Saint…? Anti-Christ…? Or neither?
In the public debate on environmental policy and global warming, there appear to be only alarmists and deniers. There are those who feel that global warming is the greatest threat facing humanity today, that we must devote all our resources to countering its effect to prevent utter catastrophe for human civilization. And then there are deniers who think the Earth is not warming, that even if it is man is not the cause, and that even if it could be fixed it would cost too much and doing so would cause more harm than good.
That Al Gore has won the Nobel Peace Prize for his work on encouraging world governments to tackle global warming shows how much a leftist joke the post-Cold War Nobel committe has become. (Not since Arafat (1994) Jimmy Carter (2002) has the prize been such a big joke.) But I don’t say that because I’m a denier. Although it’s hard to stay in the middle of this debate, there is a third way: Bjorn Lomborg, the Danish author of “The Skeptical Environmentalist” (2001) who challenged the belief that the environment is going to pieces, has a new book titled “Cool It,” which is brimming with useful facts and common sense on how to tackle global warming.
The book starts with a calm review of the many supposed calamities that will result from a hotter planet—extreme hurricanes, flooding rivers, malaria, heat deaths, starvation, water shortages. It turns out that, when these problems are looked at from all sides and stripped of the spin, they aren’t as worrisome as the alarmists would suggest. In some cases, they even have an upside.
- FLOODS: After the 2002 floods of Prague and Dresden, Blair, Chirac and Schroeder all argued that the floods “proved” the need for Western governments to commit themselves to Kyoto. Mr. Lomborg agrees that global warming increases precipitation. Yet truly bad floods have historically accompanied colder climates, since plentiful snow and a late thaw produce ice jams that block rivers and produce high water levels. These sorts of floods have in fact decreased in the 20th century, at least in part because of global warming.
- SEA LEVELS: Yes they will rise, perhaps a foot over this century. But they have already risen a foot since 1860, and the world has coped. More people will die from heat, but significantly more people will not die from cold.
- KYOTO: Implementing Kyoto will cost trillions of dollars that would only result in a 3% reduction in flooding damages. If we instead adopted smart flood policies—an end to subsidies that encourage people to settle in flood plains, levees—we could achieve a 91% reduction in damages at a fraction of the Kyoto cost.
In short, Bjorn makes the case to be concerned about the environment we live in resource consumption, but not sacrificing economic development for meaningless benefits. His argument is convincing, and we can only hope it wins out the day.
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ComingAnarchy.com » Blog Archive » The argument against using “green” technologies now added these pithy words on Mar 06 08 at 7:38 am[...] and a good dose of common sense. Every green politician in the US and elsewhere should read into the Lomborg school of thought on environmental policy before blowing taxpayer money (or forcing consumers to waste cash) because of feel-good [...]
tomojiro added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 8:44 amI still don’t understand why Eisaku Sato got the Novel price. Since then, the Novel Peace Price is regarded as a big political joke among Japanese.
Does Al Gore think that it is an honor to line up with people like Eisaku Sato or Kim Dae-jung?
Really weird price.
Bill Petti added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 10:16 amMy understanding is that Lomborg is hardly an example of a ” middle-way” or non-controversial figure in the environmental debate.
Also, when trying to alter the behavior of actors that have been behaving and perceiving the world one-way for so long it is often useful to exaggerate one’s claims in order to ‘shock’ them into questioning the common wisdom. It is an old but useful trick in politics. This can obviously bring about ethical dilemmas but nonetheless it is a tried and true practice.
Dan tdaxp added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 11:45 amCurzon, very good post. I reviewed Cool It as well.
Bill,
You emphasize all the right points. What Gore is doing is exaggerating science, politicizing the field and taking away its objective power. Further, doing too much to remove CO2 is a bad thing, as the wealth lost doing that could have been used in much better ways.
Curzon added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 2:04 pmBill Petti: I’d love to know the basis or source of your cryptic “understanding.” Lomborg is the only analyst who stresses a cost-benefit analysis and prioritization. Everyone else is talking on the basis of wild beliefs not real statistics, and worst case scenario instead of a practical future—Gore being one very guilty party.
Kurt9 added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 4:53 pmThe problem with “climate science” is that it is based almost entirely on computer modeling, rather than actual temperature measurements. Anyone who has used computers for technical work can tell you GIGO - garbage in, garbage out.
Computer modeling is useful, but it must be supported by empirical scientific experimentation and measurements. Much of government-funded climate science is not.
Michael Hancock added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 5:30 pmI was annoyed when Gore’s propaganda-style ‘scientific’ documentary won the Oscar. The Nobel Peace Prize just takes it beyond tolerance. What the hell? Peace and the Environment’s relationship notwithstanding, what has Al Gore done for the environment? Sensationalizing the topic of Global Warming is not educational, especially when Al Gore plays the part of the bleeding heart environmentalist who has screamed unto the heavens and at the deaf ears of Congress. Well, of course he couldn’t save the environment – he’s been so busy, what with the success of his invention of the internet.
