halfway toward stable carbon emissions by 2050. We need many times more non-carbon-based energy than is currently being produced. (Green, Chris, and Isabel Galiana, 2009, “An Analysis of a Technology-led Policy as a Response to Climate Change”)

Since, half of the models say a global carbon tax would even work anyway, instead of wasting $40 trillion a year for less than 0.2 degree Celsius temperature change, we could invest in research and new technology.  For a fraction of the investment of carbon taxes, which will severely harm poor people and world economies, we could focus on new technologies.  This would be more beneficial in 2 major ways: 1) new technologies would provide better means of having energy sources with 0 CO2 emissions that can size up to meet the global energy needs, both now and the future, and 2) investment in new technologies will allow for the discovery of methods to cut their financial costs, making them more accessible and affordable.  If something costs less people are more willing to switch to it than if it is more expensive.  

Again, I repeat another claim I made about Dreamer's approach - Dreamer doesn't care about poor people.  He has pretended that he cares about the planet, but when sources point out the futility and expense of his scheme, he wants to dismiss them out of hand as 'biased' rather than admit the enormous costs involved.  For that reason, Dreamer, and extremists like him, are the real enemy of the poor.

Forcing people to drive EV cars that are on average $10,000 more expensive than gasoline cars, just puts an unbearable burden on the poor.  Increasing someone's electric bill by $1,000 or more a year (as Germany's forced switch to solar did) may make the virtue signaling club Dreamer is a member of happy, but it makes it harder for a poor person to keep their lights on.  Add to this the compounded fact that higher energy and transportation costs makes everything more expensive and you quickly see how it would cost global economies $40 trillion.  

If Dreamer's $100 a ton carbon tax weren't evil enough, he claims it is probably too 'low'.  I present this as evidence of my second claim that Dreamer wants to harm poor people.

Dreamer

@just_sayin

First, I want to thank the contender for continuing the debate. Second, I want to expose the reason to debate on vs one. This is a lot of claims that the interlocutor has made in a single round. Just reading the post, partially understanding it, and finding a few key flaws can take quite a bit of time and mental energy. 

 Let alone a full understanding, finding all the evidence based flaws, and the logical fallacies, writing a full rebuttal, finding two peer reviewed journals to back up each premise, and keeping it neat and organized so others can better comprehend.

Imagine if I had to argue against several people at the same time. This would be really difficult if not impossible to keep track of. Especially when for every post I make I get a response from multiple deniers.

I want to add one more argument about social costs of carbon I heard on NPR (national public radio). Crabs are being reduced in number and it is probably due to ocean acidification. This is really harming fisherman because then they go from the approx $3.50 a pound snowcrabs to the $.50 cod. Furthermore, with everyone fishing for cod there isn't enough to go around. Fisherman need specialized equipment for cod in lieu of crab which they couldn't afford.

"Carbonate ions are an important building block of structures such as sea shells and coral skeletons. Decreases in carbonate ions can make building and maintaining shells and other calcium carbonate structures difficult for calcifying organisms" noaa

https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/acidification.html

https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1155676

https://skepticalscience.com/ocean-acidification-global-warming-intermediate.htm

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2022/10/15/alaska-snow-crab-season-climate-change/

" some 90 percent of snow crabs mysteriously disappeared ahead of last season." Andrew Jeong

Climate change might be responsible. Either by weakening their shells or by changing the behavior of predators and both could be caused by ocean acidification by climate change. The point this is a dynamic situation with unexpected results.

This is why when Just_saying uses articles from 2009 that I can't even find easily they can be dismissed as obsolete. This is similar to Michael Moore's misinformation film that uses old data to attack renewables.

The problem is renewable energy even in the last few years has gotten a lot more efficient. This is a rapidly changing field.

So, while Just_Saying might be correct if this was 2009 about GDP, who cares, this is 2023, 14 years later and a lot has changed. As we mass produce renewables and build them to scale the efficiency dramatically increases.

I seriously doubt a climatologist would make those claims, and what exactly is a climatologist anyways? Are they an expert of experts like a climate change scientist? The IPCC recommends a carbon price.

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a price level of $135–5500 in 2030 and $245–13,000 per ton CO2 in 2050 would be needed to drive carbon emissions to stay below the 1.5°C limit.[8]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_price#cite_note-8

I'm not even sure what ETS program stands for Just Saying mentioned.

