-1=e^ipi

Sexism stems primarily from Reproductive Utility differences between men, women and non-binary people. Racism stems from tribalism. Both have very different evolutionary psychology origins. Then maybe you should try going to one, or listening to people that do (Such as Dr. Gad Saad or Dr. Janice Fiamengo, go see their youtube channels)? Could you provide evidence for this claim? More stuff you don't know. Yet you somehow 'know' that I'm wrong. Why not go to twitter and look up #notyourshield and figure out what I am referring to? Spoken like a true believer of a religion and dogmatic thinking.

I'm open to the idea.

Of course it does. But apparently the hurt feelings of nationalists are more important than that.

Are we going to put this up their with On Guard for Thee doesn't understand the basics of cellular respiration or photosynthesis or On Guard for Thee doesn't understand physics of heat engines and the second law of thermodynamics? On guard for Thee doesn't understand the water cycle and the implications of the Clausius-Clapeyron relation? Your history on knowledge of climate change related science has not been good on these forums. I personally don't want to become a meat ball. If you wish to, then you can always go to North Korea where there is a market for cannibalism, so I'm sure someone would be willing to turn you into one.

Exactly. But appeals to the Clausius-Clapeyron relation or empirical evidence of vegetation changes since the last glacial maximum are lost on people with an emotional attachment to a certain narrative.

It's not ambiguous. If you don't understand what a social welfare function is you can always use a search engine to look it up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_welfare_function More specifically one can restrict the set of possible social welfare functions based on certain axioms that I think most people would accept. The separability axiom and the anonymity principle reduce the problem of finding a social welfare function to the problem of finding the mean utility function for an individual in society. Next you generally want to consider utility as a function of only the parameters relevant/necessary to the analysis (in this case, utility solely as a function of consumption is probably sufficient, although for other applications more parameters may be necessary). Next, we know from expected utility theory that it is possible to attain a unique utility function up to positive affine transformation by looking at risk averse behaviour (and you only need the utility function up to positive affine transformation for the sake of maximizing the social welfare function); so it's possible to get the utility function from empirical evidence. However, given that data available isn't infinite and has error associated with it, one cannot determine the functional form of the utility function from empirical data alone. In which case, you need Occam's razor to justify that you should go with the simplest functional form that is relatively consistent with empirical observations. I would argue that a constant relative risk aversion utility function (CRRA) is relatively consistent with empirical observations. This reduces the problem of determining the utility function to determining the coefficient of relative risk aversion, which can be measured empirically. Not only that, but there are many methods to measure the coefficient of relative risk aversion in humans other than looking at risk averse behaviour, such as looking at market price elasticities, looking at country taxation policy, looking at results of happiness surveys, looking at estimates of the statistical value of life, and comparing economic growth rate with market interest rates between countries and using something called Ramsey's equation. A coefficient of relative risk aversion of 0 corresponds to 0 risk aversion and a coefficient of infinity corresponds to infinite risk aversion. Only values of the coefficient of relative risk aversion between 0.5 and 2 are consistent with empirical observations. I especially find Raj Chetty's recent meta study fairly compelling in which he finds that the best estimate of the coefficient of relative risk aversion to be very close to 1. This corresponds utility being a logarithmic function of consumption. Not only that but there have been some recent papers that argue based on evolutionary theory that humans and other species would evolve to have roughly logarithmic utility functions of consumption. Heck, people like Kenneth Arrow have been arguing that human consumption utility can't be very divergent from logarithmic based on certain moral/empirical arguments. I could go into further detail, but perhaps it is better to link to other threads where I have discussed this. Anyway, the final part of defining the social welfare function is you need to determine a discount rate. I would argue (along with Nordhaus, Tol, Arrow and others) that the appropriate discount rate is the social rate of time preference, which can be obtained from empirical evidence and using Ramsey's equation. Again, I'll try to keep things short though perhaps I should link to other threads. Basically what is consistent with a coefficient of relative risk aversion of 1 is a social discount rate of about 2%. William Nordhaus for example uses a coefficient of relative risk aversion of 1.45 is a social discount rate of about 1.5% in his recent DICE IAM. Perhaps I disagree with William Nordhaus, but any disagreement we have can eventually be resolved with better empirical evidence. Although I find the Kenneth Arrow arguments, the evolutionary psychology arguments and the simple fact that logarithmic consumption utility greatly simplifies calculations especially when dealing with a roughly Cobb-Douglas production function quite compelling. So this means that a reasonable social welfare function is: Sum(t = 0 to infinity;1.02^(-t)*Sum(t = 1 to N(t);ln(C(i,t)))) Where t is time in years, i is an individual in society at time i, N(t) is the global population at time t and C(i,t) is the consumption (in PPP) of individual i at time t. Now what is expected social welfare? Well that is simple the expected value of social welfare. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expected_value So this gives you an empirically justified mathematical objective function that you want to maximize in order to maximize the well being of society. Perfect? No. Best given available empirical evidence? Yes. Of course humans can live without fossil fuels. They have done so for hundreds of thousands of years. What do you think hunter-gatherer societies where? Why would water suddenly not be abundant due to climate change? I'm not going to/can't plug in things without empirical justification and an estimate of the probability distribution of the event occurring. Much like I'm not going to/can't plug in the possibility of the flying spaghetti monster getting angry over climate change, suddenly appearing, and then turning everyone into meatballs.

