Global Warming Is Not a Threat but the Environmentalist Response to It Is (Full Version)
This article is the original, full version from which three previous articles that have appeared on this blog were excerpted. Those articles were “The Environmentalist Noose Is Tightening” (February 9, 2007, “Global Warming Is Not a Threat But the Environmentalist Response to It Is” (March 12, 2007), and “Global Warming: Environmentalism’s Threat of Hell on Earth” (March 16, 2007).
Global Warming Does Not Imply a Carbon Cap
Early this winter, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change released the summary of its latest report on global warming. It’s most trumpeted finding was that the existence of global warming is now “unequivocal.”
Although such anecdotal evidence as January’s snowfall in Tucson, Arizona and freezing weather in Southern California, and February’s more than 100-inch snowfall in upstate New York, might suggest otherwise, global warming may indeed be a fact. It may also be a fact that it is a by-product of industrial civilization (despite two ice ages having apparently occurred in the face of carbon levels in the atmosphere 16 times greater than that of today, millions of years before mankind’s appearance on earth).
If global warming and mankind’s responsibility for it really are facts, does anything automatically follow from them? Does it follow that there is a need to limit and/or reduce carbon emissions and the use of the fossil fuels—oil, coal, and natural gas—that gives rise to the emissions? The need for such limitation and/or rollback is the usual assumption.
Nevertheless, the truth is that nothing whatever follows from these facts. Before any implication for action can be present, additional information is required.
One essential piece of information is the comparative valuation attached to retaining industrial civilization versus avoiding global warming. If one values the benefits provided by industrial civilization above the avoidance of the losses alleged to result from global warming, it follows that nothing should be done to stop global warming that destroys or undermines industrial civilization. That is, it follows that global warming should simply be accepted as a byproduct of economic progress and that life should go on as normal in the face of it.
(Of course, there are projections of unlikely but nevertheless possible extreme global warming in the face of which conditions would be intolerable. However, as I explain below, to deal with such a possibility, it is necessary merely to find a different method of cooling the earth than that of curtailing the use of fossil fuels; I also show that such methods are already at hand.)
In fact, if it comes, global warming, in the projected likely range, will bring major benefits to much of the world. Central Canada and large portions of Siberia will become similar in climate to New England today. So too, perhaps, will portions of Greenland. The disappearance of Arctic ice in summer time, will shorten important shipping routes by thousands of miles. Growing seasons in the North Temperate Zone will be longer. Plant life in general will flourish because of the presence of more carbon dioxide in the atmosphere.
Strangely, these facts are rarely mentioned. Instead, attention is devoted almost exclusively to the negatives associated with global warming, above all to the prospect of rising sea levels, which the report projects to be between 7 and 23 inches by the year 2100, a range, incidentally, that by itself does not entail major coastal flooding. (There are, however, projections of a rise in sea levels of 20 feet or more over the course of the remainder of the present millennium.)
Yes, rising sea levels may cause some islands and coastal areas to become submerged under water and require that large numbers of people settle in other areas. Surely, however, the course of a century, let alone a millennium, should provide ample opportunity for this to occur without any necessary loss of life.
Indeed, a very useful project for the UN’s panel to undertake in preparation for its next report would be a plan by which the portion of the world not threatened with rising sea levels would accept the people who are so threatened. In other words, instead of responding to global warming with government controls, in the form of limitations on the emission of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases, an alternative response would be devised that would be a solution in terms of greater freedom of migration.
In addition, the process of adaptation here in the United States would be helped by making all areas determined to be likely victims of coastal flooding in the years ahead ineligible for any form of governmental aid, insurance, or disaster relief after the expiration of a reasonable grace period. That would spur relocation to safer areas in advance of much of any future flooding.
What Depends on Industrial Civilization and Man-Made Power
As the result of industrial civilization, not only do billions more people survive, but in the advanced countries they do so on a level far exceeding that of kings and emperors in all previous ages—on a level that just a few generations ago would have been regarded as possible only in a world of science fiction. With the turn of a key, the push of a pedal, and the touch of a steering wheel, they drive along highways in wondrous machines at seventy miles an hour. With the flick of a switch, they light a room in the middle of darkness. With the touch of a button, they watch events taking place ten thousand miles away. With the touch of a few other buttons, they talk to other people across town or across the world. They even fly through the air at six hundred miles per hour, forty thousand feet up, watching movies and sipping martinis in air-conditioned comfort as they do so. In the United States, most people can have all this, and spacious homes or apartments, carpeted and fully furnished, with indoor plumbing, central heating, air conditioning, refrigerators, freezers, and gas or electric stoves, and also personal libraries of hundreds of books, compact disks, and DVDs; they can have all this, as well as long life and good health—as the result of working forty hours a week.
The achievement of this marvelous state of affairs has been made possible by the use of ever improved machinery and equipment, which has been the focal point of scientific and technological progress. The use of this ever improved machinery and equipment is what has enabled human beings to accomplish ever greater results with the application of less and less muscular exertion.
Now inseparably connected with the use of ever improved machinery and equipment has been the increasing use of man-made power, which is the distinguishing characteristic of industrial civilization and of the Industrial Revolution, which marked its beginning. To the relatively feeble muscles of draft animals and the still more feeble muscles of human beings, and to the relatively small amounts of useable power available from nature in the form of wind and falling water, industrial civilization has added man-made power. It did so first in the form of steam generated from the combustion of coal, and later in the form of internal combustion based on petroleum, and electric power based on the burning of any fossil fuel or on atomic energy.
This man-made power, and the energy released by its use, is an equally essential basis of all of the economic improvements achieved over the last two hundred years. It is what enables us to use the improved machines and equipment and is indispensable to our ability to produce the improved machines and equipment in the first place. Its application is what enables us human beings to accomplish with our arms and hands, in merely pushing the buttons and pulling the levers of machines, the amazing productive results we do accomplish. To the feeble powers of our arms and hands is added the enormously greater power released by energy in the form of steam, internal combustion, electricity, or radiation. In this way, energy use, the productivity of labor, and the standard of living are inseparably connected, with the two last entirely dependent on the first.