I heartily agree with Kurt9’s “GIGO” take on it. That’s why it is so easy to get vastly different results with the same data. Cool It sounds like an excellent read – I’ll snag a copy from the library.
jim added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 6:16 pmYes, Lomborg is doing the world a great service by trying to inject some rational thinking into what has become a religious debate.
Part of this is a real values difference. Lomborg takes a very human-centric position. The radical Greens object to putting humanity above other species … a suicidal, but coherent, position to take.
I think most Dems are simply cynically using this for electoral advantage, and have little intention of passing ultra-stringent enviro laws. Any party that stops economic growth will get crushed.
It’s somewhat similar to how some Repubs talk about banning abortion, but the Repubs would never really do that, since they’d immediately get destroyed at the polls. It’s good at rallying the base to vote for you, though.
We can pass modestly more stringent laws now because we are just out-sourcing our heavy pollution to China. Every year our tech allows us to be a bit more energy efficient. But that just means we’ll use more energy next year as it gets cheaper.
Even an oil shock would only slow us down for a bit. Look how calmly the global economy has adjusted to a fairly massive increase in oil prices.
I do think the true Greens are evil, since they actually want to stop the economic advance of humanity. But I think they are a fairly small and powerless group. The broader Left is just cynically using Green talk to get votes and enact fairly standard redistribution and social democracy policy.
Mitch H. added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 10:10 pmYou know, we deniers have been going about things the wrong way. The media & the terminally moderate are always looking for the golden mean, the happy middle, the sane compromise between violent extremes. What we should be doing is attacking the reasonable centrists. They’re mad! Profligate! Economically unsound! They’ll ruin the world with their kow-towing to the heathen global-warming fanatics!
After all, how can they be reasonable centrists if one of the two groups of lunatics are vorciferously attacking them and the other is nodding sagely in rueful agreement en masse?
Mitch H. added these pithy words on 15 Oct 07 at 10:16 pmCurzon: anyone who thinks about religious subjects in economic terms is by definition a heathen. It’s a species of blasphemy.
As I said, what we have here is a lunacy gap. We’re not nearly mad enough. We need to be madmen if we want to bring balance to this debate.
shane added these pithy words on 16 Oct 07 at 3:10 amLomborg was great on Bill Maher’s REALTIME last week—though the typically left-leaning panelists (Jeanine Garofalo and Salman Rushdie) declared the religious dogma and dismissed Lomborg’s comments. This, in my humble opinion, greatly elevates Lomborg’s credibility.
I particularly like the honest assessment Lomborg offers of glaciers (dead artifacts of past ice ages), mankind’s ability to cope with heat versus cold, and the positive economic benefits to northern (and southern) nations.
Besides, no serious climatologist I’ve asked has been willing to assert that CO2 has an indisputable causal link to climate change. As I blogged at Oz a few weeks ago, the dynamics of our complex adaptive ecosystem are too poorly understood to be able to assert causality—and the substantiating data lacking to provide independent, impartial verifiability.
Adrian added these pithy words on 16 Oct 07 at 1:39 pmI think there is a right way and a wrong way of using economic analysis to look at climate change. The right way is to decide ahead of time how much resources you will allocate to climate change, and then use economic analysis to look at the tradeoffs within those allocations. So, like Lomborg says, end subsidies to settle in floodplains rather than build giant dikes or whatever.
The wrong way is to compare across issues how much resources should be devoted to climate change, for a few reasons:1) Economic analysis requires much better information than we have about climate change – climate change could be catastrophic, or an annoyance, we just don’t know yet, therefore we can’t know how much resources it would “justify.”
2) I don’t believe that competition for resources between climate change and, for instance, malaria, is a zero-sum game. People might send resources to combat climate change that they wouldn’t spend on malaria, because climate change affects them and malaria doesn’t.
3) Lomborg’s analysis (I haven’t read his books but I’ve read many of his articles) seems to ignore time as a variable. He compares a tradeoff between sending money to malaria now, and sending money to climate change now. What about the tradeoff between sending money to climate change now and sending money to climate change in ten years when it might be an even larger problem?
Arcane added these pithy words on 16 Oct 07 at 11:58 pmOne aspect of the whole climate change debate that has been ignored is the simple fact that various instruments used to measure the climate have become more accurate over the years and unless this is taken into consideration, which it has not, thus far, much historical data currently being used paints a false picture.
It’s sort of like how many doctors are saying that more people are being diagnosed with diseases than in the past and immediately jump to the conclusion that something abnormal is happening that is causing it, when in reality all that is happening is technological improvements in diagnostic equipment.
That Lomborg has utilized historical facts and combined them with a very pragmatic cost-benefit analysis and prioritization process is very important and useful. His analyses are perhaps the best in the entire field.
I also agree with what some commenters have said about how some groups are using climate change as a way to push leftist social programs.
Adrian added these pithy words on 30 Oct 07 at 10:04 pmJustifying Al Gore’s Nobel Prize:
http://a517dogg.blogspot.com/2007/10/justifying-al-gores-nobel-prize.html
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