Global warming debate not over
It is true: the earth is getting warmer. However, contrary to what John Quiggin and friends will have you believe, there is an ongoing debate about the size of the human contribution with some scientists continuing to question the mainstream position that it’s all our fault.
I am not a scientist and so I have nothing to add to the science debate. But science is only half the debate when it comes to global warming (GW) – the other debate is a public policy debate about what to do. I wonder if the scientists will recognise that this is not their area of expertise and leave it to the professional economists and public policy analysts?
At the centre of the current debate about GW policy is the Kyoto protocol. Most studies to date suggest that the costs of Kyoto exceed the small benefits. Supporters of Kyoto respond that Kyoto is just the first step and future steps will have more benefits, but that doesn’t change the benefit-cost ratio because they will also have more costs.
Recently, John Quiggin has suggested that the total cost of stabilising global CO2 levels will be about 5% of GDP. ABARE comes up with a similar estimate. Quiggin considers this a small number, but it sounds big to me.
World GDP is about US$44.4 trillion and 5% of that is about US$2.2 trillion. Assuming 3% world growth and using a 5% discount rate inside a 30 year time limit (standard assumptions), the present value of the economic cost is US$51.1 trillion. Using PPP instead of GDP increases the cost to over US$70 trillion.
Another recent consultancy was more conservative and estimated a present value cost of preventing global warming of “only” US$18 trillion. The authors concluded that this cost was “much greater than any conceivable benefit” from preventing global warming.
And what is the estimated cost of global warming? Robert Watson, World Bank Chief Scientist and IPCC Chair from 1996-2002, suggests that the possible costs from global warming could be “between tens to hundreds of billions of dollars a year” or up to 3 percent lower GDP (US$1.3 trillion/year). Strangely, these two estimates do not match.
Watson goes on to say that “the cost of action is much less than the cost of inaction”, but if we are to believe John Quiggin or ABARE then this is not true.
Further, there has been some suggestion that the costs of global warming have been overestimed by not taking into account the offsetting benefits from global warming. Professor Robert Mendelsohn notes that “warming benefits and damages will likely offset each other until warming passes 2.5C and even then it will be far smaller on net than originally thought”.
None of this is to suggest that the debate is over. We still have a lot to learn about the benefits and costs of global warming and the benefits and costs of possible anti-GW policies, and there may come a time when the evidence unambiguously supports global action. But we are not there yet.
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Oz Political Quiz
Coase’s great contribution was that externalities (to the extent they exist) are reciprocal. If our EU friends were really concerned about global warming and Kyoto they’d pay us to sign up. Rather, they expect us to pay to join.
Obviously the scientific debate won’t be over, in the sense you want it, as long as ExxonMobil has an open check book.
“I wonder if the scientists will recognise that this is not their area of expertise and leave it to the professional economists and public policy analysts?”
They have. Agree with John Q’s comment above.
‘as long as ExxonMobil has an open check book’
Not sure what this means. The Royal Society, for example, claims to be ‘independent’ yet receives 30 million pounds from the UK government (http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/page.asp?id=1139). This pro-global warming organisation has far deeper pockets behind it, than do anti-global warming organisations.
The real point here is that the global warming brigade don’t want to do the hard yards in the market for ideas. The suffer from the myth of authoritativeness – we must believe because they are scientists (who are very clever people and deserve to be obeyed!)
Why don’t people understand? Aliens cause global warming!
It’s true that there is still a scientific discussion ongoing about the size of the human contribution to global warming. However I don’t think many people are arguing that the contribution is zero or negative.
‘I don’t think many people are arguing that the contribution is zero or negative.’
The number who argue in favour of any proposition is irrelevant. Science is not a democracy. Somebody is either correct or wrong. Science generates testable hypotheses, that are then falsified in reproducible experiments. Our human global warming friends have a hypothesis, but no reproducible experimental results. So the religious beliefs of scientists, while interesting in themselves, are not really science.
Sinclair,
Large bodies of science relate to phenomena across timeframes that are simply untestable. The fact that such theories are not falsefiable does weaken the certainty of such theories however it does not make the endeavour unscientific. In medicine we can do field trials and demonstrate reproducable results, however in terms of the earths climate there is no opportunity to do such robust testing.
The global climate system is complex. Those with the time and energy and intellect to study all the relevant factors and data may do so. However most people will look at the body of scientific “opinion” as a proxy for such personal analysis. There are definitely problems trusting in authority figures however this does not diminish the fact that people do. If the bulk of climate scientists believe in AGW then there are very real political difficulties in arguing that AGW is not real. Ultimately the majority of people are going to follow the authority opinion because they can’t afford to become experts themselves.
