EclectEcon

Please! No Trade Wars!

Following the failed policies of the 1930s, Trump and now Biden are both indicating there will be more restrictions on U.S. imports, especially from China. Policies like these will greatly harm both th e U.S. and the world economies.

1. Regardless of any other argument, we saw in the 1930s that when one country starts a trade "war" by raising tariffs, others retaliate. See references to the Smoot-Hawley tariff wars. We also saw this same effect with Trump's trade war with China: The Chinese retaliation against US farmers was extremely costly to the farmers, requiring bailout policies that cost much more than any potential benefits (of which there were few). Trade wars make everyone worse off (except maybe the lobbyists).
2. It's REALLY hard to argue that the US needs tariffs to protect jobs when its unemployment rate is so low. 
3. Quite clearly low-wage countries have an advantage in producing products that require more labour intensity. Their labour is cheap, compared to US labour. And one major reason for that is that US labour is so productive -- When people are productive, they get hired for higher-paying jobs, and that makes it unprofitable to hire them to produce many/most of the goods being produced in China (or India or Bangladesh or....)
4. US wages are high possibly because of the minimum wage and unions. But if (I don't think it's serious) and to the extent this is true, it doesn't justify raising trade restrictions to offset those effects. Why don't I think it's serious? the minimum wage in the US is low enough that those jobs are looking for workers; the current minimum wage may be contributing to the general substitution of labour for capital, but because labour has lots of comparatively valuable alternative uses (and because in the US it has lots of capital to work with), wage rates are high.
5. Raising tariffs (or otherwise restricting trade) in general hurts poorer people.
6. When companies relocated from the rust belt to the southern US, people in the north lost jobs. That's what unemployment insurance is for --- to tide them through the changes brought about by market forces. Tariffs against southern production wouldn't have made most northerners any better off -- they just would have made high-cost, protected, northern manufacturers better off at the expense of northern consumers. 
7. related-- The same holds for international trade: the protections usually prop up the high-cost and inefficient local producers at the expense of consumers.
8. Generally, labour is mobile. People change jobs in response to changes in economic conditions, whether the changes are induced by new technology, new domestic competition, or new foreign competition. These changes, like any changes do indeed cause some people to lose their jobs or suffer in other ways. But those results by themselves should not justify making all consumers worse off.
9. But what about unfair trade practices: subsidies, etc.? My brash reaction is that if China wants to tax its population to subsidize exports to North America, hurt me some more. Yes, their subsidized exports to North America distort our prices and affect decisions by entrepreneurs in NA, but these distortions make the residents here better off.
10. Trade restrictions encourage, support, and protect less competition among the local firms. It has often been argued (with little success, dammit) that the best competition policy is freer trade. The prevalence and entrepreneurial drive of some foreign suppliers/producers make it difficult for local firms to collude to raise prices. 

Confrontation, Responses, and (Bayesian) Priors

We all have reasonably strong views about the world, how it operates, and how we think it should operate. These strong views, or priors, affect how we interpret events.

So let me ask readers to pick an issue about which you have strong views. What would it take to get you to change your views?

Example:

One of my all-time favourite economics professors, the late nobel laureate Robert Fogel, was once a communist organizer. He became a Chicago-school near libertarian type economist because communism was wrong about the failures of capitalism.

Counterexample:

I have friends who are so strongly opposed to abortion, nothing would ever change their minds.

The former is a more scholarly approach; the latter is a more religious or moral approach.

So what would it take to get you to change your mind about ________?

For me:

• Minimum wages. I think they're wrong; I don't think that on average they help all the people they're intended to help; I think that in general gubmnt intrusion into markets inhibits economic growth and makes future generations of poor people much worse off than they would be if we had more economic growth. I'm nearly religious on this. I'm not sure I could be convinced to change my views (informed by the study of economics and the studies I've read about minimum wages).
• Global warming. I was skeptical about how much we're experiencing, but I'm beginning to shed that skepticism in the light of increasing data and information from some people I tend to trust. I'm still somewhat skeptical about how much is caused by humans. I'm not qualified to even try to understand the studies. I doubt that much we might do in Canada or possibly in North America will change things much. I do think we should prepare and help prepare to deal with it if, as, and to the extent we experience it.
• Coventry School and the the confrontation at the Lincoln Memorial. This incident is what prompted this post. What would prompt you to change your take on the situation? What if the boys had been from a secular school and carrying copies of Michelle Obama's book?

