-1=e^ipi

I did not imply that.

Forest Fires may be a positive feedback, but this is more than offset by the negative feedback of increased photosynthesis under higher atmospheric CO2 levels.

I'm confused. Who are you implying is implying this?

You have too much faith in our justice system. It's based on 7 tweets without context apparently. They did an interview with the son of Gregory Elliot at Rebel Media. It's long and I only listed to part of it, but the part about how Gregory Elliot was initially in jail and was only allowed out on bail 3 years ago under the agreement by the accuser that he couldn't use a computer or device connected to the internet. Given that he was a graphic designer, this means he couldn't work in his field, and he couldn't even research to build a case or defend himself properly. I guess our justice system is guilty until proven innocent if accused by a feminist. Here is the issue covered by Karen Straughan:

http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/christie-blatchford-ruling-in-twitter-harassment-trial-could-have-enormous-fallout-for-free-speech Well the degradation of free speech in Canada continues. Human rights commissions were bad enough. Now if you disagree with someone politically on twitter and they 'feel offended' you may go to jail. I recommend you read the article, but basically a guy called Gregory Elliot didn't want to join in on a public shaming campaign on twitter with two feminists. This later developed into a political discussion, which later developed into the two individuals 'feeling offended' by his comments and therefore charging him with 'criminal harassment'. This has huge implications for online discourse, maybe even this website. The ruling of the trial will occur on October 6th. Although in Gregory Elliot's case damage is already done (lost his job).

Okay. Pretend that extra weight doesn't cause planes to use more fuel or that plane companies don't try to vary the number of planes flying to meet demand.

I don't think people should be killed for apostasy or homosexuality. I guess this makes me an 'Islamophobe'. I think the correct term is progressive. Liberals like Bill Maher get it.

Or this woman who lives in mecca: She must be a racist. Meanwhile, combating 'manspreading' and making sure that males make up less that 40% of university students is a far more pressing concern for today's modern 'feminists'.

Westcoastrunner, how do people like Tarek Fatah fit into your belief that all criticism of Islamism is racist?

Islam isn't a race.

You could spin that around and say that if the biggest injustice feminists can come up with is men on buses having their legs not touching each other, then they have it pretty good.

So you are all for fighting for climate change, as long as someone else has to reduce emissions. Is that how it works? How hypocritical. Free trade allows countries to take advantage of comparative advantage and as a result makes society more prosperous.

You can try.

Lottery tickets are a tax on the stupid (unfortunately, many people in my family are in this category). The expected value of earnings of a lottery ticket is smaller than the cost of a lottery ticket. If you are risk neutral or risk adverse, it makes no sense to buy one. Why buy one? If I did have such a ticket, I would put the money in a bank and dress up in a panda suit when obtaining the money like people do in China in order to prevent people from knowing I have 55 million dollars (http://www.odditycentral.com/news/chinese-lottery-winners-collect-prizes-dressed-as-cartoon-characters-to-protect-their-identity.html). I would then spend my time learning more about the stock market, to maximize the return to my investments, and spend the next couple of years doing calculations and looking through empirical data to determine the best use of that money. Edit: at some point, I would probably spend money renting a super computer to perform calculations (buying a super computer would be too expensive).

I used to, and then you people complained that my posts were too long. For example, I explained things in full detail in the thread on jet streams and your entire response was 'manifesto, manifesto, manifesto'. Even when I tried to cut things down in the climate sensitivity thread, it still wasn't enough. Is it that hard to click on a link?

I read the DICE 2013 manual today: http://www.econ.yale.edu/~nordhaus/homepage/documents/DICE_Manual_100413r1.pdf I wanted to point out a few interesting things: - The real interest rate gradually decreased under the model over time. It started slightly above 5% and gradually decreased to slightly below 4% by 2100. This suggests that a reasonable discount rate is likely somewhere between 4% and 5%. - The optimal carbon dioxide emission tax was calculated to be $17 in 2015. This optimal increased exponentially by roughly 2.6% per year after 2015 (which is roughly the growth rate of real GDP per capita). - The model used an ECS of 2.9 C and determined that the optimal Pigouvian tax lead to a temperature anomaly slightly greater than 3C relative to pre-industrial levels, and temperatures start to decrease around 2130. Atmospheric CO2 peaks slightly above 600 ppm around 2120. Edit: Found this study which determined the social rate of time-preference to be around 4% (http://www.envplan.com/fulltext_temp/0/a170199.pdf). And here, the coefficient of relative risk aversion to be around 1.4 (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-5890.2005.00010.x/abstract).

