Category: Global Warming

Heretics to the Religion of Global Warming

SuperFreakonomicsBK.jpg

Source of book image: online version of the WSJ review quoted and cited below.

(p. A19) Suppose for a minute–. . . –that global warming poses an imminent threat to the survival of our species. Suppose, too, that the best solution involves a helium balloon, several miles of garden hose and a harmless stream of sulfur dioxide being pumped into the upper atmosphere, all at a cost of a single F-22 fighter jet.

. . .

The hose-in-the-sky approach to global warming is the brainchild of Intellectual Ventures, a Bellevue, Wash.-based firm founded by former Microsoft Chief Technology Officer Nathan Myhrvold. The basic idea is to engineer effects similar to those of the 1991 mega-eruption of Mt. Pinatubo in the Philippines, which spewed so much sulfuric ash into the stratosphere that it cooled the earth by about one degree Fahrenheit for a couple of years.
Could it work? Mr. Myhrvold and his associates think it might, and they’re a smart bunch. Also smart are University of Chicago economist Steven Levitt and writer Stephen Dubner, whose delightful “SuperFreakonomics”–the sequel to their runaway 2005 bestseller “Freakonomics”–gives Myhrvold and Co. pride of place in their lengthy chapter on global warming. Not surprisingly, global warming fanatics are experiencing a Pinatubo-like eruption of their own.
. . .

. . . , Messrs. Levitt and Dubner show every sign of being careful researchers, going so far as to send chapter drafts to their interviewees for comment prior to publication. Nor are they global warming “deniers,” insofar as they acknowledge that temperatures have risen by 1.3 degrees Fahrenheit over the past century.
But when it comes to the religion of global warming–the First Commandment of which is Thou Shalt Not Call It A Religion–Messrs. Levitt and Dubner are grievous sinners. They point out that belching, flatulent cows are adding more greenhouse gases to the atmosphere than all SUVs combined. They note that sea levels will probably not rise much more than 18 inches by 2100, “less than the twice-daily tidal variation in most coastal locations.” They observe that “not only is carbon plainly not poisonous, but changes in carbon-dioxide levels don’t necessarily mirror human activity.” They quote Mr. Myhrvold as saying that Mr. Gore’s doomsday scenarios “don’t have any basis in physical reality in any reasonable time frame.”
More subversively, they suggest that climatologists, like everyone else, respond to incentives in a way that shapes their conclusions. “The economic reality of research funding, rather than a disinterested and uncoordinated scientific consensus, leads the [climate] models to approximately match one another.” In other words, the herd-of-independent-minds phenomenon happens to scientists too and isn’t the sole province of painters, politicians and news anchors

.

For the full commentary, see:
BRET STEPHENS. “Freaked Out Over SuperFreakonomics; Global warming might be solved with a helium balloon and a few miles of garden hose.” The Wall Street Journal (Tues., OCTOBER 27, 2009): A19.
(Note: ellipsis added.)

Copenhagen Global Warming Performer Asks for More Summer “Because It’s Too Cold to Be Out Here”

(p. 12) . . . a small contingent of climate skeptics and libertarians opposed to caps on heat-trapping carbon dioxide emissions derided the United Nations talks.

“We want to be able to live our lives like we’ve always led them before — as free citizens in free democracies,” said David Pontoppidan, a graduate student in sociology at the University of Copenhagen, who addressed passers-by through a megaphone over the chatter of two helicopters hovering far above. “We want free debate; we want to be able to be taken seriously even though we don’t agree with the U.N.”
. . .
Leading the march from the square this afternoon, a man in blue coveralls, with vaudevillian face paint and a faux Cyrano nose, could be seen sweeping the street and peering into a rolling trash bin painted to resemble the planet. It emitted plumes of white dust and mournful musical notes.
“This is our comment on global warming,” said the sweeper, Jens Kloft, a Danish performance artist. “We want to have an international compromise on global warming — a better climate, but two more months of summer in Denmark please. Because it’s too cold to be out here.”