I agree that science is not democracy. However I don’t doubt the influence of a majority opinion.
Regards,
Terje.
‘If the bulk of climate scientists believe in AGW then there are very real political difficulties in arguing that AGW is not real. Ultimately the majority of people are going to follow the authority opinion because they can’t afford to become experts themselves.’
I understand these points. Let’s consider a slightly different example. Many, many more people in the world believe that Jesus is their personal saviour, than scientist believe AGW. Yet, our Green friends don’t accept this as ‘evidence’ for Christianity (and nor should they). Yet, our Green friends make the same type of claim and expect us to believe in AGW. Science has reproducible experiments as the final arbiter – if it is science where are the reproducible experiments?
I am willing to accept the whole CO2, warming, greenhouse stuff — it is when people begin modelling what the effects will be that the exercise becomes highly speculative.
Ultimately, reducing emissions is impractical and — probably — not terribly desirable. Were the climate change mafia serious, they would be examining ways to mitigate the impact of climate change, rather than peddling impossible, “humanity’s evil” energy-reduction initiatives.
Michael Crichton had some interesting things to say in the essay published in his book State of Fear:
These are pretty reasonable assertions to make I would have thought, especially the first one (which we should all be able to agree on).
JQ — I was hoping you would join us. When I said the debate wasn’t over, I wasn’t actually talking about the scientific debate. That debate may need to go further, but at this stage I am more interested in the public policy debate about what to do next.
I recognise that global warming is an important issue that deserves our serious consideration. Therefore I am sincerely interested in your views on the relative benefits and costs of various actions. Perhaps we could all learn from an open and honest debate of these issues.
Sinclair — I agree that public opinion is irrelevant with regards to the truth. However, given the current balance of scientific opinion I think it worthwhile at least exploring the variuos options for combating AGW.
Terje — Always appreciate your contributions to the AGW debate and am not-very-secretly hoping that you will contribute a post or two of your own on this topic.
Sinclair,
Is the big bang theory scientific? Is the theory that Dinosaurs roamed the earth scientific? Neither is repeatable in the sence that you require, however both theories rest on a body of evidence. Are they religious beliefs or scientific opinion?
Religion and scientific insight both require a “REVELATION” of sorts. However in religion the revelation is far more personal. Some science is very repeatable in the manner that you describe. Some isn’t.
The AGW theory is scientific. Expecting it to predict the weather for ten straight years confuses climate with weather and as such is not a useful test. The challenge for AGW theory is to have the theoretical mechanisms that it rides on tested against climate history. It is in this regard (ie the strength of the climate models) that I think there is still too much uncertainty. There are also some current events that do need to be accounted for such as the recent cooling of the worlds oceans which is too dramatic to be just weather (it could be a data error).
I do agree with John Quiggin in the sence that it is time to join the policy debate assuming AGW might be real. I disagree with him on the notion that the AGW theory is scientically settled. Science is rarely so quick to get it so certain. As I see it the real concensus is that the climate models incorporate the best of our understanding, not that they are a finished project or that their accuracy is completely certain.
Regards,
Terje.
p.s. A carbon tax that reduces other taxes (eg income tax) can’t be much more offensive than the near arbitrary array of taxes that we already have.
The question is, ‘Is the big bang theory settled science?’ Answer, No. Can we believe that dinosaurs roamed the Earth? Well first have an hypothesis: Big animals existed at some point in the past, that no longer exist today. Second, conduct an experiement. This experiment consists of digging up the fossil remains of alleged animals. Repeat. After several animals have been dug up we can safely agree that our hypothesis is approximately correct. (Of course, our hypothesis should be stated in the negative, and all that – lets keep it simple).
‘The AGW theory is scientific.’
It is one explaination for an apparent increase in global temperature.
‘Expecting it to predict the weather for ten straight years confuses climate with weather and as such is not a useful test.’
Why not. Either the planet is warming, or it is not. I understand why our green friends don’t like this test. They can’t predict a week in advance, yet they can predict a century in advance.
‘The challenge for AGW theory is to have the theoretical mechanisms that it rides on tested against climate history.’
This is huge challenge – this is why the AGW hypothesis is not falsifiable and consequently cannot truely be called a scientific theory.
‘It is in this regard (ie the strength of the climate models) that I think there is still too much uncertainty.’
So we do agree!
‘I do agree with John Quiggin in the sence that it is time to join the policy debate assuming AGW might be real.’
Why? There are so many other things you could assume to be real too.
‘I disagree with him on the notion that the AGW theory is scientically settled.’
Don’t we all?
‘Science is rarely so quick to get it so certain.’
