The limited impact of Kyoto is evinced by the fact that carbon permits are now selling in the range of a negligible one euro a ton.
Here is much more, all excellent, via Brad DeLong.
Larry Summers sentence of the day
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Summers opines: “Those who still deny that human activity is warming the planet, or claim that “business as usual† can continue indefinitely without profoundly adverse consequences, are increasingly seen as the moral and intellectual equivalent of those who deny that tobacco has adverse consequences for human health.”
I find this statement pretty appalling. By contrast, I would say that there is reasonable confidence that the planet is warming, very little certainty concerning the cause, and we have no idea at all whether changing ‘business as usual’ will make any difference.
It is amazing that so many people blandly believe that humans can modulate the planetary climate to whatever temperature they favour by adjusting economic policy.
And it is very disappointing to see Summers using the ‘climate change denial’ slur against people who are unconvinced by the current eco-panic. He compounds it with the indefensible comment: “The real question for debate is not whether something should be done – that debate is over among the rational.”
So why does Tyler think the article is ‘excellent’?
Well, josh, if you read to the next paragraph, we do find Summers’s opinion:
“The real question for debate is not whether something should be done – that debate is over among the rational. “
I must agree with Bruce. While the “logic” of global warming makes sense in theory, I do find that the Al Gore crowd is not as forthright as it should be about the incompleteness of our knowledge of the earth, and how much faith we can have in the models that point to humans as the cause.
I am naturally suspicious when the most popular representative graph of the movement is the “hockey stick graph,” which, besides all of its other failings, only encompasses 1/100000 of the earth’s existence — an existence which saw the still unexplainable disappearance of the dinosaurs, a couple of ice ages, etc.
Can anyone point me in the direction of a scholar who appears to do an intellectually honest job in pointing out what we know, what we don’t know, what we think, and how much faith we can place in what we think? (We= scientific community)
Funny how an ECONOMIST, no matter what his faculties for mathematical abstraction feels totally capable of making certain statements on CLIMATOLOGY, that global warming exists, is abnormal (i’m still wondering that comports with the emergence and disappearance of the glaciers that made various formations in Pennsylvania, USA about 10-20 thousand years ago, that its anthropogenic, controllable and reversible and that its possible to design publc policy to accomplish that end
Of course these leaps make him competent to dismiss people who disagree or remain unconvinced as not only intellectually inferior but morally deficient.
Typical left-winger. No absolutes (except theirs).
Obviously learned nothing in his adventures in public conjecture about female faculty …I think I hear… Four legs good, two legs bad.
Hmm, I don’t know, I’ve read quite a few top level scientists who have shed more than a little doubt as to the overall severity, and root causes of anthropomorphic g/warming.
I think an ongoing debate is both good, and fun, but when one side spends a majority of their energy trying to shut down debate, it seems dubious at best.
Well, we “evil” humans can just solve the whole problem and save “mother earth” by annihilating our species. No humans, no problem. Right?
Incidentally, in light of the leftist aversion to “carbon footprints†, I can’t imagine why they constantly whine about Africa’s poverty. Living on less than $2 a day usually results in a very low carbon footprint. Abandoning leftist ideology, which caused nothing but misery and poverty (absolute poverty, not the big mac chomping, bear guzzling, ipod listening, car driving picnic which passes for poverty in the United States), in favour of more liberal markets and growth, China is now set to overtake the US in emissions.
What does Tyler mean by “excellent”?
“Beside, if you don’t believe in global warming at this point, what evidence will really sway you? How much change must occur before global warming definitively has occured?–(note the past tense)”
I believe the temperature has increased by 0.74 degree over the last 100 years. What I take issue with is extrapolating that
Christopher: We recently hosted a lecture by John Drake (who’s at Oak Ridge). He does a pretty good job of laying what we do and do not know out there. You can see his lecture in its entirety at: http://petascale.theacesbuilding.com/. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the lecture on April 12.
The debate is now at the stage where industry can only rely on the general scientific consensus that there is a carbon problem. The issue is that there is now a risk for a price on carbon emissions that will come into operation before the end of the economic life of any new carbon emitting assets that are constructed. Carbon price risk has to be put in to any business plans as these are major investments with extremely long lives and the owners of these assets have the legitimate expectation that they do not want them to be stranded with the consequent capital losses. Because we are dealing with emissions into the global commons of the atmosphere, whether we like it or not governments are the best ones for putting a framework for which carbon can be priced and therefore incorporated into the risk profile of the investment.
Some of the best work in terms of putting an economic/political policy framework around carbon emissions comes from Warwick McKibbin whose original work was published by the Brookings institution as the McKibbin Wilcoxen model as an alternative potential global framework for limiting carbon emissions.
