What you mentioned is too complicated than necessary.
One of the problems in international negotiations on climate change is that it has included too many details. Instead, it should be focused on important ones, such as CO2 and leave most relatively unimportant emissions out.
Further, the many problems you mentioned in the Nordhaus study/paper have the same relatively easy solutions. For example, the key for a global solution is the fairness of an agreement. Once that is achieved, participation other problems will be easy to dealt with.
What solution is there for international fairness? In economics, it is fairly simple, that is, a system of user or emitter pay would do.
Is that system difficult to achieve? No, once one realise to set an international carbon price and every country is taxed for carbon emissions and the revenue is then distributed by population shares to each country.
Such a system may not achieve all the objectives from the start, but over time it will be effective and achieve the target. This is because there will be enough incentives for innovations to reduce emissions and for the use of alternative and more economic energy sources.
The difficulties Nordhaus got is the unrealistically perfection that created unnecessary problems. If everyone falls into that kind of trap of thinking, then it would be a problem of unsolvable.
But once a different thinking is adopted, it is a whole different story.

"every cow, sheep and goat"? Alarmism does not help, Peter. You and I both know that carbon recycled through the biosphere does not increase the net emissions figure. It is only fossil carbon that creates the problem. Your exaggeration brings the rest of your argument into question.

"Livestock emissions make up about 12 per cent of Australia’s total greenhouse gas emissions or 70 per cent of our agriculture emissions. In fact, livestock are Australia’s third largest source of emissions — nearly equal to all transport emissions."

http://www.daff.gov.au/climatechange/australias-farming-future/climate-change-and-productivity-research/emissions_reduction2

Emissions from livestock have been given a temporary reprieve from carbon pricing in Australia because they cannot be measured sufficiently accurately and the compliance cost would be huge..

All sources of anthropogenic CO2 emissions would have to be included in an international GHG emissions pricing scheme eventually, otherwise the scheme cannot work.

Sigh. When will you admit that carbon consumed by an organism becomes carbon emitted by that organism, either in life or after death? A cow taking in carbon (embodied in grass, for instance, which in turn has absorbed it from the atmosphere very recently) and re-emitting it as CO2 or Methane is not affecting the overall carbon budget. No new carbon has been introduced to the biosphere.

Your argument seems to be that CO2 we exhale should be measured, ignoring the obvious notion that it is just the same carbon we inhaled in our previous breaths.

The problem is not with recycling carbon that is already in the carbon cycle. The problem is in digging up carbon that has been safely sequestered away underground for umpteen years and releasing it into the atmosphere, thereby increasing the total amount of carbon in the biosphere.

True, Doug, to some extent. The problem is farming, which is a fossil-hydrocarbon-intensive effort, now carried on around the world.

Food for animals depends on crops grown to feed them. Those crops depend on fertilizer, made using fossil hydrocarbons. The crops also depend on fuelled vehicles for tilling, planting, weeding, spraying, harvesting & transport to markets.

Ir goes on from there. In the US, for example, methane emissions from meat production swamp those from natural gas extraction, transport, etc., and are ~40% of total US methane emissions.

So, eating meat is a large contributor to GHG emissions.

The problem, as usual, is understanding the realities: photosynthesis is about 7% efficient in storing energy in edible form. Grazing animals are far less efficient in turning that into stored food energy. And our digestion of meat is similarly not terribly efficient.

Vegetarians have a point on net emissions.

And, if our population weren't so large...
;]

Hi Alex.

I think we agree that recycling carbon already in the biosphere is not the problem. That is what the carbon cycle does.

As you said, fossil carbon is used in manufacturing nitrogen fertilisers and FF carbon is used to power agricultural machinery and these uses are part of the problem. I was only trying to correct Peter's assertion that livestock methane emissions are part of the problem.

Carbon absorbed by grass, consumed by cattle and emitted as methane is just going round and round in the carbon cycle. Carbon sourced from fossil fuels is the problem.

A good deal of carbon emitted by livestock in Australia comes from grass grown without the use of fertiisers.

You have a point when we include cattle grown in feed-lots, where the diet is essentially FF-sourced-fertilser-fed grain, but even there the bulk of the carbon in the seed-heads is that which has been captured by plants from the air. I doubt there is a significant fraction of FF carbon in the grain used as feed. It would be interesting to see the research on this, but I don't know of any.

