This is a continuation of a remarkable thread that has now received 10,000 comments running to well over a million words. Unfortunately its size has become a problem and this is the reason for the move.
The history of the New Statesman thread goes back to December 2007 when Dr David Whitehouse wrote a very influential article for that publication posing the question Has Global Warming Stopped? Later, Mark Lynas, the magazine’s environment correspondent, wrote a furious reply, Has Global Warming Really Stopped?
By the time the New Statesman closed the blogs associated with these articles they had received just over 3000 comments, many from people who had become regular contributors to a wide-ranging discussion of the evidence for anthropogenic climate change, its implications for public policy and the economy. At that stage I provided a new home for the discussion at Harmless Sky.
Comments are now closed on the old thread. If you want to refer to comments there then it is easy to do so by left-clicking on the comment number, selecting ‘Copy Link Location’ and then setting up a link in the normal way.
Here’s to the next 10,000 comments.
Useful links:
Dr David Whitehouse’s article can be found here with 1289 comments.
Mark Lynas’ attempted refutation can be found here with 1715 comments.
The original Continuation of the New Statesman Whitehouse/Lynas blogs thread is here with 10,000 comments.
Robin
Brute has given his perspective from a US standpoint (where governments last 4 years).
From a Swiss standpoint (even though governments may last a few years longer here) the answer is still the same (the old “bird in the hand” thing).
I cannot say what your new coalition government in the UK will do, but it cannot be any worse than the path to which former PM Brown had committed. Maybe (if you’re lucky) it will actually be more reasoned (and less hysterical).
But you’ll have to admit that the AGW ploy is really ingenious in actual fact. It enables the governments to don the apparent mantle of “long-term thinkers” (avoiding an otherwise certain climate disaster in year 2100) by “short-term action” (levying a carbon tax – and increasing tax revenues – NOW). The best of both worlds, as they say (or a politician’s “dream come true”).
Max
Brute
BTW, you’ll be pleased to know that “googling” “Is Al Gore a scam artist?” gets 35,200,000 hits.
Hmmm…
Max
Brute/Max:
Re governments’ real intention, I’d hoped that my “(There’s no need to answer that.)” made my own view clear enough.
Robin (473)
Not even if you include the raw materials and energy required to manufacture the Fiat? Not that these things bother me unduly, but clearly they should matter to the greens, who are the ones exhorting us to scrap our (well, my) old vehicles.
Brute – I’m glad to hear that you’re a conservator as well as a conservative. I must admit that I thought Americans were keen on changing their cars, but that may be because I grew up reading copies of the National Geographic, which used to have glossy (and to me, exotic) ads for new models every year!
James,
Just curious……..what taxation would be involved with purchasing a new car in England?
For example, is it a one time tax on a new purchase or do you pay annual taxes on personal property?
Here in the US, I pay 5% when I purchase the vehicle……..one time, that’s it. Every two years it has to be retagged (no inspection)…..just another (tax) fee every two years $120.00.
Is this a discussion on various ‘scrappage’ car schemes? I heard about them when I was in the UK this winter.
I would say that you are probably quite right that the amount of energy required to build a new car hasn’t been properly factored into the calculations. In principle, from what I understood the scheme to be, UK residents could receive a government subsidy of about UKP2k to replace a car over ten years old with a new one regardless of whether it was any better in terms of emissions.
So, yes, the scheme had very little, if anything, to do with reducing CO2 emissions and everything to do with trying to keep capitalism going for a little while longer!
Max,
You’ve raised the ‘it’s all a scam’ argument again. Governments around the world have conspired together and supposedly brainwashed the world’s climate scientists and reprogrammed them to write papers about AGW just so they have an excuse to levy taxes on carbon dioxide emissions.
Do you really believe that? Its such a paranoid argument that it scarcely merits a reply. However, I would suggest that governments have successfully raised taxes for all sorts of reasons for many years now and they have never had to openly lie about the reasons for it. Sure they have bent the truth a little and left taxes in place long after the original stated reasons had passed. For instance, income tax was introduced in the UK as a temporary measure to fund the Napoleonic wars and similarly the Civil was in the USA. They are experts at they sort of stuff they don’t need AGW to do it.
Increasing globalisation makes it much easier for multinational companies to arrange their affairs so that they make losses where corporation taxes are high and big profits where they are low. Whereas, in most countries, taxation paid by individuals is rising, taxes paid by corporations are falling.