Thus, it is not surprising, for example, that the United States enjoys the world’s highest standard of living. This is a direct result of the fact that the United States has the world’s highest energy consumption per capita. The United States, more than any other country, is the country where intelligent human beings have arranged for motor-driven machinery to accomplish results for them. All further substantial increases in the productivity of labor and standard of living, both here in the United States and across the world, will be equally dependent on man-made power and the growing use of energy it makes possible. Our ability to accomplish more and more with the same limited muscular powers of our limbs will depend entirely on our ability to augment them further and further with the aid of still more such energy.*
A Free-Market Response to Global Warming
Even if global warming is a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization will have no great difficulty in coping with it—that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired. The seeming difficulties of coping with global warming, or any other large-scale change, arise only when the problem is viewed from the perspective of government central planners.
It would be too great a problem for government bureaucrats to handle (as is the production even of an adequate supply of wheat or nails, as the experience of the whole socialist world has so eloquently shown). But it would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve. It would be solved by means of each individual being free to decide how best to cope with the particular aspects of global warming that affected him.
Individuals would decide, on the basis of profit-and loss calculations, what changes they needed to make in their businesses and in their personal lives, in order best to adjust to the situation. They would decide where it was now relatively more desirable to own land, locate farms and businesses, and live and work, and where it was relatively less desirable, and what new comparative advantages each location had for the production of which goods. Factories, stores, and houses all need replacement sooner or later. In the face of a change in the relative desirability of different locations, the pattern of replacement would be different. Perhaps some replacements would have to be made sooner than otherwise. To be sure, some land values would fall and others would rise. Whatever happened individuals would respond in a way that minimized their losses and maximized their possible gains. The essential thing they would require is the freedom to serve their self-interests by buying land and moving their businesses to the areas rendered relatively more attractive, and the freedom to seek employment and buy or rent housing in those areas.
Given this freedom, the totality of the problem would be overcome. This is because, under capitalism, the actions of the individuals, and the thinking and planning behind those actions, are coordinated and harmonized by the price system (as many former central planners of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union have come to learn). As a result, the problem would be solved in exactly the same way that tens and hundreds of millions of free individuals have solved greater problems than global warming, such as redesigning the economic system to deal with the replacement of the horse by the automobile, the settlement of the American West, and the release of the far greater part of the labor of the economic system from agriculture to industry.**
Emissions Caps Mean Impoverishment
The environmental movement does not value industrial civilization. It fears and hates it. It does not value human life, which it regards merely as one of earth’s “biota,” of no greater value than any other life form, such as spotted owls or snail darters. To it, the loss of industrial civilization is of no great consequence. It is a boon.
But to everyone else, it would be an immeasurable catastrophe: the end of further economic progress and the onset of economic retrogression, with no necessary stopping point. Today’s already widespread economic stagnation is the faintest harbinger of the conditions that would follow.
A regime of emissions caps means that all technological advances requiring an increase in the total consumption of man-made power would be impossible to implement. At the same time, any increase in population would mean a reduction in the amount of man-made power available per capita. (Greater production of atomic power, which produces no emissions of any kind, would be an exception. But it is opposed by the environmentalists even more fiercely than is additional power derived from fossil fuels.)
To gauge the consequences, simply imagine such caps having been imposed a generation or two ago. If that had happened, where would the power have come from to produce and operate all of the new and additional products we take for granted that have appeared over these years? Products such as color television sets and commercial jets, computers and cell phones, CDs and DVDs, lasers and MRIs, satellites and space ships? Indeed, the increase in population that has taken place over this period would have sharply reduced the standard of living, because the latter would have been forced to rest on the foundation of the much lower per capita man-made power of an earlier generation.
Now add to this the effects of successive reductions in the production of man-made power compelled by the imposition of progressively lower ceilings on greenhouse-gas emissions, ceilings as low as 75 or even 40 percent of today’s levels. (These ceilings have been advocated by Britain’s Stern Report and by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel, respectively.) Inasmuch as these ceilings would be global ceilings, any increase in greenhouse-gas emissions taking place in countries such as China and India would be possible only at the expense of even further reductions in the United States, whose energy consumption is the envy of the world.
All of the rising clamor for energy caps is an invitation to the American people to put themselves in chains. It is an attempt to lure them along a path thousands of times more deadly than any military misadventure, and one from which escape might be impossible.
Already, led by French President Jacques Chirac, forces are gathering to make non-compliance with emissions caps an international crime. According to an Associated Press report of February 5, 2007, “Forty-Five nations joined France in calling for a new environmental body to slow global warming and protect the planet, a body that potentially could have policing powers to punish violators.”
Given such developments, it is absolutely vital that the United States never enter into any international treaty in which it agrees to caps on greenhouse-gas emissions.
An Answer to the Hellfire-and-Brimstone Version of Global Warming
In previous centuries it was common for Religion to threaten those whose way of life was not to its satisfaction, with the prospect of hellfire and brimstone in the afterlife. Substitute for the afterlife, life on earth in centuries to come, and it is possible to see that environmentalism and the rest of the left are now doing essentially the same thing. They hate the American way of life because of its comfort and luxury. And to frighten people into abandoning it, they are threatening them with a global-warming version of hellfire and brimstone.
This is not yet so open and explicit as to be obvious to everyone. Nevertheless, it is clearly present. It is hinted at in allusions to the possibility of temperature increases beyond the UN report’s projected range of 3.5 to 8 degrees Fahrenheit. For example, according to The New York Times, “the report says there is a more than a 1-in-10 chance of much greater warming, a risk that many experts say is far too high to ignore.”
Environmentalist threats of hellfire and brimstone can be expected to become more blatant and shrill if the movement’s present efforts to frighten the people of the United States into supporting its program appear to be insufficient. Hellfire and brimstone is the environmentalists’ ultimate threat.
Thus, let us assume that it were true that global warming might proceed to such an extent as to cause temperature and/or sea-level increases so great as to be simply intolerable or, indeed, literally to roast and boil the earth. Even so, it would still not follow that industrial civilization should be abandoned or in any way compromised. In that case, all that would be necessary is to seek out a different means of deliberately cooling the earth.
It should be realized that the environmentalists’ policy of reducing greenhouse-gas emissions is itself a policy of cooling the earth. But it is surely among the most stupid and self-destructive such policies as it is possible to imagine. What it claims is that if we destroy the energy base needed to produce and operate the construction equipment required to build strong, well-made, comfortable houses for hundreds of millions of people, we shall be safer from hurricanes and floods than if we retain and enlarge that energy base. It claims that if we destroy our capacity to produce and operate refrigerators and air conditioners, we shall be better protected from hot weather than if we retain and enlarge that capacity. It claims that if we destroy our capacity to produce and operate tractors and harvesters, to can and freeze food, to build and operate hospitals and produce medicines, we shall secure our food supply and our health better than if we retain and enlarge that capacity. This is the meaning of the claim that retaining this capacity will bring highly destructive global warming, while destroying it will avoid such global warming.***
There are rational ways of cooling the earth if that is what should actually be necessary, ways that would take advantage of the vast energy base of the modern world and of the still greater energy base that can be present in the future if it is not aborted by the kind of policies urged by the environmentalists.
