Climate Consensus: Do Little for Now
16 Sep 2014 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, economics of natural disasters, environmental economics, global warming, health economics, liberalism, technological progress Tags: climate alarmism, cost benefit analysis, global warming, moral panic, richer is safer, wealthier is healthier
Fact sheet on Green scaremongering about more flooding because of global warming
15 Sep 2014 1 Comment
Who Is More Irrational – Consumers or Regulators?
08 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, expressive voting, futile gestures, global warming, Kip Viscusi, nanny state, regulatory failure, The fatal conceit, The pretence to knowledge
A study by Ted Gayer and W. Kip Viscusi looked into this implied irrationality of consumers. They have found no empirical evidence to support the view that if consumers are so irrational that government agencies must prohibit certain energy consuming products for us to make the right choices:
Rather than accept the implications that consumers and firms are acting so starkly against their economic interest, a more plausible explanation is that there is something incorrect in the assumptions being made in the regulatory impact analyses.
Indeed, upon closer inspection it is apparent that there is no empirical evidence provided for the types of consumer failures alleged.
Even the EPA acknowledged this logical gap in its economic analysis of energy efficiency regulations:
it is a conundrum from an economic perspective that these large fuel savings have not been provided by automakers and purchased by consumers
Not surprisingly Kip Viscusi observed that
The regulatory impact analyses examined in this study contain virtually no empirical evidence to support the irrationality proposition.
• This proposition ignores the fact that consumers and firms purchase products based on a number of factors—only one of which is energy efficiency.
• Government agencies exhibit a parochial bias by ignoring all product attributes other than energy efficiency.
Prof Chris Turney was trapped in ice he predicted wouldn’t be there
22 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: Antarctic ice, Chris Turney, global cooling, global warming
Chris Turney, a professor of climate change at Australia’s University of New South Wales, said it was “silly” to suggest he and 73 others aboard the MV Akademic Shokalskiy were trapped in ice they’d sought to prove had melted.
Turney is a scientist who wants everyone to believe the Antarctic is melting away. The ship was not an icebreaker, it is only ice reinforced for a light ice. His family family and tourists were on the ship because they weren’t expecting to be trapped in ice.
Killer green technologies alert: safety records of the nuclear and wind industries
10 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, climate change, economics of climate change, economics of regulation, environmental economics, global warming, health economics Tags: killer green technologies; wind power
Nuclear fatalities in the last ten years: 7
Wind farm fatalities in the last ten years: 44.
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