There has never been any doubters. Makes me very suspicious.
‘As I see it the real concensus is that the climate models incorporate the best of our understanding’
It’s called the fatal conceit. Why should we believe that we understand all there is to know about a complex and dynamic system such as the earth’s weather system?
I’m happy to tax carbon, or the great outdoors, or any other tax base. Just tll me which existing taxes will be scrapped and replaced by carbon taxes? I nominate the income tax.
I’m not sure where this leaves us. I suspect we agree that AGW is contested but disagree on what to do. You want to apply the precautionary principle and I don’t.
JH, as the numbers you quote suggest, costs and benefits of stablising CO2 concentrations look to be around 3 per cent of GDP over the period to 2050. But the end states are very different – under the no action scenario, the problem is still there in 2050 and needs to be dealt with.
Sinclair, most analyses of carbon taxes incorporate the assumption that they will displace payroll taxes and that seems like a good choice to me. But the most likely policy option will involve primary reliance on tradeable permits, so revenue flows won’t be such an issue.
As regards the science, I’ll just make the point that if you want a serious discussion of the economic policy issues, you’re doing yourself a disservice by citing dishonest hacks about the science as an opening gambit. And when the best ‘authority’ that can be cited in comments is a science fiction writer, the thinness of the case is pretty evident.
Sinclair,
I don’t think much of the precautionary principle. It is a “never get out of bed” philosophy that does not take us anywhere useful. And given that so far I have not advocated any specific policy response I don’t know quite why you presume that I believe in it. For what it is worth John Quiggin has me tagged as a denialist on AGW so that should give a fair indication of where I don’t stand.
The reason I think we need to join the policy debate is not because I think AGW is a certain risk. It is because the population at large believes in AGW and some policy responces are less bad than others. If it was my planet things would be done differently on a whole swag of things, but it isn’t so I try and deal with political reality.
For what it is worth I think that excessive government is bad for the economy. However I can’t forcast any economic figures accurately for ten years running. I still think excess government is a menace that we need to fight against.
Regards,
Terje.
On a slight tanget here, looking at the ABARE report I notice that they don’t seem to make any error estimate for their predictions? Or are they hidden in an appendix somewhere?
It seems meaningless to me to be talking about the difference between 1.7% of GDP and 2.6% of GDP or whatever when you don’t know what the likely error in the estimate is? I mean if they get GDP right to 1% over 1 year, then they are likely to have an error of say 7% over 50, and the differences between some of these scenarios are basically insignifigant (less than a quarter of the standard deviation).
‘the assumption that they will displace payroll taxes and that seems like a good choice to me’
Payroll tax is a nuisance tax that doesn’t raise all that much money (relative to the nuisance it causes). I would have thought that a ‘decent’ price signal via carbon tax would have to be quite large – much larger than the current payroll tax (not that I’m advocating such a signal). Also global warming is a ‘national’ / international issue, why then apply it at a state taxation level?
“Why not. Either the planet is warming, or it is not. I understand why our green friends don’t like this test. They can’t predict a week in advance, yet they can predict a century in advance.”
Sinclair, you do understand the difference between weather and climate, don’t you?
Yes, I do (at least, I have an understanding of what I think the difference is). Climate can be thought of as the macro environment and weather the micro environment. The argument being that there are changes in the long term generating process (climate) that impact the weather (here and now). Strictly speaking predicting the weather (choatic process) is harder than predicting climate (stable process). HOWEVER, the current kerfuffle is about (allegedly, unseasonal) warm days we have been experiencing. Now, in economic terms, investigating climate change is like doing business cycle research – you need a long data series. Our greens friends don’t have a long data series. They have to impute data, or ‘slice’ data series together. fine – this is a difficult task. But there are unknown error terms associated with that process (not to mention lookback bias and survivorship bias) that can easily distort data and results.
I think this statement, just like your implication that the science debate won’t be over until the big bad corporations stop funding the sceptics, shows how ‘thin’ your own arguments are. Or at the very least, they show no one – not even one of Australia’s top ‘intellectuals’ – is immune from the tendency of putting up strawmen to score cheap points.
So it doesn’t really help that you try and cast aspersions on Crichton, who graduated from Harvard Medical School and has been studying this issue for probably as long as you (if not longer).
For what it’s worth I wasn’t citing Crichton as an authority on anything, just putting his thoughts out there for some rational debate.
Here I do agree with yobbo – degrees don’t prove a thing. Pleas to authority only make you look desperate.
