No increase in global temperatures observed in the last 11 years:And our climate models did not forecast it, even though man-made carbon dioxide, the gas thought to be responsible for warming our planet, has continued to rise.
So what on Earth is going on?
No one seems to know.
(HT Russ Roberts)
Glenn Reynolds:Say what you will about the underlying issue, there's been no topic -- even Iraq -- on which media coverage has been more one-sided and unrelenting than that of man-made global warming. And it's been worse in Britain than here. And yet . . . Poll: most Britons doubt cause of climate change."The majority of the British public is still not convinced that climate change is caused by humans - and many others believe scientists are exaggerating the problem, according to an exclusive poll for The Observer. The results have shocked campaigners who hoped that doubts would have been silenced by a report last year by more than 2,500 scientists for the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)."Shockingly, almost two thirds think it's just a scheme to raise taxes.
Shocking indeed!
Globbal temperatures haven't risen in a decade:Global temperatures will drop slightly this year as a result of the cooling effect of the La Nina current in the Pacific, UN meteorologists have said.This underscores the point that the science of global warming is not as well understood (or agreed upon) as many would have us believe. The issue has been so politicized, it makes it more difficult for good scientific and economic research to be done in the area. Climatologists are needed to research what is going on and why. Economists are needed to explain the potential effects on the economy, natural resources, and the effectiveness of policies on behavior.
The World Meteorological Organization's secretary-general, Michel Jarraud, told the BBC it was likely that La Nina would continue into the summer.
This would mean global temperatures have not risen since 1998, prompting some to question climate change theory.
Ethanol exacerbates global warming. Whoops.The ink is still moist on Capitol Hill's latest energy bill and, as if on cue, a scientific avalanche is demolishing its assumptions. To wit, trendy climate-change policies like ethanol and other biofuels are actually worse for the environment than fossil fuels.
The rebukes arrive via two new studies in Science, a peer-reviewed journal not known for right-wing proclivities. The first, by ecologists at Princeton and the Woods Hole Research Center, reviews the environmental consequences of increased biofuel consumption, which had never been examined comprehensively.
The researchers break new ground by exposing a kind of mega-accounting error: Prior studies had never credited the carbon-dioxide emissions that arise when virgin forests, grasslands and the like are cleared to grow biofuel feedstocks.
About 2.7 times more carbon is stored in terrestrial soils and plant material than in the atmosphere, and this carbon is released when these areas are cleared (often by burning) and the soil is tilled. Compounding problems is the loss of "carbon sinks" that absorb atmospheric CO2 in the bargain. Previous projections had also ignored the second-order effects of transferring normal farm land to biofuels, which exerts world-wide pressure on land use.
So, incredibly, when the hidden costs of conversion are included, greenhouse-gas emissions from corn ethanol over the next 30 years will be twice as high as from regular gasoline. In the long term, it will take 167 years before the reduction in carbon emissions from using ethanol "pays back" the carbon released by land-use change. As they say, it's not easy being green.
More after the link, including details on a second study out of the University of Minnesota and the Nature Conservancy. Big whoops.
What's wrong with this picture?
BALI, Indonesia -- Never before have so many people converged to try to save the planet from global warming, with more than 10,000 jetting into this Indonesian resort island, from government ministers to Nobel laureates to drought-stricken farmers.
But critics say they are contributing to the very problem they aim to solve.
"Nobody denies this is an important event, but huge numbers of people are going, and their emissions are probably going to be greater than a small African country," said Chris Goodall, author of the book "How to Live a Low-Carbon Life."
In all, 190 countries are represented.
The United States is sending more than 100 delegates, and all 27 countries of the European Union are flying in national teams.
Non-governmental organizations also are attending, from groups advocating the rights of indigenous people to those seeking to protect rapidly dwindling forests.
And there are those with something to sell, including technology to produce drinking water and businesses ready to capitalize on future carbon trading markets.