We are at the stage where it does not matter whether there is agreement or disagreement with the overall consensus of the science there is a strong commercial risk for all investments in terms of carbon pricing. I do not want my investment funds taking on these un-priced risks and I think they might be wary about charges of potential negligence
Brad DeLong reminds us once again why he should not be taken seriously.
The observed warming in the last century has been fairly small, and while it is quite probable that this warming is due in some degree to mankind’s contribution to atmospheric green-house gases, it is by no measure been conclusively demonstrated that we are even the major cause of this warming, and even more, it has not been demonstrated that we can stop it, even if we stopped burning fossil fuels today. Yes, there are a lot of questions science still has to answer before one can even begin to contemplate taking significant action to reduce fossil fuel use.
Do the global-warming is bad crowd try to shut down debate? Really, is this a serious question? Just take a look at this thread and others like it.
“….while anybody who seriously doubts that global warming is at least partly anthropogenic and that continuing to treat greenhouse gas emissions as costless involves some non-zero long-term risk is firmly out of the reality based camp at this point.”
Way to complain about others shutting down the debate by spewing specious nonsense and then…um…shutting down the debate by spewing specious nonsense yourself.
“And that’s still doing *something*, which is what I see the debate being about, not whether to do something, but *what* to do, with government laissez-faire (i.e. assuming effective private action will happen in time without any regulation) still a contender, though in my opinion a dark-horse.”
Really? So all those hybrid cars flying off the shelf at car dealerships and all those people plastering solar panels on their roofs is a result of government regulation? Those aren’t people making decisions in a free market? I think I hear the dark horse coming.
Incidentally, China is set to overtake us in emissions this year or next. I nearly died trying to breath in Cairo. What kind of goverment regulation do you propose our government impose on them – without destroying humanity in the process?
Of course, dismissing large amounts of evidence by many of the top scientists in the world that disagree with the alarmists is foolish.
Wise men will take up a debate.
Fools won’t listen,
and liars will want everyone to shut up when they feel that they’ve had the last word.
“….while anybody who seriously doubts that global warming is at least partly anthropogenic and that continuing to treat greenhouse gas emissions as costless involves some non-zero long-term risk is firmly out of the reality based camp at this point.”
Way to complain about others shutting down the debate by spewing specious nonsense and then…um…shutting down the debate by spewing specious nonsense yourself.
Which nonsense is that? Do you seriously disagree that treating greenhouse gas emissions as costless involves *zero* risk? And note carefully what I did not say. I did not say anything about governments. People who specifically purchase alternative energy sources for more money are not treating greenhouse gas emissions as costless. They are assuming that there is a cost and that they have a moral obligation to minimize the amount they pump into the air. If enough people take this view, the government may not need to get involved at all.
Similarly, if everyone in China treats emissions as costless and continues to do so for a long time, then it’s true that what we do won’t make a great deal of difference.
But don’t confuse arguing against government intervention with denying the scientific evidence. I don’t support alarmists, and from what I’ve seen, neither does Brad DeLong. People in comments here have branded him and Larry Summers alarmists simply because they do not take seriously the idea that there is nothing to worry about.
I also don’t take seriously people who feel sure that we’ll see 6m sea level rise in the next hundred years.
It seems to me that what people on both foolish sides of this debate have (and there appear to plenty on both sides) is a fundamental inability to understand what the uncertainties *mean*.
Christopher Prottas
http://ipcc-wg1.ucar.edu/wg1/wg1-report.html
in particular the ‘Summary for Policymakers’, the ‘Technical Summary’ and ‘the Frequently Asked Questions’.
I say this without irony. The science is probably as good as we are going to get (without more data).
The IPCC spends a mind-bending amount of time identifying the uncertainties and the level of scientific understanding about each factor. Some of the more dramatic evidence regarding climate change was specifically excluded from the report.
It is just not the case that there are any credible climate scientists in the world who have raised significant objections to the picture of anthropogenic global warming. What you have is a motley rabble of industry-finance ‘professional sceptics’ (in the case of Fred Singer, he was previously so employed by the tobacco industry). You also have Richard Lindzen, but he admits what he proposes are simply alternative theories.
Coming from a professional economic modelling background, I was amazed at climate science. They have models which are well tested against actual scientific laws and principles, and which have a good record of predicting past phenomena. And they are very clear about what they do, and do not, know. There is never anything like this level of certainty in economics.
The deficiencies in the models (which are admitted) would lead one to a conclusion that we would do *more* about global warming, now, rather than less. Because if we overestimate the effects, the costs of action are relatively small.
But if we underestimate the effects (at least as likely) then the costs of inaction are huge. If we inadvertently trigger the permafrost melt and methane release, then the cost is civilisation, and maybe human life itself.
Uncertainty should make us *more* cautious about tampering with the planet’s environment, not less.
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