Reply To: Wealth of Nations, and Economics of Abundance

[Brian H]

Duke Leto wrote: No I do not. I do not even disagree that applying Gore’s prescriptions would cause massive economic hardship, but as I see it so will AGW in the long term. Much more so. In fact Peak Oil will probably cause a depression and a World War if nothing is done on AGW or if any measures are taken, so long as no new energy source emerges. So as I see it FF is humanity’s and the US’s only real hope at this point.

But I do disagree with the Wegman criticism. Basically we have a statistician called in to criticize the conclusions of climate scientists by a Texas Republican house committee chairman to comment on a scientific finding that conservatives are politically opposed too. Lovely. Michael Behe has similar credentials. I’m not even going to bother looking at the findings of the British judge, as they are 100% irrelevant. Judges do not arbitrate science any more then chemists judge the merits of writs of appeal.

I looked at RealClimate’s contemporary response to the hearing. What amuses me in the whole discussion is that the GW critics are bitching about variations in the amplitude of the graphs, whether it was warmer before the little ice age then it is now and such. That isn’t the point. The point is the 1st and 2nd derivatives of the graph. Did the temperature changes in the past operate as FAST as they are now and does this indicate the appearance of a powerful new force in global climate? I fail to see how anyone can not answer yes to those two questions.

Plato supposedly wrote “I’ll admit no one who doesn’t understand Geometry” over the door of the Academy. Modern science ought to substitute Calculus. (Yes, Plato WAS an utter bastard.)

Statistical incompetence is very much to the point. The 1st and 2nd derivitives are bogus issues, since there is no comparison to equally fine-grained data in earlier periods. E.g.: during any long-run episode of cooling or warming, how “jagged” is the process? There very well may have been sharp rises and falls which the data are too fuzzy to resolve. Actually, in more recent geological times, there have been some very fast “flips”, on the order of decades, which are not taken into account in the IPCC data. They are usually as the result, it seems, of poorly understood changes in ocean circulation and wind patterns.

As far as the economics goes, you misrepresent the conclusion. The Nordhaus analysis INCLUDES the negative impact of AGW, and considers a) how much of it is mitigated by the proposed policy, and b) how much it costs to do so, plus c) the secondary benefits of applying the policy (e.g., increased device and energy efficiencies as spinoffs of upgrading). FF-type solutions have the multiple advantages of costing little and creating great net wealth combined with high effectiveness in cutting carbon use. All the other possibilities are weak in one or more of those areas. Gore’s ideas are weak in all of them, even the first.