Environmental Stewardship News Round-Up
The following items appear in the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation Newsletter, June 6, 2007:
1. Cornwall Alliance and Evangelical Environmental Network Debate Global Warming Theology, Science, and Economics
Representatives of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and the Evangelical Environmental Network faced off in informal debate Thursday, May 31, at the Family Research Council in Washington. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Dr. Kenneth Chilton represented the Alliance on a discussion panel about global warming hosted by the FRC. Opposite them were EEN representatives Dr. Jim Ball and Dr. Rusty Pritchard. To hear the panel discussion, click here.
Comment:
After listening to the panel online, one person wrote, “I am confused -- is Cal saying we should not do anything about it or is he stating that we need to do our adjusting systematically in due time?” Here’s my answer:
Am I “saying we should not do anything about it”? That depends on what “it” and “anything” denote. There are about five superimposed, overlapping cycles of warming and cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere/ocean systems that have gone on throughout geologic history, and about them we should do absolutely nothing because we can do absolutely nothing. Then there is human impact on global average temperature; since we cause it, we can, at least theoretically, “do something about it.” But it only makes sense to “do something about it” if the marginal benefits of what we do about it exceed the marginal costs of our doing it. Since what we do that impacts global average temperature has its own beneficial effects (providing energy to fuel our economies, which provide us with food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, transportation, communication, and everything else we consume, making our lives longer, healthier, and generally more enriched materially), we must weigh the benefit/cost ratio of continuing that against the benefit/cost ratio of reducing or eliminating it. Doing that in turn depends, as my colleague Ken Chilton put it, on putting dollar values on all the products of our energy use, on all the effects of whatever temperature increase that energy use might have, on all the effects of reducing our energy use, and on all the lost products from the reduced energy use. All of that is an incredibly, incredibly complex set of calculations with enormous unknown variables scattered all through it.
It helps to start by trying to quantify, relative to natural factors, just how much human activity has influenced or is likely to influence global average temperature. The linked PDF has the handout I gave to those at the panel discussion. It compares the correlation between solar variability and Earth’s atmospheric temperature variability with the correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and Earth’s atmospheric temperature variability. You will notice instantly that the correlation with CO2 concentration is very poor, while that with solar variability is very, very good. This is just one of many, many such pieces of data that indicate that the overwhelming majority cause of recent global climate change has been natural, not human (as if humans weren’t part of “nature,” by the way). Some of the reading resources mentioned on the second page of the handout would give you much more information on this.
The upshot is that, like many climate scientists, I (not a climate scientist but a well read layman) think human influence on global average temperature is theoretically real but so small as to be nearly, or completely, impossible to distinguish from natural background variation. Some such estimate is implicit in the fact that even the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions estimate that full compliance over fifty years would reduce global average temperature by only at most 0.07C (0.126F). Such a tiny temperature increment is not even detectable on any global scale and certainly would have no significant impact on human or non-human ecology or on the general ocean/atmosphere climate system on which life depends. Yet achieving it would, even according to Kyoto’s supporters, cost something in the neighborhood of $200 billion to $1 trillion per year to the global economy. The benefit cost/ratio of that is utterly absurd. That’s why I conclude that we should do nothing about “it”--namely, about how much or how little global average temperature will change (upward or downward) in the future.
But we should do something about another “it”--the impact of climate change (however caused) on people. We can’t do anything about it by trying to reduce the climate change itself, but we can certainly do something by reducing the negative and enhancing the positive effects of the climate change. How? By promoting economic development, i.e., the growth of wealth, which enables people to protect themselves against all kinds of threats--natural and unnatural, climate-related and otherwise. Fifty years of economic growth around the world will lift almost all societies to a level quite close to that of the present U.S. (and thirty more years will put all at or above that level). At that level, they will be able to afford all the protections we enjoy in the U.S. Consider that even Hurricane Katrina caused only 346 direct and 1326 indirect deaths in the U.S., though it hit areas with millions of residents. Had a storm of the same magnitude hit a similarly populated but very poor region, the death toll would have been in the scores of thousands. The difference is in the quantity and quality of infrastructure (roads and power grids) and residential shelter and commercial operations--i.e., in the wealth. Whatever climate and weather the future holds (and because we know Earth’s and the Sun’s cycles will continue, we know it will hold both warmer and colder times), if we want to protect people from its ill effects, we want to promote their economic development.
Abundant, affordable energy is a crucial factor in economic development. Since the attempt to reduce future temperature by CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions reductions will make energy more expensive, it will necessarily reduce its consumption and therefore the rate of economic development. That means that it will also reduce people’s ability to protect themselves from the ill effects of weather and climate. That is another reason not to do anything about future global temperatures, but a great reason to do something about promoting economic development.
Other reports on the event:
Evangelicals Debate Differing Views on Global Warming
Christians Debate Global Warming
Evangelicals Debate How to Approach Global Warming
Related items:
2. Cornwall Alliance Representatives to Speak at Senate and Elsewhere
The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing Thursday, June 7, on religious perspectives on global warming (for more details, click here). Three members of the Cornwall Alliance advisory board will be among the witnesses: Rev. Dr. Jim Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy; Russell D. Moore, Ph.D., Senior Vice President for Academic Administration, Dean, School of Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Executive Director, Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, Louisville, KY; and David Barton, Founder and President of WallBuilders. All three have endorsed Cornwall’s “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” now endorsed by over 168 leaders.
