Eli Is Getting Impatient

Those who deny climate change are very sensitive little snowflakes who dislike being reminded that they are deniers.  MT has a nice thread about denial being a denial of service attack, but, reacting with hurt when denial has been pointed out has always been part of the denial toolbox.  Recently Marc (C) Morano got into it with Mark (K) Boslough

oh. OK. So it's OK to use word 'denier' and smear link them to Holocaust as long as your specific enclave is not labeled the same.

— Marc Morano (@ClimateDepot) May 24, 2019

Now Eli is not one to avoid calling a climate change denier a denier but this time, the Bunny came up with a good defanger

Why are you stealing the sacrifice of those who died in the Holocaust?

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) May 24, 2019

 And, that being Twitter, Marc (C) came back for another round.  He should not have tho

You use the sacrifice of others to deflect criticism of your duplicity

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) May 24, 2019

So here are Eli's suggestions the next time some anti-Vaxxer, climate change denier or whatever starts bleating about being accused of denying the Holocaust and how mean you are for pointing it out

Why are you stealing the sacrifice of those who died in the Holocaust? 

You use the sacrifice of others to deflect criticism of your duplicity 

Another bunch who wants to steal the suffering of the Holocaust victims for themselves. 

Eli Rabett's Simple Impeachment Advice

Well, what the hell, the US is headed there are the House Democratic leadership (e.g. Nancy Pelosi) doesn't want to impeach Donald Trump

The House speaker also suggested Trump was disappointed that she has resisted calls from some members of her caucus to pursue impeachment. Pelosi appeared to endorse the theory that Trump is trying to trap House Democrats by goading them into bringing impeachment charges, expecting to be acquitted by the Republican-controlled Senate. This would allow him to claim vindication heading into his reelection.

“The House Democratic caucus is not on the path to impeachment,” Pelosi said. “That’s where he wants us to be.”

But Pelosi also made clear that Trump’s conduct could lead the House down that path, eventually.

“The president’s behavior in terms of his obstruction of justice, the things that he is doing, it’s very clear — it’s in plain sight,” she said. “It cannot be denied. Ignoring subpoenas. Obstruction of justice. Yes, these could be impeachable offenses.”

She added: “We can walk and chew gum at the same time. I hope he can too.”

The problem is obvious.  Trump is richly deserving of impeachment and conviction but a) the Reprehensibles in the Senate will never convict and b) Trump will never hand over evidence to even the ongoing House inquiries.

Thus Eli Rabett's Simple Solution:  Impeachment by a thousand Benghazis.  As the bunnies may recall the Reprehensibles ran thousands of Benghazi hearings (seemed that way), always demanding more information from Hillary Clinton and the White House, screaming stonewalling all the time.  This had a very negative effect on Clinton's candidacy to say the least.

Turn about could be excellent.  The House should open an impeachment inquiry.  Tomorrow

Nothing says they have to bring it to a vote, well it might be fun to do so a month or less before the election.  It would tie the Senate into knots and there are LOTs of Republicans running in 2020.  They would have the interesting choice of doing a quick whitewash  (explaining that in the face of the mountain of evidence that is already there) and even then spending valuable time before the election, or putting it off (explaining why they did not do their job would be even more fun).

Having a long running impeachment inquiry kills any argument that the House has no right to ANY information about how Trump is doing his job, or his actions before hand.  Trump STILL won't give up any information, but the Dems just have to keep saying, gee, how can we end this inquiry without the needed information.

Even better, Mueller, Barr, McGahn and the crew can't refuse to testify to the impeachment inquiry.  EINAL but the argument about executive privilege would seem to be a lot less effective against an impeachment inquiry.

And, of course, as everybunny sees, even more dirty deeds come to light with passing time

Impeachment Inquiry Tomorrow (Vote in about 17 months). Eli Rabett's Simple Plan

Republishing "Don't feed the warhorses"

Republishing the post below from December 2016. TLDR version - old political warhorses like Biden do well in party primaries and less well in general elections. Doesn't mean he can't win though, just that it's harder. (And note the wrong idea I had that Biden couldn't possibly run in 2020.)

