In Australia we tried a scheme with very low economic impact (despite scaremongering to the contrary) carbon tax, which provably reduced emissions before its repeal.
I'm not ideologically in favor of smaller or bigger government. I want smarter government, and there's nothing smart about passing legislation that will reduce the state government's revenue by between $80 and $900 million a year without defining what services to cut.
Also, "bigger government" is a vague enough definition that it could easily apply to this initiative. It creates a new category of tax, and a new category of tax credit. It will probably reduce the government's revenue, but the legislature can and most likely will raise revenue in other places to plug the gaps rather than cutting necessary agencies.
The same people who want a smaller government are also usually in favor of a balanced budget amendment, which would force any proposal to cut taxes or raise spending to specify how it balances.
Don't you think this is a bit too serious issues to waste energy on petty political divisions? Anyway, they only entities that can do something are governments. People are good at locally optimizing their own lives. Not so good at optimizing the good of the whole.
Where did the water for the ice come from? What is the optimal sea level for the governments to set? How do you calculate an energy output without knowing it's environment? Why do scientist, who are dependent on government funding, use words like 'suggest', 'surprised', or 'consensus'?
The truth is that none of us know what the actual dimensions of our solar system were 5,000 years ago, nor do we know the measurements in the next 1,000.
An object is never the same when nature is applied over time.
> What is the optimal sea level for the governments to set?
I don't think anyone is suggesting or has suggested such a policy. Rather, the recommendation is "avoid changing things, especially when the outcomes are probably negative and their magnitude highly unknown".
> who are dependent on government funding
Plenty of scientists who are funded by non-government grants agree that climate change is real.
Plenty of non-climate scientists have looked at the data and agree that climate change is real.
Plenty of non-scientists with training in a scientific discipline -- who have never received and will never receive a penny of grant money in their lives -- have looked at the data and agree that climate change is real.
This particular ad hom is tired and unfounded.
> Why do scientist, who are dependent on government funding, use words like 'suggest', 'surprised', or 'consensus'?
Suggest: because this is one study/measurement, and others should repeat the measurement and/or come to the same conclusions by other methods.
Surprised: Because they're surprised.
Consensus: When 90+% of trained experts agree on something, that's pretty much as close to a consensus as you can get in a large population.
> Where did the water for the ice come from?... How do you calculate an energy output without knowing it's environment?... The truth is that none of us know what the actual dimensions of our solar system were 5,000 years ago nor do we know the measurements in the next 1,000. An object is never the same when nature is applied over time.
We engineer systems and make scientific measurements and predictions with high accuracy every day without knowing the exact origin and trajectory of everything in the universe.
There is only one legitimate way to criticize climate science, and that is by producing contrary facts. Everything else is noise. There are a limited number of potential facts which could overturn AGW; similarly gravity is considered difficult to disprove. The kind of mental processes which would use speculation about the future to contradict empirical fact seem antithetical to any coherent worldview, let alone a scientific one.
