Reply To: Wealth of Nations, and Economics of Abundance

[Brian H]

Take a look at Freeman Dyson’s review of a book detailing economic projections of AGW “cures” on a cost-benefit basis. Drastic Gore-Stern solutions are disasters. FF-type “low-cost backstop” energy sources are huge net pluses. That’s taking AGW as a given, which I certainly do not. The IPCC modelling is riddled with circular mathematical logic, most notoriously the now-defunct “hockey stick” graph, which was the result of an Al-Gore-ithm which had been tweaked to produce that output no matter what data was fed in.

Dyson is personally convinced that comparatively inexpensive and easily do-able modifications of agriculture and forestry practices would have overwhelmingly larger impact on CO2 than any “industrial/consumer” fixes, e.g.

It’s interesting to note, historically, that “Warm Periods” of the historical record (higher than all but the direst predictions currently) were boom times for humanity. Cool periods, like the Little Ice Age, not so much.