Ironically, the core principle of one such method has been put forward by voices within the environmental movement itself, though not at all for this purpose. Years ago, back in the days of the Cold War, many environmentalists raised the specter of a “nuclear winter.” According to them, a large-scale atomic war could be expected to release so much particulate matter into the atmosphere as to block out sunlight and cause weather so severely cold that crops would not be able to grow.
Wikipedia, the encyclopedia of the internet, describes the mechanism as follows:
Large quantities of aerosol particles dispersed into the atmosphere would significantly reduce the amount of sunlight that reached the surface, and could potentially remain in the stratosphere for months or even years. The ash and dust would be carried by the midlatitude west-to-east winds, forming a uniform belt of particles encircling the northern hemisphere from 30° to 60° latitude (as the main targets of most nuclear war scenarios are located almost exclusively in these latitudes). The dust clouds would then block out much of the sun's light, causing surface temperatures to drop drastically.
Certainly, there is no case to be made for an atomic war. But there is a case for considering the possible detonation, on uninhabited land north of 70°, say, of a limited number of hydrogen bombs. The detonation of these bombs would operate in the same manner as described above, but the effect would be a belt of particles starting at a latitude of 70° instead of 30°. The presence of those particles would serve to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching most of the Arctic’s surface. The effect would be to maintain the frigid climate of the region and to prevent the further melting of its ice or, if necessary, to increase the amount of its ice. Moreover, the process could be conducted starting on a relatively small scale and proceeding slowly. This would permit the observation of essential empirical relationships and also allow the process to be stopped at any time before it went too far.
This is certainly something that should be seriously considered by anyone who is concerned with global warming and who also desires to preserve and enhance modern industrial civilization and retain its amenities. If there really is any possibility of global warming so great as to cause major disturbances, this kind of solution should be studied and perfected. Atomic testing should be resumed for the purpose of empirically testing its feasibility.
If there is any remnant of the left of an earlier era, which still respected science and technology, and championed industrial civilization, it might be expected to offer additional possible solutions for excessive global warming, probably solutions of a kind requiring grandiose construction projects. For example, one might expect to hear from it proposals for ringing North Africa and Australia with desalinization plants powered by atomic energy. The purpose would be to bring massive amounts of fresh water to the Sahara Desert and the deserts of Australia, with the further purpose of making possible the growth of billions of trees to absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Another possibility would be an alternative proposal simply to pump an amount of sea water into confined areas in those deserts sufficient to provide an outlet for a growing volume of global seawater other than heavily inhabited coastal regions. (I would not be ready to endorse any such costly proposals, but they would be a vast improvement over the left’s only current proposal, which is simply the crippling of industrial civilization.)
Once people begin to put their minds to the problem, it is possible that a variety of effective and relatively low-cost solutions for global warming will be found. The two essential parameters of such a solution would be the recognition of the existence of possibly excessive global warming, on the one side, and unswerving loyalty to the value of the American standard of living and the American way of life, on the other. That is, more fundamentally, unswerving loyalty to the values of individual freedom, continuing economic progress, and the maintenance and further development of industrial civilization and its foundation of man-made power.
Global warming is not a threat. But environmentalism’s response to it is.
It claims to want to act in the name of avoiding the risk of alleged dreadful dangers lying decades and centuries in the future. But its means of avoiding those alleged dangers is to rush ahead today to cripple industrial civilization by means of crippling its essential foundation of man-made power. In so doing, it gives no consideration whatever to the risks of this. Nor does it give any consideration to any possible alternatives to this policy. It contents itself with offering to the public what is virtually merely the hope and prayer of the timely discovery of radically new alternative technologies to replace the ones it seeks to destroy. Such pie in the sky is a nothing but a lie, intended to prevent people from recognizing the plunge in their standard of living that will result if the environmentalists’ program is enacted.
If the economic progress of the last two hundred years or more is to continue, if its existing benefits are to be maintained, the people of the United States, and hopefully of the rest of the world as well, must turn their backs on environmentalism. They must recognize it for the profoundly destructive, misanthropic philosophy that it is.
They must solve any possible problem of global warming on the foundation of industrial civilization, not on a foundation of its ruins.
*The last five paragraphs, with slight adaptation, are an excerpt from pp. 77 and 78 of my book Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics.
**The last four paragraphs, with slight adaptation, are an excerpt from pp. 88 and 89 of Capitalism.
*** The examples in this paragraph are adapted from p. 88 of Capitalism.
This article is copyright © 2007, by George Reisman. Permission is hereby granted to reproduce and distribute it electronically and in print, other than as part of a book and provided that mention of the author’s web site www.capitalism.net is included. (Email notification is requested.) All other rights reserved. George Reisman is the author of Capitalism: A Treatise on Economics (Ottawa, Illinois: Jameson Books, 1996) and is Pepperdine University Professor Emeritus of Economics.
Comments (39)
Paul A.
I have been following Professor Reisman's writings on global warming the last couple of weeks. I wanted to add an additional point that, in my mind, should end all talks about implementing programs requiring massive reductions in CO2 emissions. I read recently Chris Horner's wonderful book, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Global Warming and Environmentalism. In it, he indicates that of all CO2 emissions, anthropogenic emissions account for only 3%. Also, according to Horner, if we all were able to conform to the Kyoto Protocol, global temperature would only be reduced by 0.08 degrees Celsius. Given those facts, what is there to discuss? If man were to cut all anthropogenic emissions, global warming would be slowed very little, but most of man would be dead as a result of the elimination of carbon emissions. All of these arguments for reducing CO2 emissions make no sense except as a means for some people to control other people. I am still amused by Al Gore and others of his ilk, who jet around the country spewing emissions like there is no tomorrow, telling other people to stop using the internal combustion engine and incandescent light bulbs.
I agree with Reisman that the big threat here isn't from global warming but from the very real threat of the immense loss of our remaining liberties. We all need to be vigilant because these global warm-ites are using the fears of the general populace and man's natural desire to survive to drum up blind support for their outrageous proposals. Remember that. Kyoto, for example, is an extremely outrageous proposal, but the MSM has treated it as an entirely reasonable response to global warming that the "reactionary" United States has failed to ratify. It is not reasonable. It is not the first step. And it is designed to desensitize the American public specifically into the types of "sacrifices" that Reisman has described so well here.
