Ronald Bailey on the Social Cost of Carbon: Garbage In, Garbage Out
Economists, regulators, and activists all try to calculate the social cost of carbon—that is, the economic and ecological damage caused each time we add a ton of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere by burning fossil fuels. If we know how much harm each additional ton of carbon dioxide causes, the thinking goes, regulators can offset the effects by putting a price on in it, in the form of taxes or regulations. Unfortunately, Reason Science Correspondent Ronald Bailey finds that they calculate that price using highly dubious computer models.