Waldo, you criticize me of not using 'plain English', while in your response using unclear Waldo-speak, which is difficult to follow. It is very ironic. I already did, in other posts, which I linked to. How are you supposed to determine what policy makes sense with respect to climate change if you don't attempt to quantify things and compare the costs and benefits? Are we supposed to use 'discovery math' and just make decisions based on subjective feelings? You say no one cares, yet I have an open invitation from Judith Curry to make a guest post on her blog on the issue of relative risk aversion. This is true, for the most part. Although they do perform some sensitivity analysis in cost benefit analyses. Acceptance of anonymity principle + separability axiom. I explained this in earlier in posts I linked to. Not my fault if you don't want to read them. Your continued science denial of the CO2 fertilization effect is noted.

Men get discriminated on airlines too: Should men be forced to sit away from children on the basis of their gender?

For the sake of it, I thought I would attempt to ROUGHLY quantify the external costs of CO2 emissions due to ocean acidification and sea level rise. Ocean Acidification: This is a bit tricky. Molluscs are the main group of creatures that are harmed. Most species are relatively unaffected, and seaweed may benefit. http://www.cell.com/trends/ecology-evolution/abstract/S0169-5347%2812%2900262-5?_returnURL=http%3A%2F%2Flinkinghub.elsevier.com%2Fretrieve%2Fpii%2FS0169534712002625%3Fshowall%3Dtrue The closest thing I can find that attempts to quantify the costs of ocean acidification is here: http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10584-011-0383-3 Unexpectedly, Richard Tol is an author, and the findings are that the costs will reach ~$100 billion by 2100 under BAU relative to 2012 ocean acidificiation (which I assume means RCP 8.5). If I assume a roughly linear cost per year from 0 in 2012 to $100 billion in 2100 and use a 4% discount rate, the NPV this effect of ocean acidification is $636 billion. RCP 8.5 has on average 20 Gt of Carbon per year emissions from 2012 to 2100 (which is roughly 73 Gt of CO2 per year). This means that total emissions over this period are roughly 6453 Gt. Dividing the two numbers suggests that the external cost of CO2 due to ocean acidification is roughly 9.9 cents per ton of CO2. Sea Level Rise: I need some estimate for the value of land as a function of time. Since 0.5 m / century of sea level rise is very slow, I only need to consider the value of the land, not all the buildings and stuff on top if it (since the life expectancy of buildings is short relative to the time period of sea level rise). In the USA, the value of pasture land is $1300 per acre (http://www.agweb.com/land/farmland-value-guide/). Obviously, there are different types of land (some more or less valuable), but I'll assume land has this value on average. I'll assume that the value of land is roughly proportional to GDP per capita (to take into account the fact that the USA is richer than most of the world and the fact that the world gets richer over time, so land will be more valuable in the future). In 2013, USA GDP per capita was $53000, where as the world average in terms of PPP was $13000. So I'll assume that the average value of land on Earth is roughly $319. Furthermore, I'll assume that this increases by approximately 2.5% per year (which is roughly the real GDP per capita growth rate of Earth). Next, I need to get some rough estimate of how much sea levels are affected by CO2 emissions over time. According to IPCC AR5, sea levels will rise by roughly half a meter by 2100. However, the amount of sea level rise varies based on emission scenario, and the difference in sea level rise between RCP 2.6 and RCP 8.5 is about half a meter. RCP 2.6 has roughly 5 Gt carbon / year from 2012-2070. This means that the difference in emissions between RCP 8.5 and RCP 2.6 between 2012 and 2100 is roughly 5390 Gt CO2. I'll assume that this amount of emissions results in a sea level rise of roughly half a meter per century. According to http://www.climate.org/topics/sea-level/, 0.66 m of sea level rise corresponds to a loss of 26000 square kilometers. If I assume a roughly linear relationship between sea level rise and lost land, then 0.5 m of sea level rise corresponds to a loss of 4818645 acres. Using this information, I can estimate the net present value of land lost due to sea level rise due to this 5390 Gt of emitted CO2 using a discount rate of 4% (I consider losses until 2300 in this case since most of the costs of sea level rise are quite delayed). I get a net present value of $76.2 billion. Dividing the net present value of the costs by the emissions suggests that the external cost of CO2 emissions due to sea level rise is 1.4 cents per ton of CO2. So overall, sea level rise + ocean acidification suggests and external cost of like 11 cents per ton of CO2. That is tiny.

I don't own a car.