Similarly, it shouldn’t matter who’s funding what if we’re searching for the truth. Personal attacks are not argument. By that reasoning no one should say anything about anything unless they have a Ph.D. in the subject — I should probably just go sit in the corner now…
To be even handed, John H seems to have done the same thing in his post:
And who decides this ‘expertise’ business? You might have a degree in science but be equally competent in economics. Does there have to be a trade-off? They have just as much of a contribution to make as anyone else. The aim is to hear out competing views and find the truth, not, as JQ seems to think, shut down dissent.
If money from ExxonMobile is being expended on PR and muddying the debate then I think it is reasonable to discount the PR (to an extent) and criticise the exercise. However if money from ExxonMobile is being spent on basic research that furthers our understanding of the earths systems then it should be commended.
Sinclair, I’m pretty sure (but could be wrong) that weather is the short-term thing and climate is the just long term thing. For whatever reasons climate is often fairly constant over human timescales or longer – although of course less constant over much longer time scales (eg ice ages), and weather is chaotic – although people can now predict the weather out to about 7 days through very powerful computers.
If the scribblings of sci-fi authors are going to be used, why not refer to the future history of the Earth in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy?
Correction: I appear to have added ‘So why’ to John H’s comment – that shouldn’t be there.
Terje, I agree – it’s reprehensible for any lobby group to fund false or misleading research to support its own commercial interests. But it’s what we expect them to do. If they value their reputation they won’t do it, but it probably happens. Like everyone – including the pro-global warming groups – they’re self-interested. That probably give us reason to examine the work they put out extra carefully, but as pointed out above it can’t be used to taint the science with comments like ‘the scientific debate won’t be over, in the sense you want it, as long as ExxonMobil has an open check book.’
Ultimately it shouldn’t matter who funds it – is it good or bad science? Credibility is earned through analysis, not where your funding comes from or how many degrees you hide behind.
Funny – I wrote a post criticising the hype over global warming last year on the youth site Vibewire.net: I got the same sort of disbelief that a (highly successful and intelligent) science fiction writer could have anything to say on global warming. But that was from supposedly ‘immature’ young people. I guess I too fell into the trap of thinking in stereotypes: fallacies are everywhere, regardless of age!
‘weather is the short-term thing and climate is the just long term thing’
That’s approximately my understanding.
‘the future history of the Earth in Kim Stanley Robinson’s Mars trilogy?’
I’m embarrassed to admit that my second attempt to complete the Mars trilogy has failed. Sorry, I know you gave it a good reference.
I think it took me at least two or three attempts! The first (and second?) times I got lost in the third installment.
No, in the third book (“Blue Mars”), part of the antarctic ice sheet slides off into the ocean (the melt line has gone further and further back) raising the sea level by a couple of metres – and the Mars people use this “trigger point” to their advantage.
I like the trilogy – but there’s so much writing and it’s a bit dense – the volume of the text can be just overwhelming. Liked the description of Sax and how he changed after the plastic brain treatment following his torture.
Carl Sagan wrote science fiction and I don’t think it reduced his standing as a scientist. I suppose some people doubt that analytical skills and creative skills can be resident in the same mind.
JQ — as I understand, originally you thought the costs of stopping global warming would approximate 5%. Do you stand by that estimate (and I realise it was only a rough estimate) or do you now prefer 3%?
With regards to how the world will look by 2050, I would be interested in people’s views on whether technology will have advanced sufficiently by then to stablise GW without the need for additional policies.
Sukrit, my question about scientists joining the public policy debate was a subtle (?) attempt to show scientists that they don’t have a monopoly on relevant opinion with regards the AGW debate.
I fully expect everybody to join the debate, but it sometimes worth remembering that experts might know something the lay-person doesn’t. I’m not promoting arguing-from-authority. Just respecting the views of experts.
Does Global Warming exist? Maybe.
Is it Anthropogenic? Maybe.
Is it a problem? Maybe.
If the answer to the first three questions is yes, how big a problem will it be?
If we spend money (by we I mean First World Western countries) on this problem, will it fix it, and could the money be spent more wisely on other things?
Why are no alternatives to reducing consumption being offered? e.g. http://reason.com/9711/fe.benford.shtml
How are nations like the USA, and ‘loose affiliations’ like Europe, going to convince India and China and Africa that they should stay as they are – because they might cause problems with global warming and climate change?
I just can’t get worried about this.
I agree with most of your comment nick… except that “does global warming exist?” now has a clear answer: “Yes”.
And the more correct answer to the second question “Is it Anthropogenic?” is: “probably, at least to some degree”.
There is absolutely no value in pretending this isn’t true. Doing so would only undermine our (being those who are skeptical of Kyoto etc) credibility.
Good post.