At this point I am going to continue to expose Kevin D Dayaratna.

https://www.desmog.com/kevin-dayaratna/

None of his degrees are in climate science. Furthermore he works at the infamous big fossil fuel front group the heartland institute.

"The Heartland Institute is an American conservative and libertarian public policy think tank known for its rejection of both the scientific consensus on climate change and the negative health impacts of smoking.[2]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heartland_Institute

A questionable source according to mediabiasfactcheck.

https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/heartland-institute/

Enough said, I would treat everything Kevin Dayaratna says as coming from Satan himself. He is a fake expert and his credibility couldn't be any lower. 

At this point I am going to call the debate and save the reader's eyes. I could make a longer fuller rebuttal but that is not necessary and may overwhelm the audience weakening my argument. 

https://skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-economy.htm

Thanks again for the debate, I plan to mostly or entirely skip round three.

just_sayin

I want to thank my opponent for setting up the debate and participating.  I do not question his passion for the topic.  I do question his knowledge about the topic and how his 'plan' would harm poor people and global economies.

In my first and second argument I observed that my opponent seems ignorant of the issue he is debating.  In his second response he asked what Emissions Trading Schemes (ETS) are.  According to the World Bank, "An ETS is an explicit carbon pricing instrument that limits or caps the allowed amount of GHG emissions and lets market forces disclose the carbon price through emitters trading emissions allowances."  ETS programs account for about half of all carbon reduction programs.  Someone debating carbon taxes should have known that basic information.

My opponent has been asked each round to identify the specifics of his $100 carbon tax.  He was asked to define how it would be carried out and just which types of carbon emissions it would tax.  He failed to provide that information. He was asked to explain why a $100 a ton carbon tax was the right amount.  In his second response he commented that "a $100 carbon tax is generous and if any criticism is to be had it is simply too low."  Yet in his third argument, he seems to have abandoned his 'plan' and says this:

"According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, a price level of $135–5500 in 2030 and $245–13,000 per ton CO2 in 2050 would be needed to drive carbon emissions to stay below the 1.5°C limit.[8]"

So, it seems Dreamer himself says $100 a ton carbon tax is the wrong amount.  By the way, the UN does not advocate for a carbon tax that high.  Unfortunately, Dreamer wants to harm poor people even more, and destroy the global economy, by making his carbon tax even higher.  Dreamer's quote reveals how he isn't aware of the facts involving this topic.  I've already provided evidence that if there was 0 CO2 emissions everywhere in the world TODAY  that the global temperature would still continue to rise, FOR CENTURIES TO COME, and would only be abated by 0.2 degree Celsius by 2100.  That calculation was made with the UN's own climate tool. Dreamer's response was to ignore that. He accepts some UN statements as gospel but dismisses summarily any of their evidence if it doesn't fit his position.  He instead attacked the man who cited the UN evidence.  Dreamer was provided the link to use the UN tool for himself and verify the results.  But I doubt he understands the topic enough to do so.  Also of note, Dreamer never identifies the total costs of his plan - specifically to businesses or the poor.  He doesn't even do a general cost of how much his $100 a ton carbon tax will raise a year.  Nor does he identify just how much the global temperature will be reduced from its expected increase of between 2 - 4.5 degree Celsius expected increase.  And I doubt he himself knows or cares.  

In contrast to Dreamer's vague 'plan' with no details.  I provided specifics from a lead researcher for the UN.  

Professor Richard Tol—a contributing, lead, principal, and convening author for the IPCC - showed that a high global CO2 tax starting at the lower amount of $68 a ton (designed to limit temperature rises to less than 2°C) could reduce world gross domestic product by a staggering 12.9 percent in 2100—the equivalent of $40 trillion a year—costing 50 times the expected damage of global warming (Tol, Richard S., 2009, “An Analysis of Mitigation as a Response to Carbon Change”).

Further Pol's numbers came from the Stanford Energy Modeling Forum. About half the models found it impossible to keep temperature rises lower than 2°C with carbon cuts, so the $40 trillion price tag comes from the models that could.

Dreamer's weak defense was 'that was true in 2009, but not today'.  And he is correct, just wrong about the cost, as it would be much more costly to implement today.  Dreamer's non-plan has omitted key information - first developing nations need cheap energy to help their countries be first world countries.  Therefore it is highly unlikely they will abandon cheaper energy sources and choose instead to let their children starve.  Further, without the participation of large carbon emitters like China and India - any carbon efforts will have little to no effect.  So little, that we can't accurately measure such a small change to even verify if our efforts made any change at all.  The instrumentation just isn't fine tuned enough to make that determination for such a small differentiation in temperature.  