Cornwall Alliance spokesman Calvin Beisner will speak on global warming, environmentalism, and economics at Summit Ministries, Manitou Springs, Colorado, Friday, June 8, from 9 a.m. to noon.
3. On Global Warming Heresy
by Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 16, 2007
Special to the Cornwall Alliance
I am frequently asked to describe my experiences as a contrarian about global warming. I still find the request somewhat annoying, and in this piece I would like to explain why. For starters, to be a contrarian generally implies an automatic tendency to go against popular wisdom. That is not my position.
What in the world does it really mean to be a ‘contrarian’ on the issue of global warming? On an issue where virtually all popular depictions depend on long chains of uncertain connections, support for all these linkages would constitute more a religious faith than a scientific position. On the other hand, where the elements of the picture do deal with relatively basic issues, there is, in fact, little disagreement. Some examples may help clarify the situation.
For instance, there is little argument that levels of C02 in the atmosphere have risen from 315 ppmv when we began systematic measurement in 1958 to about 380 ppmv today. There is also relatively little argument that preindustrial levels were about 280 ppmv. There is no disagreement that C02 is a gas with important absorption bands in the infrared.
There is agreement that at the level of fractions of a degree, the earth’s global mean temperature is always varying, and there is widespread agreement (though with appreciably greater uncertainty) that over the past century there has been net warming of between 0.5 and 0.75C (depending on which analysis one uses). This warming has, as far as anyone can tell, been irregular, with warming between 1920 and 1940, modest cooling between about 1940 and the mid 70’s, warming between about 1976 and the early nineties, and little of either since.
Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that greenhouse forcing is currently about three quarters of what one would expect from a doubling of C02, and yet we have seen much less warming at the surface than the models project - even with models that have oceans which are supposed to delay the response.
Here the argument amounts to one between those like me, who think that the most likely reason for the discrepancy is that models are exaggerating the response, and those who think the models are correct, but that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming. However, even the IPCC acknowledges that our confidence in the aerosol cooling is low.
Agreement goes even further: there is general agreement that the famous ‘blanket’ picture of the greenhouse effect that Gore likes to present is, in fact, misleadingly wrong. Rather, the real greenhouse climate effect requires most warming to occur in the middle of the tropical troposphere (cooling at the surface is mainly by motion systems, with the heat deposited in the middle of the troposphere where it is then radiated to space), and as a recent report of the National Research Council notes, warming trends at this level in the tropics appears to actually be even smaller than at the surface.
For me personally, I find that the low climate sensitivity is consistent with my research on cloud feedbacks and other matters, but when it comes to current research one doesn’t normally seek general agreement.
So where is there significant disagreement?
The main focus of disagreement has remained much the same since I first went public with my objections to catastrophic claims in 1988. (It is sobering to realize how long we have been told by environmental groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists that the end of the world as we know it is imminent due to global warming.) At that time, I felt confident, on the basis of my own research over the previous decade or more, that our knowledge didn’t warrant these claims.
Given the long term nature of climate, it should not be surprising that there is little reason to change this position. Nevertheless, it has, since the 80’s, led to an important disagreement with some of my colleagues over whether our present limited knowledge warrants deep concern or not. I, personally, don’t think so, but I respect my colleagues’ right to feel otherwise.
This difference is distinct from the issue of whether concern is tantamount to feeling that specific actions are warranted. Most of my colleagues would agree, for example, that Kyoto is merely symbolic with little potential for affecting climate. Some favor other approaches, but I think there is widespread acknowledgment that with presently known or anticipated technology there is little that one can do to significantly cut greenhouse gas levels, and even less that one can do to significantly reduce radiative forcing by greenhouse gases (which, in the case of C02, goes up much more slowly than the level of C02 itself).
There are, of course, some who feel that warming concerns are a good excuse for implementing their pet energy policies. Here, I share with the late Roger Revelle (whom Gore points to as his mentor in this area) the view that current evidence does not warrant any drastic actions that cannot be justified independently of climate concerns.
Given my views, I am happy to be at an institution like MIT. At least most people at MIT are sufficiently technically savvy to appreciate the arguments involved with this issue.
In the world at large, the situation is certainly different. No scientific issue has likely ever been as politicized as this one.
Global warming has for about 20 years been a major focus of environmental advocacy groups and their political allies. In the last two years, they have greatly expanded their efforts to spread alarm to the public at large, including elementary school children, who lack any ability to understand the issue and are apparently suffering an appreciable degree of anxiety.
In any marketing effort, it is useful to offer the objects of the propaganda something that they value. In the present instance, they are offered at least two such benefits. First, they are given a sense of virtue: simply by changing light bulbs or (for the wealthier) buying a Prius or even by paying some outfit an indulgence to cancel their carbon footprint, they are made to feel that they are saving the world. Second, their intellectual insecurity when confronting such a complex issue is relieved by being told that all scientists agree with whatever propaganda they are fed. Under the circumstances, they are made to feel that in going along with the propaganda, they are displaying intelligence, and acquiring the right to consider anyone who does not as being either stupid or hopelessly corrupt.
Thus, the existence of questions about the validity of the global warming alarmism threatens both their virtue and their intelligence, and it should not be surprising that the response to such threats can be emotionally intense.
