Apparently it's not any kind of torus.

Without getting back into the weeds of the thing, there's a physical process generating high energy light in frequencies not previously…

They certainly had a way with numbers:

Rufus T. Firefly: Gentlemen, Chicolini here may talk like an idiot, and look like an idiot, but don't let that fool you: he really is an idiot. I implore you, send…

There’s a US company called Brilliant Light Power that says it’s on the cusp of transforming the way the world produces and uses energy.

BLP is developing a prototype ‘SunCell’ generator that it plans to field test in 2017. The discovery underpinning the device is said to…

I really appreciate all those links. Not being a tax expert myself, I don't know the jargon, and it's hard to even identify the correct search terms for the literature.

There's a lot to digest in both your comments and…

(1) The tax/econ jargon for the popsicle problem is "leakage" addressed through "border adjustments." A *lot*…

Yeah, I know, I write too much and address points you'd rather not talk about. I'll go away now.

I do appreciate your comments, and they’ve certainly highlighted various parts of my blog where I’d made assumptions about pre-existing knowledge. Many…

If you want to lock in your 100 year timescale, I think you have to use a 100 year timescale, you can’t say “this thing over 12 years, this one…

While tropical forests continued to decline, a remarkable change is happening: tree cover on agricultural land has increased across the globe, capturing nearly 0.75 Gigatonnes carbon dioxide every year.

Just to be clear, Ian, I’m certainly not saying that atmospheric carbon isn’t sequestered in trees – but…

No I’m not, Bart. A consumption tax is not an import tariff.

GST is a consumption tax (i.e. not an import tariff) as well – hence we can change the rate of GST…

Bean counters never factor in the plant!
even when they have a 'hill of 'em'!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LGEhZMaH7Lc

Yeah I get that you aren't asking other countries to put in place the tax, but you are expecting to be allowed to apply tariffs to imports which is just as difficult.

I guess…

Discussed or disgust?
Argumentum ad nauseam or argumentum ad infinitum
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_nauseam#Etymology
:- )

How would you modify your PGST to encourage negative emissions? Why have you not done so?

I’m not sure as to your definition of negative emissions, Moz. Some researchers describe the conversion of a dairy farm to crops as a negative emission – but I (and a PGST) would…

you seem to have pre-compromised on 100 years as your CO2e period. Why do that rather than use the more accurate one year figure?

It’s not me who decided on 100 years as the CO2e period. All the official data is based on those…

Yes, you…

I tried to get you to understand that an exponential decay and a linear average is a bad combination, but you…

I certainly admire your ingenuity, Michael! I hope that you're putting your intellectual energy to work as a tax lawyer or some such.

Yes, all sorts of weird effects may be possible at hypothetical extremes — the question…

That's a feature, not a bug. The higher that tax the lower emissions will get. Usefully, even at zero net emissions that proposed PGST will…

Yes, the perennial problem with excise taxes (you probably recall that the US federal government couldn't levy…

Because that's something I am not convinced of.There's a whole pile of work being done…

in the long run we're all dead, but given the choice I'd still assassinate Hitler not Ghandi

The short term effects *matter*.

scale of centuries rather than financial years or electoral cycles. See, in all honesty, I don’t ever remember mentioning any such thing.

Again, two tracks:…

It occurs to me that don't you have a problem that once this is in place then governments have an incentive to increase greenhouse gas emissions in order to increase their tax take.

This would…

As an energy engineer, I thoroughly approve! Extremely energy efficient, and — according to a paper that I once read — exactly what the digestive system that we inherited from our proto-hominid ancestors has evolved to digest.

What’s wrong with a revenue neutral carbon-tax on selected emissions?

Yes, that seems like one of the few workable alternatives in New Zealand (if properly done) that wouldn’t tend to increase world greenhouse gas emissions. Essentially you’d be putting things like industrial emissions and…

The reason we exclude farming and a whole pile of other emissions is not technical, it's political. Our government wants not to tax certain parts of the economy, and we can't make them.

