Robert Samuelson on the Great Global Warming "Denial Machine"
Ronald Bailey | August 13, 2007, 10:57am
Washington Post and Newsweek columnist Robert Samuelson takes on Newsweek's cover story attacking the evil global warming denial conspiracy. Samuelson scolds Newsweek:
We in the news business often enlist in moral crusades. Global warming is among the latest. Unfortunately, self-righteous indignation can undermine good journalism. Last week's NEWSWEEK's cover story on global warming is a sobering reminder. It's an object lesson of how viewing the world as "good guys vs. bad guys" can lead to a vast oversimplification of a messy story. Global warming has clearly occurred; the hard question is what to do about it.
If you missed NEWSWEEK's story, here's the gist. A "well-coordinated, well-funded campaign by contrarian scientists, free-market think tanks and industry has created a paralyzing fog of doubt around climate change." This "denial machine" has obstructed action against global warming and is still "running at full throttle." The story's thrust: discredit the "denial machine," and the country can start the serious business of fighting global warming. The story was a wonderful read, marred only by its being fundamentally misleading....
NEWSWEEK's "denial machine" is a peripheral and highly contrived story. NEWSWEEK implied, for example, that ExxonMobil used a think tank to pay academics to criticize global-warming science. Actually, this accusation was long ago discredited, and NEWSWEEK shouldn't have lent it respectability. (The company says it knew nothing of the global-warming grant, which involved issues of climate modeling. And its 2006 contribution to the think tank, the American Enterprise Institute, was small: $240,000 out of a $28 million budget.) [AEI defends itself here.]
The alleged cabal's influence does not seem impressive.
Samuelson also makes some pretty sobering observations about the political possibility of dealing with man-made global warming. To wit:
Democracies don't easily adopt painful measures in the present to avert possible future problems...One way or another, our assaults against global warming are likely to be symbolic, ineffective or both.
Samuelson does suggest a gasoline tax as a start. It should be noted that when oil prices soared during the OPEC-induced oil crisis, U.S. oil consumption dropped by 13 percent between 1973 and 1983. In other words, people will conserve when energy becomes more costly. My own proposal for beginning to deal with climate change is a gradually rising tax on carbon-based fuels. I discuss the magnitude of the future energy challenge here and here and here.
Whole Samuelson column here.
Disclosure: To many political environmentalists I am considered to have been a cog in the global warming "denial machine." My side of the story here.
Ron Bailey | August 13, 2007, 12:24pm | #
de stilj: What about the possibility that money follow opinions rather than opinions following money?
I realize using 20/20 hindsight, man-made global warming must appear as uncontroversial. However, there were good scientific reasons to doubt its seriousness, e.g., the satellite temperature record which showed only minimal warming.
In addition, analysts at CEI and AEI and other think tanks had developed considerable skepticism with regard to prior exaggerated environmentalist claims of impending disasters, famine, population explosion, cancer epidemics from exposures to trace amounts of synthetic chemicals, genetically modified crops cause health problems, half of all species dead by 2000, running out oil, cooper, zinc, natural gas by 2000 and such. All of which were "scientifically" justified by political environmentalists. And they were wrong. So at the beginning of new highly touted environmental crisis like global warming, surely skepticism is warranted, or as Carl Sagan said, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence."
I plead guilty to remaining skeptical perhaps longer than I should have, but the evidence for man-made global warming was not a slam-dunk. I know many of the analysts at CEI, AEI and others who remain skeptical, and I believe that they are intellectually honest people who have turned out to be wrong on this issue, not paid shills.
And before you let the environmental lobby off the hook, remember they have every reason to sell fear in order to stay in business too. However, I don't believe that environmental lobbyists are "green shills" who exaggerate dangers in order to boost their funding raising (btw, the top 12 environmental groups in the U.S. have total budgets that exceed $1 billion yearly). They are sincere people who have turned out to be wrong about a lot scientific (and economic) issues.
Finally, as I have
previously disclosed, the Reason Foundation has received grants from ExxonMobil in past.
TrickyVic | August 13, 2007, 4:47pm | #
"""There is nothing in their argument that claims atmospheric CO2 does not respond to natural climate drivers."""
They can't have it both ways. If atmospheric CO2 rise is strictly a man made event as their statement said there could be no CO2 increases without human cause. Again here is their quote.
"In summary, we know that the rise in atmospheric CO2 is entirely caused by fossil fuel burning and deforestation because..."
That's pretty straight forward.
Not to mention they make the statment that CO2 has been on the rise for the last 150 years. Which is not really true, it's had its ups and downs. That would be a kin to saying the stock market has been up for the last 70 years. It is true that it's higher than it was 70 years ago.
"""There is nothing in their argument that claims atmospheric CO2 does not respond to natural climate drivers. It just claims that the evidence for the current rise in CO2 results from a human activity."""
They do claim that nothing natural would increase atmospheric CO2 levels. I'll agree my use of the word stable might have been incorrect in the sense that it excluded negative pressures. So I would amend my conclusion to say
" If that was true, then the atmospheric CO2 levels would have been stable or decreasing prior to our actions. Does any scientist believe that? "
But they do claim that atmospheric CO2 level increases are man made. Of course CO2 is not the main problem for global warming anyway.