However, judging from my email, a great many people are beginning to resent being exploited in this manner. I fully expect that this latter group will eventually be vindicated, and that alarm over global warming will go the way of Y2K and the Club of Rome forecasts for hunger (not to mention the fears over global cooling of just 30 years ago).
4. Bush’s New Climate Initiative: A Mixed Bag, But Pointing in the Right Direction
by Paul K. Driessen, Energy Policy Analyst, Congress of Racial Equality
Author, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death
Special to the Cornwall Alliance
The climate initiative announced May 31 by President George W. Bush changes many of the dynamics of the climate change debate.
The EU and its system of mandatory caps and emissions trading had been the driving force–despite the constant and growing bickering, pollution increases, consumer cost increases, and drags on the European economies. President Bush’s plan recognizes that the world will need increasing amounts of energy in the coming decades–and that the key to that, and to pollution and greenhouse gas emissions control, has to be technology. It will also require participation by all the major emitters worldwide.
Arbitrary, mandatory emission caps and raising prices to force people to use less energy would hurt jobs, economies, and families, especially families in poor countries. (For example, a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says Senate Bill 309 would cost the average US family $4500 a year, and more.)
It’s good to have targets, but at least for the short-term the targets have to be flexible–and so do the methods for reaching them. It’s also vital that all major emitters in the world work together to reduce all forms of pollution from energy generation–developed and developing countries alike.
A lot of what’s been discussed up to now–scary climate change scenarios, mandatory limits on emissions, huge new regulatory systems to enforce compliance with tough new rules, to “do something” about climate change–might be good for politicians. But there is no evidence that they would be good for consumers, especially poor families, not just in America but especially in the Third World.
But this new initiative could still create major problems of rent seeking by many companies and organizations that will expect Washington to provide technology mandates, tax breaks, subsidies, research grants, and other taxpayer grants to do what many of them would have done anyway to gain a competitive edge, reduce pollution, or cut energy costs through greater efficiency. If they can develop new product lines and make more money, and get taxpayer help for doing it, they’re even happier.
And for scientists, researchers and activist groups being able to tap into $6 billion a year federal grant system for climate change is a huge bonanza. That’s one of the major political realities that is driving this growing “consensus” on climate change.
But the underlying realities remain the same. There is still no evidence of a looming catastrophe. All we have are worst-case scenarios generated by extreme, outlier computer models and Hollywood special effects. Virtually no bona fide climatologists believe these scary crises that dominate Al Gore’s movie, Time magazine, or other headline-grabbing horror stories.
The price tag for taking precipitous action in response to these horror stories would be huge. Poor families and blue collar workers would be hammered especially hard – for no environmental gain.
Precipitous action imposes huge, very real costs, right now to respond to hypothetical problems that some say will be fulfilled 50 or 100 years from now but have no basis in real science, only in models that do a terrible job of portraying climate even one year ahead or one year back, much less 50.
That’s why the Bush plan has some advantages.
• It gives us time to learn more about climate and the natural forces and human influences that drive it.
• It recognizes that we and the Third World need energy–lots of it–or we give up jobs, health, prosperity, and modern living standards. I don’t think many people are ready or willing to do that.
• It recognizes that the real solution is technology–including energy generation and pollution control technologies that we can’t even imagine today, any more than people living in 1900 or 1950 could have imagined the energy, transportation, communication, and other technologies we enjoy today.
Generating energy creates problems–but not having energy is infinitely worse, for everyone.
Related items: other responses from around the world:
U.N. Welcomes New U.S. Climate Change Initiative
Associated Press, 1 June 2007
Bush’s Greenhouse Gas Plan Throws Europe off Guard
The New York Times, 2 June 2007
Pacific Allies Back Bush Climate Proposal
Financial Times, 1 June 2007
“The Question Is Whether the U.S. Can Force a Split Between Kyoto Countries”
Financial Times, 2 June 2007
EU Split by Bush’s Green Card
The Scotsman, 2 June 2007
Cracks on Climate as G8 Leaders Meet
Reuters, 4 June 2007
Germany Praises Bush on Global Warming
Associated Press, 4 June 2007
Climate Change: Global Debate Is Just Heating Up
Jeffrey Ball, Wall Street Journal Online
. . . In an announcement widely described as a major policy switch, President Bush, who has opposed calls for global-warming caps on the U.S. largely because developing countries like China don’t face them, called for talks among the world’s economic powers to establish emission targets. But the basics of the Bush policy remained the same: There should be no binding global caps, and whatever global agreement is reached should ensure action by developing countries like China, which the current Kyoto Protocol doesn’t do. . . .
Bush’s Climate Coup Splits Europe
Berliner Morgenpost, 3 June 2007
Not even George W Bush could have counted on such a rapid success. On Thursday, the US president presented his own climate initiative to a surprised global audience - and just one day later, he had already achieved his first goal: the united front of European Union climate policy was cracked wide open [...]
In spite of all the knee-jerk indignation about Bush, people lose sight of one fact: It’s not the US that is isolated - it’s the European Union. Canada and Japan as well as many non-G8-countries - in particular China and India - welcomed Bush’s initiative in euphoric tone. And, particularly bitter for the German Chancellor: Great Britain followed suit. . . .
