Cooking the Books in a Microwave Oven

Obama Quietly Raises 'Carbon Price' as Costs to Climate Increase

...Buried in a little-noticed rule on microwave ovens is a change in the U.S. government’s accounting for carbon emissions that could have wide-ranging implications for everything from power plants to the Keystone XL pipeline.

The increase of the so-called social cost of carbon, to $38 a metric ton in 2015 from $23.80, adjusts the calculation the government uses to weigh costs and benefits of proposed regulations. The figure is meant to approximate losses from global warming such as flood damage and diminished crops...

A price set by government is not a price at all, in my opinion, it's a policy statement in disguise.  We already know that the globe has not been getting any warmer for the past 16 or so years, that sea-level rise has not accelerated in the industrial age, and that, despite the media cry, there is no observable increase in "extreme weather" events, so the "costs" these carbon prices are based on are strictly fantasy (aka models).

But it does make the regulations the government imposes appear to have greater positive effects and makes it appear more reasonable to impose them:

The administration’s new carbon cost is key to a wide range of policies, which get subject to cost-benefit analysis in the rulemaking process or at OMB. Obama is considering more energy efficiency standards for everything from buildings to vending machines.

In addition, the Environmental Protection Agency is late on issuing rules to cap greenhouse-gas emissions from new power plants, a standard that would preclude the construction of new coal-fired power plants that don’t have expensive carbon-capture technology. Lobbyists representing companies such as American Electric Power Co. (AEP) and Southern Co. (SO) have urged the EPA to scale back that plan.

In each of these cases, the carbon costs would help determine if the administration would act, and how far to go.