2009

“Climate change is a threat multiplier” is the new trendy rationale for Kyoto-style energy rationing. One hears little these days about Al Gore’s nightmare vision of death and destruction from ever more powerful and frequent hurricanes, catastrophic sea-level rise, or a warming-induced climate shift into a new ice age. This story line is too implausible for most grownups to swallow or patronize, no matter how desperate they are to look green.

The new, more ‘nuanced’ rationale for energy rationing is that global warming will aggravate several pre-existing environmental and health threats that cause or contribute to instability and conflict. We’re supposed to fear that a warming world will be much more violent and dangerous. Supposedly, “even the generals are worried” that U.S. security forces will be overstretched, even overwhelmed, by crisis after crisis after crisis. Unless, of course, Congress comes through with bigger and bigger appropriations for DOD! 

This is bunkum, as I discuss here, here, and here. Today, I want to pour more cold water on threat-multiplier hype, courtesy of my colleague, environmental researcher Indur Goklany.

Goklany (”Goks” to his friends) recently responded to an article in the Economist arguing that global warming exacerbates conditions (drought, flooding, hunger, insect-borne disease) in poor countries that already impede their development. From which it follows (although the article doesn’t spell it out) that climate change increases the likelihood of state failure, violence, and war.

Chief among the conditions that will allegedly become worse in a warming world are drought and flooding. ”Regardless of whether this is the case,”  Goks writes in his letter to the Economist, “deaths from droughts have declined 99.9% since the 1920s, and 99% from floods since the 1930s” [1]. Yet alarmists tell us that the warming of the latter half of the 20th century was unprecedented in the past 1300 years.

In view of the long-established and overwhelming trends towards greater safety, despite allegedly unprecedented warming, it is difficult to believe that droughts and floods will be a major cause of violent conflict in coming decades. That is especially the case when, as noted previously, nations faced with water shortages typically cooperate and trade, not come to blows.

More broadly, Goks points out, all the long-term trends in environmental factors affecting development are positive:

In fact, access to safe water, improved sanitation, crop yields, and life expectancy has never been higher in the history of mankind.[2] This is true for both the developing and developed worlds. Much of this has been enabled, directly or indirectly, by economic surpluses generated by the use of fossil fuels and other greenhouse gas generating activities such as fertilizer usage, pumping water for irrigation, and use of farm machinery. And crop yields, in particular, are also higher today than ever partly because of higher concentrations of CO2, without which yields would be zero.

Some day — who knows when?– “even the generals” will outgrow climate hysteria and get back to worrying about threats they actually know how to do something about.

Today’s New York Times carries an article, “Hopes fade for comprehensive climate treaty.“  It’s not that important an article about the lead-up to Copenhagen.  What’s most interesting are the comments from these NYT readers — many expressing skepticism about catastrophic global warming, confusion about the science, and linkages between energy use and economic growth. Here are some examples of those views – of course, the usual “sky is falling” comments are there too.

MrPitchfork

Maybe some day, someone will finally say, “Global warming is a fraud perpetrated by Al Gore and other green technology invested twits to make themselves rich at tax payers expense” and it fall and die and turn into “Global cooling”… again..

Dan DiLeo

Faced with the pressing desire of their citizens for improved living standards,it is hard to imagine the leaders of poor and emerging countries to do anything that might conceivably inhibit the most rapid and most well-tested possible path to development. The only conceivable way to get them to sign on is through some enormous and very reliable transfer of wealth to those countries. Very hard to envision.

Paul

Good news! I knew we could count on the international bureaucrats to disagree and throw a monkey wrench into this farce called global warming. As the world starts a cyclical cooling trend maybe they will come to their senses, if that is even possible for these people.

Glenn

[Excerpt from lengthy comment]… My suggestion? I would love for a news source like the New York Times to host a series of debates between the scientists on both sides of this issue. No politicians or other loudmouths allowed. I’d like to see an agenda created ahead of time, negotiated by both sides so the issues are framed properly and also have the encounters structured so that the key issues are given enough time to be thoroughly explored. If the AGW folks win this hands down – as they should if the debate it’s structured properly, than folks like me can feel more assured in demanding the very difficult policy decisions that we must make from our leadership.

Finally, I know that the Gore’s of the world, and many other’s, say “the debate is over” but clearly, in the real world, it’s not, otherwise we’d be seeing different behavior. Let’s do this, let’s make it global and make it a learning experience for all of us. Instead of cursing the darkness and hoping our government can force policy on folks who don’t believe in AGW, let’s lead people to understand this issue more clearly. I think that may be the only chance we have, and if the planet is really at risk, then of course the effort is worth it.