I don't think it applies to Sanders because except for the last few years, he didn't do much to help Democrats beat Republicans. Not sure that really works in his favor, though.

Biden does seem to have a demeanor that makes him "moderate" rather than "compromised" so that might help him, but we'll see what a primary and general campaign does to that image.

And while I'm saying this is how American politics work, I'm not saying I'm happy about it. It's crazy that Pete Buttigieg has a better chance now than 20 years from now when he's been forced to make hard decisions and compromises. But it's what we've got.


The old post from December 2016:

Don't feed the warhorses, and careful with the lightning rods

People may be sick of political introspection, but for those who can handle a little more, here's a list of old warhorse nominees:

H. Clinton
Gore
Dole
Bush Sr.
Mondale

Plausible additions, although not a perfect fit:
Romney
McCain

These are people that had been prominent for a long time and had done a lot of favors inside their party, so they had built alliances within the elites and started their campaigns with a fair amount of name recognition within their parties. They also didn't do very well in winning the Electoral College. Bush Sr is the only partial exception, going 1-for-2.

I suppose Reagan could be argued as a counter-example, but he wasn't very cozy with Republican elites in 1980, and that's also going back a ways in political history. Even if you did include him, the warhorse win-loss record is pretty bad.

Our political system, for worse rather than for better, values newness and "authenticity" over experience, compromises and baggage. I'm open to suggestions as to how that can change, but I'm not up for beating my head against the wall. The warhorses don't make good general election candidates, and Democrats shouldn't choose them in upcoming elections.

And good news, the only warhorses Ds have lying around these days are former nominees and Biden, none of them likely to run again. But the problem will return someday.

Second and related issue is prominent Democrats becoming lightning rods for Republican lies. Hillary was their target with the willing assistance of the New York Times and some other media. The result made her the second-most unpopular nominee in history.

Hillary wasn't the sole target of hate and lies - before her, it was Gore. While I hate to let the Republicans win their little game, maybe it's time for a little political judo - the Republicans are  spending all their lies on warhorses they see as future nominees, and those people aren't the best nominees anyway. So don't nominate the lightning rods that Republicans have been lying about, and use 2008 as a model. The Republicans had no coherent critique of Democrats, let alone a message of their own, and just had Hatred for Hillary. That let Obama define a completely different, hopeful, and moderately progressive alternative.

We'll see what the Republican game plan will be for 2020 - something tells me that it won't be a positive message based on a record of accomplishments. They also won't have 2008's McCain who tamped down on a new set of lies against Obama.

I'm not saying run from any candidate the Republicans start lying about, just to choose wisely instead.

Semi-review: Let It Shine - The 6,000 Year History of Solar Power

Short version of my review of Let It Shine: go read it, even if like me you're not interested in passive solar architecture. It's ironic that passive solar isn't that interesting to me, because it's about half of the book and until the last century it was about the only truly successful harnessing of the sun. Everything else, however, is still interesting enough to make this a good book about the history of solar power.

The history of solar water heating is fascinating - it got pretty far, particularly in Japan, before being killed off by cheap fossil fuels. In some alternate universe timeline, solar motors, solar water heaters, even solar electric modules developed in the late 1800s were never replaced by coal and fossil fuels.

Solar electric was particularly interesting to me. They have a picture of the first photovoltaic array in New York City, in 1884. PV energy seems like it could have taken off earlier than it did - the Eisenhower Administration purposefully rejected it compared to nuclear power and the mirage that atomic batteries would be commonplace.