While there have been major improvements in technology regarding energy, there is still a long way to go.  No honest person believes that we could be carbon free in our energy sources by 2030.  A very overly optimistic UN report said "Cheap electricity from renewable sources could provide 65 percent of the world's total electricity supply by 2030."  This report assumes magic occurs and that issues with solar batteries and the issues with the electric grid handling these changes are auto-magically resolved.  They may indeed may be, but there are no large scale solutions for them at this time.  

Dreamer's plan isn't really a plan at all.  It is more like a mantra - 'tax people and the planet will be magically OK'.  The reality is that for many centuries to come, the global temperature will continue to increase even if we had 0 CO2 emissions today.  Either Dreamer is ignorant of these realities or he has a malicious intent in misleading people.  I've chosen to see his actions as driven by ignorance.

Instead of presenting a 'plan', Dreamer spent a large part of his argument talking about how Climate Change is affecting crabs and sea life.  No one disagrees, but pretending that a $100 carbon tax will solve the problem is misleading as temperatures will continue to rise for hundreds of years even with 0 CO2 emissions..

A second argument that I made is that Dreamer wants to hurt poor people.  Now, I'm sure that if you asked Dreamer point blank he'd tell you that he doesn't hate poor people, yet by deliberately ignoring the consequences of his plan Dreamer has displayed a gross indifference to those who would face a disproportionate brunt of his 'plan'.  I have pointed out that  the cost for a $68 a ton  carbon tax could would world gross domestic product by 12.9 percent in 2100 - the equivalent of $40 trillion a year—costing 50 times the expected damage of global warming.  And that's just a portion of what he proposes.  I've pointed out that Germany's switch to solar energy made the average home's electric bill increase by almost $1,000 a year..  And I've pointed out that it would be a financial hardship to mandate EV cars as the average cost is $10,000 more than a gas powered car.  I've also pointed out the cumulative inflationary effect that this would have as everything that uses either energy or transportation would cost more.  Estimates for Obama's Clean Power Plan found that the lowest income earning quintile of workers would see a net loss of 20 percent of their take home pay.  The Obama plan only involved the transition of power plants away from coal.  So, the negative consequences are real.  Yet, Dreamer ignored them.  He did not even acknowledge these people's plight and he provided no means of relief for them.  Having been informed of the harm his 'plan' would have, he continued on with it, so we must assume that he is willing to inflict great harm to poor people, even though this will not change global temperatures by even 0.02 degree Celsius.  

Instead of wasting 40 trillion dollars a year and destroying global economies, we could invest in new technology.  This would cost much less and it would help to bring about lower carbon emissions through creating new energy sources and by lowering current clean energy sources.  Dreamer failed to even mention viable alternatives and chose instead to go full throttle on a plan that will harm poor people, but not make a discernible difference in global temperatures.

Dreamer

"That calculation was made with the UN's own climate tool. " Just Saying

Just because a calculation was made doesn't mean it is correct. People misread data, graphs, misuse logical fallacies, and more all the time.

"Climate economics research shows that in reality, we are harming the economy by failing to implement CO2 limits."

https://skepticalscience.com/co2-limits-economy-advanced.htm

"Even the most conservative economists agree that reducing carbon emissions will result in a net economic benefit."

"Overall, by failing to put a price on and reduce carbon emissions, and by continuing to rely on fossil fuels, we are damaging the economy.  Those who argue the converse are failing to account for the costs of damage caused by climate change."

I could make a longer argument, but its best not to overwhelm. Despite, the popular idea you must respond to every argument your opponent makes and rebut it.

"Don’t overwhelm them with information"

 "It’s not easy to change a belief. It takes time and effort from both sides to come to a fruitful conclusion. Too much information can be intimidating and may evoke negative feelings. Try to keep track of the person’s reactions and stop when you see them reach their limits. Focus on deconstructing one or two arguments, not their whole belief structure."

https://skepticalscience.com/docs/CommsFlyer-en.pdf

There is also the notion that people who are overwhelmed make worse decisions possibly due to ego-depletion. This is where spam bots can really harm society, the more memes the faster misinformation spreads. Anyways, I thought I would explain why I am cutting this round short. A longer post of mine would only serve science denial.