Gasoline and Fuel Prices. You Getting Your Money Back. How? How hot is Hell?

How can the "excess" money you spent for fuel -- gasoline, diesel, natural gas, propane -- be returned to you?

Free Hit Counters

Several ways. One is a direct tax on the oil companies and gas companies profits or sales. Congress could also tax the shareholders of the stocks of these corporations.

Why not tax them and return the money to the people who paid the "excessive" fuel prices -- directly to their personal checking account or their Social Security Account if they are getting social security?

This year we are seeing a speculative and spectacular rise of oil prices -- and pure unmitigated Republican/Democrat allowed profits reaching into the astronomical range allowing a clear means of taking from the working poor but reducing the influence and power of the Dollar and the US around the world.

What is "excessive?" As a fuel price, for heating transportation or for electricity?

But it sure is more intricate than that, isn't it? Maybe you should be paying the Carbon Tax?

Are CEO's paid too much? Are politicians paid too much?

Yeah. Some of them are. Probably.

Are you paid too much?

So how much is your effort at living the good life worth? In Oil? In dollars? In food and water?

Should the vast differences between rich and poor in this country, as well as around the world be allowed to continue? That immense disparity is only marginally what this is about. Our current government is supported, nay!; directed by a few multinational banks and corporations. Their intrinsic value is unquestioned. Until now. Should they be chartered and allowed to exist if they are not serving the over-all values of our societies? What are the values important to society? Or to species, our species -- and others?

We're getting to that. But for those who think corporations are spirited extensions of human values and social values, some re-thinking should be done -- and some re-education.

Corporations are not interested nor able to be interested in people or social values. They are interested in customers and profit taken from those customers. You will hear a lot of catchy, quaint, beatific, human-sounding phrases touted out. Think them through in terms of customer's and profit. Then see if those are feedbacks to the corporate structure immediately or over time like a discounted investment, as a way to sway customers. All these catchy green phrases will be an effort to sway you into thinking, maybe they aren't so bad for the environment. I heartily endorse the greening, and I heartily endorse the limitation of emissions of carbon dioxide and its removal and sequestration. This "greening" will be good for everything on the planet -- except those with a vested interest in carbon or Big Carbon.

Excessive might be described as the exploitation of the environment; what has been excessively exploited and that time to pay for this is now past due.

So what is of Value?

Survival is of value. Species survival. There are some very queer fundamental differences in people's view of species survival. You will sometimes see a psychological or philosphical treatise discussing altruism, and often the result that the author is amazed that altruism exists at all.

Many scientists still investigate the phenomenon, wondering how to "model" it where it appears to exist or describing situations and "measurements" of altruistic qualities and even stretching it to numbers saved. Alturism exists in the species who have most successfully survived -- and yet there are more than a few among our species who are selfishly self-centered, as altruistic as a brick or post, and of either sex -- who deny they are a part of the social system or benefit from it and think they are totally on their own -- and would rather see millions die than help a single one survive. Even when they can.

Of course, you already know that. What you may not know is that we are past the point where easy long term action could have prevented extinctions of many major species. Many species are now doomed for the profit of a few of our species -- it does not matter that the few who profit may be only a 100,000-th part of our numbers -- since obviously you accept that these few are "morally" better than you and deserve the excesses they take from environment and other species members alike. Excessive? That humans are among the endangered because of the greed model of profit shows the limits of altruism.

Maybe you (and I) should be paying $10 a gallon, or more to begin paying for the remediation of Earth.

Many religions have a belief in Hell or some version of it. Just how hot is Hell?

What would constitute "Hell" on earth?

Carl Sagan used Venus as perhaps the solar system's archetype for that.

I use, as a point in discussion, the statement,"As Venus is, Earth will become." That is Earth's future. And now we do not want to get anywhere close to it.

This is about the urgency of addressing Climate.

Just how hot is Hell? Venus is between 800 and 900 F.

For the Earth, there comes the question:

How long does it take to reach the new thermal equilibrium 385 ppmv CO2 forces?

http://mb-soft.com/public3/global.html

Carl Johnson says it all comes home in 143 years, when the land warms by 25 F. And it might be higher with the amounts China kicks in and with the amounts your coal industry places in the future air.

Other students of the problem recognize that we can't allow Business As Usual. (BAU)

I have not completed my analysis of Carl Johnson's conclusions -- and so far the timing from my own computations make Carl's figures look a little short -- but not as much short as I had hoped.

Carl keeps refining his posting in small ways, but has left his main conclusions alone. Timing is everything. . . http://mb-soft.com/public3/global.html

The Russian Comment

See comment #8., by www.real climate.org user, Abbe Mac, at http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2008/06/of-buckets-and-blogs/#more-569 pointing out he is not as optimistic as he used to be [about climate change moderation],and then quotes a Russian Scientist, who states, “People claim that there is not enough evidence to act. I say there is not enough time.”

Now, is that just Russian or should it concern you?

Well. Are you sophisticated?

Sophisticated readers and students of our time -- this century, and much of the last -- will be able to take the Russian Scientist's statement as an extended comment of the long-suffering Russians. It used to be that the Russians had a bleeding spot on their collective shoulders from a centuries-old load of injustices. These people have borne the bedevilments of the Czars (Tsars); been under the Communist's for most of a century and lived austere lives in front of the KGB's internal apparatus (Putin's old friends) and it might seem "not having enough time" to act on the evidence -- is a lament derived from the long years of oppression. Smile. Though sentimentally true, what the quote Abbe Mac uses means is our species is really up against it. We are out of time.