The early space race, OTOH, was a godsend for PV as the only feasible long-term power source for the small satellites they used at the time (I'm not sure when radioisotopes became an alternate power source). The Gollum of 20th Century climate change even makes an appearance. A design for the first proposed American satellite from 1955 "shows that the satellite's designer, Dr. S Fred Singer, planned to use solar photovoltaics as its power source."

PV's cost hardly mattered for satellites but they helped pay for early technological development. Soon afterwards, remote locations on earth also became obvious use cases (irony again, offshore oil platforms started it). PV poked along for a while while subsidies for nuclear power and fossil fuels burgeoned forth, and PV received little R&D. The Atomic Energy Commission in 1973 proposed a 5-year research budget of $4 billion for nuclear and $36 million for solar. The Reagan Administration purposefully neglected solar. It took massive subsidies in Germany and piggy-backing on computer chip technology for PV to really begin its takeoff.

One interesting lesson from the book (mainly from discussion of solar motors and solar water heating) is how much of technological development is iterative development of prior work. The statement that science relies on standing on the shoulders of giants applies just as well to engineering.

Again I'd recommend the book. I'd also be interested in a history focusing exclusively on solar PV, and another on wind power. Suggestions welcomed!

A brief guide to denial arguments.

Back in 2012, I reviewed a book by James Lawrence Powell, The Inquisition of Climate Science (Columbia University Press,2011). Powell received his doctorate from MIT in geochemistry and taught at Oberlin College for two decades. My review, entitled "Petroleum and Propaganda: The Anatomy of the Global Warming Denial Industry"  appeared in the May 2012 issue of Monthly Review, and can be found online.

James Lawrence Powell has described the highly effective corporate-funded propaganda campaign  to alter the public perception of climate science.The global denial industry includes corporate funders, toxic think-tanks, and PR flacks. For example, the Heartland printed and distributed 150,000 free copies (in fifteen languages)  of The Skeptic's Handbook. The author is a pseudonym. Looking back at my 2012 article, little has changed in the essentials. The case for global warming science is even stronger now than it was a few years ago.

CO2 is garbage not plant food

Is there a bunny so sheltered that he or she has not seen myriad repetitions of denial starting with CO2 is plant food?

Eli is a patient bunny, but has decided to take up arms against this nonsense.

CO2 is garbage.  It is recycled by photosynthesis using renewable solar energy

Go forth and spread the word.  It annoys the hell out of those in denial about how people are changing the climate for the worse.  Even better it is accurate.

The bleats you will earn are your blessings.

Yes, Eli has been on sabbatical, but he really has been thinking of the bunnies, especially with Easter coming up.  Well, sometimes it just gets hard to think of something new and interesting and life, or at least Twitter, has become a series of re-runs where all that is needed is a link to some old Rabett Run post (there are some goodies there the Bunny will tell you:).

In any case there has been recent discussion about a chart posted by the Lawrence Livermore Lab folk about US Energy consumption and copied to Twitter.  Several are trying to use this as an argument against fossil fuels pointing to the fact that rejected energy is a large part of electricity generation and more.

This is tied together with a basic confusion first discussed by RayP on Real Climate, that the problem with fossil fuels is not the rejected energy, but the fact that the greenhouse gas emissions remain in the atmosphere and slow the emission of heat to space over centuries.  In a letter to Steve Levitt, Ray dispensed with Nathan Myhrvold's argument that

. . . in effect, that it was pointless to try to solve global warming by building solar cells, because they are black and absorb all the solar energy that hits them, but convert only some 12% to electricity while radiating the rest as heat, warming the planet. Now, maybe you were dazzled by Mr Myhrvold’s brilliance, but don’t we try to teach our students to think for themselves? Let’s go through the arithmetic step by step and see how it comes out. It’s not hard.

Interested or, as in the case of Eli, those with the dread forgetting disease, can follow Ray through the calculation, but the point is that all energy eventually (may take the age of the universe, but eventually) degrades to heat, but some of it can be used in the meantime to do work (move things non-randomly, including electrons).

