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Economics of climate change: the issue hots up
How do nations shift to low-emission economies without sacrificing growth? There are still not enough facts on the table
The UN had its pre-Copenhagen climate summit yesterday. The US and China, which between them account for about 40 per cent of the world's CO2 emissions, made vague promises to make reductions.
China pledged to take four steps toward greener development: cut carbon dioxide emissions by a "notable margin" by 2020; increase the size of forests; increase the use of nuclear or non-fossil fuels to 15 per cent; and develop a green economy. But President Hu Jintao did not name the target for China's carbon intensity, which some had expected.
President Obama, whose climate legislation has stalled in the Senate, offered little beyond rhetoric. "No nation," he said, "can escape the impact of climate change. The security and stability of each nation and all peoples - our prosperity, our health, and our safety - are in jeopardy. And the time we have to reverse this tide is running out."
Less than three months ahead of the key conference in Copenhagen, where nations are set to wrap up negotiations on a new agreement on emissions, green economists are attempting to calculate what it might cost to stop warming up the planet - or at least what it will cost to adapt to its impact.
It's a difficult calculation to make, and even more difficult to act upon - as Obama pointed out yesterday - given how domestic politics and national economic self-interest rarely conform with global responsibility.
Mohammed Nasheed, President of the Maldives, is certainly hoping for the two to align. He told world leaders his homeland would disappear under the sea before the end of this century. "We in the Maldives desperately want to believe that one day our words will have an effect, and so we continue to shout them even though, deep down, we know that you are not really listening."
But in the US, opposition to emissions control legislation is building. Texas governor Rick Perry yesterday called the Waxman-Markey climate change and energy bill a "legislative monstrosity" that would do grave damage to the Texan economy.
However, some studies suggest the change to a low-emission economy could be beneficial. In New York yesterday, Tony Blair said ambitious greenhouse gas reductions would spur economic growth and create as many as 10 million jobs by 2020.
The fact is no one really knows what it might cost to prevent dramatic climate change. The official UN Framework Convention on Climate Change woefully under-estimates the cost by a minimum factor of three, according to recent reports, one of them from the Grantham Institute for Climate Change at Imperial College London.
According to Professor Martin Parry at Imperial College, the UN failed to factor in several costs - from adapting to floods to the increased disease burden - and used low-end estimations of sea-level rises. He also said necessary infrastructure upgrades could be eight times more costly than the higher estimates predicted by the body.
For Copenhagen to succeed, says Parry, negotiators will need more accurate estimates. "The amount of money on the table at Copenhagen is one of the key factors that will determine whether we achieve a climate change agreement. But previous estimates of adaptation costs have substantially misjudged the scale of funds needed."
Oxfam estimates an additional $150bn a year will be needed to help developing countries adapt. The charity warned that big business could make the difference between success and failure in Copenhagen. "It is in business interests to lead the fight against climate change, to protect their supply chains, drive new technologies and stimulate jobs," said Oxfam's executive director Jeremy Hobbs. "Business can help to unblock these talks by calling with one voice for ambitious emission cuts and sufficient investment in adaptation and clean technology."
Oxfam praised a communique from Prince Charles's Corporate Leaders Group calling for 50-85 per cent carbon emission cuts by 2050 but warned that counter-efforts to water down legislation by energy and manufacturing interests could lead to a less ambitious agreement or no agreement at all. "We urge big business to be united in pushing for a fair and safe deal," said Hobbs.
With developed and developing powers like China, Brazil, India and Indonesia all making conciliatory gestures, the link between emissions reductions and trade is self-evident. With Chinese looking to take the lead, the pressure is on the US to act decisively.
UN secretary-general Ban Ki-moon told yesterday's summit: "Failure to reach broad agreement in Copenhagen would be morally inexcusable, economically short-sighted and politically unwise." ·
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THis seems to be a follow-on to the July thread mentioned here at and once again our old pal P Simmons Esq is well to the fore, but I believe he has hit the nail on the head this time - TOO MANY PEOPLE!