Published: May 30, 2007 4:39 PM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Indeed.
Published: May 30, 2007 4:46 PM
Nick Bradley
Amen on identifying some of the positive effects of global warming. There are a series of questions that need to be asked in regards t global warming:
1. Is global warming occurring?
2. Is it a long-term trend?
3. Is it a bad thing?
4. What causes it?
5. Is there anything we can do about it?
If it is actually occurring, global warming will make most of Canada and Russia habitable, greatly expanding the global economy.
Published: May 30, 2007 6:55 PM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Surprisingly Wise Words from NASA Administrator
Seems surprisingly principled and individualistic position for a NASA bureaucrat to take. I am suitably impressed and appreciative. This is not to say that we shouldn't do anything at all about anthropogenic global warming, if it is true, but rather that if we do anything it should be done on a voluntary and cooperative basis, not centrally planned and coerced.
See my blogpost for more.
Published: May 30, 2007 9:55 PM
TokyoTom
"I guess I would ask which human beings - where and when - are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that's a rather arrogant position for people to take."
These are "wise words", Geoff? Do you have any idea how much this is like an upstream polluter telling all those downstream/downwind how arrogant they are to want clean water or air?
Perhaps you can explain your chain of reasoning to me.
Have fossil fuel producers and users homesteaded a right to release as much carbon into the atmosphere as they wish, free of charge - when did they arrogate this right to themselves, so that those who want less climate change are the ones who are arrogant?
Is the choice in a classic pollution case only between cheap steel or electricity vs. clean air and water, or do we know that we can solve the problem by market transactions, once we know who has property rights?
I would be perfectly happy to advocate for clean air advocates to bargain with fossil fuel producers (and others) for less climate forcing - if we had clear property rights. But isn't it precisely the fact that we have NO such recognized rights, and that both sides are therefore fighting over the levers of government to get the decision made in their favor?
Yes, that is rent-seeking - but perhaps you could help me figure ought who it is that has so far won all the rents at the federal level? I think it is rather easy to assemble a wide range of convincing evidence that it is the upstream polluters. (Please let me know if you need any help in sketching out the picture - I would love to rant about this administration. I can't resist - let me allow John Baden, a good libertarian, former oilman and free-market environmentalist do it for me: http://www.free-eco.org/articleDisplay.php?id=488)
Are fossil fuel producers (and consumers who don't want to pay for a fully-costed product) evil? No, of course not (we know that ONLY those who want to impose some type of pricing signal are!) - they just rationally want to avoid changing their business models somewhat and to avoid new costs.
But will working towards some type of management regime based on property rights or even less efficient command and control regulation destroy their wealth, lead to ruin and bankrupt the nation? Perhaps you can give me some clue, based on case studies over the past forty years?
And it it "arrogant" to say that there is some kind of problem, and to ask for some kind of solution?
I just love all of the light that you and other Austrians keep shedding on this subject. I guess that Cordato (see Michaal Clem's discussion here: http://blog.mises.org/mt/comments?entry_id=6602) was simply and grossly wrong. The problem is NOT a theoretically tractable one, of conflict stemming from a lack of clear and enforceable property rights (private or communal), but an intractable problem of the unremitting arrogance and evil of those who are seeking redress for what scientists worldwide say is a cause for concern.
Pardon me if I gag on the richness of the ironies in your fulsome praise of the "surprisingly principled and individualistic position" for this NASA bureaucrat, who is clearly in the pocket of industry.
I understand and agree with your concerns about how government is misused by rent-seekers, but can't you be a little less credulous and recognize that this is not a new battle, but one in which there are two sides to criticize?
Regards,
Tom
Published: May 30, 2007 10:55 PM
TLWP Sam
Ouch T.T.! I'd guess your question could be turned around to 'why should down-streamers demand clean air and water?'. Could that be 'initiation of force'? 'Get yer own air and water filters, it's your problem not mine!'? In arbitration the factory is major part of the local economy whereas down-streamers are probably just a bunch of greenies. No problem at all really?
Yet, as suggested, there is about to be a great 'initiation of force' from a huge portion of the population as in 'living green'? Does the attack against fossil fuels really mean an attack against the lives of some 5 - 6 billion lives? Especially as the world population at the time when organic farming/hunting/gathering existed was around 500 mlllion? Is this the part where Libertarians can foresee the prelude to World War 3? Just wondering?
Published: May 30, 2007 11:54 PM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Tom, your leftist instincts try my patience.
You profess to be an advocate of free markets and yet insist on misinterpreting everything free market advocates here say as being critical only of leftist environmentalists and not of state-corporate capitalism. Apparently you learned nothing from my chastising you in the last thread.
I've had enough of your (intentional? or just dense?) reading things into my views that I do not say or believe. How you think I support state-corporate capitalism is beyond me.
Not that I haven't said it before but to make things absolutely clear to you, we should end ALL state intervention into the economy, including environmental regulation AND all interventions that privilege some businesses or individuals at the expense of others. The state, if it should exist at all, should limit itself to protecting individual rights (including property rights). Protection of individual rights, not their violation (as most environmentalists prefer), is the best way to protect the environment. It necessarily entails eliminating all state privileges for corporations.
In summary: I AM A FREE MARKET ENVIRONMENTALIST WHO PUTS HUMANS FIRST!!!
Good grief. Is that clear enough for you? If not, you're hopeless.
No regards until you start showing some respect,
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Published: May 30, 2007 11:55 PM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
One last thing... Here is a revised version of the last paragraph of my original post about the NASA Admin, revised to provide clarification that should be unnecessary for a libertarian:
"Seems a surprisingly principled and individualistic position for a NASA bureaucrat to take. I am suitably impressed and appreciative. This is not to say that we shouldn't do anything at all about anthropogenic global warming, if it is true, but rather that if we do anything it should be done on a voluntary and cooperative basis grounded in private property rights, not centrally planned and coerced. This means that both environmental regulations and state-privileges for corporations should be eliminated and private property protected (including from polluters) so as to avoid the tragedy of the commons we see around us today."
Published: May 31, 2007 12:20 AM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
On second thought, it might be necessary to clarify further: "(including from clearly identified polluters)."
Published: May 31, 2007 12:27 AM
TokyoTom
My "leftist instincts"?!