The reason that fossil fuels are heating the Earth is not that they produce heat as well as work, but that their CO2 emissions continue to increase the amount of thermal energy in the atmosphere, on the surface and in the oceans, over centuries.

Sunlight heats the Earth and is degraded to heat which radiates into space by IR emissions from the surface and the atmosphere.  Increasing the amount of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere slows the rate of radiation so that the Earth has to warm, increasing the rate of radiation to return the system to balance.  Energy added on the surface by fossil fuel combustion or nuclear energy or wind or solar, or whatever is soon degraded to thermal energy and radiated to space.  It's a small one time charge.

The ratio between the work, W that can be done and the energy input U, W/U is the efficiency, and the heat produced is Q. 

Thermodynamics sets the upper limit to efficiency.  Engineering sets the actual limit.  It turns out that renewables like wind and solar are not very efficient, but that the heat that they generate in creating work does not lead to a continual warming of the system over centuries.  The same is true for heat generated in fossil fuel combustion, but, as RayP pointed out a decade ago, that is irrelevant, because the CO2 produced in fossil fuel combustion DOES heat the Earth for centuries.

That being said, it's good to be efficient.  For one thing, it costs less over the long run in the building, operation and maintenance of stuff.  Also, rejected heat is local, which can be both good and bad, depending if you can use the heat for other things like industrial processes, or heating the home.  That gets deep into the weeds and Eli will leave it there

The clip that Republicans will play if Biden's the nominee - "Mr. President, my suggestion is don't go"

Unfortunately I don't see an embed option, but if he's nominated, then a shortened clip of this CNN video will get rotated heavily next year, starting about 55 seconds in, where Biden says his response to question of whether to attack the bin Laden compound was "Mr. President, my suggestion is don't go".

Expect to see that heavily played if he's the nominee. Also, if Republicans want him to be the nominee, I expect it won't be played at all by the Republican elite prior to the nomination, although they can't control everybody on their side.

They will cut off the video right before he adds "there are two more things you should do first." The Dems can point that out; it won't help them very much.

He can also point out how he backtracked in 2015 as he was considering running against Clinton, and announced the secret and contradictory advice he supposedly later gave the president:



 I don't think that will help him that much and may actually hurt him.

More here at The Atlantic on the questionable quality of his foreign policy advice in general.

Having said that, if he's the nominee he will be light years better than Trump, Pence, or whatever other disgrace the Republicans choose, and I'll give money and time to get Biden elected.

Putting down a marker on eating the ICE infrastructure away

Been looking for data like this for a long time:






Turns out that California Energy Commission has gasoline data, lots of gasoline data. I downloaded and edited the data above.

I've argued since 2013 that as EVs start taking up significant market share, the gas station and repair infrastructure for internal combustion engines will start to shrink and become less convenient. A similar-but-distinguishable process will happen with increasing ICE mileage, but that process stabilizes because even high mileage ICE vehicles still need gas and will pay enough to stabilize the number of stations. As EVs eat into the ICE infrastructure, the ICE market just gets less convenient and the shift to EVs accelerates in a virtuous feedback.

The effect will be especially strong when people consciously notice the ICE infrastructure is getting less convenient, but that's not required. And I fully admit the more important factor, for now, is EVs becoming more convenient. Still, a choice of EV versus ICE turns in part on the relative convenience of the choice, and increasing inconvenience for ICE will have an increasing effect.

Oslo would be the best place to test this, but I can't find their data. San Francisco Bay Area isn't a bad alternative. This doesn't constitute proof yet - 2016 was the highest year in the dataset, and it would be bold to claim the 2017 decline is from EV share of the fleet mileage traveled, but let's watch this space.

A thing of beauty

Sabine Hossenfelder's new book, Lost in Math:  How Beauty Leads Physics Astray is stirring up quite a stir with multiple reviews.  Hossenfelder has recently stuck her oar into the question about whether a new supercollider should be built as a follow-on to CERN.