5. The G8 Summit: President Bush Must Stand Firm on Global Warming
by Sally McNamara and Ben Lieberman
At the forthcoming G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, America will face intense pressure to agree to a post-Kyoto deal on climate change that includes far-reaching mandatory targets to cut carbon emissions. G8 President and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has personally endorsed increasing pressure on the Bush Administration to reverse its current environmental policies, despite the United States’ superior performance in emissions reduction so far.
President Bush’s May 31 remarks on the G8 and climate change have led to speculation that he may reverse course and agree to binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions. This would be a mistake. The Administration should actively reject entreaties from fellow G-8 nations to agree to growth-sapping controls on energy use and instead continue its successful model in favor of economic development. . . .
Read the whole story here.
6. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Questions Need to Combat Warming
by Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore
NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency’s preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.
In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” program, Griffin was asked by NPR’s Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.
“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin told Inskeep. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”
“To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change,” Griffin said. “I guess I would ask which human beings where and when are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”
Griffin’s comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
“It’s an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement,” Hansen told ABC News. “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change.”
Hansen believes Griffin’s comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to. . . .
Comment: Hansen is the same one who declared in 1988 that all the debate was over, and the same one who received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation, chaired by Democratic Senator John Kerry’s wife Theresa Heinz Kerry, and soon thereafter made his first ever public endorsement of a candidate for President--surprise!--John Kerry. Griffin’s comments were actually quite moderate and well reasoned and definitely bear reading. They are here.
For commendations of Griffin by other scientists, click here.--ECB
Other coverage:
The Hindu News Update Service
Anxiety about global warming called into question
Detroit Free Press
NASA Chief Not Worried About Climate
Houston Chronicle
NASA chief unsure of need to tackle global warming
France24
7. Who Would Have Thought: The Guardian Discovers That Kyoto Is a Scam
by Nick Davies
The Guardian, 2 June 2007
A Guardian investigation has found evidence of serious irregularities at the heart of the process the world is relying on to control global warming.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground.
One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. [...]
Read the full story here.
Related item:
8. Truth About Kyoto: Huge Profits, Little Carbon Saved
The Guardian, 2 June 2007
On the eve of a G8 summit focused on climate change, Nick Davies reveals major flaws in the global system designed to reduce emissions
[...] The carbon market’s leading analysts, Point Carbon, recently calculated that this scheme handed out 170m too many EUAs. In the early days, nobody realised quite how badly the commission had miscalculated, and so the price of the EUAs was quite high, at up to EUR30 a tonne. But individual companies, particularly energy companies, rapidly saw they had millions of tonnes of EUAs that they didn’t need, and so they sold their surplus, making huge profits. A 2005 report by IPA Energy Consulting found that the six UK electricity generators stood to earn some ꎀ0m in each of the three years of the scheme.
A separate report by Open Europe, in July 2006, found that UK oil companies were also poised to make a lot of free money: ꌐ.2m for Esso; ꌗ.9m for BP; and ꌠ.7m for Shell. And behind this profiteering, the environmental reality was that these major producers of carbon emissions were under no pressure from the scheme to cut emissions.
At the other end of this EU market, smaller organisations like UK hospitals and 18 universities, who had been given far fewer EUAs, were forced to go out and buy them - while the price was still high. So, for example, the University of Manchester spent ꎒ,500 on EUAs. Now that the truth about the glut has been revealed, the university would be doing well if it managed to get ,000 for the lot of them.
Read the full story here.
9. Follow the Money--to Russia, and Elsewhere
by Alexander Zaitchik
Freezerbox Magazine, 1 June 2007
Nothing drove home Russia’s place in the growing pollution-trading business better than what one carbon finance guy told me at a conference last month sponsored by Gazprom and the World Bank. We were on drink number three or four at the reception when he dropped the green pretense and came clean.
“I don’t know if climate change is caused by burning coal or sun flares or what,” said the Moscow-based carbon cowboy. “And I don’t really give a *&^#. Russia is the most energy inefficient country around, and carbon is the most volatile market ever. There’s a lot of opportunity to make money.”
Read the full story here.
10. Briefly noted:
Global Warming: What Should Texas Do? (PDF)
by Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Iain Stuart Murray
Green Gone Wild in Vegas
Wall Street Journal editorial explains how perverse incentives lead to unexpected results in environmental regulation.
1. Cornwall Alliance and Evangelical Environmental Network Debate Global Warming Theology, Science, and Economics
Representatives of the Cornwall Alliance for the Stewardship of Creation and the Evangelical Environmental Network faced off in informal debate Thursday, May 31, at the Family Research Council in Washington. Dr. E. Calvin Beisner and Dr. Kenneth Chilton represented the Alliance on a discussion panel about global warming hosted by the FRC. Opposite them were EEN representatives Dr. Jim Ball and Dr. Rusty Pritchard. To hear the panel discussion, click here.