Care to explain your evidence for that imagined conclusion, Geoff?
I may be an evil environmentalist, but I'm proudly a right-wing one!
It seems that you have forgotten the little discussion we had last year about confirmation bias. http://blog.mises.org/archives/005221.asp
Sorry for the "cheap trick" of mentioning again how good we all are at twisting reality to fit our preconceptions.
Regards,
Tom
"The first principle is that you must not fool yourself - and you are the easiest person to fool."
Richard Feynman
"We see the world as 'we' are, not as 'it' is; because it is the "I" behind the 'eye' that does the seeing." - Anais Nin
Published: May 31, 2007 1:23 AM
TokyoTom
Dr. Reisman, thanks for your consolidated post (let's call it "Destructive, Misanthropic Enviros"), which gives us again another opportunity to review and try to understand your views.
For the moment I only have time for a short question, based on a comparison of this article and my quick review of your longer piece on May 28, "Environmentalism in the Light of Menger and Mises" (http://blog.mises.org/archives/006691.asp) (let's call it "Capitalism Rules")
1. In "Capitalism Rules, you state very strongly the following points:
"If global warming or ozone depletion or whatever, really are consequences of the actions of the human race considered collectively, but not of the actions of any given individual, including any given individual private business firm, then the proper way to regard them is as the equivalent of acts of nature."
"[T]he appropriate response ... to such environmental change, whether global warming and ozone depletion, or global cooling and ozone enrichment, or anything else nature may bring ... is the same as the appropriate response of man to nature in general. Namely, individual human beings must be free to deal with nature to their own maximum individual advantage, subject only to the limitation of not initiating the use of physical force against the person or property of other individual human beings. By following this principle, man will deal with the any negative forces of nature resulting as byproducts of his own activity taken in the aggregate in precisely the same successful way that he regularly deals with the primary forces of nature."
"[F]undamentally, the answer to the environmentalists is that the appropriate response to environmental change, whether global warming or a new ice age, is the economic freedom of a capitalist society. Sooner or later, such environmental change will occur—if not in this new century or even in this new millennium—then certainly at some time in the more remote future. At that time, it will require vast changes in human economic activity. Some areas presently used for certain purposes will become unuseable for those purposes. Conceivably, they might even become uninhabitable. Other areas presently uninhabitable or barely habitable, will become much more desirable. Major changes in the comparative advantages of vast areas will take place, to which people must be free to respond."
"As I wrote in Capitalism, "Even if global warming turned out to be a fact, the free citizens of an industrial civilization would have no great difficulty in coping with it—that is, of course, if their ability to use energy and to produce is not crippled by the environmental movement and by government controls otherwise inspired. The seeming difficulties of coping with global warming, or any other large-scale change, arise only when the problem is viewed from the perspective of government central planners.
It would be too great a problem for government bureaucrats to handle . . . . But it would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve. It would be solved by means of each individual being free to decide how best to cope with the particular aspects of global warming that affected him.
"A rational response to the possibility of large-scale environmental change is to establish the economic freedom of individuals to deal with it, if and when it comes. Capitalism and the free market are the essential means of doing this, not paralyzing government controls and “environmentalism.” And both in the establishment of economic freedom and in every other major aspect of the response to environmentalism, the philosophy of Ludwig von Mises and Carl Menger must lead the way.”
2. You repeat two of these paragraphs in Destructive, Misanthropic Enviros, but also you offer up the following:
"There are rational ways of cooling the earth if that is what should actually be necessary, ways that would take advantage of the vast energy base of the modern world and of the still greater energy base that can be present in the future if it is not aborted by the kind of policies urged by the environmentalists."
"[T]there is a case for considering the possible detonation, on uninhabited land north of 70°, say, of a limited number of hydrogen bombs. The detonation of these bombs would operate in the same manner as described above, but the effect would be a belt of particles starting at a latitude of 70° instead of 30°. The presence of those particles would serve to reduce the amount of sunlight reaching most of the Arctic’s surface. The effect would be to maintain the frigid climate of the region and to prevent the further melting of its ice or, if necessary, to increase the amount of its ice. Moreover, the process could be conducted starting on a relatively small scale and proceeding slowly. This would permit the observation of essential empirical relationships and also allow the process to be stopped at any time before it went too far.
"This is certainly something that should be seriously considered by anyone who is concerned with global warming and who also desires to preserve and enhance modern industrial civilization and retain its amenities. If there really is any possibility of global warming so great as to cause major disturbances, this kind of solution should be studied and perfected. Atomic testing should be resumed for the purpose of empirically testing its feasibility."
3. My question: how is your advocacy of a program of atomospheric tests of atom bombs as an approach to global warming at all consistent with either the philosophy of Ludwig von Mises and Carl Menger or your own insistence that while "[i]t would be too great a problem for government bureaucrats to handle", "it would certainly not be too great a problem for tens and hundreds of millions of free, thinking individuals living under capitalism to solve"?
No doubt there would be plenty of statists who would be thrilled to for the government to start testing atom bombs in the Arctic, but I can't imagine that this idea warms the cockles of any libertarian's heart, much less either the native peoples of the Arctic nor the oil exploration companies and shipping firms that are drooling at the prospects for further commercial opportunities that the rapid melting up there is now presenting.
Sincerely puzzled,
TT
Published: May 31, 2007 4:44 AM
andy
TT, it seems to me there are quite big problems regarding ANY solution of the CO2 problem. One of this problems is the "comparison" problem.
When you say that someone loses because of CO2 pollution, you compare "global warming situation vs. no global warming situation". But advocates of CO2 cap should compare "with CO2 cap vs. without CO2 cap". It is quite possible that his situation would be better WITHOUT the CO2 cap including higher global warming, because of additional benefits of e.g. higher energy consumption.
It is even possible that it DOES NOT mean breaking private property rights, given the assumption that these people would agree (which, unlike other types of pollution, is NOT an unreasonable assumption) - this is basically the same position as advocation of CO2 cap which assumes that the people would not agree with CO2 pollution.
Given these doubts it seems to me that "doing nothing" is on par with "imposing CO2 cap". It is not exactly "right" and "perfect" but I do not see any solution that would be an improvement over an existing situation.
Published: May 31, 2007 6:26 AM
banker
Don't trees use CO2 to make oxygen? I thought CO2 was necessary to all life on Earth. How exactly did it end up becoming the worst pollutant in existence. From watching the news it would seem that CO2 is worse than nuclear fall out. I breathe out CO2 for heaven sakes, how can that be bad for humanity?
