United States and European Emission Patterns | The Energy Collective.
Fighting the World’s Biggest Environmental Problem – With Fossil Fuels | Bjorn Lomborg
12 Jul 2014 2 Comments
in development economics, environmental economics Tags: Bjørn Lomborg, indoor pollution
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.
The value of a statistical life through time in the USA
06 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in economics of regulation, environmental economics, health economics, technological progress, Thomas Schelling, transport economics Tags: Thomas Schelling, value of life
Thomas Schelling’s crucial contribution in 1968 at RAND was the notion of statistical lives—mortality risks—in contrast to valuing the lives of specific, identified individuals. His insight was that economists could evade the moral thicket of valuing life and instead focus on people’s willingness to trade-off money for small reductions in the risks they face.
Good old days alert: The Great London Smog | Stuff You Missed in History Class
04 Jul 2014 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, technological progress Tags: London smog, The Great Escape
A London bus conductor is forced to walk ahead of his vehicle to guide it through the smog, 9th December 1952.
In 1952, a choking cloud enveloped much of London and the Home Counties which killed thousands. Barbara Fewster walked 16-mile home – in heels – guiding her fiancé’s car.
the fog persisted until the 1960s when people stop using coal to heat their houses.
the London fogs which were regular from about the 1830s until the early 1960s were part of the good old days before the environment even got worse, if our friends in the environmental movement are to be believed.
via Missed In History: The Great London Smog | Stuff You Missed in History Class.
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.
The Peak Whale Oil Theory | Coyote Blog
18 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics Tags: peak oil
As the US Population reaches toward the astronomical total of 40 million persons, we are reaching the limits of the number of people this earth can support. If one were to extrapolate current population growth rates, this country in a hundred years could have over 250 million people in it! Now of course, that figure is impossible – the farmland of this country couldn’t possibly support even half this number. But it is interesting to consider the environmental consequences.
Take the issue of transportation. Currently there are over 11 million horses in this country, the feeding and care of which constitute a significant part of our economy. A population of 250 million would imply the need for nearly 70 million horses in this country, and this is even before one considers the fact that “horse intensity”, or the average number of horses per family, has been increasing steadily over the last several decades.
It is not unreasonable, therefore, to assume that so many people might need 100 million horses to fulfil all their transportation needs. There is just no way this admittedly bountiful nation could support 100 million horses. The disposal of their manure alone would create an environmental problem of unprecedented magnitude.
Or, take the case of illuminant. As the population grows, the demand for illuminant should grow at least as quickly. However, whale catches and therefore whale oil supply has levelled off of late, such that many are talking about the “peak whale” phenomena, which refers to the theory that whale oil production may have already passed its peak. 250 million people would use up the entire supply of the world’s whales four or five times over, leaving none for poorer nations of the world.
The great leap backward
17 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in comparative institutional analysis, development economics, environmental economics, growth disasters, population economics Tags: Deirdre McCloskey
The importation of socialism into the Third World, even in the relatively non-violent form of Congress-Party Fabian-Gandhism, unintentionally stifled growth, enriched large industrialists, and kept the people poor. Malthusian theories hatched in the West were put into practice by India and especially China, resulting in millions of missing girls. The capitalist-sponsored Green Revolution of dwarf hybrids was opposed by green politicians the world around, but has made places like India self-sufficient in grains.
State power in many parts of sub-Saharan Africa has been used to tax the majority of farmers in aid of the president’s cousins and a minority of urban bureaucrats. State power in many parts of Latin America has prevented land reform and sponsored disappearances. State ownership of oil in Nigeria and Mexico and Iraq was used to support the party in power, benefiting the people not at all. Arab men have been kept poor, not bettered, by using state power to deny education and driver’s licenses to Arab women.
The seizure of governments by the clergy has corrupted religions and ruined economies. The seizure of governments by the military has corrupted armies and ruined economies.
The real beauty of this free-market price system is that it brings about its own kind of sustainability
17 Jun 2014 Leave a comment
in energy economics, entrepreneurship, environmental economics Tags: peak oil
This is not so much sustainability in the use of particular resources — for particular goods fall in and out of favour according to supply and demand factors — but sustainability of high economic growth and high standards of living in the economically developed, capitalist economies.
Take, as an example, the transition in the market for interior illumination: tallow candles were replaced by whale-oil lamps, which were replaced by kerosene lamps, which were replaced by incandescent bulbs powered by electricity.
There was no social or political pressure needed to accomplish this evolution; there was no “peak whale oil” movement, no kerosene conservationists, no sustainability crusade of yore. All it took was a functional price system, combined with the ever-present entrepreneurial drive for profits under a competitive, free-market order.
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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