""So where is the CO2 coming from?
We dig up fossil fuels and burn them. ""
Doesn't that imply that there would be no CO2 increase absent the burning of fossil fuels?
DannyK | August 13, 2007, 8:32pm | #
Googled my own question and got this:
mysite.verizon.net/mhieb/WVFossils/greenhouse_data.html
which says that about 0.3% of global warming is due to anthropogenic greenhouse gases. Couldn't find any other articles venturing to weigh in on that topic.
jh, you're missing the central point*. It doesn't matter what the percentage is. Here is what matters: the Earth has been in rough heat balance for a long time -- the heat radiated out balances the heat from the sun.
Since the industrial revolution, CO2 has doubled, and other greenhouse gasses have also increased. This means the Earth is trapping more heat energy. The heat balance is thrown off, and can only be restored by the Earth warming up to the point that it again radiates enough energy to balance what it absorbs.
We've already changed the heat balance enough to lock in at least 3 degrees of increased global temperature, and we're adding more to the total every day. We're already seeing changes, but by 2150 (a date many of us will live to see, I hope), the evidence will be unmistakeable.
If you believe what the scientists are saying, then intervention is justified because climate change will be a massive worldwide disaster. We should be looking for freedom-friendly solutions to the problem, not quibbling.
Here's a nice one-page summary of the topic:
http://www.realclimate.org/index.php/archives/2007/08/the-co2-problem-in-6-easy-steps/
I'd be happy to discuss it further, if you're open to talking science.
DannyK
*the greater point, of course, is that the guy you cite is deliberately fudging the argument by referring to "global warming" without further qualification. Water vapor is, of course, the greatest greenhouse gas and without any greenhouse effect, the Earth would be a snowball. None of that is controversial, and none of it has any bearing on climate change.
Horst Graben | August 14, 2007, 1:49am | #
All of you folks are sophisticated morons. The land-based temperature record is F_CKED. The keepers of the records correct all of the good and bad station data to be more like each other. The details of these corrections are SECRET.
There is very likely a significant man made influence on climate change, however, the basic data used to calibrate the models is WRONG.
Increased carbon dioxide and methane may cause some warming. This may be offset by the big brown dust cloud spewing out of China that diminishes solar radiation. Then you have contrail (not chem trails) induced cloud formation, methane releases, deforestation, reforestation, asphalt and concrete covering of land, and the evaporation of lake, river and groundwater via irrigation.
All of these big spewings of massive shit has some effect on climate. No one knows how it all works. The north pole sea ice appears to be melting back more and more. Maybe this is due to CO2, maybe the sun, maybe soot deposited from china that increases the heat absorption.
Without knowing how all of these pieces fit into the overall climate change equation, any cost benefit analysis is worthless.
In the mean time, the promoters of CO2 as the bogyman of Armageddon are fighting all efforts to evaluate the temperature record.
A guy in Davis California and his volunteers (who seem a bit froth-mouthed deniers) have surveyed about 20% of the US long term climate stations. They have found that many of the sites used in the settled science are next to buildings and asphalt parking lots. These are photos that the realclimate government slugs do not want anyone to see because it makes their models just a pile of steaming bullcrap.
But, the north pole is still melting. Maybe there is a CO2 induced temperature signal in the record. The fact is that the temperature record as now published and promoted by the alphabet soup bureaucrats and their blog is not useful, they don't want it fixed and they refuse to disclose how they have manipulated it to make the current temperature look to an idiot like Nuevo Mexo the tops of the geologic record. I don't know how the neuvo smart set explains the fern fossils above the Arctic Circle. Perhaps that follows porcine aerodynamics.
Bottom line:
1) the north pole melting may be caused by man not related to CO2.
2) It is all natural and no matter how hard we all collectively scrimp and save, the pole will continue to melt.
3) It may be some strange combination of factors, including natural and CO2 and a host of other man spewings.
Right now, both sides are being played for fools and this thread is full of morons dancing to a tune they cannot hear.
The biggest fool is Bailey who has covered science and the environment so long, he thinks that he actually knows something about science:
Remember that the difference between the layman who understands science and the man who practices the art of science is that the layman, or critic, out of receptive experience, shares passively what the scientist, out of productive experience, creates. (Modified after Hofmann, 1948)
Less opinion and more reporting would be in order Bailey. Quit thinking that you can have make conclusions of value to your readers. Since you are a reporter, why don't you stick to that? Is it boring and career limiting? I thought so, the same is true in science.
Thats why the government warming propaganda scientists and there megaphones are more concerned with the destination (models), not the journey (temperature data).
Mark Bahner | August 14, 2007, 9:08pm | #
"The Copenhagen Consensus seems to think that our ability to address these problems is limited."
This is not a notion unique to the Copenhagen Consensus! This is a basic, unquestionable fact of life, on which an entire system of study is founded. The whole foundation of economics is that it involves the allocation of scarce resources (money and time) in the manner that is most efficient.
