Comments (10)

• TokyoTom

  Dear Jeff:

  Sorry to disagree with you, but unfortunately, what you term a “very nice oped� by Rob Bradley concerning an issue that you thought “would have died long ago� can be seen an closer reading to be a carefully-crafted, but rather transparent work of rent-seeking by a mouthpiece of major energy companies concerning the important issue of manmade global warming. The scientific evidence has become increasingly convincing, so much so that major skeptics have been changing their minds in droves and actively calling for policies both to mitigate potential climate change and to prepare to adapt to climate change that is now already built into the system as a result of previously emitted greenhouse gases, which continue to be emitted unabated. While doing his best to downplay the significance of the evidence and to shift whatever responsibility there may be away from his own clients to politicians and environmentalists who are “at war with fossil fuels� , even Mr. Bradley acknowledges that anthropogenetic CO2 has produced atmospheric concentrations now at levels 33% higher than pre-industrial levels, that this has already resulted in surface warming, and that manmade global warming has costs. In doing so, Mr. Bradley is simply serving his masters – the major energy companies that fund him, and who wish to continue to receive, via cynical and opportunistic politicians, implicit subsidies by continuing to damage the global atmospheric commons on an unrestricted basis.

  I am not surprised by Mr. Bradley’s piece, but am disappointed with its disingenuousness at trying to fob off a very serious problem on environmentalists whom, a more fair analysis would show, are simply pointing out a case of market failure that has arisen as a result of the lack of clearly designated or enforceable property rights in the atmosphere (as well through other explicit and implicit subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and to consumers of their products). Fossil fuel manufacturers and users quite naturally hope to continue to get away from bearing the full responsibility for the phenomenon of global warming, but it is silly to think that our economy would collapse or would otherwise be severely interrupted if we took steps to end the existing subsidies – on top of the other very costly adaptations to climate change that will now be now necessary as a result of our lack of action, purchased rather cheaply by campaign contributions and clever disinformation campaigns, over the past few decades. I’m sorry, but fossil fuels have had enough of a free ride, and we should end the "implicit and explicit government subsidies for carbon fuels and for products and services that use carbon fuels intensively", to quote Mr. Bradley’s most recent book.

  We can expect that for as long as the energy producers expect that there is a fair likelihood that they can continue to shift costs onto the rest of society and our children that folks like Mr. Bradley will continue to write op-ends such as this, and the previous piece that Jeff linked to two weeks ago (http://blog.mises.org/archives/005102.asp), where he ignored oil statism in the US and sought to shift to countries like Iraq and Iran blame for high oil and gas prices, rather than to acknowledge the most important roles played by our own reckless foreign policy (bulk of increases coming with our invasion of Iraq and saber-rattling towards Iran), lack of preparedness for refinery capacity shortages due to hurricanes such as Katrina and Wilma, and inflexibility in siting and refining regulations. Mr. Bradley worries about the “costs� of eliminating the fossil-fuel free-ride, but fails to note that the economy has continued to hum along quite nicely despite the rise in fuel prices, and ignores that the Bush administration has already spent more on the war in Iraq that our multi-decade implementation of the Kyoto Protocol was expected to cost.

  For those of you looking for a more honest discussion, the Energy Bulletin has a convenient summary of the recent avalanche of conversions by former skeptics:

  http://www.energybulletin.net/16335.html

  Here are some directly links as well:

  Gregg Easterbrook: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/24/opinion/24easterbrook.html?ex=1306123200&en=a4df3b808f1716da&ei=5090&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss

  John Tierney
  http://gristmill.grist.org/story/2006/5/22/222031/241

  Ron Bailey
  http://www.reason.com/rb/rb040306.shtml

  Michael Shermer, who, appropriately enough, writes the Skeptic column for the Scientific American
  http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=000B557A-71ED-146C-ADB783414B7F0000&colID=13

  Sir David Attenborough
  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2092-2189536,00.html

  Jeff, thanks for bringing this to our attention.