Despite the clarity and depths of the realclimate.org blog,[Of Buckets and Blogs] about the discrepancies of Sea Surface Temperature measurements -- which is eloquent -- and written by Gavin Schmidt, Gavin refers to another blog which also speaks plainly about measurement discrepancies:

http://www.chron.com/commons/readerblogs/atmosphere.html?plckController=Blog&plckScript=blogScript&plckElementId=blogDest&plckBlogPage=BlogViewPost&plckPostId=Blog%3a54e0b21f-aaba-475d-87ab-1df5075ce621Post%3a47083c00-a776-4f89-b9dd-a2cb00a5dcb1&plckCommentSortOrder=TimeStampAscending

All of this concerns the measurement of the temperature of the ocean surface, by different methods before, during, and after WWII -- showing there was not a cooling -- but some measurement values that need re-scaling. That is, to remove measurement bias from the historical data..

But on to the more difficult task.

Likely the long-suffering un-named Russian Scientist is correct. We do not have enough time to stop or moderate, let alone modulate, the climate we are going to experience. The irony is that the damage has already been done. Like an eclipse that has been predicted for centuries from now. Inevitable in every conceivable way.

Credit: Wikipedia, and NASA Goddard Institute of Space Sciences; Hansen in testimony to U.S. Congress.

James Hansen -- American Scientist.

James Hansen is perhaps our species clearest articulate and credible voice on climate. Okay. I'm on James Hansen's Mailing List. You should be there, too.

James Hansen sees the IPCC timing and temperature publications to be scientifically reticent and deficient and probably for reasons I might expect all of you to appreciate. Business is running governments.

But we'll get into that in Hansen's own words from his postings and from his speeches to leaders around the nation and the world.

I favor environmental conspiracy laws with teeth

I favor laws to punish those for participation in the environmental conspiracy to continue to poison the future with the thermal destiny of CO2 and the death it causes, will cause and continue to cause for thousands of years. Billions of homo sapiens will die as well as most large living plants and animals on this planet.

Because of this --

I support harsh economic penalties and prison time, including, rarely, capital punishment, but reserve that for genocidal environmental tinkering. I favor going after corporate stockholders and taxing them directly on a share ownership and dividend basis. I want to see the use of "fossil carbon" ended as soon as possible -- yesterday or 10 years ago would be fine. But as soon as possible.

Carbon Tax and where it would go

James Hansen wants a Carbon Tax levied and the tax monies therefrom deposited directly in your personal (bank) or social secuity account monthly with no hands from the guys wearing alligator skin shoes touching it.

I favored the Carbon Tax paying for the research. I still want that research targeted. But Jim want's a freer opportunity for the society to use the money to solve the problem. It may be the quickest way. But we are past the point where we can waste time with fossil carbon -- despite the oil rig orders that have forced manufacturers profits and stocks skyward in this last week. To me, these are part of the conspiracy that needs to be prosecuted.

But Jim has a viable approach: He says just carbon tax the heck out of the offenders and give the money to ordinary American "citizens." NOT to illegal aliens in America. Jim Hansen favors 350 ppmv as an initial target but also as I recommend, targets a much lower 300 ppmv --

And we are at 385 ppmv CO2 at present. (The average adjusted level of the median twixt high and low, with fully 27% added by humans since the industrial revolution began.)

This is the text.
http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/mailings/20080604_TaxAndDividend.pdf

These are the graphics:

http://www.columbia.edu/%7Ejeh1/2008/HawaiiPACON_20080603.pdf

Or Powerpoint!

http://www.columbia.edu/~jeh1/2008/HawaiiPACON_20080603.ppt

Now, Get these in perspective in your thinking --

These are from NOAA an Mauna Loa, where the oldest record of atmospheric CO2 direct measures comes from.

IMAGE: NOAA

The Mauna Loa data are being obtained at an altitude of 3400 m in the northern subtropics, and may not be the same as the globally averaged CO2 concentration at the surface.

See here also:

http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/trends/index.html#global

This graphs for the global values.

How do we remove the CO2 from the air?

Ideas?

Freeman Dyson, a brilliant physicist, from England who converted to Americanism favors Gene Modified trees and plants -- something like one of my own comments for the $25 million Branson Prize. . .as I posted on Xomba last year.

What kind of "machine" do you suggest? And realize the scale is immense and the time is short.

By the way, Xomba's microcephalic's do not even recognize there is a problem. Or better spoken, deny it.

The environmental laws would also penalize investment in Big Carbon. Certain investments would be heavily taxed, and withdrawal of investment funding would be encouraged. This is likely to happen anyway, but our species survival depends on fossil carbon fuels being eliminated.

Nationalization is always an option, and if the corportions resist, they can be dismantled. Yeah folks. These people and their deniers are far worse than agents of genocide. This is species and life itself these miscreants are tinkering with.

Freedom of speech indeed! (Close the doors, there ain't no fire here.)

These would be akin to the laws of denying there was a fire in the theater of life, that they started, and whose flames they fan, as though they be Satan's helpers fanning the flames of Hell. But in this case denialists will be recognized and penalized -- some kind of macabre feeders on the death's they bring, discounted to the future.

The payback should be extracted from those who profit now. For morality to have any meaning it must be from this generation. This might suggest a semblance of balanced human justice.

Take notice.

Yes, Jim Hansen's approach is much more pleasant than mine.