Doug Hutcheson,

“Sigh!” yourself! If you make silly assertions like you did which demonstrate you haven’t a clue what you are talking about, who’d waste time answering your questions (also govenh uyou’ve made it clear you are not interested in any aswer that doesn’
t tell you what you want to hear. And I notice you resort to CAGW Alarmist propaganda site to get back up for your beliefs. How pathetic. Why don’t you go to authoritative sites. Here is the DCCEE site for Australia’s CO 2 emissions (54 Gt CO2 in 2010). Select the UNFCCC. http://ageis.climatechange.gov.au/UNFCCC.aspx

And go to the debates on the legislation to see how long emissions from agriculture are postponed from inclusion in the ETS. Emissions from agriculture, transport and many other emissions sources are excluded temporarily. The government wanted to give a temporary exemption until 2014, then 2015. Now the date is not defined and will, depend on internationals agreement

http://www.climatechange.gov.au/government/clean-energy-future/legislation.aspx
“excludes emissions from agriculture, the land sector, and the combustion of biomass, biofuels and biogas from the mechanism”.

The key point to take from all this is that the compliance cost for any legally binding international agreement will be huge. Clearly such schemes cannot work in the real world. That is what 20 years of failed negotiations pushing such schemes demonstrates.

Just before some pedant picks me up on my error, it is 54 Mt CO2, not 53 Gt CO2, from farting domestic livestock.

Oh, so you don't have as many cows in Australia as Crocodile Dundee led us to believe?
;]

Nah, the crocs ate 'em over winter "8-)

Peter and Alex, I have been corrected over my assertion that domestic livestock only recycle carbon already in the system: my assertion is correct, but I had not allowed for the phase change from CO₂ to CH₄, which does create a forcing as CH₄ is a more powerful greenhouse gas.

The source of my correction was Skeptical Science, so I expect Peter to tell me it is wrong advice, as he has been told it is a "CAGW Alarmist propaganda site", which he would find is laughable if only he would go there to discuss the science.

Doug Hutcheson,

Your problem is you think a web site is good if it supports your beliefs.

You should be able to recognise it is just an alarmist web site since it is run by 'communications' specialists - i.e propaganda sepecialsists.

The headlines for their articles should be sufficient to tell you they are nothing but an extremist CAGW Alarmist site.

You know what will happen if agriculture is included don't you? as ag sectors are predominently price takers, producers will be squeezed to collapse, you know what happens then. You all starve to death.
Though I guess that could solve AGW, just like shutting off fossil fuels would.

Nev Norton,

The people who want a carbon tax are not interested in the consequences. Many of them would like us to stop eating meat altogether. Some suggest we eat insects instead (seriously!).

They also are totally opposed to any rational solutions, as is frequently demonstrated by their comments on threads about global warming on The Conversation.

Yes I agree Peter, but it would also apply to cropping and horticulture and Dairy, not just meat livestock.
I am aware of the Bottom up narrow focus applied on here (TC) by some, not all, supposedly intelligent people. I have seen it frequently, and I find it disturbing.

I see it like this, there is a big flat block at the bottom called the environment, sitting on the environment block are the twin colums of fossil fuel and agriculture, and on top of that is arranged a whole pyramid of blocks called society. Now, white ant the big block at the bottom and you will eventually bring the pyramid crashing down, knock out either the fossil fuel column or the ag column, and you smash the societal pyramid to pieces, society would cease to exist in a matter of weeks, then the model no longer exists and no alternative model can be constructed from the rubble. So what we see is environmentalists working so hard to maintain the big block at the bottom, that they reason they can just knock out the fossil fuel column, to isolate society from damaging the big block at the bottom but forgetting that they need a replacement block called alternative energy, to maintain the balance of the pyramid, but this a really complex block to firstly make, because it has to be a complex alloy that address"s employment and export earnings, among other things, failure to correctly build this column could see it collapse and again take down the societal pyramid, and then it has to be slid in oh so carefully while the fossil fuel column is being slid out oh so carefully to maintain the balance of the pyramid. As for the agriculture column the environmentalists are just content to keep white anting it, oblivious to the fact it will eventually crumble, toppling over the societal pyramid to its waiting fate.

But once a different thinking is adopted, it is a whole different story.
Why is it so difficult to reach an international agreement, given in economics the principles and methods are so clear for a solution? The reason is that applying the economically sound principle and method would mean the rich and powerful countries would have to pay more, much more because they emit more on the per capita basis and powerful countries would not like to do it. That is why the US has refused to do Kyoto, that has caused a serious other problems, including developing countries refusal to commit to a legally binding regime for them.