Al Gore’s got an Oscar, an Emmy, and as of today a Nobel Peace Prize. And the “Draft Gore” movement thinks they’d all look good on his desk in the Oval Office.Björn Lomborg writes:
On the other hand, Greg Mankiw is happy to see a member of the Pigou Club win.This year's Nobel peace prize justly rewards the thousands of scientists of the United Nations climate change panel (the IPCC). These scientists are engaged in excellent, painstaking work that establishes exactly what the world should expect from climate change.
The other award winner, former US vice-president Al Gore, has spent much more time telling us what to fear. While the IPCC's estimates and conclusions are grounded in careful study, Gore doesn't seem to be similarly restrained.
John Tierney on Bjorn Lomborg on climate change:
If you’re worried about stronger hurricanes flooding coasts, [Lomborg] says, concentrate on limiting coastal development and expanding wetlands right now rather than trying to slightly delay warming decades from now. To give urbanites a break from hotter summers, concentrate on reducing the urban-heat-island effect. If cities planted more greenery and painted roofs and streets white, he says, they could more than offset the impact of global warming.
The biggest limitation to his cost-benefit analyses is that no one knows exactly what global warming will produce. It may not be worth taking expensive steps to forestall a one-foot rise in the sea level, but what if the seas rise much higher? Dr. Lomborg’s critics argue that we owe it to future generations to prepare for the worst-case projections.
But preparing for the worst in future climate is expensive, which means less money for the most serious threats today — and later this century. You can imagine plenty of worst-case projections that have nothing to do with climate change, as Dr. Lomborg reminded me at the end of our expedition.
“No historian would look back at the last two centuries and rank the rising sea level here as one of the city’s major problems,” he said, sitting safely dry and cool inside the Bridge Cafe. “I don’t think our descendants will thank us for leaving them poorer and less healthy just so we could do a little bit to slow global warming. I’d rather we were remembered for solving the other problems first.”
We modern folk are fortunate to be able to worry, if we choose, about environmental problems such as global warming, species loss, and whether or not companies drill for oil off of the coast of California. A principal cause of our good fortune is the fact that capitalism makes our daily lives so clean, sanitary, and healthy -- and, generally, wealthy -- that we can afford to stew in concern about environmental problems that are more speculative and far more distant than were the environmental problems that plagued our ancestors -- problems such as houses with thatched, bug-infested roofs and no indoor plumbing or hard flooring.
I call capitalism the great anti-pollutant. Our lives truly and thoroughly are cleaned by capitalism. This realization first hit me several years ago as I stood at an automatic-flush urinal in LaGuardia airport. "I don't have to touch this thing to flush it; how wonderfully sanitary!" I marveled.
Well, here's a further development along these lines: no-touch dispensers of toilet paper.
WASHINGTON, DC—In a nationally televised address reminiscent of President Kennedy's historic 1961 speech pledging to put a man on the moon, President Bush responded to the global warming crisis Monday by calling for the construction of a giant national air conditioner by the year 2015.
The National Air Conditioner Initiative is expected to be the largest public works project in the nation's history. Because technology capable of creating an air conditioner that can fulfill the cooling needs of a continental land mass does not presently exist, the president estimated that research and development alone will require at least $100 trillion in both federal and private sector funds.
While Bush's speech left many questions unanswered, such as whether the one-touch cooling settings would be under federal or state jurisdiction, reaction from congressional Democrats and Republicans has been largely favorable.
In his new book, The Assault on Reason, Al Gore pleads, "We must stop tolerating the rejection and distortion of science. We must insist on an end to the cynical use of pseudo-studies known to be false for the purpose of intentionally clouding the public's ability to discern the truth." Gore repeatedly asks that science and reason displace cynical political posturing as the central focus of public discourse.
If Gore really means what he writes, he has an opportunity to make a difference by leading by example on the issue of global warming.
A cooperative and productive discussion of global warming must be open and honest regarding the science. Global warming threats ought to be studied and mitigated, and they should not be deliberately exaggerated as a means of building support for a desired political position.
Many of the assertions Gore makes in his movie, ''An Inconvenient Truth,'' have been refuted by science, both before and after he made them. Gore can show sincerity in his plea for scientific honesty by publicly acknowledging where science has rebutted his claims.
Read the whole thing.