Even if human activity is causing global warming it is important to understand that nothing follows from that. Neither environmental science nor economic science is capable of proving from the fact of global warming, the value judgment that therefore we ought to do anything.
The underlying value judgements are very much in issue, for example, how resources should be allocated as between existing human and non-human life, and future human and non-human life. Only if there were underlying agreement on the value judgements in issue, would it be valid to assume that the positive sciences are capable of indicating the appropriate policy response.
From what I have seen of the debate, particularly by environmental scientists, all we see on these points is abysmal ignorance and presumptuousness.
Some facts: There have been no global ice-caps for 80 percent of the time since earth began. Extinction, not conservation, is the norm. There have been massive extinction events before, over and over and over again. In just one of them, 96 percent of living species were wiped out. Massive clouds of gas are thrown up into the atmosphere from continental drift and many other causes. Rapid massive climate change is normal. How do we now that any warming isn’t due to an event like that, that scientists don’t even know about? But more to the point, who fucking cares if the climate is getting warmer? Why should my life prospects, liberty or property be sacrificed to someone else’s moral panic about global warming? Can I confiscate his property to satisfy a value judgment of mine? It doesn’t seem to occur to the environmentalists smirking their moral superiority over other mere mortals that *their* rate of consumption of earth’s precious resources is in issue.
Even if the great chain of contingencies is conceded that gets us to the question of whether any response should be by way of governmental regulation, it’s still a case of…. excuse me? Do these people have the gall to re-run the socialist argument, presuming government’s omniscience after what just happened in the twentieth century?
The fallacy of ‘scientism’ is alive and well. It is a fallacy of science to believe that the issues of human action are reducible to questions to which positive science can give us the answer, if only we can get the data. The problem facing us with the environment now, is similar to the problem facing the socialists with the economy early in the twentieth century. How is one to know how best to allocate resources in satisfying human wants? If there were no human beings, the whole issue wouldn’t arise. Science is incapable of telling us anything about what value humans should attach to life: to their own, to others’, to non-human life, and to future human life. So much of appeal to science in these issues is mere ignorant superstition, no better than olden resort to astrologers and the oracle.
The fallacy of socialism is also alive and well. The issue is precisely how are we to know what allocation of resources, and what structure of production is better? This requires the consideration of all the factual values, and all the normative values, of all the people in all the world, not only now, but in all future generations as well. Apart from blind faith, what reason is there to think that a committee of scientists or bureaucrats is capable of knowing what they would need to know in order to decide what allocation of resources would be appropriate for the whole world? The early socialists only had to know all the facts and variables in the whole economy: the modern totalitarians would need to know all the facts and variables in the environment as well!
The point that the modern-day environmentalists don’t seem to understand, is the same one that the socialists don’t understand: there are limits to human knowledge, that are relevant to the appropriate policy response. The knowledge that they would need is not available to a committee, no matter how clever they are – it is dispersed in the special knowledge of particular times and places in literally billions of people all over the world. Human freedom is necessary to solve both the economic and the environmental problem. The market system of discovering the best way to do things through competition may be imperfect, but it is far better than a system based on governmental edict, both in economic and in environmental outcomes. No-one has ever refuted the arguments proving that socialism is intrinsically incapable of rationally economising – ie rationally conserving – the resources that are in issue. Human action and human freedom cannot be eliminated from the equation.
The promises of socialism will only turn to ash in the mouth of any people who try them, and the whole United Nations environment racket is nothing more than a re-run of the intellectual and moral bankruptcy of the socialist disaster. ‘Those who are ignorant of history are condemned to re-live it.’ Intellectuals who advocate this path are no better than the well-intentioned educated ignoramuses who ushered in national socialism in Germany, and Soviet socialism in Russia.
Substitution of the will of government is not an alternative rational system for dealing with the problem: it is an abolition of a rational system for dealing with the problem.
Granting sweeping powers to government to ‘tackle’ global warming is a far greater and more immediate threat to the welfare of us and our children than climate change.
I challenge any proponent of governmental action on global warming to prove that he knows all the values and varibales he would need to know, in order to know whether coercion is justified.
“Extinction, not conservation, is the norm. There have been massive extinction events before, over and over and over again. In just one of them, 96 percent of living species were wiped out.”
True. The thing is that the rate of extinction is much faster now than usually.
“The point that the modern-day environmentalists don’t seem to understand, is the same one that the socialists don’t understand: there are limits to human knowledge, that are relevant to the appropriate policy response. The knowledge that they would need is not available to a committee, no matter how clever they are – it is dispersed in the special knowledge of particular times and places in literally billions of people all over the world. Human freedom is necessary to solve both the economic and the environmental problem.”