Well not with that attitude! Then advocate the implementation of optimal policy. Define collapse of civilization. As long as you can quantify different outcomes and associate a probability distribution to the various outcomes, you can determine the set of policies that maximizes expected social welfare. Indeed that is the case. But that doesn't mean you can't try to model what will occur under different policy regimes. Some people claim we do, you claim we won't. Personally I find the quantification of the size of the cost of renewables as 'huge' to be quite vague and ambiguous. Ultimately, disagreements as to the size of the cost can be resolved using empirical evidence provided that both parties are not dogmatic in their beliefs (although I suspect many are).

You are moving goal posts here. You start by claiming that renewables are cheaper than fossil fuels so we should switch to renewables anyway. Then in cases where renewables are not cheaper it's 'oh but that's not including the externality'. There are 3 possibilities (obviously this is an oversimplification but at least things will be consistent): 1. fossil fuels are cheaper than renewables even after the externality is taken into account. 2. fossil fuels are more expensive than renewables when the externality is taken into account but cheaper when the externality is not taken into account. 3. fossil fuels are more expensive than renewables even without the externality. Pick one and stop convoluting 2 and 3 by moving goal posts.

South Park recently made fun of pc culture and microaggressions in season 19 episode 1.

Okay, so is this belief falsifiable and testable against empirical data or is it dogmatic? How? That's not my position. I think a pigouvian tax on CO2 emissions should be determined with maximize wellbeing of society and I think there are ways of calculating that.

I don't know what the efficiency if the aluminum battery + electric motor is. $50/1000 miles doesn't tell me that. It wouldn't be fair to take into account the efficiency of internal combustion engines but not the efficiency of the battery and motor. That's true about Harper. As an aside, many people with the title of 'scientist' don't follow the scientific method, so should they be considered scientist? As for me, perhaps I've done scientific research in the past. How would you know?

Well being will be harmed through action. Well being will be harmed through inaction. What you should do is maximize well being. You can do this using empirical evidence and integrated assessment models (although I think they need to be modified to maximize expected social welfare in order to take into account all the uncertainty). For some reason you don't like the concept of maximizing well being. In the long run, the sun will die out and all the stars in the universe will run out of fuel. So maybe we should instead switch right now to tidal energy around black holes. In the long run, humanity is also served if larger technological progress occurred in the past and additional funding for technological progress could have been funded using the lost resources that were used to mitigate against climate change. That doesn't make sense. If the cost differential between non-CO2 intensive and CO2 intensive forms of energy is higher, then mitigation costs will be higher. If in the future costs of CO2 intensive fuels will be higher, and cost of alternatives will be lower, then there will be more incentive to switch to alternatives.

I don't know the mass of the vehicle, so I can't really compare fuel economy to conventional vehicles. I can make some crude calculations, but ultimately, the mass of the vehicle used to get 1000 miles for $50 is likely much lower than the mass of most vehicles on the road. Doesn't mean that extraction costs won't rise as demand rises. Maybe I was at a time. Maybe I have a physics degree. How would you know?