"It assumes that addressing GW (or any of these other issues) will be a drag on the economy."
The Copenhagen Consensus assumes that addressing global warming--or addressing malaria, or addressing contaminated drinking water--will cost money and time. Again, that is the foundation of economics: money and time are finite, but desires are not.
"While that may be true for some of the problems on the list, GW is best addressed by techniques that have a long term positive impact on the economy."
If I buy a set of photovoltaic panels and put them on my house to reduce my purchases of electricity from the grid, it will have a *long term* positive effect on my financial position. That is, in 20+ years, the photovoltaics (and inverters) will eventually save more money then I've spent. But I haven't gone out and bought a set of photovoltaic panels. Why not? Well, my 403b retirement investment is returning an astounding 22 percent over the last year, for example. So I could invest $10,000 in a photovoltaic system that would pay back in 20+ years, or I could invest $10,000 in my retirement, and at 7 percent per year (let alone 22 percent), in 20 years it would be worth $40,000.
"To argue that there are certain challenges we should ignore so that we can concentrate on the more important problems hampers the natural processes of development that will take care of these problems as they arise."
No, it doesn't. Again, this is the foundation on which economics is built. The amount of time and money that's been wasted on global warming could have been better spent on more important problems. If the amount of money spent on global warming just in the last few years had gone into purchasing and delivering (at no charge)for no charge multivitamin/multimineral tablets to everyone on earth who can't presently afford them, literally millions of lives would have been saved. The same is true for systems to treat drinking water to remove biological contaminants.
"J. Simon's premise only works if people actively engage issues as they arise."
No, J. Simon’s “premise” (it’s actually a conclusion based on large amounts of data) works best if people actively engage the most important and easily solvable issues first. There’s nothing in J. Simon’s “premise” (that human beings innovate to produce better futures) that conflicts at all with the fundamental concept of economics that problems that can most cost-effectively addressed should be solved first.
"The Copenhagen Consensus argues that we should be passive on some issues..."
Yes, exactly. We should be passive on some issues until more pressing problems are addressed. For example, last week my nose got broken by a bad-hop ground ball in a softball game. My car was also in the repair shop. On my way to the emergency room for my nose, I didn't call the mechanic to see whether my car had been finished.
Mark Bahner | August 14, 2007, 9:53pm | #
"For instance...if someone were to invent your magic fusion reactor to address global warming…”
First of all, it it's neither “mine,” nor “magic.” There are several ways to produce fusion beyond conventional tokamak reactors. For example, one of the fusion reactors I find most intriguing is the dense plasma focus reactor...especially if it can be run with hydrogen and boron as a fuel (as opposed to deuterium).
But that is not *my* idea, and there is absolutely nothing "magic" about it. Dense plasma focus devices have already achieved fusion…though not with hydrogen and boron as a fuel. They have produced abundant neutrons, which are unquestionably the result of fusion. So there is absolutely nothing magical about them producing fusion. It’s well-understood fusion physics. What they haven't done is produce more energy output than input. And they haven't run on hydrogen-boron fuel.
I liken the situation to powered flight in the late 19th century. The physics was generally understood (though not completely), but the development of compact and powerful internal combustion engines hadn’t progressed sufficiently to allow powered flight. Now, you could say that the Wright Brothers or the Spirit of St Louis involved “magic,” and probably 100 or even 50 years before those flights, the ideas would have seemed like “magic.” But they weren’t.
“…what would the impact on the economy be?"
The development of hydrogen-boron fusion capable of producing electricity at a cost equal to or less than the lowest current-cost technologies (e.g. coal-fired power plants in the U.S.) would be a world-changing technology. It would allow rapid and essentially pollution-free electrification of Africa, India, and China. It would completely eliminate any need for a nationwide electrical grid in the U.S. or anywhere else (e.g. Iraq). In fact, it probably would even be a solar-system-changing technology, in that it would probably allow humans to live for extended periods on the Moon and Mars, and potentially even the moons of Jupiter.
(One more potentially important impact: If it led to the possibility that small groups of nut jobs could produce fusion explosions by misusing the technology, that would be horrendous. Of course, so would genetically engineered viruses or bacteria used to kill people.)
"Would that help to address other issues on the Copenhagen list?"
Well, inexpensive electricity available anywhere in the world will go a very long way towards reducing microbiological contaminants in water and food. I don't think indoor air pollution from burning solid fuels was on the Copenhagen list, but it would probably be even better at reducing that. It would allow long-term storage of medicines that require refrigeration to be preserved. Air conditioning would be a huge boon to reducing malaria.
So, yes, it would help reduce some Copenhagen Consensus problems. And it would be a huge boon to solving problems like indoor air pollution from burning solid fuels that did not make the Copenhagen Consensus list.
It would also essentially allow elimination of the need to mine and burn coal and to dam rivers for electricity.
THAT'S why controlled (non-tokamak) fusion should be pursued. Not because it will reduce CO2 emissions...though it would do that, also. CO2 emissions simply aren't a very important problem.
Reason on Facebook
Reason on Twitter
Reason on YouTube
Reason RSS