All sensible people recognise the limits to their knowledge.
“So it doesn’t really help that you try and cast aspersions on Crichton, who graduated from Harvard Medical School and has been studying this issue for probably as long as you (if not longer).”
You are joking, right? As far as I know, no one quotes me as an authority on the science of global warming, even though my qualifications are just as relevant as Crichton’s medical degree and, contrary to your claims, I’m confident I’ve been studying the issue much longer than him.
I’ll repeat my point. Those who have denied the scientific evidence on the basis of wishful thinking can’t expect to be taken seriously when the debate turns to economics.
JH, my range of estimates for is 1 to 5 per cent, with a best point estimate of 3 per cent.
There is a difference between “denying evidence” and disagreeing about conclusions. In economics all the time we see huge disagreement about conclusions even though in general people are working from the same data set.
On page 6 of todays (20 October 2006) The Australian is reference to a recent poll of 1500 voters that says 70% think the government should sign Kyoto.
Okay, here’s the thing.
The Carbon Emissions Trading Scheme – can anyone tell me about that?
The idea seems to be that you can get credit for cutting down on your carbon emissions and then trade those credits with other countries (if you’re in the Kyoto scheme, that is).
BUT: since for most countries, the most/only efficient way of producing electricity is undoubtedly the burning of fossil fuels, then the process of gaining ‘carbon credits’ would seem to result in a net loss – and extending that net loss over whole economies.
In other words, the phrase ‘carbon credits’ seems to be misleading, as it will usually result in a loss.
Am I wrong here? The whole issue is confusing, but ‘carbon credits’ strike me as being so much bullshit. Is there any economist who can help me out?
Emissions trading was pinoneered in the USA to reduce sulphur emissions. It was a huge success. I’d take a look on wikipedia if you really want some detail.
How do you respond to this part of my comment, Terje?
BUT: since for most countries, the most/only efficient way of producing electricity is undoubtedly the burning of fossil fuels, then the process of gaining ‘carbon credits’ would seem to result in a net loss – and extending that net loss over whole economies.
THIS is what I am concerned about. Will emissions trading result, over time, in a net loss to the European economy? And is the term ‘carbon credit’ simply political double-talk intended to hide this up?
You have not responded to this.
You are right, I did not respond. It was deliberate because I found your question to be framed in a somewhat hostile manner (maybe I mean selfish). However let me try and respond as an act of goodwill.
Firstly I’m not sure I understand your question. If you are asking if there is a cost associated with switching to low emission technology then the answer is yes. Low emission energy requires an investment in new plant and a higher unit cost for energy. In crude terms everybody would suffer a financial loss.
If however you are suggesting that nations may fail to buy or produce the necessary credits such that the market for such credits would fail then they will be in breach of the protocol. I am not sure what sanctions exist for such a failure or how it would be policed.
I don’t really understand how my question was hostile, apart from my use of the swear word in the last sentence. I don’t understand how it was selfish, either – I just tried to outline the problem as I saw it simply. That’s an interesting response, Terje – thanks.
” “So it doesn’t really help that you try and cast aspersions on Crichton, who graduated from Harvard Medical School and has been studying this issue for probably as long as you (if not longer).”
You are joking, right? As far as I know, no one quotes me as an authority on the science of global warming, even though my qualifications are just as relevant as Crichton’s medical degree and, contrary to your claims, I’m confident I’ve been studying the issue much longer than him.”
Of course we should listen to Crichton. After all, he wrote a fictional novel.
Was it my second or my third paragraph that correctly intepreted your question.
A carbon credit will be worth creating if the market price for such credits is higher than the cost of generating the credit. The point of such a scheme is that it results in emissions being reduced first where it is cheapest to do so. This ensures that the transition to a low emission economy is an orderly one in which investments can be planned and technology applied and developed progressively. It harvests the low hanging fruit first. It is also technologically agnostic. The system does not dictate whether credits are created by improving cement manufacture techniques, growing more trees or building Solar Tower thermal power plants to replace coal. This approach is in stark contrast to the Howard governments stated prefered approach of picking winners and giving grants to particular innovators.
Under an emissions trading scheme the role of the government is limited to an audit function and to designating the overall cap. If we are going to reduce emissions by government compulsion this seems to be the approach most aligned to free market philosophy. Certainly more so than the central planning currently promoted by those that want governments to do something other than a trading scheme.
If we are going to regulate emissions of CO2 then I favour the existing taxes on petrol, plus an emissions trading regime in other selected sectors such as electricity, cement manufacture and forestry. And if we are going to regulate CO2 etc then I think we should join Kyoto.