Politically the problem with "a carbon tax with tariffs" is…

Yes, but that doesn't make your system any different from the existing carbon taxes – it's widely accepted that at some point tariffs will have to be applied to…

They eat locusts in Dunedin now, ya know!

In theory, the refund of PGST on exports could be calculated via a system of documentation that shows the accumulated dirty energy for any good or service (in the long term this may…

It's okay to criticize (though I realize that you weren't)! I'm hoping that someone will suggest a better solution...

It's odd what you can say…

I didn’t mean that as a criticism (of your explanation, or of the concept…

Fair enough! Yes, it is conceptually a bit complicated (though our existing ETS seems worse to me —…

It's very interesting David, but to this non-engineer it seems…

It does mine, too!

I should emphasize that this wasn’t an original observation on my part or anything. It’s extremely well-known in energy engineering circles (and elsewhere), but the knowledge doesn’t seem able to make its way to policy makers…

Hate to sound snarky but I could guess why at that and be in the ball park.
But dont let me sidetrack you.
You have a great idea, will it reach a wider…

Wow, I must…

Yes, as would your system... without the border tariffs that also fix the carbon tax. So the question to answer is: would we be better applying…

But one of the faults of a carbon tax when applied to dirty energy in New Zealand (as I’ve tried to point out) is that it would increase greenhouse gas emissions for the world as a…

Except that for all its faults, a carbon tax is widely known and discussed. A whole new approach would both create confusion and give excuses for further delay. As OldNewThing reminds us, new features [[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/ericgu/2004/01/12/minus-100-points/|start…

Okay I see what you’re asking. The idea, of course, is…

Only from an energy perspective! I'd say old growth forest has value that can't be measured in joules — and should be considered (protected) via totally different laws.

think I’m struggling with your time scales. To me, it doesn’t matter whether,…

No, but it does need a container deposit levy style system to make sure that there's no systematic "accidental" release (at the…

The reciprocal problem I was using as an example was the one where companies were paid for destroying a gas, but not charged for creating it. Profit!

The PGST tax has the problem that if…

Perhaps. It's not really so much the methane as the residual carbon dioxide (or not)…

Yes, once you rule negative emissions out they are. You also rule out embodied energy as sequestration, which makes some substitutions difficult (plantation vs old growth forest, they're identical to you)

I think I'm struggling with…

Well, you could say there’s no dirty energy storage in the tree.

The tree, if burnt, would provide mostly clean energy.…

Right, so in this view there is no energy storage in the tree per se, so there's no negative tax applied for planting trees or any other carbon-negative activity. That makes the system much simpler, but it makes negative…

Maybe consider a process view rather than a static view. For any given interval we have some methane being released, and some breaking down, but there's a net amount of methane in the atmosphere. Sure, that…

Here’s what confuses me:

If, as I understand they are,…

I didn't have time to talk to…

:) I was singing "there was an only lady who swallowed a fly" to entertain my sister in law yesterday. She loved it. Also, she's 25 years old. But apparently hadn't heard the story before

That certainly comes through, Moz — and it's very helpful! One learns to think a certain way as an energy engineer, and this often makes it confusing when you…

I'm not convinced that your side notes and implicit "wood as a construction material…

Thanks Paul — that'd be my aging eyes! Now fixed...

Actually (nearly) all of this is included in the numbers that I discussed!

Russia is basically fucked the day we count methane from permafrost and clathrates, as their…

As I mentioned in my discussion, the methane emissions from ruminants are due to the conversion of solar energy (e.g. via grass) into chemical potential energy in meat. So that…

It's at least conceptually possible to include methane waste/leaks/dumping from fossil energy mining as part of the "energy cost", but it's very easy when looking at energy to overlook GHG…

A carbon tax isn’t just – or even primarily? – aimed at consumers, but at producers, too, of course. Isn’t it possible that the NZ iceblock [exporters] will (in response to a carbon tax) even further reduce their…

As before, could I politely request that we avoid a stooshie about whether the climate scientists and atmospheric physicists are right or wrong – and concentrate purely on the subject of discussing…