If governments were as smart as you suggest, they would be colluding with each other to stop it. Much easier than trying to herd cats, or rather control the opinions of independently minded scientists.
PeterM
You wrote:
No, Peter.
I have simply mentioned to Brute that
Check it out yourself and you will see why.
But your point on the suggestion that many scientists write papers that support the politicians’ views (who finance them) is a point worth considering. As several scientists have pointed out, “science” risks becoming corrupted, when such large sums of public money are at stake.
I’m sure that you are not so naïve to not see this danger, Peter. Or would you seriously claim it does not exist?
Max
PeterM
You wrote (482):
Corporate taxes vary by country: in most developed countries these are between 30% and 40%.
Highest corporate tax rates (2003 data) were in Japan (40.9%), Germany (39.6%) and USA (39.3%), while the lowest were in Ireland (12.6%), Norway/Sweden (28.0%), Finland (29%) and Australia/UK (30.0%).
http://www.cbo.gov/ftpdocs/69xx/doc6902/11-28-CorporateTax.pdf
Personal income taxes also vary considerably, with most countries having a “progression” (whereby larger incomes are more heavily taxed than lower incomes). In addition, most countries have a national VAT (or sales tax).
http://www.worldwide-tax.com/
Japan (5-50%, + 5% sales tax); Germany (14-45%, + 19% VAT), USA (0-35%, no VAT), Ireland (20-41% + 21% VAT), Norway (28-49% + 25% VAT), Sweden (0-57% + 25% VAT), Finland (7-30% + 22% VAT), Australia (17-45% + 10% sales tax), UK (0-40% + 17.5% VAT).
I have seen no statistics confirming your statement that corporate taxes are “falling” while personal income taxes are “rising”. Do you have any statistical data to support this claim?
Your point is very valid that taxes, which have been implemented to address a specific problem (real or perceived), are not automatically removed once that problem has gone away. If a “carbon tax” would be imposed to stop “global warming”, it is quite likely that this tax would continue, even if we had moved into a new ice age and “global warming” fears had long disappeared.
Max
PeterM
Back to personal income taxes.
During the US Bush administration, most of the tax burden was paid by those taxpayers with the highest incomes:
http://usgovinfo.about.com/od/incometaxandtheirs/a/whopaysmost.htm
This is expected to increase as the Bush tax cuts expire under the new Obama administration.
A similar “progression” exists in most countries.
Max
Ran accross this Peter to help things along.
Peter,
What would you think about a relatively small cadre of people, promoting the idea that a man was born through divine intervention, claiming that the man was the son of God and that he was the savior of the world……would you think that anyone could possibly be fooled by such a tall tale?
Would you think that millions of people worldwide would embrace this?
Could people actually be persuaded voluntarily to give their hard earned money to support this idea?
Could people believe so deeply in this idea that they could be persuaded to die on behalf of this idea?
That for over 2000 years they write prolifically about this?
That this organization “brainwash” millions of people, all over the world, to fervently follow this idea, oftentimes marching to war to kill non-believers that oppose this idea?
Could never happen………preposterous!
It’s rather nice and warm in London today, and here’s the Times quoting the Met Office’s Barry Gromett: “We are in for two cracking days this weekend. It is real ice-cream weather”. I heartily agree. In a nutshell: hot summer – nice! Freezing winter – not so nice. If the powers-that-be really believed in CAGW, you’d think this would be spun the other way round. Weather people on the TV would pull gloomy faces when talking of rising temperatures. The Met Office would not make connections between hot weather and pleasurable things like barbecues and ice cream. (They’d probably be on about sunstroke, wildlife extinctions and death!)
It would be interesting if we did get a heat wave to rival 1976 or 2003 this year. After such a freezing winter, it would be easy to determine which – cold or heat – is generally costlier, deadlier and less bearable.
Brute (480)
You’d think that was a simple question…
Firstly, there is VAT (currently 17.5% on most things), a bureaucratic wet dream that replaced the much simpler ‘purchase tax’ (like your sales tax) that applied before 1973.
Then there is a flat £55 ‘first registration’ fee for new cars, plus the ‘vehicle excise duty’ commonly known as road tax, which is now (inevitably) based on CO2 emissions. Electric and a few small cars squeeze under the wire here and are zero-rated, but most of us pay somewhere between £100 and £1000. This applies every year, although thankfully it doesn’t (yet) depend on your vehicle maintaining its emission rating.