The other option is zero or limited regulation of CO2. And that takes us back to a discussion about whether CO2 emissions matter that much that we should reduce liberty. Whether climate change represents an external threat that necessitates compulsory collective action in the same manner that many libertarians think national defence does. On this question I am not yet decided and I am probably a long way from being decided. As such I lean toward my defacto Lassiez Fair position of doing nothing (yet). Although if Howard is going to turn socialist I’ll argue for Kyoto.
2nd paragraph.
The currently large size of the hole in the ozone is causing some excitement in the press. The Montreal Protocol was suppose to fix this by reducing the amount of CFCs etc in the atmosphere. So whats going on? It turns out that the protocol has worked and whilst CFCs live a long time (up to 40 years) they are actually declining. So why the growing ozone hole? It turns out that low temperature is also a factor in the chemical process that destroys ozone and over the last winter Antarctica was quite a bit colder than usual. So actually it’s good news.
Justin said:
“Extinction, not conservation, is the norm. There have been massive extinction events before, over and over and over again. In just one of them, 96 percent of living species were wiped out.”
Sacha said:
“True. The thing is that the rate of extinction is much faster now than usually.”
Justin says:
a) How do you know? Do you know the rate of extinction of all species in all times and places since the beginning of life 3.5 billion years ago?
b) Even if the rate of extinction now is much greater than usually, how do you know that, all human and natural values considered, the amount of benefit that any given human would receive from human activity now, is not greater than the amount of disbenefit to any given human at any other time and place?
Positive measurements such as the distribution and abundance of species, still do not of themselves require a conclusion that the social response to any given problem, should be by way of organised coercion, rather than by way of spontaneous order arising from agreement and voluntary exchange.
I was interesting to hear the following interview with Roger Davey the CEO of Enviromission that comes so soon after the government rejecting their application for a construction subsidy. Enviromission plans to build a solar thermal power station near Mildura which happens to be the same georaphical area as the proposed photovoltaic plant that did win government subsidies.
Roger Davey seemed pretty unfazed by the news that they won’t be getting a penny from the government, saying that the design submission they made was optimized to meet the requirements of the subsidy but they would now modify the design free of those constraints and commence construction next year with their power plant expected to be producing electricity in late 2009.
Roger does a reasonably job of explaining the problem with photovoltaics and wind farms as a power source in so far as they don’t allow dynamic demand matching or have an energy production profile that matches a typical 24 hour demand curve. This is a critical issue that most alternate power stations fail to address which makes them unsuitable as a substitute for coal based baseload power. However Enviromission claims to have solved the problem with the design of its solar thermal power plant. From previous reading I think it is Macquarie bank that will stump up the funds for the construction.
The interview goes for the first half hour of the MP3.
http://tinyurl.com/tesm3
Just a thought – electrical energy can be stored.
Justin says:
“a) How do you know? Do you know the rate of extinction of all species in all times and places since the beginning of life 3.5 billion years ago?
b) Even if the rate of extinction now is much greater than usually, how do you know that, all human and natural values considered, the amount of benefit that any given human would receive from human activity now, is not greater than the amount of disbenefit to any given human at any other time and place?”
a) I don’t know – this is what biologists say.
b) I don’t understand the question, sorry. As an outsider to biology and ecology, I’d say that after the thing to do is to look at the effects of what is thought to be the current mass extinction. I don’t know what they are.
Sacha,
Electrical energy can be stored in small quantities in capacitors or inductors with varing degrees of efficiency. On the scale of the electric power industry however there is only really one viable means of storing electricity which is to convert it to some other form of energy. The most widely used technique is reverse pump hydro where the energy is converted to potential mechanical energy by pumping water up a hill. There are limited opportunities for the dams required.
A more successful strategy has been to source electricity from power plants where the electricity production process can be regulated according to the prevailing demand. Fossil fuel based power plants are ideal because the energy is chemically stored for years if necessary.
Wind power and photovoltaics are pretty hopeless in this regard. They don’t have any scope to regulate their output and on some days (or nights) they simply stop producing. A grid based on such technologies would need massive amounts of storage systems (such as reverse hydro) that is simply not practical. They would also require huge amounts of over capacity to cope with the high level of down time.
The solar thermal plant proposed by Enviromission is one of the only alternate energy solutions that I have ever seen that is truely scalable. By which I mean it could displace baseload alternatives such as coal and nuclear. Like coal it would still operate most effectively if small amounts of complimentary peaking power were available from highly responsive sources such as gas fired plants and hydro stations.
Regards,
Terje.