For the full story, see:
TOM ZELLER Jr. “Thousands March in Copenhagen, Calling for Action.” The New York Times, First Section (Sun., December 13, 2009): 12.
(Note: the last two paragraphs quoted above are from the print version; the NYT deleted them from the online version. Also, the first paragraph quoted, is from the print version of that paragraph, and not the shortened online version. The online version of the article is dated Sat., December 12, 2009.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Safe Drinking Water Matters More than Global Warming

(p. A17) Getting basic sanitation and safe drinking water to the three billion people around the world who do not have it now would cost nearly $4 billion a year. By contrast, cuts in global carbon emissions that aim to limit global temperature increases to less than two degrees Celsius over the next century would cost $40 trillion a year by 2100. These cuts will do nothing to increase the number of people with access to clean drinking water and sanitation. Cutting carbon emissions will likely increase water scarcity, because global warming is expected to increase average rainfall levels around the world.

For Mrs. Begum, the choice is simple. After global warming was explained to her, she said: “When my kids haven’t got enough to eat, I don’t think global warming will be an issue I will be thinking about.”
One of Bangladesh’s most vulnerable citizens, Mrs. Begum has lost faith in the media and politicians.
“So many people like you have come and interviewed us. I have not seen any improvement in our conditions,” she said.
It is time the developed world started listening.

For the full commentary, see:
Bjørn LOMBORG. “Global Warming as Seen From Bangladesh; Momota Begum worries about hunger, not climate change.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., NOVEMBER 9, 2009): A17.

Malaria “Weakly Related to Temperature”; “Strongly Related to Poverty”

(p. A17) In the West, campaigners for carbon regulations point out that global warming will increase the number of malaria victims. This is often used as an argument for drastic, immediate carbon cuts.

Warmer, wetter weather will improve conditions for the malaria parasite. Most estimates suggest that global warming will put 3% more of the Earth’s population at risk of catching malaria by 2100. If we invest in the most efficient, global carbon cuts–designed to keep temperature rises under two degrees Celsius–we would spend a massive $40 trillion a year by 2100. In the best case scenario, we would reduce the at-risk population by only 3%.
In comparison, research commissioned by the Copenhagen Consensus Center shows that spending $3 billion annually on mosquito nets, environmentally safe indoor DDT sprays, and subsidies for effective new combination therapies could halve the number of those infected with malaria within one decade. For the money it takes to save one life with carbon cuts, smarter policies could save 78,000 lives. . . .
Malaria is only weakly related to temperature; it is strongly related to poverty. It has risen in sub-Saharan Africa over the past 20 years not because of global warming, but because of failing medical response.

For the full commentary, see:

BJORN LOMBORG. “Climate Change and Malaria in Africa; Limiting carbon emissions won’t do much to stop disease in Zambia.” The Wall Street Journal (Mon., NOVEMBER 2, 2009): A17.
(Note: ellipsis added.)
(Note: the online version of the article was dated Nov. 1st.)

Global Warming Did Not Cause Southeast Drought

(p. A13) The drought that gripped the Southeast from 2005 to 2007 was not unprecedented and resulted from random weather events, not global warming, Columbia University researchers have concluded. They say its severe water shortages resulted from population growth more than rainfall patterns.

The researchers, who report their findings in an article in Thursday’s issue of The Journal of Climate, cite census figures showing that in Georgia alone the population rose to 9.54 million in 2007 from 6.48 million in 1990.
“At the root of the water supply problem in the Southeast is a growing population,” they wrote.
Richard Seager, a climate expert at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory who led the study, said in an interview that when the drought struck, “people were wondering” whether climate change linked to a global increase in heat-trapping gases could be a cause.
But after studying data from weather instruments, computer models and measurements of tree rings, which reflect yearly rainfall, “our conclusion was this drought was pretty normal and pretty typical by standards of what has happened in the region over the century,” Mr. Seager said.
Similar droughts unfolded over the last thousand years, the researchers wrote. Regardless of climate change, they added, similar weather patterns can be expected regularly in the future, with similar results.