The just-look-argument is of course well and fine. But, as I have pointed out many times before, the same just-look-argument can be made for any other new experiment in the foundations of physics. It therefore does not explain why a larger particle collider in particular is a good investment. Indeed, the opposite is the case: There are less costly experiments for which we have good reasons, such as measuring more precisely the properties of dark matter or probing the weak field regime of quantum gravity.

Eli got into this a little bit on Twitter

Think of it as the argument btw theory: Go here and experiment: Cast about. When there is no indicative theory you cast about.

You are making an economic argument not a scientific one.

— eli rabett (@EthonRaptor) March 9, 2019

but the issue of beauty in physics, in science in general, what is worth doing, at least to Eli is of interest.  About a month ago the Rabett in a comment to Hossenfelder thought that beauty in physics was a matter of being terse, spare simple.  She really did not like that, and after all, who is Eli.  Reading the New Yorker this week a rather better description appeared in James Marcus' memorial to his father, a bioscientist, who died a difficult death.

Later, after his death, one of his colleagues noted that my father "believed that beauty would save the world".  My father would never have said that about himself.  Yet it was true, if you understood beauty to encompass not only ecstasy but precision, rigor a relish for the tiniest (literally microscopic) details. And it was true about me, too. We were a religious sect consisting of two people, and now half the congregation was gone. There would be no closure, no healing. I would simply adjust myself to a new and severely depleted reality. The world would come to an end, as it always does, one world at a time.

Paul Campos on dual loyalties, Israel and Omar

He sez:

....This whole sordid mess is a product of, among other things, the insidious idea that it’s undesirable for people to have “dual loyalties” in the context of their relationships to nation-states.  This idea is obviously absurd if stated as a straightforward proposition, which is why it almost never is.

People have multiple loyalties in every other aspect of their lives, so why wouldn’t or shouldn’t they in the context of their relationships with nations?  I’m not Jewish, but I think it’s completely ridiculous to criticize American Jews for feeling various levels of affection toward, passion for, and loyalty to, the state of Israel....

The accusation of dual loyalty, in other words, is based on a completely bogus theory of both human psychology and political morality.  And yes, I realize “dual loyalty” is a classic anti-Semitic trope, but that accusation only has bite because of a perverted concept of patriotism, which requires loyalty to the present government of the nation of which one is a citizen to always trump every other consideration.  In other words, “dual loyalty” is only bad per se if one accepts the essentially fascist concept of loyalty to a single nation state as the first duty of every citizen of the State.

Read the whole, etc. While I think he has good points, esp about fetishization of the state, the acknowledgment that we have biases doesn't remove the obligation to confront and control those biases, to the extent we can and acknowledging our limits. The issue runs both ways - anti-Semitism has woken from near death with the rise of conservative nationalism, while the left has an obvious point at how biased American foreign policy is toward Israeli right-wing government positions and against Palestinians.

My great-grandparents and their parents emigrated from Austria-Hungary to the US in 1910. My understanding is that German-Americans disproportionately opposed American entry into World War I. It's lost to time whether my relatives took part in those politics, but the German-American bias is worth acknowledging. It's not necessarily wrong - maybe we'd have fewer wars if people cared about the lives of family relatives in the opposing military trench. It does however complicate things.

I hope we can get a somewhat-more balanced perspective on Israel (given everything global, I favor a somewhat pro-Israel stance for the US) while confronting anti-Semitism and other biases wherever they arise.

The Impossible Burger isn't good enough. The Beyond Burger is better (also, Beyond Sausage)

So I liked the hype, but after five or six attempts, I'm just not sold on the Impossible Burger. Maybe I need to try it well done, but every patty I've had ends up a thin gooey red mess in the center. I'm guessing it might be okay as a crumbled addition to a entree, like in omelettes or tacos, but not as a burger.