Comment:
After listening to the panel online, one person wrote, “I am confused -- is Cal saying we should not do anything about it or is he stating that we need to do our adjusting systematically in due time?” Here’s my answer:
Am I “saying we should not do anything about it”? That depends on what “it” and “anything” denote. There are about five superimposed, overlapping cycles of warming and cooling of the Earth’s atmosphere/ocean systems that have gone on throughout geologic history, and about them we should do absolutely nothing because we can do absolutely nothing. Then there is human impact on global average temperature; since we cause it, we can, at least theoretically, “do something about it.” But it only makes sense to “do something about it” if the marginal benefits of what we do about it exceed the marginal costs of our doing it. Since what we do that impacts global average temperature has its own beneficial effects (providing energy to fuel our economies, which provide us with food, clothing, shelter, medical care, education, transportation, communication, and everything else we consume, making our lives longer, healthier, and generally more enriched materially), we must weigh the benefit/cost ratio of continuing that against the benefit/cost ratio of reducing or eliminating it. Doing that in turn depends, as my colleague Ken Chilton put it, on putting dollar values on all the products of our energy use, on all the effects of whatever temperature increase that energy use might have, on all the effects of reducing our energy use, and on all the lost products from the reduced energy use. All of that is an incredibly, incredibly complex set of calculations with enormous unknown variables scattered all through it.
It helps to start by trying to quantify, relative to natural factors, just how much human activity has influenced or is likely to influence global average temperature. The linked PDF has the handout I gave to those at the panel discussion. It compares the correlation between solar variability and Earth’s atmospheric temperature variability with the correlation between atmospheric CO2 concentration and Earth’s atmospheric temperature variability. You will notice instantly that the correlation with CO2 concentration is very poor, while that with solar variability is very, very good. This is just one of many, many such pieces of data that indicate that the overwhelming majority cause of recent global climate change has been natural, not human (as if humans weren’t part of “nature,” by the way). Some of the reading resources mentioned on the second page of the handout would give you much more information on this.
The upshot is that, like many climate scientists, I (not a climate scientist but a well read layman) think human influence on global average temperature is theoretically real but so small as to be nearly, or completely, impossible to distinguish from natural background variation. Some such estimate is implicit in the fact that even the supporters of the Kyoto Protocol to limit greenhouse gas emissions estimate that full compliance over fifty years would reduce global average temperature by only at most 0.07C (0.126F). Such a tiny temperature increment is not even detectable on any global scale and certainly would have no significant impact on human or non-human ecology or on the general ocean/atmosphere climate system on which life depends. Yet achieving it would, even according to Kyoto’s supporters, cost something in the neighborhood of $200 billion to $1 trillion per year to the global economy. The benefit cost/ratio of that is utterly absurd. That’s why I conclude that we should do nothing about “it”--namely, about how much or how little global average temperature will change (upward or downward) in the future.
But we should do something about another “it”--the impact of climate change (however caused) on people. We can’t do anything about it by trying to reduce the climate change itself, but we can certainly do something by reducing the negative and enhancing the positive effects of the climate change. How? By promoting economic development, i.e., the growth of wealth, which enables people to protect themselves against all kinds of threats--natural and unnatural, climate-related and otherwise. Fifty years of economic growth around the world will lift almost all societies to a level quite close to that of the present U.S. (and thirty more years will put all at or above that level). At that level, they will be able to afford all the protections we enjoy in the U.S. Consider that even Hurricane Katrina caused only 346 direct and 1326 indirect deaths in the U.S., though it hit areas with millions of residents. Had a storm of the same magnitude hit a similarly populated but very poor region, the death toll would have been in the scores of thousands. The difference is in the quantity and quality of infrastructure (roads and power grids) and residential shelter and commercial operations--i.e., in the wealth. Whatever climate and weather the future holds (and because we know Earth’s and the Sun’s cycles will continue, we know it will hold both warmer and colder times), if we want to protect people from its ill effects, we want to promote their economic development.
Abundant, affordable energy is a crucial factor in economic development. Since the attempt to reduce future temperature by CO2 (and other greenhouse gas) emissions reductions will make energy more expensive, it will necessarily reduce its consumption and therefore the rate of economic development. That means that it will also reduce people’s ability to protect themselves from the ill effects of weather and climate. That is another reason not to do anything about future global temperatures, but a great reason to do something about promoting economic development.
Other reports on the event:
Evangelicals Debate Differing Views on Global Warming
Christians Debate Global Warming
Evangelicals Debate How to Approach Global Warming
Related items:
2. Cornwall Alliance Representatives to Speak at Senate and Elsewhere
The U.S. Senate Environment and Public Works Committee will hold a hearing Thursday, June 7, on religious perspectives on global warming (for more details, click here). Three members of the Cornwall Alliance advisory board will be among the witnesses: Rev. Dr. Jim Tonkowich, President of the Institute on Religion and Democracy; Russell D. Moore, Ph.D., Senior Vice President for Academic Administration, Dean, School of Theology, Southern Baptist Theological Seminary; Executive Director, Carl F. H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, Louisville, KY; and David Barton, Founder and President of WallBuilders. All three have endorsed Cornwall’s “A Call to Truth, Prudence, and Protection of the Poor: An Evangelical Response to Global Warming,” now endorsed by over 168 leaders.
Cornwall Alliance spokesman Calvin Beisner will speak on global warming, environmentalism, and economics at Summit Ministries, Manitou Springs, Colorado, Friday, June 8, from 9 a.m. to noon.
3. On Global Warming Heresy
by Richard S. Lindzen, Alfred P. Sloan Professor of Atmospheric Sciences
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, March 16, 2007
Special to the Cornwall Alliance
I am frequently asked to describe my experiences as a contrarian about global warming. I still find the request somewhat annoying, and in this piece I would like to explain why. For starters, to be a contrarian generally implies an automatic tendency to go against popular wisdom. That is not my position.