However, once it is 3 years old, every vehicle has to undergo an MOT (ministry of transport) test that used to be just a basic roadworthiness inspection, but now includes an ever-widening raft of checks designed to reduce the useful life of your car and force you buy a new one! This costs about £50 and is annual after the honeymoon period.
As you probably know, we pay excise duty (like alcohol) on fuel, and VAT on top of that, making a UK gallon of petrol about £5.44 (over $8), which might be bearable if the resultant revenue (some £40bn) was spend on the roads but, of course, it isn’t…
http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/transport-fact-sheet-13.htm
And still we drive!
Alex (488)
“the Met Office’s Barry Gromett”
Does he have an eccentric sidekick called Wallace?
Thanks for pointing out the inconsistency of the message, although doubtless we’ll be told that while warmer weather is good, a warmer climate is bad.
Some people seem to taking it much more seriously, though:
http://www.agoracosmopolitan.com/home/Frontpage/2007/01/08/01291.html
Brute,
You ask “Could people believe so deeply in this idea that they could be persuaded to die on behalf of this idea? ” The world has lots of different, and contradictory “ideas”, which cannot all be true. It doesn’t stop people dieing for these ideas, which I don’t object to, or them killing either, and to which I certainly do!
Max,
You asked for evidence of the shift in taxation away from corporations and towards individuals.
Take a look at This Book
Brute
Your essay on “mass manipulation” (as well as the religion example) are thought-provoking.
The conclusion reached is that “mass manipulation” is not “bad” per se, and that it can be used positively, if used “wisely”.
Your example would both prove and disprove that conclusion. (Along with other religions) Christianity has been used over history to justify wars, mass murder, executions, burning at the stake, etc. But it has also created the likes of Mother Teresa, Compassion International (child sponsorship), the Salvation Army, etc., which have done a lot of good.
But, if one looks at the historical examples of “mass manipulation”, the balance sheet appears to me to have been more negative than positive, unlike the analogy made with “automobile driving”, where the balance is clearly positive (e.g. the benefits have far outweighed the dangers or losses).
When the powerful (or wealthy) use “mass manipulation” it is very often to maintain or increase their power (or wealth). This can be true for church leaders and rulers, or (in modern times) lobby groups, governments, corporations, etc.
Are the politicians (like Al Gore, Ban Ki Moon, Rajendra Pachauri, etc.), political or AGW-lobby groups (IPCC, WWF, Alliance for Climate Protection, Greenpeace, etc.) and the many corporations who have joined in (General Electric, Johnson & Johnson, Alcoa, DuPont, etc.) or those who lobby for the other side (ExxonMobil, Monsanto, etc.) using “mass manipulation” related to AGW “wisely” (i.e. for the “common good”) or are they using it for their own gain?
I’m sure PeterM would answer this question differently than you or I would, for example.
I would put the attempted “mass manipulation” against the AGW premise by lobby groups (supported by ExxonMobil, for example) into exactly the same category as the attempted “mass manipulation” for the AGW premise by opposing groups. Neither group is doing this “wisely” or “for the common good”, despite any claims they might make to this effect. [These claims are actually an integral part of the “mass manipulation” itself.]
A rational skeptic (in the scientific sense) insists on empirical data, observation, test, or experiment to confirm the truth or rational justification of a scientific hypothesis. In science, no amount of positive or supportive evidence ever “proves” a hypothesis – and it only takes one contrary fact to disprove it.
As a rational skeptic, my advice to avoid falling for “mass manipulation” (to quote Benjamin Franklin):
http://thinkexist.com/quotation/believe_none_of_what_you_hear_and_half_of_what/154871.html
And, above all, insist on empirical evidence.
Max
PeterM
The EU study, which you cited (492) on corporate vs. personal income taxes is interesting. It does show that on average taxes on corporate profits in the EU have decreased (now at 35.2%) while personal income taxes have increased (to 40.5%), proving your point.
The argument is made that taxing corporations (capital) at a higher rate than individuals (labor) induces corporations to “replace labor with capital” (i.e. install automation, low-labor processes, etc.), and that this is inherently undesirable. A questionable point, as far as I am concerned, because it ignores the fact that corporations must compete globally.
