@CFigueres seriously mistaken on carbon emissions and global poverty
13 Apr 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, development economics, economic history, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, growth disasters, growth miracles, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: climate alarmism, extreme poverty, global poverty, The Great Escape
What They Haven’t Told You about Climate Change
30 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, global warming
1 Hot Month is the signal but years of The Pause is just noise
27 Mar 2016 2 Comments
in economics of media and culture, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, conjecture and refutation, philosophy of science
Temperature trends in the 20th century
22 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, global cooling
Solution aversion and the anti-science Left
11 Mar 2016 1 Comment
in applied price theory, applied welfare economics, comparative institutional analysis, constitutional political economy, economics of regulation, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, health economics, law and economics, politics - Australia, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, property rights, Public Choice Tags: antiscience left, climate alarmism, geo-engineering, GMOs, growth of knowledge, gun control, motivated reasoning, nuclear power, political persuasion, solar power, solution aversion, wind power
Climate science is the latest manifestation of solution aversion: denying a problem because it has a costly solution. The Right does this on climate science, the Left does it on gun control, GMOs, and plenty more. Cass Sunstein explains:
It is often said that people who don’t want to solve the problem of climate change reject the underlying science, and hence don’t think there’s any problem to solve.
But consider a different possibility: Because they reject the proposed solution, they dismiss the science. If this is right, our whole picture of the politics of climate change is off.
Some psychologists wasted grant money on lab experiments to show that people that think the solution to a problem is costly tend to rubbish every aspect of the argument. Any politician will tell you you do not concede anything. Sunstein again:
Campbell and Kay asked the participants whether they agreed with the IPCC. And in both, about 80 percent of Democrats did agree; the policy solutions made no difference.
Republicans, in contrast, were far more likely to agree with the IPCC when the proposed solution didn’t involve regulatory restrictions…
Here, then, is powerful evidence that many people (of course not all) who purport to be skeptical about climate science are motivated by their hostility to costly regulation.
The Left is equally prone to motivated readings. For example, it was found that those on the left are much more concerned about home invasions when gun control can reduce them rather than increase them.
The Left picks and chooses which scientific consensus as it accepts. The overwhelming consensus among researchers is biotech crops are safe for humans and the environment. This is a conclusion that is rejected by the very environmentalist organisations that loudly insist on the policy relevance of the scientific consensus on global warming.
Previously the precautionary principle was used to introduce doubt when there was no doubt. But when climate science turned in their favour, environmentalists wanted public policy to be based on the latest science.
The Right is welcoming of the science of nuclear energy or geo-engineering. The Left rejects it point-blank. Their refusal to consider nuclear energy as a solution to global warming is a classic example of solution aversion. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone.
Is Climate Change Our Biggest Problem?
06 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economics, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, global warming
How to deal with science denialists
03 Mar 2016 Leave a comment
in economics of education, economics of information, economics of media and culture, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, health economics Tags: antiscience left, climate alarmism, growth of knowledge, philosophy of science, quackery, Quacks
Most climate alarmists do not separate the policy issues, the economic issues, from the science of global warming as suggested in this flowchart. Specifically, they do not ask what is the economic and social cost of global warming.
The climate alarmism wheel of Fortune
27 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, conjecture and refutation
Think Again: The Green Economy @janlogie @GarethMP
23 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in applied welfare economics, energy economics, environmental economics, politics - New Zealand, politics - USA, Public Choice, resource economics Tags: climate alarmism, green economy, green rent seeking
Source: Matthew Kahn (2009) Think Again: The Green Economy | Foreign Policy
Partisans divides on foreign threats in the USA
12 Feb 2016 Leave a comment
in defence economics, economics of media and culture, environmental economics, global warming, politics - USA Tags: 2016 presidential election, climate alarmism, foreign policy, global warming, voter demographics
Apparently, it has been getting hotter recently depending on what recently means
04 Feb 2016 2 Comments
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism
I used to write essays about the threats of global cooling in high school
16 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in economic history, economics of media and culture, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, conjecture and refutation, global cooling, global warming, growth of knowledge, rational irrationality
Al Gore and Arctic ice
11 Jan 2016 1 Comment
in environmental economics, global warming Tags: Al Gore, climate alarmism
The Paris treaty on global warming explained
07 Jan 2016 Leave a comment
in energy economics, environmental economics, global warming Tags: climate alarmism, climate treaties, free riding, rational irrationality
@Greenpeace why are German and Danish power prices so high?
24 Dec 2015 Leave a comment
in applied price theory, economic history, energy economics, environmental economics, global warming, Public Choice, rentseeking Tags: Big Solar, Big Wind, bootleggers and baptists, climate alarmism, Denmark, Germany, green rent seeking, power prices, solar power, wind power
Utopia, you are standing in it! 
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