Based on a New York Times/CBS News/MTV poll, more than half of Americans aged 17-29 want universal health care and believe that global warming should be one of the government’s “highest priorities.”
And although they are just as worried as the general population about the outlook for the country and think their generation is likely to be worse off than that of their parents–
Worse off than their parents? Their parents had draft cards, not video iPods. Silly young people.
(HT Don Boudreaux)
Lawerence Solomon writing for the Financial Times:
"Only an insignificant fraction of scientists deny the global warming crisis. The time for debate is over. The science is settled."
So said Al Gore ... in 1992. Amazingly, he made his claims despite much evidence of their falsity. A Gallup poll at the time reported that 53% of scientists actively involved in global climate research did not believe global warming had occurred; 30% weren't sure; and only 17% believed global warming had begun. Even a Greenpeace poll showed 47% of climatologists didn't think a runaway greenhouse effect was imminent; only 36% thought it possible and a mere 13% thought it probable.
Today, Al Gore is making the same claims of a scientific consensus, as do the United Nation's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change [IPCC] and hundreds of government agencies and environmental groups around the world. But the claims of a scientific consensus remain unsubstantiated. They have only become louder and more frequent.
More than six months ago, I began writing this series, The Deniers. When I began, I accepted the prevailing view that scientists overwhelmingly believe that climate change threatens the planet. I doubted only claims that the dissenters were either kooks on the margins of science or sell-outs in the pockets of the oil companies.
Somewhere along the way, I stopped believing that a scientific consensus exists on climate change. Certainly there is no consensus at the very top echelons of scientists -- the ranks from which I have been drawing my subjects -- and certainly there is no consensus among astrophysicists and other solar scientists, several of whom I have profiled. If anything, the majority view among these subsets of the scientific community may run in the opposite direction. Not only do most of my interviewees either discount or disparage the conventional wisdom as represented by the IPCC, many say their peers generally consider it to have little or no credibility.
Read the whole thing.
(HT Instapundit)
China will pass the United States as the world's biggest source of greenhouse gasses this year, an official with the International Energy Agency was quoted as saying.China had been forecast to surpass the U.S. in 2010, but its sizzling economic growth has pushed the date forward, the IEA's chief economist, Fatih Birol, was quoted as saying in an interview appearing in Tuesday's Wall Street Journal newspaper. . . . China is a signatory to the Kyoto Protocol on reducing greenhouse gasses, but is exempt from its restrictions because it is a developing country.
This is a position I'm glad to lose. While I am highly skeptical of much of the research and rhetoric about global warming, I do believe it is important to take care of the environment. However, if you want to impact the world for good, there are probably better bangs for your buck. (I just added this list to my sidebar.)
Here's an animated graphic that shows the relative pollution of countries around the world.
(HT Instapundit)
Several discussions I had with fellow travelers on my way to and from Kansas City last week:
THE MISERY OF LIFE IN AMERICA:
I sat next to a lawyer on the plane I got stuck on trying to fly out of DC for the first time. He was absolutely convinced that the quality of life in America was far more miserable than at any point in our history. When I asked him why he thought so in an age of increasing lifespans, higher levels of wealth and technology, less work hours, and improved living conditions for virtually everyone he gave his response:
"We have longer commutes than ever before. How can anyone be happy with that?"
I asked him where he lived and he said Denver. I asked why he didn't move if he was so miserable, he couldn't give a good reply.
CLIMATE CHANGE:
The same lawyer was absolutely convinced that climate change was destroying the world. He thought we should sacrifice the economic growth of two generations of Americans to "solve" the problem. When I asked him what his evidence was for the level of danger, he said to watch "An Inconvenient Truth"...
One my way back from Kansas City, I sat next to a meteorologist who works for NOAA and asked him what his thoughts were on climate change. He said it is very uncertain whether or not human activity is contributing to global temperature increases and that any increase is more likely to be due to natural causes. He said that volcanic erruptions often produce far more carbon emissions into the atmosphere than many years of human activity. I'll put my stock in a trained meterologist trained in climatology rather than in a lawyer who happened to see "An Inconvenient Truth".