What in the world does it really mean to be a ‘contrarian’ on the issue of global warming? On an issue where virtually all popular depictions depend on long chains of uncertain connections, support for all these linkages would constitute more a religious faith than a scientific position. On the other hand, where the elements of the picture do deal with relatively basic issues, there is, in fact, little disagreement. Some examples may help clarify the situation.
For instance, there is little argument that levels of C02 in the atmosphere have risen from 315 ppmv when we began systematic measurement in 1958 to about 380 ppmv today. There is also relatively little argument that preindustrial levels were about 280 ppmv. There is no disagreement that C02 is a gas with important absorption bands in the infrared.
There is agreement that at the level of fractions of a degree, the earth’s global mean temperature is always varying, and there is widespread agreement (though with appreciably greater uncertainty) that over the past century there has been net warming of between 0.5 and 0.75C (depending on which analysis one uses). This warming has, as far as anyone can tell, been irregular, with warming between 1920 and 1940, modest cooling between about 1940 and the mid 70’s, warming between about 1976 and the early nineties, and little of either since.
Even the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change acknowledges that greenhouse forcing is currently about three quarters of what one would expect from a doubling of C02, and yet we have seen much less warming at the surface than the models project - even with models that have oceans which are supposed to delay the response.
Here the argument amounts to one between those like me, who think that the most likely reason for the discrepancy is that models are exaggerating the response, and those who think the models are correct, but that aerosols have cancelled much of the warming. However, even the IPCC acknowledges that our confidence in the aerosol cooling is low.
Agreement goes even further: there is general agreement that the famous ‘blanket’ picture of the greenhouse effect that Gore likes to present is, in fact, misleadingly wrong. Rather, the real greenhouse climate effect requires most warming to occur in the middle of the tropical troposphere (cooling at the surface is mainly by motion systems, with the heat deposited in the middle of the troposphere where it is then radiated to space), and as a recent report of the National Research Council notes, warming trends at this level in the tropics appears to actually be even smaller than at the surface.
For me personally, I find that the low climate sensitivity is consistent with my research on cloud feedbacks and other matters, but when it comes to current research one doesn’t normally seek general agreement.
So where is there significant disagreement?
The main focus of disagreement has remained much the same since I first went public with my objections to catastrophic claims in 1988. (It is sobering to realize how long we have been told by environmental groups like the Union of Concerned Scientists that the end of the world as we know it is imminent due to global warming.) At that time, I felt confident, on the basis of my own research over the previous decade or more, that our knowledge didn’t warrant these claims.
Given the long term nature of climate, it should not be surprising that there is little reason to change this position. Nevertheless, it has, since the 80’s, led to an important disagreement with some of my colleagues over whether our present limited knowledge warrants deep concern or not. I, personally, don’t think so, but I respect my colleagues’ right to feel otherwise.
This difference is distinct from the issue of whether concern is tantamount to feeling that specific actions are warranted. Most of my colleagues would agree, for example, that Kyoto is merely symbolic with little potential for affecting climate. Some favor other approaches, but I think there is widespread acknowledgment that with presently known or anticipated technology there is little that one can do to significantly cut greenhouse gas levels, and even less that one can do to significantly reduce radiative forcing by greenhouse gases (which, in the case of C02, goes up much more slowly than the level of C02 itself).
There are, of course, some who feel that warming concerns are a good excuse for implementing their pet energy policies. Here, I share with the late Roger Revelle (whom Gore points to as his mentor in this area) the view that current evidence does not warrant any drastic actions that cannot be justified independently of climate concerns.
Given my views, I am happy to be at an institution like MIT. At least most people at MIT are sufficiently technically savvy to appreciate the arguments involved with this issue.
In the world at large, the situation is certainly different. No scientific issue has likely ever been as politicized as this one.
Global warming has for about 20 years been a major focus of environmental advocacy groups and their political allies. In the last two years, they have greatly expanded their efforts to spread alarm to the public at large, including elementary school children, who lack any ability to understand the issue and are apparently suffering an appreciable degree of anxiety.
In any marketing effort, it is useful to offer the objects of the propaganda something that they value. In the present instance, they are offered at least two such benefits. First, they are given a sense of virtue: simply by changing light bulbs or (for the wealthier) buying a Prius or even by paying some outfit an indulgence to cancel their carbon footprint, they are made to feel that they are saving the world. Second, their intellectual insecurity when confronting such a complex issue is relieved by being told that all scientists agree with whatever propaganda they are fed. Under the circumstances, they are made to feel that in going along with the propaganda, they are displaying intelligence, and acquiring the right to consider anyone who does not as being either stupid or hopelessly corrupt.
Thus, the existence of questions about the validity of the global warming alarmism threatens both their virtue and their intelligence, and it should not be surprising that the response to such threats can be emotionally intense.
However, judging from my email, a great many people are beginning to resent being exploited in this manner. I fully expect that this latter group will eventually be vindicated, and that alarm over global warming will go the way of Y2K and the Club of Rome forecasts for hunger (not to mention the fears over global cooling of just 30 years ago).
4. Bush’s New Climate Initiative: A Mixed Bag, But Pointing in the Right Direction
by Paul K. Driessen, Energy Policy Analyst, Congress of Racial Equality
Author, Eco-Imperialism: Green Power, Black Death
Special to the Cornwall Alliance
The climate initiative announced May 31 by President George W. Bush changes many of the dynamics of the climate change debate.