Published: May 31, 2007 7:08 AM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
TokyoTom,
Yes, apparent leftist instincts and even ignorance. It boggles the mind that you come to this blog and accuse Austro-libertarians time and again, contrary to all evidence, of being in support of state privilege for corporations. It makes me wonder if you are a libertarian or have read much of anything by Austrian economists and Austro-libertarians. You continually attack us for being skeptical of environmentalist claims, especially the claims of catastrophe, despite there being good reason to be skeptical of the latter (both scientific reasons and because such claims tend to be made by leftist-statists). Your knee-jerk reaction to skeptics is to wonder if they are being funded by corporations or to think that they support said companies and others polluting people's property, even despite evidence to the contrary. Meanwhile, you are defensive and uncritical of government funding and leftist special interest funding of climate science. (Did you know your precious RealClimate has connections with left-liberal environmental groups? It is hosted by one, probably free of charge, which was founded by a prominent director of Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. Small wonder they don't criticize Gore's propaganda film. Not that this in itself refutes their claims.) So yes, you often strike me as a leftist in outlook.
You want to talk about confirmation bias. That's funny. Why don't you examine your own beliefs for it too while you're at it? If anyone seems more convinced of his position and prone to relying on a few like-minded sources, it is you.
You claim to be right-wing, but I've seen precious little evidence of that. And, incidentally, I don't consider libertarianism to be inherently right-wing. I've seen precious little evidence of libertarianism either. Oh, a few cursory claims here and there, but mostly you just seem to attack fellow libertarians in apparently willful ignorance of what libertarianism entails. You are aware that most of the people here are libertarian, right? Indeed, that they are more radical than most? This is why your constant accusations and insinuations are puzzling at best, insulting at worst.
In light of all of this and your long history of actions on this blog, your continually polite signatures seem less than genuine.
Published: May 31, 2007 8:46 AM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
CO2 is not inherently a pollutant, and even one or more of the contributors of RealClimate admit that. They think it is a pollutant when humans generate an excessive amount of it and it starts to change the climate.
Provided TT really is a free market environmentalist, his position rests on the questionable position that CO2 is the primary driver of recent man-made global warming. I've seen no evidence that the advocates of CO2 have solid evidence that it is the primary driver, however. Their claim seems to rest mainly on controversial computer models not observations and, in the absence of another explanation (because if confirms their view of man), the assumption that it is the primary driver.
From the IPCC report:
"Current studies indicate the latter is most likely, on the grounds that
* estimates of internal variability from climate models, and reconstructions of past temperatures, indicate that the warming is unlikely to be entirely natural
* climate models, forced by changes in greenhouse gases and aerosols, reproduce the observed global changes; those forced by natural factors alone do not
* 'fingerprint' methods indicate that the pattern of change is closer to that expected from greenhouse gas forced change than from natural change"
As for the meaning of the "fingerprints", just read the following excerpt from the IPCC TAR §12.2.3:
“Different models may give quite different patterns of response for the same forcing, but an individual model may give a surprisingly similar response for different forcings. The first point means that attribution studies may give different results when using signals generated from different models. The second point means that it may be more difficult to distinguish between the response to different factors than one might expect, given the differences in radiative forcing.”
It is hard to fingerprint when different numerical simulations give different responses.
Much like a police force that believes it has already nabbed the criminal, the scientist-activists aren't interested in entertaining alternative explanations.
I'm not saying CO2 doesn't cause some warming, but I don't think the CO2 advocates have solid evidence that it is as dominant a driver as they like to claim.
There are scientists who are positing both natural and other (probably more tractable) man-made causes of global warming. Recent warming may be a combination of natural, CO2, and other man-made causes. Focusing too much on CO2 detracts from other possible natural and man-made causes. If CO2 is not the primary driver, then cutting CO2 emissions will not have as much effect on global warming as hypothesized.
Tom acts like the science is settled and it is a moral failing not to accept it. I disagree with both positions.
Published: May 31, 2007 9:12 AM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
As one example of an alternative theory:
James Hansen, prominent in global warming circles, now thinks that much of the ice melting in the Arctic is being caused primarily by soot (primarily from Asian and Russia; America 10-15%).
Koch, D., and J. Hansen 2005. Distant origins of Arctic black carbon: A Goddard Institute for Space Studies ModelE experiment. Journal of Geophysical Research, 110, D04204, doi:10.1029/2004JD005296.
Here is the press release.
And here is some interesting commentary.
Soot, as it happens, is a particulate and would be easier to deal with than CO2 emissions.
Published: May 31, 2007 9:40 AM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Oops...that could have come out more clearly: "(primarily from Asia and Russia; only 10-15% from America)."
Published: May 31, 2007 9:42 AM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Roy Cordato has an environmental blog, by the way. Free market environmentalists might want to check it out: http://www.environmentnc.com/.
Published: May 31, 2007 11:55 AM
Yancey Ward
Michael Rozeff had an essay, a couple of days ago on Lew Rockwell's website, on environmentalism that more or less coincides with my thoughts on the movement. Link
Published: May 31, 2007 1:42 PM
Geoffrey Allan Plauche
Speaking of James Hansen and Roy Cordato, here is Roy Cordato pointing out the bankruptcy of the typical leftist environmentalist response to skeptics as he comments on Hansen's hissy fit over the NASA Admin's remarks. Sound familiar?
Published: May 31, 2007 3:40 PM
Sag
I find absurd the notion that we must all be deep experts in climate science. I am not and have no intention of becoming one. If there was some reason to become one - such as, according to the GW alarmists, survival - I would.
We hear that humans "contribute" to GW. Also that unless submission to total government control over the environment is effected, we will die.
However, the people who say this are never really specific about these claims despite the apocalyptic nature of their conclusions and the totalitarianism of their policy prescriptions. It's interesting that their cluster of claims are not located in any one place such that if they were refuted, the GW alarmists would abandon their movement.
The fundamental questions which would seem to me need to be answered comprehensively, specifically, clearly and all at once are the following. We can later get to scientific or other critiques. But anything short of a comprehensive answer to these questions (i.e. all GW claims I've heard to date) isn't really worthy of serious attention - beyond calling statists to account for the umpteenth and surely not last time:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/chernikov/chernikov46.html
Published: May 31, 2007 4:28 PM
Balaji Viswanathan
Pretty interesting article with good suggestions like channelizing a portion of rising sea level to deserts and making use of newly warmed regions.
