Global cooling costs too much -- Jonah Goldberg

[DesertFox]

PUBLIC POLICY is all about trade-offs. Economists understand this better than politicians because voters want to have their cake and eat it too, and politicians think whatever is popular must also be true.

Economists understand that if we put a chicken in every pot, it might cost us an aircraft carrier or a hospital. We can build a hospital, but it might come at the expense of a little patch of forest. We can protect a wetland, but that will make a new school more expensive.

You get it already. But let me just add that in the great scheme of trade-offs in the history of humanity, never has there been a better one than trading a tiny amount of global warming for a massive amount of global prosperity. The Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800%, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800% is unknowable, but let's stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity and that this warming is in fact indisputably bad (which is hardly obvious). That's still an amazing bargain. Life spans in the United States nearly doubled (from 44 to 77 years). Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.

More (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg8feb08,0,5612072.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail)

[markus3622]

I certainly agree that there is a trade-off, but it seems Goldberg is working on a few assumptions that need to be questioned.

What would you prefer -- increase temperatures by less than a degree, or give up all the world's wealth?

I would guess this byline wasn't written by Jonah Goldberg, but it's a terrible false dilemma.

He later goes on to say that "Even so, the costs are just too high for too little payoff", but I can't see anywhere in the article that any estimates of the costs are made. He can't possibly be suggesting that we'd have to go lose all of that economic growth?

In addition, a similar argument could have been made in 1950, when talking about air or water quality. As Bjorn Lomborg points out that in Skeptical Environmentalist, air and water quality has improved greatly since then, but it would have been easy to say "poor air quality is just a consequence of the growth of wealth, and it would be too expensive to tackle it". What happened is that we managed to mix economic growth with cleaner air and water. I don't have the answers, but I don't see any barriers to human ingenuity in finding a solution that will combine economic growth with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.

[DoctorDoom]

In addition, a similar argument could have been made in 1950, when talking about air or water quality. As Bjorn Lomborg points out that in Skeptical Environmentalist, air and water quality has improved greatly since then, but it would have been easy to say "poor air quality is just a consequence of the growth of wealth, and it would be too expensive to tackle it". What happened is that we managed to mix economic growth with cleaner air and water. I don't have the answers, but I don't see any barriers to human ingenuity in finding a solution that will combine economic growth with reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.You're comparing apples with bowling balls.

- Air and water pollution have immediate, testable, verifiable health consequences. It's sound science, properly applied.

- The GW mythology is hypothesizing untestable, unverifiable consequences over hundreds of years and ignoring natural influences in favor of the p-c assertion of human causes for GCC. It's pure, politically-motivated scaremongering thinly disguised as science.

The two are utterly unrelated.

[DoctorDoom]

Interesting factoid: the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/index.html) website is hosted in China, which is exempt from the draconian measures that the liberalosers want to impose on western nations. How odd!

[CountryGent]

China has more coal-fired power plants than the entire countries of the world combined......And their track record for enviromental standards has never gotten out of the toilet.

[markus3622]

Interesting factoid: the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/index.html) website is hosted in China, which is exempt from the draconian measures that the liberalosers want to impose on western nations. How odd!

DD, ".ch" is Switzerland. It comes from ISO3166

http://www.iso.org/iso/en/prods-services/iso3166ma/02iso-3166-code-lists/list-en1.html#sz

It's run by Switch

https://nic.switch.ch/

[bannerman]

Interesting factoid: the IPCC (http://www.ipcc.ch/index.html) website is hosted in China, which is exempt from the draconian measures that the liberalosers want to impose on western nations. How odd!

New coal plants bury 'Kyoto'

New greenhouse-gas emissions from China, India, and the US will swamp cuts from the Kyoto treaty.

[ they just HAD to include the US..regardless of the numbers ]

By Mark Clayton | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

So much for Kyoto.
The official treaty to curb greenhouse-gas emissions hasn't gone into effect yet and already three countries are planning to build nearly 850 new coal-fired plants, which would pump up to five times as much carbon dioxide into the atmosphere as the Kyoto Protocol aims to reduce.

China is the dominant player. The country is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in the next eight years

http://www.csmonitor.com/2004/1223/p01s04-sten.html

doctordoom

GREAT AL-GORE-ZOWIE slogan!

[CountryGent]

China is the dominant player. The country is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in the next eight years

Ahem.....I tole ya so......:D

[DoctorDoom]

DD, ".ch" is Switzerland. It comes from ISO3166I stand corrected. It is indeed. China is ".cn". It shows how often I visit Chinese sites.

[markus3622]

Doom, as an aside, it's worth comparing

http://images.google.com/images?svnum=10&hl=en&q=tiananmen+square

with

http://images.google.cn/images?complete=1&hl=zh-CN&q=tiananmen+square&btnG=%E6%90%9C%E7%B4%A2%E5%9B%BE%E7%89%87

[DoctorDoom]

China is the dominant player. The country is on track to add 562 coal-fired plants - nearly half the world total of plants expected to come online in the next eight years.In 1997, when the Kyoto Protocol's essential provisions were known, a "sense of the Senate" resolution declared opposition to any agreement that would do what the protocol aims to do. The Senate warned against any agreement that would require significant reductions of greenhouse-gas emissions in the United States and other developed nations without mandating "specific scheduled commitments" on the part of the 129 "developing" countries, which include China, India, Brazil and South Korea--”the second, fourth, 10th and 11th largest economies. Nothing Americans can do to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions will make a significant impact on the global climate while every 10 days China fires up a coal-fueled generating plant big enough to power San Diego. China will construct 2,200 new coal plants by 2030.Will: Inconvenient Kyoto Truths (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16960409/site/newsweek/)

China is of course exempt from the impositions of ecowacko "science".

[TheIrishman]

Actually, according this man, China will be building 100 plants every year until 2030. That's 2 per week.



Jonah Goldberg:
Global cooling costs too much
What would you prefer -- increase temperatures by less than a degree, or give up all the world's wealth?
February 8, 2007

Snip Snip

Even so, the costs are just too high for too little payoff. Even if the Kyoto Protocol were put into effect tomorrow — a total impossibility — we'd barely affect global warming. Jerry Mahlman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research speculated in Science magazine that "it might take another 30 Kyotos over the next century" to beat back global warming.

Thirty Kyotos! That's going to be tough considering that China alone plans on building an additional 2,200 coal plants by 2030. Oh, but because China (like India) is exempt from Kyoto as a developing country, the West will just have to reduce its own emissions even more.

snip snip

The fact is we can't afford to fix global warming right now — in part because poor countries want to get rich too. And rich countries, where the global warming debate is settled, are finding even the first of 30 Kyotos too fiscally onerous. There are no solutions in the realm of the politically possible. So why throw trillions of dollars into "remedies" that even their proponents concede won't solve the problem?



Click Here (http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/la-oe-goldberg8feb08,0,5612072.column?coll=la-opinion-rightrail) [www.latimes.com]

Should read the whole thing it isn't long.