The meteorologist also said we should do things that are good for the environment regardless of the impact on global warming because it's the right thing to do. I agree.
IRAQ:
After my flight leaving DC got cancelled, I was standing in line behind a soldier who had been serving in Iraq and was planning on going back in a few weeks. I asked him what he and other troops thought of the war. He said that most of them don't know what they're fighting for anymore. Many are disillusioned and their morale is very low. He was supposed to be home for Christmas last year and had his stay extended 3 months beyond what he had been promised. Many other troops have experienced the same.
Regardless of what you think of the war, this is no way for the the troops to be treated. This makes me sad.
Readers of this blog know that I have a large degree of skepticism for much of the global warming rhetoric going around political circles nowadays. It's not so much that I doubt that the earth may in fact be getting warmer as much as I think the science is poorly understood by most people offering "solutions" and the potential impact of most of the "solutions" are poorly understood by those who do understand the science. I also believe there is far more disagreement among scientists about the cause of global warming than is realized by most of the public.
In trying to keep myself and others well-informed about this issue, here is a roundup of various thoughts and opinions on global warming from around the blogosphere:
Economists Joe Stiglitz, Nicholas Stern, and Martin Weitzman have new pieces on global warming. The most interesting (as well as the most technically demanding) is the one by Weitzman. His conclusion: "The Stern Review may well be right for the wrong reasons."
Do I "believe in " global warming? In the sense that the world seems to be warmer now than in recent history, yes. The more apocalyptic scenarios seem to me to remain unproven, but certainly cause for concern.
Do I believe that global warming is anthropogenic? Not so clear. Plausible, but still far from certain.
Does this matter? Probably not. Regardless of what you think of the above, burning carbon is a lousy idea. Coal and oil are, over the long term, far more valuable as chemical feedstocks than as fuels anyway, and burning them is unacceptably filthy regardless of greenhouse issues.
Burning less carbon is good planetary hygiene, and good practice generally, regardless of what you think of global warming. So, I suppose, in a way we should be pursuing global warming remedies regardless of what you think about global warming.
Cosmic Rays Blamed for Global Warming:
Man-made climate change may be happening at a far slower rate than has been claimed, according to controversial new research.
Scientists say that cosmic rays from outer space play a far greater role in changing the Earth's climate than global warming experts previously thought.
Senators Boxer & Inhofe Discuss Climate Change On Larry King
Sens. Barbara Boxer and James Inhofe, chairwoman and ranking minority member of the Environment & Public Works Committee respectively, discuss climate change on Larry King Live.
Global Warming Is Caused By the... Sun?
... did anyone tell you that in east Antarctica the Adélie penguins and Cape petrels are turning up at their spring nesting sites around nine days later than they did 50 years ago? While sea-ice has diminished in the Arctic since 1978, it has grown by 8% in the Southern Ocean.
That levelling off is just what is expected by the chief rival hypothesis, which says that the sun drives climate changes more emphatically than greenhouse gases do. After becoming much more active during the 20th century, the sun now stands at a high but roughly level state of activity. Solar physicists warn of possible global cooling, should the sun revert to the lazier mood it was in during the Little Ice Age 300 years ago.
Global Warming Deniers Are Like Holocaust Deniers?
I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.
Climate Change Concerts to Dwarf Live Aid
A series of concerts "bigger than Live Aid" is being planned for July, in a bid to put the subject of climate change before an audience of a global audience of 2bn. The event, scheduled for July 7, will feature co-ordinated film, music and television events in seven cities including London, Washington DC, Shanghai, Rio de Janeiro, Cape Town and Kyoto, with major broadcasters and media owners aiming to extend the reach of public awareness of global warming.
Information Visualization and the Debate Over Global Warming:
Images From Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth"
Joel Hunter Shares A Theological Perspective:
Every major religion has a moral mandate to take care of the Earth. For those who look to the Bible for instruction, it is the first responsibility given to man: “The Lord God took the man and put him into the garden of Eden to cultivate it and keep [protect] it” (Gen: 2:15, NASB). Our moral obligation, then, does not depend on the rate our planet is warming, or even whether the main cause is human activity. We are to refrain from harming God’s creation – period. Few Christians or persons of other faiths (or no faith) would disagree with that statement.