  Regards,

  Tom

  Published: June 5, 2006 8:38 AM

• cynical

  TokyoTom,

  Have you considered therapy for your environmental extremism?

  Published: June 5, 2006 2:26 PM

• M E Hoffer

  cynical,

  I wonder what your answer would be to the Q: "Where do you live?"

  Goldwater gave us: "Extremism in the defence of Liberty, is no vice."

  TT, very well, and, may give us: "Extremism in defence of the Environment, is no vice."

  Published: June 5, 2006 5:07 PM

• cynical

  M E Hoffer,

  I would consider myself an extreme defender of liberty and, thus, property rights. The consequentalist aspects of such a point of view is that true environmental protection (in the eyes of individuals 'where they live') can take place under such circumstances. The environmental extremism, to which I referred to in my early post, is the variety that is anti-liberty (anti-property) and seeks to take one or several people's personal values and force everyone to follow their plan. This is the worst of all worlds, as their plans violate others' liberty and don't even result in a "better environment".

  Take the example of global warming. Many "environmentalists" tell us that "we" need to address this issue because it will cause human suffering and lower standards of living. But the plans they put forward for (the government) addressing global warming lack the details and logic required of a good plan. For instance, global warming always has a universal solution because it is said to be a universal problem - but what about the areas where global warming might be beneficial? Also, the plans always call for economic activities to be curtailed -- but might those very economic activities generate more benefits than costs and therefore help deal with future global warming? My list goes on and on, but my main point stands -- this type of environmentalism is an extremism, not unlike similar afflictions that have led to things like the New Deal, the War on Poverty, the War on Drugs, the War on Terrorism, etc. etc.

  Published: June 5, 2006 6:45 PM

• M E Hoffer

  cynical,

  From TT, above :"I am not surprised by Mr. Bradley’s piece, but am disappointed with its disingenuousness at trying to fob off a very serious problem on environmentalists whom, a more fair analysis would show, are simply pointing out a case of market failure that has arisen as a result of the lack of clearly designated or enforceable property rights in the atmosphere (as well through other explicit and implicit subsidies to the fossil fuel industries and to consumers of their products)."

  Past that, I hear you. I was only pointing out that you may have been, were, incorrect in assailing TT as being one of those "other kind" of Environmentalists, Enviro-Communists.

  Published: June 5, 2006 6:54 PM

• David White

  Well, here's global warming on steroids -- http://www.sprott.com/pdf/climate.pdf -- from an asset management firm with a lot to gain from it.

  Frankly, I'm much more concerned about financial collapse resulting from the demise of the dollar -- http://johnlaw.wordpress.com/2006/05/19/why-the-global-financial-system-is-about-to-collapse -- all the more so as global warming (and now gay marriage) deflect attention from it.

  Not to mention American Idol.

  Published: June 5, 2006 7:35 PM

• TokyoTom

  "cynical" [?]:

  When will you act like your own name, and stop drinking the honeyed snake oil that Bradley and other shills for the oil industry have been peddling on climate change, at least long enough to read the label? Unfortunately, on this issue Bradley is a paid voice and should be analyzed as one.

  On the facts of climate change, perhaps you care to brouse the links I noted, which will show how wrong Bradley is? Afraid of a little information that would not compute with your cureent version of reality?

  I take it that both parts of "environmental extremism" are meant to help you dismiss what I have to say without really addressing anything that I said. Could you clarify what it is that you disagree with?

  Allow me to note my general approach to environmental issues - where there's smoke, there's fire. Usually the environmentalists are fuming about something and proposing statist solutions; in this cases, close analysis will reveal that there is a corporate rent-seeker with his hand in the till (either there is a market failure due to unclear or unenforceable property rights, or "public" resources are involved). Rather than railing at "enviros" while totally ignoring the rent-seekers, I prefer to figure out ways we can keep the rent-seekers from stealing from us, and to suggest Misean-type solution rather than the "government-friendly" type of solutions that enviros are prone to offer.