However, a few things concern me. The main thing is that we as a society still are unable to understand this complex system of weather patterns. Even with advanced computer models, scientists find it difficult to determine the behavior of this non-linear system with complex tipping points. A 1 degree increase in temperature in Sahara desert and a 1 degree temperature rise in ice-berg on the edge of sea might lead to vastly different outcomes. Even a small change in temperature can change ocean currents, change river courses, wind patterns etc and I dont think we fully understand all the possible factors that affect climate and vegetation. This is why maintaining bio-diversity and keeping climate closer to current conditions, become crucial. Global warming might indeed lead to positive results, but there are enormous uncertainities that surround us. What about the future of polar bears, penguins and other creatures that depend snow and cannot adapt in a short time are one among thousands of unanswered questions.
While, there is no case for stopping or slowing industrial expansion, solutions must be explored for more efficient energy usage and cleaner methods of energy production that will keep our signature on global climate as low as possible.
Published: May 31, 2007 9:47 PM
Michael A. Clem
TT, while it's hard to detect sarcasm and other subtle emotions and attitudes from plain text, it does seem to me that your questions are more rhetorical than simple attempts to seek information. If they don't answer your question the first time, why do you think they'll answer it the third, fourth, or fifth time you ask? Just make your statement and let it go.
Published: June 1, 2007 1:27 AM
TokyoTom
Michael, do rhetorical questions serve a useful role in a discussion/debate?
If you are referring to my question to Dr. Reisman, clearly I've only asked him this question once on this thread. Though I have asked him before, he has not responded. I repeat the question and the background both to make the question (and his non-response) very clear and to save readers the trouble of clicking through cross-references to prior comments.
Are there any other subtle emotions involved here? You betcha.
Yoroshiku,
Tom
Published: June 1, 2007 2:08 AM
Alex J
Geoffrey,
I see the part that says soot may be a "contributing" factor, but where does it say "much of the ice melting in the Arctic is being caused primarily by soot"? Obviously, Hansen continues to think the amplified greenhouse effect is a significant threat, considering his latest comments on thresholds of accelerated warming and the CO2 hazard point.
The other issue is the possibility that reducing particulate and sulfate aerosol pollution (representing a short-term cooling effect while in the upper atmosphere), without addressing CO2 will also accelerate warming somewhat.
Published: June 1, 2007 8:31 PM
Michael A. Clem
Michael, do rhetorical questions serve a useful role in a discussion/debate?
Um, I'll just assume that's a rhetorical question.
;-)
Published: June 2, 2007 1:16 PM
TokyoTom
Andy:
"it seems to me there are quite big problems regarding ANY solution of the CO2 problem."
Even Dr. Reisman realizes that the climate is warming, human activities may very well be at fault, that there are no effective institutional mechanisms (property rights or regulations) now in place to address the impact of such activities, so that the problem is not self-correcting and at some point may very well justify collective action - such as exploding atom bombs - on top of individual adaption to changing climate.
Do you disagree with Dr. Reisman? Why or why not?
Published: June 3, 2007 9:44 AM
TokyoTom
Geoff:
"we should end ALL state intervention into the economy, including environmental regulation AND all interventions that privilege some businesses or individuals at the expense of others. The state, if it should exist at all, should limit itself to protecting individual rights (including property rights). Protection of individual rights, not their violation (as most environmentalists prefer), is the best way to protect the environment. It necessarily entails eliminating all state privileges for corporations.
In summary: I AM A FREE MARKET ENVIRONMENTALIST WHO PUTS HUMANS FIRST!!!"
Good. So we do share basic principles.
"I've had enough of your (intentional? or just dense?) reading things into my views that I do not say or believe. How you think I support state-corporate capitalism is beyond me."
Maybe it`s my own false perceptions, Geoff, but methinks that thou doth protesteth slightly too much. When you and others constantly bash enviros but somehow never seem to mention the powerful corporate rent-seekers - that are the reason for the development of environmental laws (frustration of common law) and who with other elites do a much better job of manipulting government and eluding responsibility (with corporate limited liability) - but are always questioning the motives and arrogance of the enviros who battle the corporations, instead of focussing relentlessly on analysis of the claimed problem, well, that kinda seems rather less than impartial to me.
And this problem is both persistent and goes very deep, and the author of this post is a perfect case in point. Instead of reason, we see here alot of rationalized, but very emotional and reflexively partisan and emotional, position-taking.
Do I see clearly and cooly? Does anyone? We`re all imperfect and human. Emotions have their place.
It is rather ironic that even quoting Feynman and Nin doen`t help to get the point across, at least for some.
TT
Published: June 3, 2007 10:02 AM
TokyoTom
TLWP Sam, "I'd guess your question could be turned around to 'why should down-streamers demand clean air and water?'"
You got it Sam. If someone has homesteaded rights before others, it hardly matters whom, as long as the rights are clear, so that private, utility-maximizing market transactions can take place.
How is all of this working out in the case of the atmosphere and AGW? Who has clearly established what legal rights, and what forum exists to enforce them, if any?
Are those who are not in favor of rushing into geologically rapid changes to climate by definition arrogant? What about those who impliedly asserting that they can do what they want (the maximizes their own intersts) free, and everyone else can lump it?
Published: June 3, 2007 10:14 AM
TokyoTom
Geoff, your other posts here are a bit over the top. You love to throw around labels like they really help with clear thinking, and you attribute to me any number of odious strawmen that cannot be fairly grounded on what I`ve written.
Sorry that I am not so easily pegged.
If it helps, feel free to just view me as an ornery cuss.
Tom
Published: June 3, 2007 10:23 AM
TokyoTom
Balaji Viswanathan:
"solutions must be explored for more efficient energy usage and cleaner methods of energy production that will keep our signature on global climate as low as possible."
Perhaps you`d care to explain exactly who is supposed to explore these solutions, and based on what incentives (other than those already reflected in market pricing)? No individuals can exclude others from the benefits accruing from such "solutions" and so has little incentives to invest in them. Surely you`re not recommending statist actions, are you?
Published: June 3, 2007 10:30 AM
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Published: June 6, 2007 10:43 AM
TokyoTom
Dr. Reisman, you might be interested to note that extensive arguments were made here in favor of geoengineering approaches to climate change, given that mitigation approaches are too late to be fully effective:
GEOENGINEERING: A CLIMATE CHANGE MANHATTAN PROJECT, Jay Michaelson (Yale JD), Stanford Environmental Law Journal January, 1998; http://www.metatronics.net/lit/geo2.html.