But the latest reports indicate the need to move the care of creation up the priority scale. The great news is that individually we can help as much as we have harmed the physical environment, but we must watch out that we don’t poison the environment of relationships in the process….
The environmental issue can become a substitute religion. Our faith has to do with obeying God and loving our neighbor. Hugging trees is not the point. Creation care is important to many Biblical themes we need to address, including sanctity of life, disease, poverty, and conflict.
(HT Joshua Sowin)
Bryan Caplan on "What Do We Know About Climate Preferences?"
Suppose you surveyed a random sample of Americans with the following question:
"Overall, would you rather the climate in the area you live got warmer, got cooler, or stayed the same?"
Has such a survey ever been done? My guess is that about 50% want warmer, 30% the same, and only 20% want cooler. Anyone else willing to hazard a guess? Or know of some real data?
The Real Questions Behind Global Warming by Tyler Cowen
The key issue is what we can expect from China and India. As I understand the evidence, if China and India continue to grow, the United States cannot succeed in much limiting global warming on its own. Let us assume, somewhat dubiously (many European countries are further from Kyoto targets than is the United States), that Europe is already on board, what are the options?
Global Cooling Costs Too Much by Jonah Goldberg
Earth got about 0.7 degrees Celsius warmer in the 20th century while it increased its GDP by 1,800 percent, by one estimate. How much of that 0.7 degrees can be laid at the feet of that 1,800 percent is unknowable, but let’s stipulate that all of the warming was the result of our prosperity...
That’s still an amazing bargain. Life expectancies in the United States increased from about 47 years to about 77 years. Literacy, medicine, leisure and even, in many respects, the environment have improved mightily over the course of the 20th century, at least in the prosperous West.
Given the option of getting another 1,800 percent richer in exchange for another 0.7 degrees warmer, I’d take the heat in a heartbeat.
These statistical projections are highly uncertain. In fact, I do not think that the climate modelers have anywhere near enough data to make usable predictions.
99 percent of the people who knowingly tell you that global warming is real and that the science is conclusive have no clue about statistical modeling. The statistical challenges of climate modeling that scientists understand among themselves are quite different from the popular conceptions that imagine some concrete certainty. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, never before in the field of public policy have so many had such confidence in model forecasts based on so few meaningful observations.
And finally, Don Boudreaux sums up my views pretty nicely in Let's Have Less Hot Air About Global Warming:
I am not so much a skeptic of global warming as I am of politicized efforts to deal with it. I am most assuredly a skeptic of pronouncements, predictions, and assumptions made by natural scientists -- and by politicians and pundits -- about global-warming's likely consequences on human economy and society. Many (most?) of these scientists have no earthly idea of the fundamental logic of market exchange.
(This charge is no criticism; it merely points to an inevitable result of a deep division of labor. After all, most of us who are not environmental scientists are poorly equipped to grasp the important details and nuances of environmental science. Likewise, specializing in natural science (or in politics, or Hollywood acting) reduces the time and effort you put forward to study and understand the economy.)
And someone with no firm grasp of economic principles can be as right as right can be about global warming and its causes while simultaneously being utterly benighted about what to do about it and even whether or not something should be done about it.
Here are some of my previous posts related to global warming:
It's one thing to convince people that the earth is getting warmer. It's another thing to convince people that human actions are the cause of global warming. But it's a much harder thing still to convince people that the results of global warming will be something other than a more pleasant winter in Minnesota and a less pleasant summer in Arizona. You've got to convince people that we're making the earth less hospitable for human and other life forms. We all know that the earth goes through big climate swings. So how likely is it that we're actually going to destroy the earth? On top of all that, you've got to convince people we can actually do something about the problem. As Robert Samuelson points out, there's not that much we can do.
