HT: aei-ideas.org
An inconvenient chart
15 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: an inconvenient truth, global warming
HT: aei-ideas.org
The battle of the graphs
08 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in environmentalism, global warming Tags: global cooling, global warming, Little ice age, Medieval warming period
The second IPCC report, in 1996, showed a 1,000-year graph demonstrating that temperature in the Middle Ages was warmer than today.
The 2001 report contained a new graph showing no medieval warm period. The technique they overweighed was one which the UN’s 1996 report had said was unsafe: measurement of tree-rings from bristlecone pines.
Scores of scientific papers show that the medieval warm period was real, global and up to 3C warmer than now.
There are major differences between a carbon tax and emissions trading.
29 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: cap and trade, carbon tax, emissions trading, global warming, rent seeking
- The history of cap-and-trade systems suggests that the carbon emission allowances are given away to carbon emitters, which they can use or sell at market prices. The prices of energy products would rise, but governments would collect no revenue to reduce other taxes and compensate consumers.
- Agreement on a global cap-and-trade system is hard to imagine. A global carbon tax is easier to negotiate. All nations use a carbon tax to raise revenue and use the proceeds to compensate consumers with tax relief. No money needs to change hands across national borders.
- A carbon tax is now being championed by groups and political parties that previously would deny to their graves that taxes have significant incentive effects, and that taxes do not affect the supply of labour or the rate and direction of investment to any important degree. It is suspicious that groups and parties that deny tax cuts increase economic growth take time out from these foundational beliefs to support a tax because of the incentives it gives to reduce carbon consumption. They want it both ways.
The disappearance of IPCC 1990 report figure 7c, the Medieval warm period, and River Thames frost fairs
25 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: global warming, Little ice age, Medieval warm period, River Thames frost fairs
This painting, dated 1684, by Abraham Hondius depicts one of many frost fairs on the River Thames during the Little Ice Age. River Thames frost fairs were held on its tideway in some winters between the 17th century and early 19th century.
The global warming hiatus? Climate models all wrongly predicted warming, so let’s call it a discrepancy
22 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate change, hiatus in global warming, IPCC
Ross McKitrick noted this week that the IPCC still uses the word unequivocal to describe the evidence, but has let a new word slip into its lexicon : hiatus – the global warming hiatus since 1998.
How times have changed. Up until now, to mention this hiatus was to be a climate denier – pure wickedness: to be anti-science and a paid lackey or wannabe paid lackey of Big Oil.
Has the IPCC become a climate denier? Trends change. Differentiating a break in trend from fluctuations around a trend is never easy.
I have not seen a statement of when this hiatus becomes a break in trend. Nor have I seen an estimate of when a return of warming, in what year in the 2020s or 2030s or whenever, will a return in warming make recent trends in global temperatures statistically significant evidence of global warming.
National emissions regulations can have perverse global effects.
16 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: Brayan Caplan, cap and trade, carbon tax
If relatively clean countries switch to clean energy (via command-and-control regulations, cap-and-trade, pollution taxes, or green norms), fossil fuels don’t vanish. Instead, their world price falls – encouraging further consumption in relatively dirty countries. The net effect?
Peak oil versus global warming
16 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: global warming, peak oil
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The environmental movement manages to believe in both peak oil – oil will run out in the next two decades or so – and global warming based on runaway carbon emissions for the rest of the century burning the increasingly expensive and increasingly scarce crude oil that had ran out a long time ago previously.
Global warming will solve itself as long as we are willing to accept that the environmental movement is genuine in its predictions about peak oil.
The ideal green share market portfolio would be made up of shares in green energy companies and futures contracts in the natural resources sector to take advantage of peak oil.
Let the science be settled!
16 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, global warming
HT: Cool It
The Political Rhetoric Around Climate Change … Er, Global Warming | fivethirtyeight
16 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: global warming
American voters are more likely to fear global warming and take part in a campaign to stop it than they are climate change but the term is falling out of favour. Climate change is less frightening to voters than global warming:
climate change “sounds like you’re going from Pittsburgh to Fort Lauderdale.” While global warming has catastrophic connotations attached to it, climate change suggests a more controllable and less emotional challenge.
Another Fox News conspiracy?
14 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of media and culture, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming Tags: Fox News, global warming
HT: Cool It
Alternative energy sources are no substitute for low-cost, zero emissions nuclear power | AEIdeas
13 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of climate change, environmental economics, environmentalism, global warming
The costs of global warming and other government statistics – Updated
11 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, global warming, Richard Tol, Yes Prime Minister
Figure 1. The 14 estimates of the global economic impact of climate change, expressed as the welfare-equivalent income loss, as a functions of the increase in global mean temperature relative to today
Source: Richard Tol
The recent IPCC report found that the temperature rise that we are expected to see sometime around 2055-2080 will create a net cost of 0.2-2% of GDP. The UK, Japan, and the US wanted this rewritten or stricken.
The IPCC report showed that strong climate policies would be more expensive than claimed as well – costing upwards of 4% of GDP in 2030, 6% in 2050, and 11% by 2100.
Politicians tried to delete or change references to these high costs. British officials said they wanted such cost estimates cut because they “would give a boost to those who doubt action is needed.”
Sir Humphrey: No, no… Blurring issues is one of the basic Ministerial skills.
Jim: Oh, what are the others?
Sir Humphrey: Delaying decisions, dodging questions, juggling figures, bending facts and concealing errors.
and more from Yes Minister:
Seven ways of explaining away the fact that North-West region has saved £32 million while your department overspent:
a. They have changed their accounting system in the North-West.
b. Redrawn the boundaries, so that this year’s figures are not comparable.
c. The money was compensation for special extra expenditure of £16 million a year over the last two years, which has now stopped.
d. It is only a paper bag saving, so it will have to be spent next year.
e. A major expenditure is late in completion and therefore the region will be correspondingly over budget next year. (Known technically as phasing – Ed)
f. There has been an unforeseen but important shift in personnel and industries to other regions whose expenditure rose accordingly.
g. Some large projects were cancelled for reasons of economy early in the accounting period with the result that the expenditure was not incurred but the budget had already been allocated.
HT: Bjørn Lomborg and wattsupwiththat
Addendum
http://www.reddit.com/user/pnewell was good enough on the climate sceptics subreddit to point out that there is an updated version of the graph I posted at the top that includes corrections for gremlins in Richard Tol’s original paper.
His response reminds me of another passage from Yes Minister where prime ministerial candidate Jim Hacker is arguing with a European commission official about butter mountains.
Hacker said in one room a European commission official was subsidising people to produce milk, while in the next room another official is subsidising people to destroy it.
The response of this European union official was to say that was not true. Hacker asked how it was not true. He was told that the two officials were not on the same floor, the other official paying people to take the milk away is on the next floor.
The main body of my post is:
- about propaganda tactics to discredit criticism and suppress inconvenient facts, and
- the IPCC report facts that even if global warming is a problem, doing anything about it makes us even worse-off.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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