There have of course been many discussions of geoengineering over the past two decades. The topic is gaining interest, espcially after an article by Nobel Laureate Paul Crutzen last year. More here, if you are interested:
Climate change: Is this what it takes to save the world? Long marginalized as a dubious idea, altering the climate through 'geoengineering' has staged something of a comeback. http://www.nature.com/news/2007/070508/full/447132a.html#B2
ALBEDO ENHANCEMENT BY STRATOSPHERIC SULFUR
INJECTIONS: A CONTRIBUTION TO RESOLVE A POLICY
DILEMMA? Paul Crutzen; http://downloads.heartland.org/19632.pdf
A Combined Mitigation/Geoengineering Approach to Climate Stabilization, T. M. L. Wigley; http://www.atmosp.physics.utoronto.ca/~jclub/journalclub_files/Wigley_Science_2006.pdf
Geoengineering Earth's Radiation Balance to Mitigate CO2 Induced Climate Change, Bala Govindasamy and Ken Caldeira Climate and Carbon Cycle Group, Lawerence Livermore National Laboratory; http://geocrisis.com/Geoenigineering%20Earth%20Radiative%20Balance.pdf
Feasibility of cooling the Earth with a cloud of small spacecraft near the inner Lagrange point (L1), Roger Angel; http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/103/46/17184
Only mother nature knows how to fertilize the ocean; Natural input of nutrients works ten times better than manmade injections; http://planktonforums.org/viewtopic.php?t=5059
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/21stC/issue-2.1/huyghe.htm
http://geocrisis.com/cpe_geoengineering_menu.htm
I understand that government funding around the world has already been flowing into investigations of geoengineering approaches, given the costs and relative ineffectiveness of trying to tackle climate change through energy usage.
Of course, I imagine you will agree that proposals such as these, even though they reflect a "can do" attitude in the face of a difficult problem and are much less intrusive on our individual behavior than cap and trade or tax schemes, should be rejected and condemned as statist - like your nuclear winter proposal? And that, rather, the best way to deal with climate change is for us to ignore the nature of the atmosphere as an open-access commons, and for us all to simply act individually to grin and bear and adapt to whatever is the aggregate consequence of our individual choices?
Regards,
TT
Published: June 25, 2007 10:33 AM
jpitt42
TT, I think the questions that should be asked regarding the geo-engineering are the following:
* Will the geo-engineers be held liable for the ill-effects of their actions? After all, they're quite likely to screw up the "open-access commons" as much or more so than the billions of individuals who are allegedly causing the warming in the first place. How will they be held accountable?
* How will the effort be funded? Will it be through voluntary contributions, through taxation, or through printing more money (stealth taxation)? Which methods are acceptable and which are not? Who decides? This is admittedly getting into a much larger subject.
Published: June 25, 2007 9:55 PM
TokyoTom
jpitt42, you've certainly asked a couple of the right questions. Other questions and points that merit consideration include:
- how do your questions apply to Dr. Reisman's proposal for open-air testing of atom bombs in the arctic?
- what private incentives any firms or individuals have to engage in geoengineering or carbon sequestration activities when they cannot capture more than a miniscule fraction of the benefits and thus can't cover their costs?
- how do we develop a voluntary management structure for the global atmospheric commons? Must we reinvent the state?
- my understanding that all investigations of geoengineering/sequestration efforts have been funded by the state or by private firms trying to provide a service in response to the carbon emission reductions/offset markets created under the Kyoto protocol. Private efforts, which will be subject to liability, will further increase - if governments further expand offset markets. (Not that I advocate that, of course.)
TT
Published: June 25, 2007 11:40 PM
TokyoTom
jpitt42, you've certainly asked a couple of the right questions. Other questions and points that merit consideration include:
- how do your questions apply to Dr. Reisman's proposal for open-air testing of atom bombs in the arctic?
- what private incentives any firms or individuals have to engage in geoengineering or carbon sequestration activities when they cannot capture more than a miniscule fraction of the benefits and thus can't cover their costs?
- how do we develop a voluntary management structure for the global atmospheric commons? Must we reinvent the state?
- my understanding that all investigations of geoengineering/sequestration efforts have been funded by the state or by private firms trying to provide a service in response to the carbon emission reductions/offset markets created under the Kyoto protocol. Private efforts, which will be subject to liability, will further increase - if governments further expand offset markets. (Not that I advocate that, of course.)
TT
Published: June 25, 2007 11:41 PM
RogerM
"Local scientist calls global warming theory 'hooey' by Samara Kalk Derby. If you google for the title you can find the story on many sites. Here's the lead: "Reid Bryson, known as the father of scientific climatology, considers global warming a bunch of hooey."
Also, "Sun's Shifts May Cause Global Warming" at Discovery Mag's site is very interesting. Available at http://discovermagazine.com/2007/jul/the-discover-interview-henrik-svensmark. In this article a Danish researcher who gets no money from oil companies says the sun causes global warming and cooling.
Published: June 26, 2007 2:28 PM
TokyoTom
Roger,
Thnaks for providing another opportunity to discuss Svensmark.
1. I have previously noted that on cosmic rays, RealClimate said the following in a February 12 post:
"Whether cosmic rays are correlated with climate or not, they have been regularly measured by the neutron monitor at Climax Station (Colorado) since 1953 and show no long term trend. No trend = no explanation for current changes."
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/02/what-triggers-ice-ages/index.php?p=405
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2006/10/taking-cosmic-rays-for-a-spin/
Since then, the following more complete discussion is out regarding Svensmark's analysis: http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/03/cosmoclimatology-tired-old-arguments-in-new-clothes/
And here is a related show of humor by RealClimste, relating to what they see as the correlation mistakes of Svensmark and others:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/05/fun-with-correlations/#more-433
FInally, if Svensmark is so convincing, why did Martin Durkin, who swindled us with Swindled!, fail to mention him at all? Was Svensmark's thesis just too credible to be twisted by Durkin?
2. Besides the science, of course, which is Damned difficult for us to get our heads around, the past few thousands aof years are full of examples of destructive over-exploitation of open-access resources, which continues apace where resources are not owned or managed. Is this something good Miseseans also like to deny, rather than to acknowledge and to propose solutions that minimize rent-seeking? Simply insisting that the state should do nothing neither means that there is no problem, nor that it will cure itself.
Regards,
TT
Published: June 27, 2007 2:26 AM
Tarun K Juyal
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Published: July 27, 2007 7:55 AM