The EU and its system of mandatory caps and emissions trading had been the driving force–despite the constant and growing bickering, pollution increases, consumer cost increases, and drags on the European economies. President Bush’s plan recognizes that the world will need increasing amounts of energy in the coming decades–and that the key to that, and to pollution and greenhouse gas emissions control, has to be technology. It will also require participation by all the major emitters worldwide.
Arbitrary, mandatory emission caps and raising prices to force people to use less energy would hurt jobs, economies, and families, especially families in poor countries. (For example, a study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology says Senate Bill 309 would cost the average US family $4500 a year, and more.)
It’s good to have targets, but at least for the short-term the targets have to be flexible–and so do the methods for reaching them. It’s also vital that all major emitters in the world work together to reduce all forms of pollution from energy generation–developed and developing countries alike.
A lot of what’s been discussed up to now–scary climate change scenarios, mandatory limits on emissions, huge new regulatory systems to enforce compliance with tough new rules, to “do something” about climate change–might be good for politicians. But there is no evidence that they would be good for consumers, especially poor families, not just in America but especially in the Third World.
But this new initiative could still create major problems of rent seeking by many companies and organizations that will expect Washington to provide technology mandates, tax breaks, subsidies, research grants, and other taxpayer grants to do what many of them would have done anyway to gain a competitive edge, reduce pollution, or cut energy costs through greater efficiency. If they can develop new product lines and make more money, and get taxpayer help for doing it, they’re even happier.
And for scientists, researchers and activist groups being able to tap into $6 billion a year federal grant system for climate change is a huge bonanza. That’s one of the major political realities that is driving this growing “consensus” on climate change.
But the underlying realities remain the same. There is still no evidence of a looming catastrophe. All we have are worst-case scenarios generated by extreme, outlier computer models and Hollywood special effects. Virtually no bona fide climatologists believe these scary crises that dominate Al Gore’s movie, Time magazine, or other headline-grabbing horror stories.
The price tag for taking precipitous action in response to these horror stories would be huge. Poor families and blue collar workers would be hammered especially hard – for no environmental gain.
Precipitous action imposes huge, very real costs, right now to respond to hypothetical problems that some say will be fulfilled 50 or 100 years from now but have no basis in real science, only in models that do a terrible job of portraying climate even one year ahead or one year back, much less 50.
That’s why the Bush plan has some advantages.
• It gives us time to learn more about climate and the natural forces and human influences that drive it.
• It recognizes that we and the Third World need energy–lots of it–or we give up jobs, health, prosperity, and modern living standards. I don’t think many people are ready or willing to do that.
• It recognizes that the real solution is technology–including energy generation and pollution control technologies that we can’t even imagine today, any more than people living in 1900 or 1950 could have imagined the energy, transportation, communication, and other technologies we enjoy today.
Generating energy creates problems–but not having energy is infinitely worse, for everyone.
Related items: other responses from around the world:
U.N. Welcomes New U.S. Climate Change Initiative
Associated Press, 1 June 2007
Bush’s Greenhouse Gas Plan Throws Europe off Guard
The New York Times, 2 June 2007
Pacific Allies Back Bush Climate Proposal
Financial Times, 1 June 2007
“The Question Is Whether the U.S. Can Force a Split Between Kyoto Countries”
Financial Times, 2 June 2007
EU Split by Bush’s Green Card
The Scotsman, 2 June 2007
Cracks on Climate as G8 Leaders Meet
Reuters, 4 June 2007
Germany Praises Bush on Global Warming
Associated Press, 4 June 2007
Climate Change: Global Debate Is Just Heating Up
Jeffrey Ball, Wall Street Journal Online
. . . In an announcement widely described as a major policy switch, President Bush, who has opposed calls for global-warming caps on the U.S. largely because developing countries like China don’t face them, called for talks among the world’s economic powers to establish emission targets. But the basics of the Bush policy remained the same: There should be no binding global caps, and whatever global agreement is reached should ensure action by developing countries like China, which the current Kyoto Protocol doesn’t do. . . .
Bush’s Climate Coup Splits Europe
Berliner Morgenpost, 3 June 2007
Not even George W Bush could have counted on such a rapid success. On Thursday, the US president presented his own climate initiative to a surprised global audience - and just one day later, he had already achieved his first goal: the united front of European Union climate policy was cracked wide open [...]
In spite of all the knee-jerk indignation about Bush, people lose sight of one fact: It’s not the US that is isolated - it’s the European Union. Canada and Japan as well as many non-G8-countries - in particular China and India - welcomed Bush’s initiative in euphoric tone. And, particularly bitter for the German Chancellor: Great Britain followed suit. . . .
5. The G8 Summit: President Bush Must Stand Firm on Global Warming
by Sally McNamara and Ben Lieberman
At the forthcoming G8 summit in Heiligendamm, Germany, America will face intense pressure to agree to a post-Kyoto deal on climate change that includes far-reaching mandatory targets to cut carbon emissions. G8 President and German Chancellor Angela Merkel has personally endorsed increasing pressure on the Bush Administration to reverse its current environmental policies, despite the United States’ superior performance in emissions reduction so far.