The facts are that as population grows, so too do their requirements for food, living space (or "Lebensraum", now where have I heard that before?), water, work...
So as we can't stop "climate change", or "global warming" or whatever you want to call it (although it will find its own level over a few thousand years, as it always has), we will see the survival of the fittest, or the strongest swimmers (!), or those with the most guns - Darwinism will eventually reduce the population to a manageable level. I just hope that I don't have to live through it, but it will happen eventually...it always does.
Wow, Peter Simmons sure can pack a few punches into one paragraph - perhaps he's the one who wrote that Virgin complaints letter...also fascinating to see his tolerant, see-both-sides approach to a discussion.
Nope, Pete old son, the game's up - hot air to attack, er, hot air just ain't going to convince the rest of us (the vast majority!) that we can control the climate any more than we can control the United Nations and their "Gaddafi" moments - as you said yourself, we're just one species, we live and die while the good ol' Earth just soldiers on and copes for better or worse as it has aways done.
So it can't be done - get over it!
When I saw your headline "What will it cost to fight climate change?" my first thought is "Whatever the market..and taxpayer... will bear." And at the risk of another personal attack from Peter Simmons, why do you publish his venomous attacks on people who simply don't think the way he does? He is disgusting . Everyone backs up what they say except him, who has nothing to say. On the other hand yes do publish him, then we can see him exactly for what he is. A nothing. Kevin McGrane said it all.
The rant by Peter Simmons, half of which is a puerile ad hominem attack on Michael Jose, shows just how deluded the climate alarmists are. They can't address the scientific issues, so they just resort to nonsense, lies and personal attacks of the worst kind: point weak, shout loud. It all helps to make the case for the sanity of the sceptical position: the likes of Peter Simmons (a God-hating, environmentalist/dreamer photographer and anarchist) who writes like this cannot be trusted to have sound judgment on any matter. He stands as an excellent example of what happens when peoples' minds get darkened and ultimately destroyed by all this environmental clap-trap. If anyone is sitting on the fence on this issue, a comparison between the posts of Jose and Simmons leaves one in no doubt who is deluded, bitter and twisted. Do carry on Peter, you're doing a grand job at discrediting your cause.
Eminent scientists (and one or two others) who do not support the Great Global Warming Swindle:
1. Dr Tim Ball, former Professor of Climatology, U of Winnipeg
2. Prof. Nir Shaviv, Institute of Physics, Hebrew U of Jerusalem
3. Prof. Ian Clark, Dept. of Earth Sciences, U of Ottawa
4. Mr Piers Corbyn, independent Solar Physicist
5. Prof. John Cristy, lead author IPCC
6. Prof. Phillip Stott, Emiritus Prof. of Biogeography, U of London
7. Prof. Paul Reiter, Pasteur Institute, Paris. World Health Organisation consultant and IPCC consultant.
8. Prof. Richard Lindzen, Alfred Sloan Professor of Meteorology, MIT. IPCC consultant.
9. Mr Patrick Moore, co-founder of Greenpeace
10. Dr Roy Spencer, principal research scientist, U of Alabama, Huntsville
11. Prof. Patrick Michaels, Dept. of Environmental Science, U of Virginia
12. Mr Nigel Calder, former editor of New Scientist magazine
13. Lord (Nigel) Lawson of Blaby, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, UK.
14. Prof. Syun-Ichi Akasofu, Director of Institute of the Arctic Research Centre.
15. Prof. Frederick Singer, First Director, US National Weather Satellite Service.
16. Prof. Eigil Friis-Christenson, Director, Danish National Space Centre
17. Prof. Frederick Seitz, former President of National Academy of Sciences, USA, and President of the American Physical Society
18. Mr Paul K. Driessen, author of book `Eco-Imperialism'
19. Mr James Shikwati (born 1970) Kenyan libertarian economist, Director of Inter-Region Economic Network
Contributors to the extra material - interviews, lectures, and credits
1. Prof. Tim Patterson, Geology Dept. of Carleton University, Canada
2. Prof. Edward J Wegman
3. Prof. Bob Carter
4. Dr. Willie Soon
5. Dr. Madhav Khandekar
6. Prof. Wibjorn Karlen
7. Dr. Henrik Svensmark
8. Dr Dick Morgan
9. Dr Fred Goldberg
10. Hans H. J. Labohm
11. Steve McIntyre
12. Dr Ross McKitrick
13. Dr Chris Landsea
The sun is the major driver of climate change, I did not say 'all', such casual absolutism is almost always easily refuted. Reduced sunspots and lessening of solar magnetosphere reduce the cosmic ray flux density reaching the earth's atmosphere, and alter the cloud cover, regulating the tropospheric greenhouse effect.
While I can agree with Michael Jose about the con job, it would not be correct to say that all global climate change arrives with radiation from the Sun. The burning of forests and volcanic erruptions also have a substantial impact. Where the 'scientists' are straying from reality can be found in their straight line extrapolation of the correlation between human emissions and global temperature rise over a long time scale. The Earth has inbuilt control systems that can suddenly reverse trends of many kinds, from animal populations to stock market bubbles. In markets, everyone is bearish at the bottom and bullish at the top. I expect a major reversal of the present climate trend, sooner rather than later. After all, one good super volcano could throw enough ash into the air to plunge the planet into a long winter, thus trashing clever correlations. The more 'scientists' predict a constant rise in temperature like the bulls at the top of a market, the more confident and fearful I become that they are all going to be wrong, big time.
Oh dear, Michael Jose is at it again, recycling his deranged, second hand garbage, cobbled from the outer reaches of the lunatic web as if it was actually real. If you didn't gather your 'facts' from unscientific know nothings, and instead examined the real science, [not that you''d understand it if this simplistic post is anything to go by] you might find out that no 'senior scientists' refute man-made global warming, if you aren't lying, how about naming some? You really show yourself up with these ignorant, silly, juvenile conspiracy theories. It's happening and we are to blame, moron. And as for your recycled 'ice age' nonsense, that was tabloid scare stories - you're so obviously a Sun reader - and was a complete misunderstanding of science by the hard of thinking. How does it feel being part of the 0.001% who think it's all a con? You must feel really special, important and superior, rather than irrelevant, stupid and inadequate. NOW to address this article: the writer should stick to money which is clearly his subject, as he fails to understand the very basic fact that it's economic growth which has brought us to this point, uncontrolled growth is what's destroying the ecosystem, so, far from returning to growth and the same old same old attitude of exploitation from greed, we have to construct a system of zero growth and ecological living which allows other species also to live and treats the planet as a finite resource. The alternative is ecosystem meltdown and a cull of the rampant naked ape which thinks it's so special. We depend totally on the planetary ecosystem for our existence, and destroy it at our peril. Meanwhile, our plague-like numbers continue to spiral out of control, people obsess about fertility treatment for the infertile as if human babies were in short supply, and medicine tries its best to keep us alive long past our sell by date. We are just another species, we live and then die, we are not important. Get over it.
The global warming industry is a global con-job. The fluctuations in the energy received from the sun provides the vast majority of the variance driving climate change. CO2 is a vitally necessary part of photosynthesis for all green plants on the planet, and a little extra is good not bad as plant growth, including crops, will slightly increase. Crops in real greenhouses have CO2 added as an atmospheric nutrient, or growth stops. Politicians want to scare us into remaining obedient so they can run our lives, tax us, and stay in power and be driven around in limousines and fly to summits in jet planes. Tragically, Margaret Thatcher (as pointed out by Nigel Lawson, he Chancellor of the Exchequer), was one of the first to jump on the CO2=warming bandwagon. And her reasons were political - to stab at the troublesome coal miners in the UK in the 1980s. Lots of senior scientists oppose the CO2 theory, and the last decade of 'warming' figures show that it has been a period of cooling not warming, as *not* predicted by the climate warming computer models. Check out 'Red Hot Lies' by Christopher C. Horner, and the DVD 'The Great Global Warming Scandal'. I remember the 70s when it was all global-cooling-next-ice-age-acoming stories. I did not believe them either.