I've blogged before about Beyond Burger as a vegetarian alternative, and I think it's better. No clue why it sits in the grocery stores while Impossible Burgers command a premium at restaurants. Well, one clue - my wife can't stand coconuts, and it has a mild coconut smell and taste..

Anyway, not a burger substitute but far better than any vegetarian dogs I've had is Beyond Sausage, now showing up in my Safeway store. No coconut smell or taste btw. It wasn't so great on an electric grill, but sliced and fried up on a stove, it easily matches regular sausage.

Convenience marches on. Contra David Roberts, I think to the extent environmentally aware people can easily do something more, we should do so.

Please please please not Bernie or Biden (also, think carefully about Klobuchar)

There are ten thousand horrifying gifts regarding Trump's manifest unfitness for office. High up in the ranks of unfitness, because it's objective, is his age as the oldest president ever to assume office tied with his concealment of his health and mental health status. Why then would Democrats choose to nominate someone who is even older? Bernie and Biden are four and three years older than Trump respectively, and at that age that difference counts.

It's easy for me to say this in part because I'm not big fan of either men. Elizabeth Warren is three years younger than Trump. She's also at a point where her age counts somewhat against her - not against Trump, it's in her favor, but against the real chance that Mike Pence (10 years younger) or someone else will be the Republican candidate.

The first main point is that there's a wide range of Dems to choose from - why give up a huge advantage by choosing Biden or Bernie? Warren's age counts moderately against her too in my opinion but not as a disqualifying blow.

A similar analysis relates to Klobuchar - the current evidence seems to pretty closely tilt her from demanding to abusive. I'm not sure it's disqualifying yet, and apparently there's some smoke surrounding Bernie too and other male candidates that should be investigated, but we Democrats have the luxury of a wide range of choices. We can be picky.

The second main point, maybe one for another post, is that Trump's awfulness doesn't guarantee he's going to lose. The most important thing is to beat him, not to get the Democratic candidate that exactly matches our personal political preferences. Time to be picky regarding some political disadvantages among the candidates.

Last point - all Dem candidates, but especially the older ones, should undergo public reviews of their physical and mental health fitness for office. It is now a great time to establish this precedent, one that works against Trump and will be helpful in future elections.


UPDATE: For a contrary opinion, read Everett's multi-part diatribe against my evident ageism and stupidity in the comments. YMMV. FWIW, I'm hitting the age at which I'm just starting to get concerned about ageism as my career progresses, so I obviously don't like ageism. OTOH, despite Bernie's conclusory statement against ageism, I bet that if forced to do it, he'd acknowledge that if a candidate were 10 or 20 years older than him, that candidate's age should be considered as a factor. So should Bernie's.

There he goes again v.93 p.1221....

On his last visit, but before leaving Ethon described a wonderful piece of misdirection from our friend in Colorado, who asks for advice on improving this:

No emissions reduction policy currently under discussion – from changes in personal behavior to those proposed under the Framework Convention on Climate Change – even if successfully implemented will have a discernible effect on the global climate system for at least 50 years.

and points to a statement

NCAR's Jim Hurrell observes, "... it should be recognized that mitigation actions taken now mainly have benefits 50 years and beyond now."

as support for the "scientific accuracy of the first sentence.

Now Ms. Rabett Sr. was school teacher and the first thing Eli noted was the difference between "mainly have benefits" and "no emisions policy will have a discernible effect on the global climate system".

So at a minimum Hurrell says that MOST OF THE BENEFIT will come later, but there will be some earlier than 50 years. He who must not be named twists this into NO DISCERNIBLE EFFECT. Several of the comments point out that policies implimented today will take time to establish, economic systems do not stop on a dime, and that even after the policies are implimented it will take time for the climate system to respond. However, let us look and see if

CA HSR, RIP (kind of)

So just as high speed rail gets a political lift via the Green New Deal, the one active effort bites the dust in California. Read the link though, it's not entirely dead - Newsom committed to a strange little stretch in Central Valley from Merced to Bakersfield that's already partly constructed, and put off the rest for another (undefined) time. Some Amtrak connection to Central Valley could end up making a mixed HSR/normal line run from the Bay Area to LA.