President Bush’s May 31 remarks on the G8 and climate change have led to speculation that he may reverse course and agree to binding targets on greenhouse gas emissions. This would be a mistake. The Administration should actively reject entreaties from fellow G-8 nations to agree to growth-sapping controls on energy use and instead continue its successful model in favor of economic development. . . .
Read the whole story here.
6. NASA Administrator Michael Griffin Questions Need to Combat Warming
by Clayton Sandell and Bill Blakemore
NASA administrator Michael Griffin is drawing the ire of his agency’s preeminent climate scientists after apparently downplaying the need to combat global warming.
In an interview broadcast this morning on National Public Radio’s “Morning Edition” program, Griffin was asked by NPR’s Steve Inskeep whether he is concerned about global warming.
“I have no doubt that a trend of global warming exists,” Griffin told Inskeep. “I am not sure that it is fair to say that it is a problem we must wrestle with.”
“To assume that it is a problem is to assume that the state of Earth’s climate today is the optimal climate, the best climate that we could have or ever have had and that we need to take steps to make sure that it doesn’t change,” Griffin said. “I guess I would ask which human beings where and when are to be accorded the privilege of deciding that this particular climate that we have right here today, right now is the best climate for all other human beings. I think that’s a rather arrogant position for people to take.”
Griffin’s comments immediately drew stunned reaction from James Hansen, NASA’s top climate scientist at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies in New York.
“It’s an incredibly arrogant and ignorant statement,” Hansen told ABC News. “It indicates a complete ignorance of understanding the implications of climate change.”
Hansen believes Griffin’s comments fly in the face of well-established scientific knowledge that hundreds of NASA scientists have contributed to. . . .
Comment: Hansen is the same one who declared in 1988 that all the debate was over, and the same one who received a $250,000 grant from the Heinz Foundation, chaired by Democratic Senator John Kerry’s wife Theresa Heinz Kerry, and soon thereafter made his first ever public endorsement of a candidate for President--surprise!--John Kerry. Griffin’s comments were actually quite moderate and well reasoned and definitely bear reading. They are here.
For commendations of Griffin by other scientists, click here.--ECB
Other coverage:
The Hindu News Update Service
Anxiety about global warming called into question
Detroit Free Press
NASA Chief Not Worried About Climate
Houston Chronicle
NASA chief unsure of need to tackle global warming
France24
7. Who Would Have Thought: The Guardian Discovers That Kyoto Is a Scam
by Nick Davies
The Guardian, 2 June 2007
A Guardian investigation has found evidence of serious irregularities at the heart of the process the world is relying on to control global warming.
The Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), which is supposed to offset greenhouse gases emitted in the developed world by selling carbon credits from elsewhere, has been contaminated by gross incompetence, rule-breaking and possible fraud by companies in the developing world, according to UN paperwork, an unpublished expert report and alarming feedback from projects on the ground.
One senior figure suggested there may be faults with up to 20% of the carbon credits - known as certified emissions reductions - already sold. Since these are used by European governments and corporations to justify increases in emissions, the effect is that in some cases malpractice at the CDM has added to the net amount of greenhouse gas in the atmosphere. [...]
Read the full story here.
Related item:
8. Truth About Kyoto: Huge Profits, Little Carbon Saved
The Guardian, 2 June 2007
On the eve of a G8 summit focused on climate change, Nick Davies reveals major flaws in the global system designed to reduce emissions
[...] The carbon market’s leading analysts, Point Carbon, recently calculated that this scheme handed out 170m too many EUAs. In the early days, nobody realised quite how badly the commission had miscalculated, and so the price of the EUAs was quite high, at up to EUR30 a tonne. But individual companies, particularly energy companies, rapidly saw they had millions of tonnes of EUAs that they didn’t need, and so they sold their surplus, making huge profits. A 2005 report by IPA Energy Consulting found that the six UK electricity generators stood to earn some ꎀ0m in each of the three years of the scheme.
A separate report by Open Europe, in July 2006, found that UK oil companies were also poised to make a lot of free money: ꌐ.2m for Esso; ꌗ.9m for BP; and ꌠ.7m for Shell. And behind this profiteering, the environmental reality was that these major producers of carbon emissions were under no pressure from the scheme to cut emissions.
At the other end of this EU market, smaller organisations like UK hospitals and 18 universities, who had been given far fewer EUAs, were forced to go out and buy them - while the price was still high. So, for example, the University of Manchester spent ꎒ,500 on EUAs. Now that the truth about the glut has been revealed, the university would be doing well if it managed to get ,000 for the lot of them.
Read the full story here.
9. Follow the Money--to Russia, and Elsewhere
by Alexander Zaitchik
Freezerbox Magazine, 1 June 2007
Nothing drove home Russia’s place in the growing pollution-trading business better than what one carbon finance guy told me at a conference last month sponsored by Gazprom and the World Bank. We were on drink number three or four at the reception when he dropped the green pretense and came clean.
“I don’t know if climate change is caused by burning coal or sun flares or what,” said the Moscow-based carbon cowboy. “And I don’t really give a *&^#. Russia is the most energy inefficient country around, and carbon is the most volatile market ever. There’s a lot of opportunity to make money.”
Read the full story here.
10. Briefly noted:
Global Warming: What Should Texas Do? (PDF)
by Competitive Enterprise Institute Senior Fellow Iain Stuart Murray
Green Gone Wild in Vegas
Wall Street Journal editorial explains how perverse incentives lead to unexpected results in environmental regulation.
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