But the biggest reason nothing is going to happen is that Al Gore Oscar nomination. Imagine ten years from now that the United States starts getting more protectionist. We start limiting imports and refusing to honor trade agreements. In response, George W. Bush does a brilliant documentary on the virtues of free trade. I don't care how brilliant and accurate and persuasive the documentary turns out. At least 40% of the American people (and maybe it will be a lot more than 40%) will decide that because it comes from George Bush, the whole thing must be garbage with a hidden political agenda. Well about 40% of the American people (and maybe a lot more than 40%) think that Al Gore has a political agenda and can't be trusted.
Having Al Gore as the most recognized advocate for action against global warming reduces the political likelihood of action. It politicizes something that should be pure science and reminds people that the solutions to global warming are going to come via the political process rather than from the experts.
The final reason we're not going to do anything about global warming is because the Chinese aren't going to do anything about global warming. If the Chinese don't do anything, our incentive is very small. We will have to take a big hit in standard of living to make up for the surge in the Chinese pollution that's coming. And I don't think the Chinese are going to do anything to reduce their march toward modernity.
A final thought: the experts on global warming bear little cost for making overly pessimistic predictions about the world in 2100. So they have an incentive to make overly pessimistic predictions.
David Friedman shares some thought-provoking comments on global warming (emphasis mine):
Suppose the cause of global warming is not human action but changes in solar activity or some other external factor. Suppose also that the consequences of global warming will be catastrophic. Finally suppose that there is something we can do to prevent global warming, say raising the albedo of the earth with orbital mirrors, high altitude pollution, or whatever. Isn't the argument for doing it precisely the same as if we were causing the warming? Hence isn't "whose fault is it" a wholly irrelevant distraction?
The crucial fact for me is that the more persuasive predictions of bad effects are well into the future; at one point the estimate was a sea level rise of half a meter to a meter over the next century. In my view, the next century is sufficiently uncertain so that it makes little sense to take expensive precautions against risks that far off.
By the time the risk arrives, if it arrives, we may have already wiped outselves out in some other way. If we have not wiped ourselves out, our lives may have changed in a way that eliminates or even reverses the problem; communting via virtual reality produces little CO2. If we are still around and the problem is still around, we are likely to have a level of technology and wealth that will make possible a range of solutions well beyond what we are currently considering.
Read the whole thing!
The Foundation for Economic Education's Sheldon Richman, shares some wisdom on global warming:
More than a few reputable scientists see potential problems in the climate change that is occurring. Thus the issue needs to be evaluated on its merits. I know of no a priori reason to rule out the possibility that human activity is producing enough greenhouse gases to warm the atmosphere to an extent that will have bad consequences. That doesn't mean it's happening, just that it's not impossible.
For every factoid about ice sheets or sea levels or sun spots I can pull from the skeptics' literature, someone else can produce a counter-factoid. How is a nonscientist to decide which is accurate?
This is not to say the skeptics don't raise apparently compelling points. They do, and the believers should address them. But that still leaves the problem of how a layman is to sort the wheat from the chaff.
For advocates of individual liberty it is tempting to believe the skeptics are right because the other side is associated with statist solutions to climate change. Most solutions call for government control over the burning of fossil fuels. No advocate of free markets can be comfortable with a position that entails substantial taxes and subsidies to achieve a political objective -- reduction of carbon emissions -- especially when the solutions promise no more than negligible reductions in temperature. (Temperature, not emissions per se, is supposed to be the believers' cause for concern.)
But picking sides in a scientific debate on the basis of proposed remedies is the wrong way to go about things. A believer in global warming could get the science right but the remedy wrong. That government shouldn't ban smoking doesn't mean smoking isn't bad for you. There is nothing incoherent about favoring free markets and thinking that global warming is a problem.
Unfortunately, I have rarely heard the science of global warming discussed as a separate issue from solutions. It' is always the assertion "global warming is occurring..." without discussing magnitude of its impact, immediately followed by "therefore we must..." Shouldn't these be two separate issues? Why is it that the politicians are the ones speaking about this much more than the scientists?
This is why, as a Christian, I have grave concerns about the Evangelical Climate Initiative (ECI). Particularly when several pastors I greatly respect are signatories. (See this New York Times article for more on this.)