No, I have a problem with crazy fundamentalist Christians trying to impose blasphemy laws and censor people, I have a problem with idiots like Jack Thompson trying to ban games due to some deluded belief that they cause violence (much like Anita Sarkeesian is doing now). I have a problem with Saudi Arabia beheading people that disagree with the government. I have a problem with the North Korean government oppressing its people. I have a problem with crazy imams demanding that no one is allowed to depict the prophet Mohammed. Etc.

That isn't my position at all. But people getting angry at losing an argument and then trying to infer that I have some hidden motive/position to dismiss my argument is something I'm quite used to. Because you don't care about the well being of millions or billions of people? No, you should pick the BEST number because you should want to maximize the well being of society.

If that were the case, you wouldn't need a pigouvian tax since everyone would just cooperate with each other. But that isn't realistic and the free-rider problem exists. The fact that people trade with each other doesn't eliminate the free rider problem.

Because the welfare of 7 billion people, soon to be 10 billion people, is worth proper analysis. And what is the methodology for obtaining a best guess for optimal taxation?... That was a rhetorical question btw. No, here is how taxation policy is determined in Canada and elsewhere: Politicians pull numbers from thin air and then use overly simplistic populist arguments to get elected. Then they ignore all empirical data and wait for the next election to try to get reelected. All of our tax policies are baseless. That's why places like USA have a 0% VAT, where as places like Sweden have a 25% VAT. Do you think the difference in VAT between those 2 countries is due to intrinsic economic differences or due to ideological difference in the idiot politicians that run those countries? I say it's the latter. They've been coming up with estimates for optimal taxation for over 2 decades. Yet most policy makers continually ignore their estimates in favour of overly simplistic nonsense arguments and methodology (such as the strong precautionary principle). That's why the 2C target is so popular. Because it is overly simplistic.

10 years ago, they would not have a choice. 10 years in the future, not so much, especially if nationalism is going to be on the rise in China (which I expect it to be).

They can try, but determining optimal level of taxation is far more complicated then simply trying to determine the risk of an event occurring for an individual (and without expertise in modelling climate, how are they even determining this?). An economist like William Nordhaus, Richard Tol or Kenneth Arrow. Edit: also, it's not just costs of AGW you need, since current costs of CO2 emissions will depend on future CO2 emission levels as the marginal cost of warming becomes higher as more warming occurs and additional atmospheric CO2 has a lifetime of ~100 years. So you need to project changes in population growth, economic development, technological change and many other things.

Somehow I don't see China simply going along with whatever CO2 reduction plans the developed countries decide upon. You fail to take into account that most people (especially outside the multicultural west) are not to fond of foreigners coming along, imposing sanctions and dictating policy. Also, some regimes care more about staying in power than about the well being of its people, let alone the world. The communist party of China certainly wants to stay in power, and ensuring that economic growth is not slowed down due to emission reductions is one way in which they can increase their chances of staying in power.

Appeal to ignorance fallacy. By occam's razor, preference should be given to the null hypothesis until demonstrated otherwise. But regardless, how is this post a response to what I wrote? I didn't mention oil companies. All I said was that one should use empirical evidence to determine the optimal level of CO2 emission taxation, and alluded to a methodology to determine that optimal level.

Because US + EU + Japan simply won't have sufficient economic weight to cause most of the other countries to be compliant.

1. We don't know the mass of the car. One can exaggerate the mileage of this technology simply by using a super low weight car. The best I can do is look at energy density. The enthalpy of formation if aluminum oxide is 1669.8 kJ/mol. Atmoic mass of aluminum is 27 g/mol. So the 25 kg of aluminum contains 1.55 * 10^9 J. By comparison, gasoline has an energy density of 32.4 MJ/L. If we assume gasoline has a cost of $1/L then $50 of gasoline contains 1.62 * 10^9 J. 2. Assuming market prices remain constant is partial equilibrium analysis not full equilibrium analysis. If the entire world goes to aluminum batteries, then the demand for aluminum will skyrocket, which means that prices will increase. 1. Let's be super generous and say that you can indefinitely store 1.55 * 10^9 J of energy for $50. A kWh is 3.6 * 10^6 J. So the storage cost suggests you should add 11.6 cents per kWh to solar and wind. 2. These are 'best case costs', as opposed to average costs. Let alone the fact that this is being done in regions with abundant wind and solar. In places with less abundant wind and solar, costs of production will be higher.

I think you would need China and India on board as well. You might even need to threaten military action on non-compliant countries.