Still, it's depressing if not surprising (I've been hesitant about it for a while). Vox tries to explain why HSR has done poorly, a combination of cost overruns, delays, and political overrides of logic, but that's at best a first-level explanation. Why are cost overruns, delays and politics so much worse for American HSR than in other countries?

Maybe our love affair with cars means that everything else gets second-best efforts. There was also some argument making its way around several years ago that English-speaking advanced economies have far more expensive public infrastructure than in comparable non-English speaking countries (couldn't find a good link on a quick search). The reasons given that I recall were stubborn labor unions, which I find a doubtful distinction, and greater legal costs, which also seem overblown to me. The real cause isn't clear.

Anyway I view the HSR failure as a similar disappointment to each carbon-capture project that bites the dust, usually for the same reason of cost overruns and delays. We need these programs to work.

Still, HSR isn't entirely dead, and alternatives like high-speed autonomous EVs in dedicated lanes could provide similar benefits. And people keep trying CCS, maybe it will eventually work as something we desperately need in order to generate large amounts of negative carbon emissions.



UPDATE - some good analysis from Scott Lemieux:

The crucial underlying problem here is America’s fractured and extraordinarily high-veto-point system, which inevitably leads to substantial inefficiencies and inequities unless (as with roads) the support for them is extremely broad-based and the opposition very weak. Any remotely rational plan would have started with a San Diego-to-LA or an LA-Bakersfield-SF line and proceeded from there, but instead so many local interests had to be bought off that it became white elephant done in a completely irrational sequence, and collapsed. And that’s in one of the most favorable political contexts for such a project.

Another related problem is that NIMBYISM has a serious presence on the left, which can be seen in the fact that the Green New Deal completely ignores the critical need for upzoning and increased housing density. These are both very serious issues.

Eli Rabett's: Dividend and Fee Carbon Taxes

Eli has an idea.  Usual disclaimers.

Let's have a dividend and fee carbon tax. Let's pay the first year dividend and only start to collect the fee in the second, and let's even give bonus' for good deeds, like riding public transport, not using neonicotinoids, giving more carrots to the bunnies and your suggestion goes here.

The Overton window on this is being shoved too and fro.  On the one hand in the US there is a real shift in public opinion toward reality on climate change to it is real, and we must do something about it.  The Green New Deal has a bunch of momentum going for it.  On the other hand the French gilets jaunes have been raising holy hell in the streets of Paris. 

Thus Eli Rabett's simple plan: Pay the first year dividend without collecting the tax.  Institute the tax in the second year.  Where will the money come from the bunnies ask.  Well, think of it as the infrastructure week that the US did not have.  It's an investment, and more will be needed for supporting research and new infrastructure like new nuclear plants and electrical distribution networks.   

So back to the beginning.  Fee and dividend was an idea popularized by Jim Hansen, the idea being that there would be a revenue neutral carbon tax with the revenue being returned to citizens.  In the US this has been taken up by the Citizens Climate Lobby among others including a whole bunch of economists who argue for a carbon fee and dividend plan.  CCL calls for a 100% monthly per person dividend and a border adjustment which would cover the carbon generated in the production and transport of imports. (Eli notes he was one of the first bunnies to talk about the border adjustment feature in the 2007 Eli Rabett's Simple Plan to Save the World).

Now one can argue about the correct costing for a carbon tax, but the general idea is clear and the point of the dividend is to capture the advantages of eliminating CO2 emissions while returning the fee to the public.  Why return the fee, well, some high fees will be needed to get to zero emission, and people will not be happy with paying them (Pay no attention to the folks selling free beer).  Thus pay the dividend up front, tax the carbon later.  Everybody wins