The Skeptical Environmentalist's Plan for Global Warming
Ronald Bailey | October 8, 2007, 9:19am
Bjorn Lomborg, the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist (2001), offers his thoughts on what are the cost-effective things to do about man-made global warming in an op/ed in the Washington Post. He points out that reducing the ability of people to create wealth blunts their ability to meet the challenges of future climate change. Unfortunately, the Kyoto Protocol turns out to be pretty effective at reducing wealth creation and not so effective at lowering global temperatures. To wit:
We shouldn't ignore climate change or the policies that could attack it. But we should be honest about the shortcomings and costs of those policies, as well as the benefits.
Environmental groups say that the only way to deal with the effects of global warming is to make drastic cuts in carbon emissions -- a project that will cost the world trillions (the Kyoto Protocol alone would cost $180 billion annually). The research I've done over the last decade, beginning with my first book, "The Skeptical Environmentalist," has convinced me that this approach is unsound; it means spending an awful lot to achieve very little. Instead, we should be thinking creatively and pragmatically about how we could combat the much larger challenges facing our planet....
Even if the policymakers' earlier promises had been met, they would have done virtually no good, but would have cost us a small fortune. The climate models show that Kyoto would have postponed the effects of global warming by seven days by the end of the century. Even if the United States and Australia had signed on and everyone stuck to Kyoto for this entire century, we would postpone the effects of global warming by only five years.
Lomborg argues that there are far more cost-effective ways to address the problems exacerbated by man-made global warming:
The IPCC [U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change] tells us two things: If we focus on economic development and ignore global warming, we're likely to see a 13-inch rise in sea levels by 2100. If we focus instead on environmental concerns and, for instance, adopt the hefty cuts in carbon emissions many environmental groups promote, this could reduce the rise by about five inches. But cutting emissions comes at a cost: Everybody would be poorer in 2100. With less money around to protect land from the sea, cutting carbon emissions would mean that more dry land would be lost, especially in vulnerable regions such as Micronesia, Tuvalu, Vietnam, Bangladesh and the Maldives.
As sea levels rise, so will temperatures. It seems logical to expect more heat waves and therefore more deaths. But though this fact gets much less billing, rising temperatures will also reduce the number of cold spells. This is important because research shows that the cold is a much bigger killer than the heat. According to the first complete peer-reviewed survey of climate change's health effects, global warming will actually save lives. It's estimated that by 2050, global warming will cause almost 400,000 more heat-related deaths each year. But at the same time, 1.8 million fewer people will die from cold.
The Kyoto Protocol, with its drastic emissions cuts, is not a sensible way to stop people from dying in future heat waves. At a much lower cost, urban designers and politicians could lower temperatures more effectively by planting trees, adding water features and reducing the amount of asphalt in at-risk cities. Estimates show that this could reduce the peak temperatures in cities by more than 20 degrees Fahrenheit.
Global warming will claim lives in another way: by increasing the number of people at risk of catching malaria by about 3 percent over this century. According to scientific models, implementing the Kyoto Protocol for the rest of this century would reduce the malaria risk by just 0.2 percent.
On the other hand, we could spend $3 billion annually -- 2 percent of the protocol's cost -- on mosquito nets and medication and cut malaria incidence almost in half within a decade. Malaria death rates are rising in sub-Saharan Africa, but this has nothing to do with climate change and everything to do with poverty: Poor and corrupt governments find it hard to implement and fund the spraying and the provision of mosquito nets that would help eradicate the disease. Yet for every dollar we spend saving one person through policies like the Kyoto Protocol, we could save 36,000 through direct intervention.
Of course, it's not just humans we care about. Environmentalists point out that magnificent creatures such as polar bears will be decimated by global warming as their icy habitat melts. Kyoto would save just one bear a year. Yet every year, hunters kill 300 to 500 polar bears, according to the World Conservation Union. Outlawing this slaughter would be cheap and easy -- and much more effective than a worldwide pact on carbon emissions.
Wherever you look, the inescapable conclusion is the same: Reducing carbon emissions is not the best way to help the world. I don't point this out merely to be contrarian. We do need to fix global warming in the long run. But I'm frustrated at our blinkered focus on policies that won't achieve it.
In 1992, wealthy nations promised to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000. Instead, emissions grew by 12 percent. In 1997, they promised to cut emissions to about 5 percent below 1990 levels by 2010. Yet levels will likely be 25 percent higher than hoped for.
So instead of limits on greenhouse gases, what does Lomborg suggest?
Ideally, every nation should commit to spending 0.05 percent of its gross domestic product exploring non-carbon-emitting energy technologies, be they wind, wave or solar power, or capturing CO2emissions from power plants. This spending could add up to about $25 billion per year but would still be seven times cheaper than the Kyoto Protocol and would increase global R&D tenfold. All nations would be involved, yet the richer ones would pay the larger share.
I'm far less sanguine than Lomborg is about the efficacy of federal energy technology research programs. In any case, see what else Lomborg has to say in his op/ed here.
My Wall Street Journal review of The Skeptical Environmentalist is here. My discussion of the subsequent attacks by ideological environmentalists on Lomborg is here.
Seraphym | October 8, 2007, 6:38pm | #
ALL of this discussion PRESUMES that the climate models used by the IPCC and other Global Climate Change activists are correct. They are NOT. This has been proven time and again, but everyone just keeps on going with the conclusions like they were set in stone.