AlexBell

The USA march toward European Socialism will result in the colapse of our ecconomy and way of life. Countries like Brazil, India, China, and Russia are growing because the have and is energy as a way of growing their ecconomy. The USA can not shrink its self to propserity. Renewable energy – Yes. Energy indepentence – Yes. Cap and Trade (tax) – NO NO!!

The usually courteous practice of international diplomacy degenerated into name-calling last week over which nations are responsible for the slow pace of negotiations for a successor climate treaty to the Kyoto Protocol, which environmentalists hope will be finalized this December in Copenhagen.

It all started when Yu Qingtai, a Chinese official, told reporters during a Bangkok climate conference that, “I have yet to see a developed country or a group of developed countries coming up to say to the public, the international community and to their own people that they are not here to kill the Kyoto Protocol.”

He was referring to the concept of “common but differentiated responsibilities,” enshrined in the Kyoto Protocol, which absolves developing countries from any responsibility to fight climate change until they attain a higher standard of living. Developed countries want to jettison this principle because rapidly developing countries (such as China, India, and Brazil) will account for almost all future increases in global greenhouse gas emissions.

Mr. Qingtai’s comments elicited a response from the European Union’s lead negotiator, Mr. Runger-Metzger, who told reporters that, “You may have heard that China accused the EU of killing off the Kyoto Protocol. But it is the U.S. that is trying to kill it. They want everything ‘common’ and nothing ‘differentiated.'”

Mr. Runger-Metzger’s assertion is patently false-European nations have repeatedly indicated that treaty to fight global warming must include rapidly developing countries. That’s why an anonymous diplomat told BusinessWeek that “The EU is briefing against the U.S., but they aren’t doing anything where it matters-attacking the U.S. position in the talks themselves.”

The December deadline for a climate treaty has long been in doubt. This week’s undiplomatic cattiness suggests that a breakthrough is all but unthinkable.

Even before publication, the book SuperFreakonomics: Global Cooling, Patriotic Prostitutes, and Why Suicide Bombers Should Buy Life Insurance is the topic of hot debate – on economists’ blogs, including Krugman’s, on Amazon, and, of course, on environmental sites.  SuperFreakonomics’ authors are Steven D. Levitt, a professor of economics at the University of Chicago and Stephen J. Dubner, a former writer and editor at The New York Times Magazine.

The heat was generated by Chapter 5 of the book, which deals with global warming and mitigation techniques, such as geoengineering.  Since the chapter is no longer available for perusal on Amazon, it’s hard to take part in the debate.  But here’s one of the co-authors, Dubner, defending the chapter:

Our global-warming chapter has several sections. We discuss how it’s a very hard problem to solve since pollution is an externality – that is, the people who generate pollution generally don’t pay the cost of their actions and therefore don’t have strong incentives to pollute less. We discuss how even the most sophisticated climate models are limited in their ability to predict the future, and we discuss the large measure of uncertainty in this realm, given that global climate is such a complex and dynamic system. We discuss some of the commonly held misperceptions about climate and energy, including the fact that the historic relationship between global temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide is more complicated than is generally thought.

The real purpose of the chapter is figuring out how to cool the Earth if indeed it becomes catastrophically warmer.

Here’s how Krugman, with his usual understatement, puts down the authors:

. . .they didn’t even look into the debate sufficiently to realize what company they were placing themselves in.

And that’s not acceptable. This is a serious issue. We’re not talking about the ethics of sumo wrestling here; we’re talking, quite possibly, about the fate of civilization. It’s not a place to play snarky, contrarian games.

Here’s a review of the whole book in the Financial Times this past weekend.

It’s got a good lede that should have won at least a front-page Metro slot.  Instead, buried in Saturday’s Washington Post’s Metro Section amid the obituaries on p. B5 was this startling weather note:  On Friday, October 16, 2009, in Washington, DC, the high temperature was the lowest temperature recorded for that date in 138 years! Friday’s high was a low 45 degrees. Here’s the Post:

Something happened in Washington on Friday that had not occurred in 138 years of weather history: For the first time since the National Weather Service began compiling daily data here, the high temperature for Oct. 16 was below 50 degrees.

Now, just imagine if October 16 was the warmest in 138 years – where do you think the Post would have placed the article? Surely not buried in obituaries.