Apparently, I'm not the only Christian concerned about this:
About 20 prominent, politically-active evangelical Christian leaders -- including Charles Colson, Dr. James Dobson of Focus on the Family and Dr. Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention -- recently urged the National Association of Evangelicals to stay out of the global warming debate. They wrote: "There should be room for Bible-believing evangelicals to disagree about the cause, severity and solutions to the global warming issue."
While I think this initiative is well-intended (as are many efforts to "solve" global-warming), it seems like it amounts to public support of scientific findings by pastors without the expertise to make this claim and endorsement of economic solutions without a solid understanding of the economics involved.
Don Boudreaux shares his thoughts on Richman's statements here. In this post, Dr. Boudreaux quotes GMU law professor Bruce Johnsen:
Although climate scientists are competent to tell us whether the earth is, for the time being, warming, or whether it is warming outside some historically normal parameters, they are not competent to forecast the economic consequences of such warming or to suggest what should be done in response. When they try to do so they are not acting as scientists but as political advocates. Even if it is true that global warming will generate "large-scale disruptions," the consensus among economists -- whose expertise is at evaluating trade-offs -- is that taking the steps necessary to avoid such disruptions will lead to substantially larger disruptions.
In my estimation, it seems most economists are unqualified to tell climatologists what is occurring with global warming. Likewise, most climatologists are unqualified to predict the economic consequences of such warming or of the potential "solutions". It seems like most well-meaning pastors lack the training for making either of these judgments. Supporting something that sounds like it is a good thing to do (and has a lot of popular support) without carefully weighing in all the evidence and potential consequences is a very dangerous road to travel and not being a good steward of the intellectual, informational, or influential gifts we've been given.
Unfortunately the poor, who are the ones ECI members most want to help, are the ones who would be most negatively impacted by many of the proposed "solutions" to fight global warming. If pastors really want to help fight global warming in an effective way, they should consider signing up for the Pigou Club instead.
See this New York Times article about the Evangelical Climate Initiative and this Wall Street Journal opinion piece on the lack of consensus within the scientific community about global warming.
Joe Carter of The Evangelical Outpost shares some great thoughts on ECI here and here.
Read more about the Christian debate here, including this response to ECI by Calvin Beisner (PDF), associate professor of historical theology and social ethics at Knox Theological Seminary:
It is important to speak directly to the issue of motive. We do not question the motive of those who produced or signed the ECI’s “Call to Action.” We assume that they acted out of genuine concern for the world’s poor and others and considered their action justified by scientific, economic, theological, and ethical facts. We trust that they will render us the same respect.
It is not sufficient, however, to have good intentions. They must be linked to sound understanding of relevant principles, theories, and facts.
AMEN!
Bjorn Lomborg on Global Warming:
Global warming is an important issue and one which we should address. But there is no sense of proportion either in environmental terms, or indeed in terms of the other issues facing the world.
If you just take the environmental problem first, it's very clear that what causes by far the majority of deaths is lack clean drinking water and lack of sanitation. Millions of people are dying each year from this. Also taking the new WHO estimates of what really kills people, these are the huge issues.
The second biggest problem is indoor air pollution, which probably kills somewhere between 1 and 3 million people each year, basically because people are too poor to use good fuels and end up using dung or cardboard or whatever they can find. Only a very distant third comes climate change, which the WHO puts at 150,000 to die right now.
This of course ignores those people that are no longer dying from cold-related deaths. For some inexcusable reasons, I would argue, they have the idea that they will only look at things that are going to be bad and don't have to look at will be good from climate change.
One of the top climate change economists has modelled - and several papers that came out a couple of weeks ago essentially point out - that climate change will probably mean fewer deaths, not more deaths. It is estimated that climate change by about 2050 will mean about 800,000 fewer deaths.
There is a total lack of a sense of proportion about where we are in terms of the environment but also on non-environmental issues, which is of course what I am looking at now with the Copenhagen Consensus, where we try to look at what are the big issues of the world, and where can we do a lot of good, and where can we do a little good. And the bottom line is there are many problems in the world where we can do much more at much lower cost. So presumably, if our goal is to help people, then there are many other things we should do first. If our goal is to help the environment, then there are also many other things we can do first.
