NoaIzumiPolitical Climate, by the Investor's Business Daily
January 16th 2009 19:42
What can I say? I just seem to be on a roll lately with finding bad opinion pieces on climate change. This one is from one of my favorite sources of material, the newspaper Investor’s Business Daily. It takes note of a conversation during the confirmation hearing for Hillary Clinton.
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The editors downplay the influence of climate change on conflict, but the link is definitely there, most notably in Dharfur, where drought and desertification of the area increased competition for water and resources, raising tensions and leading to armed conflict.
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Whether that particular conflict can be laid at global warming’s door is debatable (I tend to doubt it, at least for the most part), but if global warming leads to more droughts around the world, it’s going to lead to more humanitarian crises like Dharfur.
In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, UCLA professor Jared Diamond has other examples of the human consequences of climate change, including the collapse of Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda. Rwanda suffered a severe drought in 1989, and that, combined with deforestation and soil erosion, badly damaged the mainly agrarian economy and increased competition that tended to break out along ethnic lines. Civil war intensified, raising tensions further, and this eventually led to the outbreak of genocide.
Other experts in the area of security are taking global warming very seriously.
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“the real likely result of a warmer planet would be increased plant life from more CO2 — the basis of all life on earth — and longer growing seasons.”
I won’t argue the first point, which is supported by experimental evidence, although I would point out that if plants don’t get enough water (or too much in the case of flooding), all the CO2 in the world won’t help them. The second point however, strikes me as remarkably First World-centric. Most people in the world live in places where the seasons aren’t winter and summer, the seasons are wet and dry. What’s global warming going to do for them?
“it is environmentalists, with their passion for biofuels, who insist on using food in our gas tanks, raising food prices, consuming arable land, polluting our water through farm runoff and promoting world hunger.”
Yes, IBD never misses a chance to deliver this little potshot. What is unmentioned is that many environmental groups oppose biofuels for those very reasons. And those that do support them do so only if they can be produced in a sustainable fashion.
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“Bill Clinton said: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save our planet for our grandchildren." So the current economic slowdown must be good news for the Clintons and the greenies.”
Whoa. That would be bad. But, if you look at the rest of the speech, he actually made the exact opposite point.
"And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that.
"But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.
"And guess what? The only places in the world today in rich countries where you have rising wages and declining inequality are places that have generated more jobs than rich countries because they made a commitment we didn't. They got serious about a clean, efficient, green, independent energy future…."
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(Sadly No.com? That would have been a great name for this blog. Too bad.)
“The costs of complying with Kyoto were estimated by Clinton's own Energy Department at 3% to 4% of GDP annually. All of this to reduce global temperatures by an amount too small to even measure.”
This is another claim that comes really close to outright lying, because the two statements aren’t describing the same situation. They’re right, the Kyoto Protocol by itself doesn’t make much difference at all to temperature in the long term, but that’s because Kyoto expires in 2012 and the statement assumes that nothing will replace it and the world goes back to business as usual. In which case we wouldn’t be spending anything on it after 2012, would we?
As for the cost estimate, in 1998 the Energy Information Administration reported that complying with Kyoto would cause increased fuel prices, but projected that prices would decline again as energy markets adjusted and technology improved.
Really Long Link
“The EPA said the cap-and-trade program in the recently stalled Lieberman-Warner bill would have caused a loss of $3 trillion in GDP in a $14 trillion economy”
Having seen this argument before, I strongly suspect that the $3 trillion figure is over the course of the entire legislation, which would extend to 2050, therefore the actual annual cost would be under $75 billion, much less than 1% of GDP. The EPA really doesn’t even claim that much. Here’s what they had to say.
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So, as far as IBD is concerned, environmental alarmism is bad, but economic alarmism is A-OK. So are untruths, apparently.
Really Long Link
The editors downplay the influence of climate change on conflict, but the link is definitely there, most notably in Dharfur, where drought and desertification of the area increased competition for water and resources, raising tensions and leading to armed conflict.