Here's a refresher on the properties of CO2 in the atmosphere and in the oceans:
"Catastrophic theories of climate change depend on carbon dioxide staying in the atmosphere for long periods of time — otherwise, the CO2 enveloping the globe wouldn’t be dense enough to keep the heat in. Until recently, the world of science was near-unanimous that CO2 couldn’t stay in the atmosphere for more than about five to 10 years because of the oceans’ near-limitless ability to absorb CO2. This time period has been established by measurements based on natural carbon-14 and also from readings of carbon-14 from nuclear weapons testing, it has been established by radon-222 measurements, it has been established by measurements of the solubility of atmospheric gases in the oceans, it has been established by comparing the isotope mass balance, it has been established through other mechanisms, too, and over many decades, and by many scientists in many disciplines.
Then, with the advent of IPCC-influenced science, the length of time that carbon stays in the atmosphere became controversial. Climate change scientists began creating carbon cycle models to explain what they thought must be an excess of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. These computer models calculated a long life for carbon dioxide.
Amazingly, the hypothetical results from climate models have trumped the real world measurements of carbon dioxide’s longevity in the atmosphere. Those who claim that CO2 lasts decades or centuries have no such measurements or other physical evidence to support their claims. Neither can they demonstrate that the various forms of measurement are erroneous. Instead, they substitute their faith, constructing a kind of science fiction or fantasy world in the process.
In the real world, as measurable by science, CO2 in the atmosphere and in the ocean reach a stable balance when the oceans contain 50 times as much CO2 as the atmosphere. The IPCC postulates an atmospheric doubling of CO2, meaning that the oceans would need to receive 50 times more CO2 to obtain chemical equilibrium. This total of 51 times the present amount of carbon in atmospheric CO2 exceeds the known reserves of fossil carbon– it represents more carbon than exists in all the coal, gas, and oil that we can exploit anywhere in the world.
Also in the real world, isotope mass balance calculations — a standard technique in science — show that if CO2 in the atmosphere had a lifetime of 50 to 200 years, as claimed by IPCC scientists, the atmosphere would necessarily have half of its current CO2 mass. Because this is a nonsensical outcome, the IPCC model postulates that half of the CO2 must be hiding somewhere, in ‘a missing sink.’ Many studies have sought this missing sink — a Holy Grail of climate science research– without success. It is a search for a mythical CO2 sink to explain an immeasurable CO2 lifetime to fit a hypothetical CO2 computer model that purports to show that an impossible amount of fossil fuel burning is heating the atmosphere." (from Tom V. Segalstad, noted geologist and climatologist and former expert reviewer for the IPCC - visit his discussion of these facts here: http://folk.uio.no/tomvs/esef/esef0.htm)
Sound like a theory you're willing the economic powerhouse nations to dump nearly $200 BILLION a year into? Not to me...
But then, I'm an engineer. I've learned through school and professionally that correlation != causation. CO2 rises as temperatures rise. There is little evidence that it actually DRIVES the temperature rise.
Does that mean we should just abandon clean energy efforts? Of course not, they reduce the pollution that we cause to our own environments; pollution which, if you're paying attention to Hong Kong and Shanghai in the past few months, is detrimental not only to our health but the health of the ecosystem. I'll all for economic incentives by the government for ethanol, nuclear, solar, wind, and hydroelectric power all over the place. Using solar energy to heat water to steam that drives turbines that produce Hydrogen for using in vehicles? Great idea! However, trying to take that localized pollution we produce and say that it is also "breaking the planet" is BS... the Earth is never stable. Ever. Full stop, end of discussion. It is, and always has been, always going through some sort of climate change. There was the "Little Ice Age" just a few hundred years ago... before that, the Medieval Warm Period. It has been hotter than it is now. It will be colder again... studies of the geological record show this clearly.
Furthermore, if WE are causing the increase in global temperature, and WE can reduce or eliminate the increase in temperature... then why are other planets in our solar system getting warmer, too? Could the VERIFIED increased solar output we've been seeing in the last few decades have anything to do with that? A study by Duke University concluded: "We estimate that the sun contributed as much as 45–50% of the 1900–2000 global warming, and 25–35% of the 1980–2000 global warming." (http://www.worldclimatereport.com/index.php/2006/03/21/solar-warming/)
Furthermore:
"Three papers in the May 6 issue of Science Magazine argue that the amount of incoming solar radiation reaching the surface of the earth has increased dramatically in the last two decades. While the values vary from paper to paper, in total the new studies suggest that the increase in solar radiation absorbed at the earth’s surface had almost 10 times as much warming power during that time as the concurrent increases in carbon dioxide, the main global warming gas.
Therefore, the warming observed over the past 20 years must have little to do with changes in greenhouse gases."
Sounds to me like there is no causation that can be firmly established by any theory yet. Any model should be able to predict the null state to be worth a damn... it should be able to take data from, say, 1950, and predict the OBSERVED state as witnessed in 2000. None of them currently do, and even many that over-embellish effects still show little change that WE can make.
To be clear - I think clean, renewable energy is a great idea, so long as it doesn't break the bank or prevent developing nations from achieving good growth. But there is a whole lot of understanding missing from our analyses of the evidence at hand for drastic, centuries long conclusions that, even if they worked perfectly, barely do anything... and might end up doing exactly nothing but wasting money and damaging the future of societies around the globe.