Another study shows that it is generally the case in most other countries that corporate income taxes are lower than personal income taxes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Income_Taxes_By_Country.svg
Major exceptions are the USA and Japan, both giant economies, which tax their corporations at a higher rate (39%) than their individual citizens, on average (28% and 26%, respectively).
There are no data for China, the other major world economy, or for Russia.
I wonder what the worldwide average would be here? With the GDP of USA + Japan slightly higher than that of the EU, the “worldwide” average (excl. China and Russia) would probably show that corporate and personal income taxes are at about the same average level.
Interestingly, both the Canada and Australia also tax corporations at a slightly higher rate than individuals, according to the statistic.
But what happens to “corporate income taxes”? A portion comes off “the top” (reducing dividends, share value or top management bonuses), but the bulk is probably passed on to the “consumer” (the same guy, who is paying the personal income tax).
That’s you and I, Peter.
Max
PeterM
You doubt that “cash for clunkers” programs really do much beside help the car manufacturers and sales organizations (481).
Financially the US “cash for clunkers” scheme cost every taxpayer an estimated $24,000
http://www.edmunds.com/help/about/press/159446/article.html
(This seems high to me, but that’s the estimate.)
Another estimate tells us (without including the energy required to produce the new car or destroy the “clunker”) the program will reduce US CO2 emissions by a whopping 0.04%.
(This estimate also seems high to me.)
A study shows that the average car will consume during its construction 10% of the energy used during its lifetime.
http://www.lifeaftertheoilcrash.net/Research.html#anchor_72
This figures out to be slightly more than 27 barrels of oil. Twenty seven barrels of oil (42 gallons of oil per barrel) contain 1,142 gallon of oil.
Per automobile this equals 11 metric tons of CO2 generated.
Let’s add in another 2 metric tons of CO2 to dispose of the old “clunker”.
This makes a total of 13 metric tons of CO2.
690,000 cars were sold (and destroyed), for a total of 9 million mt of CO2.
The USA emits around 6,000 million mt CO2 annually, so these cars represent a (one time) 0.15% increase in US CO2 emissions (or around four times what will be saved annually.
So it will take four years for the “cash for clunkers” program to be “CO2 neutral”.
Sounds like a “government boondoggle” to me, and you’re right, Peter.
Max
Max,
Wasn’t my essay regarding mass manipulation……… I don’t remember who wrote it, but I thought it was a good explanation of how manipulation over large segments of the population is achieved. I didn’t include the byline as Peter Martin would have attacked the author as some “right wing extremist”.
You’ll notice that Peter had no retort concerning the “impossibility” of mass manipulation.
That post and the one following were actually a rebuttal to Peter M’s dismissal of collusion amongst the media, political interests, big business and ideologists. Peter suggested that it was preposterous that so many people could be hoodwinked into believing a lie.
These two were the best I could come up with on short notice without mentioning the “H” word and again getting Peter discombobulated and claiming “Godwin’s theory”.
My point was that manipulation of the populous by governments, (or any other organization for that matter), has been going on since the beginning of time.
For Peter to suggest that it is impossible that so many people could be conspiring (intentionally or unintentionally) to achieve a general goal illustrates how naïve or willfully ignorant he is of human nature and history.
Alex
As you note, the Met Office have switched to ice-cream to describe the weather. Do you think they’d mind if I had a barbecue instead?
They’re going to be so annoyed if it really is a hot summer this time!
James,
Wow!
It seems that your “choice” (no arm twisting by government there) of purchasing a new automobile is a substantial windfall to government tax coffers!
It’s a wonder anyone purchase anything in the UK considering the oppressive tax burden.
I suppose funding all of those who “won’t” falls onto those who “do”…………Such is the Socialist mindset.
Good luck with all that!
(Not a shot at the UK or its people……..the United States, under it’s current leadership, is heading down the same ruinous path).
The Met Office is promoting outdoor barbecues? Isn’t that anathema to their “green” indoctrination program?
After all, charcoal briquettes produce unduly large amounts of greenhouse gases…………and, unless you’re barbecuing vegetables, meat is unhealthy and contributes to polar bear stresses.
Hmmmmm……did you know that Joseph Goebels learned his propaganda techniques from the (Leftist American President) Woodrow Wilson administration?
The very same US President that Barack Obama idolizes?
Just an interesting anecdote……
Yes Pete, mass manipulation of the citizens by government has never, and could never, happen………
Edward L. Bernays
http://www.criticalthink.info/webindex/bernays.htm