Really Long Link
Whether that particular conflict can be laid at global warming’s door is debatable (I tend to doubt it, at least for the most part), but if global warming leads to more droughts around the world, it’s going to lead to more humanitarian crises like Dharfur.
In his book Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed, UCLA professor Jared Diamond has other examples of the human consequences of climate change, including the collapse of Somalia and the genocide in Rwanda. Rwanda suffered a severe drought in 1989, and that, combined with deforestation and soil erosion, badly damaged the mainly agrarian economy and increased competition that tended to break out along ethnic lines. Civil war intensified, raising tensions further, and this eventually led to the outbreak of genocide.
Other experts in the area of security are taking global warming very seriously.
Really Long Link
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Really Long Link
“the real likely result of a warmer planet would be increased plant life from more CO2 — the basis of all life on earth — and longer growing seasons.”
I won’t argue the first point, which is supported by experimental evidence, although I would point out that if plants don’t get enough water (or too much in the case of flooding), all the CO2 in the world won’t help them. The second point however, strikes me as remarkably First World-centric. Most people in the world live in places where the seasons aren’t winter and summer, the seasons are wet and dry. What’s global warming going to do for them?
“it is environmentalists, with their passion for biofuels, who insist on using food in our gas tanks, raising food prices, consuming arable land, polluting our water through farm runoff and promoting world hunger.”
Yes, IBD never misses a chance to deliver this little potshot. What is unmentioned is that many environmental groups oppose biofuels for those very reasons. And those that do support them do so only if they can be produced in a sustainable fashion.
Really Long Link (PDF file)
Really Long Link
Really Long Link
“Bill Clinton said: "We just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save our planet for our grandchildren." So the current economic slowdown must be good news for the Clintons and the greenies.”
Whoa. That would be bad. But, if you look at the rest of the speech, he actually made the exact opposite point.
"And maybe America, and Europe, and Japan, and Canada -- the rich counties -- would say, 'OK, we just have to slow down our economy and cut back our greenhouse gas emissions 'cause we have to save the planet for our grandchildren.' We could do that.
"But if we did that, you know as well as I do, China and India and Indonesia and Vietnam and Mexico and Brazil and the Ukraine, and all the other countries will never agree to stay poor to save the planet for our grandchildren. The only way we can do this is if we get back in the world's fight against global warming and prove it is good economics that we will create more jobs to build a sustainable economy that saves the planet for our children and grandchildren. It is the only way it will work.
"And guess what? The only places in the world today in rich countries where you have rising wages and declining inequality are places that have generated more jobs than rich countries because they made a commitment we didn't. They got serious about a clean, efficient, green, independent energy future…."
Really Long Link
(Sadly No.com? That would have been a great name for this blog. Too bad.)
“The costs of complying with Kyoto were estimated by Clinton's own Energy Department at 3% to 4% of GDP annually. All of this to reduce global temperatures by an amount too small to even measure.”
This is another claim that comes really close to outright lying, because the two statements aren’t describing the same situation. They’re right, the Kyoto Protocol by itself doesn’t make much difference at all to temperature in the long term, but that’s because Kyoto expires in 2012 and the statement assumes that nothing will replace it and the world goes back to business as usual. In which case we wouldn’t be spending anything on it after 2012, would we?
As for the cost estimate, in 1998 the Energy Information Administration reported that complying with Kyoto would cause increased fuel prices, but projected that prices would decline again as energy markets adjusted and technology improved.
Really Long Link
“The EPA said the cap-and-trade program in the recently stalled Lieberman-Warner bill would have caused a loss of $3 trillion in GDP in a $14 trillion economy”
Having seen this argument before, I strongly suspect that the $3 trillion figure is over the course of the entire legislation, which would extend to 2050, therefore the actual annual cost would be under $75 billion, much less than 1% of GDP. The EPA really doesn’t even claim that much. Here’s what they had to say.
Really Long Link
So, as far as IBD is concerned, environmental alarmism is bad, but economic alarmism is A-OK. So are untruths, apparently.
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