For the full story, see:
CORNELIA DEAN. “Study Links Water Shortages in Southeast to Population, Not Global Warming.” The New York Times (Fri., October 2, 2009): A13.
(Note: the online version of the article is dated Oct. 1st and has the title “Southeast Drought Study Ties Water Shortage to Population, Not Global Warming.”)

The research summarized in the passages above can be read in its full and original form, at:
Seager, Richard, Alexandrina Tzanova, and Jennifer Nakamura. “Drought in the Southeastern United States: Causes, Variability over the Last Millennium, and the Potential for Future Hydroclimate Change.” Journal of Climate 22, no. 19 (Oct. 1, 2009): 5021-45.

Global Warming Is Least Worry of Vanuatu Island’s Poor

(p. A19) In a warning often repeated by environmental campaigners, the Vanuatuan president told the United Nations that entire island nations could be submerged. “If such a tragedy does happen,” he said, “then the United Nations and its members would have failed in their first and most basic duty to a member nation and its innocent people.”

Torethy Frank, a 39-year-old woman carving out a subsistence lifestyle on Vanuatu’s Nguna Island, is one of those “innocent people.” Yet, she has never heard of the problem that her government rates as a top priority. “What is global warming?” she asks a researcher for the Copenhagen Consensus Center.
. . .
Torethy and her family of six live in a small house made of concrete and brick with no running water. As a toilet, they use a hole dug in the ground. They have no shower and there is no fixed electricity supply. Torethy’s family was given a battery-powered DVD player but cannot afford to use it.
. . .
What would change her life? Having a boat in the village to use for fishing, transporting goods to sell, and to get to hospital in emergencies. She doesn’t want more aid money because, “there is too much corruption in the government and it goes in people’s pockets,” but she would like microfinance schemes instead. “Give the money directly to the people for businesses so we can support ourselves without having to rely on the government.”
Vanuatu’s politicians speak with a loud voice on the world stage. But the inhabitants of Vanuatu, like Torethy Frank, tell a very different story.

For the full commentary, see:

BJøRN LOMBORG. “The View from Vanuatu on Climate Change; Torethy Frank had never heard of global warming. She is worried about power and running water.” The Wall Street Journal (Fri., OCTOBER 23, 2009): A19.
(Note: ellipses added.)
(Note: the online version is dated Thurs., Oct. 22.)

“Recent Temperature Plateau” May Undermine Case for Global Warming

GlobalWarmingPlateauGraph2009-09-27.jpgSource of graph: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A10) The world leaders who met at the United Nations to discuss climate change on Tuesday are faced with an intricate challenge: building momentum for an international climate treaty at a time when global temperatures have been relatively stable for a decade and may even drop in the next few years.

The plateau in temperatures has been seized upon by skeptics as evidence that the threat of global warming is overblown. And some climate experts worry that it could hamper treaty negotiations and slow the progress of legislation to curb carbon dioxide emissions in the United States.
. . .

Underscoring just how little clarity there is on short-term temperature fluctuations, researchers from Britain’s climate change office, in a paper published in August, projected “an end to this period of relative stability,” with half the years between now and 2015 exceeding the record-setting global temperatures of 1998.
Whatever the next decade may hold, critics of global warming have lost no time in using the current temperature plateau to build their case.
“I think it supports the arguments of those who’ve said, ‘What’s the rush for policy on this issue?’ ” said Patrick J. Michaels, a climatologist affiliated with George Mason University and the Cato Institute, a group opposing most regulatory solutions to environmental problems.
. . .

A clearer view of whether the recent temperature plateau undermines arguments for dangerous climate change in the long run should come in a few years, as the predictions made by the British climate researchers are tested. Their paper appeared in a supplement to an August issue of The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society.
While the authors concluded that there was a 1 in 8 chance of having a decade-long pause in warming like the current plateau, even with rising concentrations of greenhouse gases, the odds of a 15-year pause, they wrote, are only 5 in 100. As a result, the next few years of observations could tip the balance toward further concern or greater optimism.
Meanwhile, social scientists who study the way people understand and respond to environmental problems say it is not surprising that the current temperature stability has created confusion and apathy.