So I thought I would try to roughly quantify the benefit of CO2 fertilization. From the above graph, it is clear that C3 plants benefit more than C4 plants from extra CO2. If we go from 400 to 440 ppm, the relative yield of wheat increases from 1.25 to 1.30 and the relative yield of corn increases from 1.04 to 1.05. This means that the yield of C3 plants increases by 4.00% and the yield of C4 plants increases by 0.96%. If we look at the world's top 10 staples (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Staple_food) only 2 of them are C4 plants (corn and sorghum), the rest are C3 plants. In terms of total yields by metric tones, C4 plants make up 27.2% of yields, and C3 plants make up 72.8%. The CO2 fertilization effect of going from 400 ppm to 440 ppm would be to increase global yields by approximately 0.272*4.00% + 0.728*0.96% = 1.787%. Now apparently agriculture makes up 6% of global GDP (http://www.indexmundi.com/world/gdp_composition_by_sector.html). So this means that the CO2 fertilization effect of going from 400 ppm to 440 ppm would be to increase global GDP by 0.1072%. The global GDP in 2014 is approximately $107.5 trillion (https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html). In 2005 dollars this is $91.3 trillion (using GDP deflators from https://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/GDPDEF/#). Go the CO2 fertilization effect of going from 400 ppm to 440 ppm is $97.87 billion per year. If I take the net present value (NPV) of this at 4% discount rate, I get $2.447 trillion. Since it takes 2.13 Gt of carbon to increase atmospheric CO2 concentrations by 1 ppm, 40 ppm corresponds to 85.2 Gt of carbon, which is 312.4 Gt of carbon dioxide. Dividing these two numbers suggest that a ton of CO2 emissions has a CO2 fertilization benefit of $7.83. Earlier I suggested that a Pigouvian tax of $22.39 per ton of CO2 would make sense based on the net effects of temperature change. Combining these two results suggest that a Pigouvian tax of $14.56 would make sense.

Earlier I alluded to the importance of the coefficient of relative risk aversion in determining the optimal policy response to climate change. http://www.mapleleafweb.com/forums/topic/24202-what-is-the-correct-value-of-climate-sensitivity/?p=1069893 I used a coefficient of 1. However, I'm a bit uncomfortable with using a coefficient of 1 or greater, because then it becomes difficult to explain why humans will occasionally make decisions that increase their chances of dying for finite gain (example: people go skydiving). If a person has constant relative risk aversion less than 1, then their utility function will be a positive affine transformation of C^β, where 1-β is the coefficient of relative risk aversion. Suppose that a person is indifferent between taking no risks and taking a risk which has an α chance of killing the person and a 1-α chance of increasing the person's consumption by ΔC. Then C^β = (1-α)*(C+ΔC)^β If α and ΔC are relatively small, then taking a taylor approximation gives: C^β = (1-α)*C^β*(1+ΔC/C)^β => 1 = (1-α)*(1+βΔC/C) => 0 = -α + βΔC/C => β = C*(α/ΔC) Now ΔC/α should be the statistical value of life. For the USA, this is approximately $9.4 million (http://www.transportation.gov/sites/dot.gov/files/docs/VSL_Guidance_2014.pdf). The USA's GDP per capita in 2015 is roughly $53,000. However, the USA's savings rate is ~18%, so only ~82% of this would count as consumption. In addition, it would make sense to take into account the future earnings of the individual, and not just the earnings over 1 year. If I use a discount rate of 4% (which is relatively consistent with interest rates over the past decade http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/real-interest-rate-percent-wb-data.html)and I assume that the individual lives for 42 more years (which is USA life expectancy minus median age), then my value of C would be: C = $53,000*0.82*(1 - 0.04^42)/0.04 = $1086500. So β = $1086500/$9400000 = 0.1156. Which suggests that the coefficient of relative risk aversion is roughly 0.8844. Still pretty close to 1 (so a logarithmic approximation likely isn't that bad), but less than 1.

I was referring to On Guard for Thee.

You can learn about different cultures online. It isn't hard. I know what things smell like. If someone says the sea smells salty, I know what salty smells like. For sounds, you just need headphones and a computer. For sights, again you just need a computer screen. For tastes, there are all sorts of restaurants where I live, or I can go buy the ingredients and make it myself.

There is no a priori moral basis for ownership of property. However, ownership of private property allows individuals to benefit from their labour and investments, which results in a more productive and prosperous society. So property rights are justified because they lead to good outcomes. Take first nations on reserves, who do not own their houses and often do not have private ownership because so much is owned communally. As a result, the incentive to invest in your land is very small, and you cannot leverage your land with a bank to finance capital to start a business. As a result, people on reserves are poorer than they could otherwise be due to lack of property rights. Also, how to native rights, the indian act and treaties fit into this discussion?