  Regards,

  Tom

  Published: June 6, 2006 2:24 AM

• TokyoTom

  cynical, it's interesting that you can see how the Administration and Republicans have been manipulating us with fear over the "War on Terror". Why can't you see that "fear of enviros" is just one other fear that the Bush Administration/Republicans have been mongering (along with fear of gays, fear of back-stabbing isolationists like Llew Rockwell, etc.)?

  Republicans are still shovelling billions a year at climate change research and even more billions per year on subsidies for fossil fuels and alternative energies. Why? Because climate change is a real problem that they can't ignore; what they can do is spin it as requiring more research and subsidies - they they get to deal out, while making sure favored industries still get to eat at the public trough cheap.

  Bradley himself has elsewhere argued that we should end all subsidies to fossil fuels; he just hasn't expressly acknowledged that making political hay and taking money from big oil to ignore/deny the looming costs of climate change is another subsidy. The right solution is stop the abuse of the global commons by creating a system of personal property rights relating to GHG emissions - and to stop all subsidies in the energy sector. The last thing we need is crash programs funded by government.

  As to costs and benefits of climate change, do you think Exxon and others would be supporting op-eds from guys like Bradley if the benefits from climate change outweighed the costs? They are paying simply because the spin helps them to secure the much more valuable rent that they are now enjoying.

  Published: June 6, 2006 2:44 AM

• Horatio

  Ice cores are not a reliable proxy for past CO2 levels. Many processes artifically decrease the measured levels. Foremost among these is the formation of clathrates. When the ice cores are removed and sectioned, the cracks that form in them cause clathrates to break open releasing their gaseous contents.

  Mulvaney, R., E.W. Wolff, and K. Oates, Sulpfuric acid at grain goundaries in Antarctic ice. Nature, 1988. 331(247-249).
  Jaworowski, Z., T.V. Segalstad, and N. Ono, Do glaciers tell a true atmospheric CO2 story? The Science of the Total Environment, 1992. 114: p. 227-284.
  Shoji, H. and C.C. Langway Jr., Volume relaxation of air inclusions in a fresh ice core. Journal of Physical Chemistry, 1983. 87: p. 4111-4114.

  The climate science community is largely ignorant of these findings and those who are aware of them have ignored them in hopes of saving their tax payer funded careers. CO2 levels are higher now than they were in the 19th century but not nearly as much as some people would have us believe. They were about 335ppm in the 19th century.

  Slocum, G., Has the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere changed significantly since the beginning of the twentieth century? Month. Weather Rev., 1955(October): p. 225-231.

  Anthropogenic warming is probably a reality, but the scientific method has taken a backseat to politics among researchers in the field.

  Published: June 6, 2006 7:38 AM

• TokyoTom

  Horatio, why are skeptics in droves now embarrrassing themselves by abandoning their tenaciously held, and laboriously built up, public contrarian positions? Because they have realized that in the face of the stark evidence they will lose all credibility whatsoever by continuing to maintain those positions. Try reading what they have to say, if you don't trust the Bush administration (including NOAA and NASA), the National Academy of Sciences, the American Geophysical Union, Wood's Hole and others.

  Those who are paid by industry now acknowledge that global warming is happening, but since they want to protect their free use of the atmosphere to shift costs to the rest of us, are falling back to arguing that climate change isn't ALL bad and that we can adapt to it by more government subsidies (which would be simply unnecessary if we were to remove the subsidies we are now providing to fossil fuel producers and users).

  In general, we don't need a huge federal or international bureacracy to deal with climate change issues; we simply need to create transferrable property rights in emissions (no non-existent) and allow the market to function. There should be international coordination to eliminate free riders like China and India (and ourselves - which is the real reason why no one else is exerting themselves to lowere GHG emissions), and there is a role for developed countries to push the lesser developed countries to move from kleptocracy to protecting private property rights - which would provide the wealth necessary to adapt to the changes that are looming.

  Regards,

  Tom

  Published: June 6, 2006 9:19 PM