[...] The Stern Review on the Economics of Climate Change was recently released suggesting that global warming would cost 20% of GDP, while government action to stabilise CO2 would cost only 1% of GDP. This is in contrast to the other evidence that I cited in my previous post on this topic and, if true, would certainly necessitate a re-think. But that is a big “if”. [...]
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“Obviously the scientific debate won’t be over, in the sense you want it, as long as ExxonMobil has an open check book.”
No thats just silly-talk Quiggin.
Thats the line the marxists used to run. Its a distraction.
Its a distraction from the fact that alarmists just don’t have the science.
You are calling:
“Show me the money”
Or show me where the money is coming from.
What you should be saying is:
“Show me the science.”
The Science is just not there. Thats why the alarmists talk about anything else BUT science. Like whose financing things. Aparently only stolen money is valid in scientific research. And actually Exxon finances tons of people. I wish they were only funding the non-alarmists but they throw their money around and are not as directed as is being made out.
Not only is the science just not there, but even if it was, nothing would follow from it. Science is not capable of dictating value judgments. People who assume it is, are merely displaying their ignorance.
By the way, I have never met anyone who has actually read one of these supposed scientific papers that show that human activity is causing the sky to fall. The source of everyone’s information is not science, it’s moral panic in the mass media.
Sacha,
the point of what (the media say) the biologists are saying, that there’s a mass extinction event underway, must surely be that there is some consequence for human action. If there were no human beings, then it wouldn’t matter what the rate of extinction is. The environment only matters because people matter, and environmental goods are one of the many kinds of goods that people want.
The problem is, how are we to know whether any given action is better or worse for humans, and which humans when? Before industrialisation, the infant mortality rate was 50 percent. Now suppose that we stop some industrial activity but the cost is that someone’s child dies. How can biological science, by itself, justify that result? It can’t. Suppose we stop a human activity now to benefit future generations. How can positive science say how much a current human should get as compared to a future human? It can’t. Science can’t answer these ethical questions. It also can’t answer the technical questions how much positive benefit will be produced for which humans now by which human activity, compared to how much benefit refraining from the activity will produce for which humans in the future.
The intellectual and moral claims of the whole movement are in fact spurious. That’s why when I asked you specifically to prove that you know, you had to answer – and fair enough – that you don’t know, and appeal to absent authority. Like you, I don’t know either. And guess what? Those absent authorities don’t know either.
The question is not whether we do something to conserve natural resources, it’s whether we do it by way of private property and consensual action, or by government and coercive action. The idea that people in government care about the environment and everyone else doesn’t care about it, is simply wrong. The calls by scientists for governmental action merely show their technical attitude that the nature of the problem is something to be manipulated to produce a given result, like chemists manipulate inanimate chemicals. The problem is, the objects they are talking about are human beings, the manipulation is by force or threats, and these people are arrogating the power to decide by the police power of organised violence, what values other people should be allowed to live by, what other people should be allowed to do, and be, and have, without themselves having either superior wisdom or the ability to deliver on what they claim.
An assumption that government has the ability to know, and to do, what it would need to know and do to solve the problem as stated, rests on nothing but blind faith. It is a modern superstition, made the more destructive because its main vector is itself the scientific community. It calls for a repeat of the errors of socialism in the twentieth century. Government does not have the answers, or the ability, to solve the problem as stated, no matter how fervently people believe or wish it did. The massive concentration of power in the hands of government that people are calling for, can only make the problem worse both for humans and the environment.
If you want to know why, read Human Action by Ludwig von Mises.
The global warming crowd are modern-day Paul Ehrlichs.
Yes. Everyone with any sense knows the problem is global cooling and we’re all going to die horribly by freezing to death. The seas will shrink, nothing will grow and we’ll all go to hell in a handbasket – unless government ‘tackles’ it.
The ones that frighten me are those incoherently shrieking in the media for the government to do something, anything, as long as it involves forcing people, without knowing what the problem is, or how it could be fixed.
Obviously the scientific debate won’t be over, in the sense JQ wants it, as long as governments have an open check book.
Oh and Greenpeace and such, too. Not to mention politicians playing the green card to get re-elected.
Not many politicians fight a general concesus. . . I wonder why? LOL
Those who do get ridiculed until they are vindicated, usually in a not so pretty manner – think Churchill, the “war monger”, and Naive Chamberlain, for example (perhaps an extreme one).
Oh and don’t forget, the IPCC is an inter-governmental panel, so by default, they are politicized. Those who claim otherwise are being naive.
The IPCC is just another UN scandal. Like “Oil-For-Food” or “Money-For-Kim” or UN soldiers sexually exploiting the people they were sent to protect. The IPCC is an expression of the corrupt nature of the UN as an organisation.