For the full story, see:
ANDREW C. REVKIN. “Plateau in Temperatures Adds Difficulty to Task of Reaching a Solution.” The New York Times (Weds., Sept. 23, 2009): A10.
(Note: the online version lists a date of September 21 and has the title as “Momentum on Climate Pact Is Elusive”, but the body of the article seems to be the same as the print version.)
(Note: ellipses added.)

Adaptation Greatly Reduces Negative Effects from Global Warming

One of the advantages of flexible economic systems, such as capitalism, is that they can adapt to unexpected or exogenous changes in the environment (e.g., changes in the weather). In the empirical analysis quoted from below, the primary finding is that roughly half of the short-term negative effects on income from rising temperatures, “are offset in the long run through adaptation.”
Almost all of the countries in the sample of 12 deviate substantially from the ideal of entrepreneurial capitalism. So the reduction by half is probably a much smaller amount of adaptation than would occur in a sample of countries that had adopted policies that allowed a flourishing of entrepreneurship.

(p. 203) Using subnational data from 12 countries in the Americas, we show that the negative crosssectional relationship between temperature and income exists within countries, as well as across countries. We then provide a theoretical framework for reconciling the substantial, negative association between temperature and income in cross section with the even stronger short-run effects of temperature shown in panel models. The theoretical framework suggests that half of the negative short-term effects of temperature are offset in the long run through adaptation.

Source:
Dell, Melissa, Benjamin F. Jones, and Benjamin A. Olken. “Temperature and Income: Reconciling New Cross-Sectional and Panel Estimates.” American Economic Review 99, no. 2 (May 2009): 198-204.

Global Warming Creates Benefit of Arctic Shipping Shortcut

GermanShipArtcticPassage.jpg “A German ship, following a Russian icebreaker, is about to complete a shipment from Asia to Europe via Arctic waters.” Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. A1) MOSCOW — For hundreds of years, mariners have dreamed of an Arctic shortcut that would allow them to speed trade between Asia and the West. Two German ships are poised to complete that transit for the first time, aided by the retreat of Arctic ice that scientists have linked to global warming.

The ships started their voyage in South Korea in late July and will begin the last leg of the trip this week, leaving a Siberian port for Rotterdam in the Netherlands carrying 3,500 tons of construction materials.
Russian ships have long moved goods along the country’s sprawling Arctic coastline. And two tankers, one Finnish and the other Latvian, hauled fuel between Russian ports using the route, which is variously called the Northern Sea Route or the Northeast Passage.
But the Russians hope that the transit of the German ships will inaugurate the passage as a reliable shipping route, and that the combination of the melting ice and the economic benefits of the shortcut — it is thousands of miles shorter than various southerly routes — will eventually make the Arctic passage a summer competitor with the Suez Canal.
“It is global warming that enables us to think about using that route,” Verena Beckhusen, a spokeswoman for the shipping company, the Beluga Group of Bremen, Germany, said in a telephone interview.

For the full story, see:

ANDREW E. KRAMER and ANDREW C. REVKIN. “Arctic Shortcut Beckons Shippers as Ice Thaws.” The New York Times (Fri., September 10, 2009): A1 & A3.

NortheastPassageMap2009-09-26.jpg “A Shortcut Across the Top of the World.” Source of caption and map: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

Adaptation of Thai Rice Farmers to Global Warming

A 2009 study of the effects of global warming on Thai rice farmers, finds that most such farmers have been able to fully adapt to milder changes, and to allay the worst effects of extreme changes. The researchers note that for milder changes, the farmers may even benefit from the increased rainfall that often accompanies such changes. The researchers also note that the adaptation would have been greater if they had been able to take account of the full range of adaptations the farmers could make:

(p. 210) Our results illustrate the complexity of climate change effects on rice yields at both the aggregate and individual levels, the scope of farmers’ ability to counter climate change, and thus the importance of accurate modeling of farmers’ decisions. Overall, farmers are unable to neutralize the adverse effects of the more extreme climate change. However, they are able to cope with milder climate change and even benefit slightly from small increases in rainfall. While most farmers manage to adjust to milder climate change, poor farmers are less able to do so.

It should be noted that in our analysis we consider only farmers’ adjustment through input decision rules. We do not model or incorporate possible changes in timing of input usage, nor broader adjustments such as changes in the type of crop grown or migration. As a result, our findings may overstate both yield changes and implied welfare effects of climate change.

Source:
Felkner, John, Kamilya Tazhibayeva, and Robert Townsend. “Impact of Climate Change on Rice Production in Thailand.” American Economic Review 99, no. 2 (May 2009): 205-10.

Creator of Cap-and-Trade Now Says Plan is Ineffective and Inflexible

CrockerThomas2009-09-13.jpg

“When he was a graduate student in the 1960s working to reduce pollutants, Thomas Crocker devised a cap-and-trade system similar to one being considered in Congress.” Source of photo and caption: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. A7) In the 1960s, a University of Wisconsin graduate student named Thomas Crocker came up with a novel solution for environmental problems: cap emissions of pollutants and then let firms trade permits that allow them to pollute within those limits.

Now legislation using cap-and-trade to limit greenhouse gases is working its way through Congress and could become the law of the land. But Mr. Crocker and other pioneers of the concept are doubtful about its chances of success. They aren’t abandoning efforts to curb emissions. But they are tiptoeing away from an idea they devised decades ago, doubting it can work on the grand scale now envisioned.
“I’m skeptical that cap-and-trade is the most effective way to go about regulating carbon,” says Mr. Crocker, 73 years old, a retired economist in Centennial, Wyo. He says he prefers an outright tax on emissions because it would be easier to enforce and provide needed flexibility to deal with the problem.
. . .
Mr. Crocker sees two modern-day problems in using a cap-and-trade system to address the global greenhouse-gas issue. The first is that carbon emissions are a global problem with myriad sources. Cap-and-trade, he says, is better suited for discrete, local pollution problems. “It is not clear to me how you would enforce a permit system internationally,” he says. “There are no institutions right now that have that power.”
Europe has embraced cap-and-trade rules. Emissions initially rose there because industries were given more permits than they needed, and regulators have since tightened the caps. Meanwhile China, India and other developing markets are reluctant to go along, fearing limits would curb their growth. If they don’t participate, there is little assurance that global carbon emissions will slow much even if the U.S. goes forward with its own plan. And even if everyone signs up, Mr. Crocker says, it isn’t clear the limits will be properly enforced across nations and industries.
The other problem, Mr. Crocker says, is that quantifying the economic damage of climate change — from floods to failing crops — is fraught with uncertainty. One estimate puts it at anywhere between 5% and 20% of global gross domestic product. Without knowing how costly climate change is, nobody knows how tight a grip to put on emissions.
In this case, he says Washington needs to come up with an approach that will be flexible and easy to adjust over a long stretch of time as more becomes known about damages from greenhouse-gas emissions. Mr. Crocker says cap-and-trade is better suited for problems where the damages are clear — like acid rain in the 1990s — and a hard limit is needed quickly.
“Once a cap is in place,” he warns, “it is very difficult to adjust.” For example, buyers of emissions permits would see their value reduced if the government decided in the future to loosen the caps.

For the full story, see:
JON HILSENRATH. “Cap-and-Trade’s Unlikely Critics: Its Creators; Economists Behind Original Concept Question the System’s Large-Scale Usefulness, and Recommend Emissions Taxes Instead.” The Wall Street Journal (Thurs., AUGUST 13, 2009): A7.
(Note: ellipsis added.)