Seriously, for each contentious issue, I think it would be a good idea for us to ask ourselves, "Is it possible that I can be convinced otherwise?" If not, we're debating religion, which I'm willing to do in some settings [do we have a multi-verse with 11 dimensions? what caused the big bang? etc.]

and as I wrote [edited here] in a comment on my Facebook page earlier today:

I shouldn't do this, I know, but my views:
1. I'm anti-Trump, as I hope most of you know. But I'm probably anti-Trump for reasons different from those that many of you have. At the same time I know some very smart and caring people who are pro-Trump. My point? Don't use your or anyone else's views about Trump to judge a particular situation. Please.
2. I'm not anti-abortion, but I'm pro-adoption (my daughter was adopted). Colour me woefully ambivalent on the topic. My point: please don't use my or anyone else's views on abortion to judge a particular situation.
3. From what I've read and seen, the school the boys were from teaches stuff I strongly disagree with. That doesn't mean I hate these boys; that doesn't mean they were in the wrong at this confrontation.
4. I am not a fan of MAGA (I actually had to google it when the incident was first written about).
5. In this incident, no matter what you might think about the boys and their school and their hats, what did they do wrong in this confrontation? Especially I don't know what the one student did who was confronted by Phillips. He smiled or smirked, as we were taught to do in the Civil Rights movement; he reacted non-violently. 
6. If you condemn the boys for their behaviour in this instance because of their school, their hats, their parents, their politics, their views on abortion, etc. you've missed the point I was trying to make.
7. Like the writer of this Atlantic piece, I've held some wildly different, and (many would say) hateful or objectionable views over my lifetime. I have done some pretty uncaring things in my lifetime. But I hope people will not use those views or actions to judge me in any given situation. I know some do and some have, but please keep this in mind when writing about this particular situation. 

I'm sure I could write more. I probably will. I'm feeling so despondent though because of the comments I've read, both yesterday and today.😕

Addendum: Many of us can, and do, change our views on religious-type topics as well. I was once a conscientious objector to war. I think I may have been drifting away from that moral position but 9-11 sealed it for me. I was no longer a conscientious objector after that event. Also, I was once an atheist but cosmological questions turned me into a devout agnostic.

Global Warming: What are the Facts?

I don't know. Honestly. I have friends who say global warming is real and it is "settled science". I have other friends who question whether it is or has been happening for the past two decades. And I have still other friends who say it may be happening, but it isn't caused by humans; and still others who say that even if it is happening, it is happening slowly and is best dealt with as it happens. I don't know.

Conrad Black is erudite and an excellent writer. In the middle of his recent column about global warming, he interjects:

Every sane person is opposed to the pollution of the environment and there is a practically universal consensus to reduce automobile exhaust emissions, ensure industrial smoke goes through scrubbers, and that all contaminated water is thoroughly treated before being returned to nature. Every serious person agrees that we must, as a species, show extreme vigilance in exercising man’s unique ability to tamper with and alter the environment. We are the stewards of the world and its environment and there are few who would dispute that until comparatively recently, we have not taken that responsibility very seriously. The Industrial Revolution had been thundering in Europe and North America for nearly a century, and in Japan for half a century, before even basic conservation, such as national parks, got its green foot in the public policy door.

But there is no justification whatever for the self-punitive nonsense of the Paris climate accord, where the administration of president Barack Obama committed to garrote American industry with costs of tens of billions of dollars to reduce carbon emissions... [emphasis added]

Earlier in his column, Black asserts:

It is the third result that has occurred: unchanged world temperatures since 2000, apart from 2015-2016; then the temperature rose slightly after a heavy El Nino, and then receded again although world carbon emissions have increased moderately.

...no ice has been lost by Greenland, other than what melts every summer and then forms again, and water levels have not moved appreciably.

Really? I have some good friends who claim otherwise.

And I have no idea what to believe. I know some glaciers (e.g. the Athabasca Glacier) have retreated considerably, but I also know that one receding glacier does not necessarily reflect global warming or rising oceans.

What are the facts? Is it even possible to discuss or debate the facts of global warming? Or are our Baysian priors too tight on both sides for science to work?

Which Theoretical Models are More Reliable?

I'm old enough to have experienced major paradigm shifts in many areas. And so I wonder, which theoretical models make predictions most in line with future events?

Macroeconomic models?

• Keynesian stuff we were taught and then retaught ourselves was way off because it tended to understate the importance of money.
• Monetary models have let us down somewhat because they often missed the importance of expectations.
• Rational expectations models were a big bust because they ignored the time costs of search and adjustment.

Climate Change Models?

• In the 1970s, it was global cooling we were concerned with.
• In the 1990s, it was global warming. The forecasting models for both have both been wildly inaccurate.

Nutrition Models?

• Remember how fat was bad and carbs were ok?
• Remember how maybe unsaturated fats were ok, but certainly saturated fats were not?
• And the most recent evidence is that there is no identifiable connection between saturated fats and premature death rates.

Astronomy Models?

• Geocentric models
• Solar models
• Milky Way
• Black Holes
• Big Bang
• Dark Matter and Energy (we have lots of black boxes in the social sciences, too)

And for each model, there have been people who claim "It's settled science!"

What's worse, throughout history the proponents of the settled science have persecuted and prosecuted the questioners, the skeptics. And it is still happening. From George Will:

Authoritarianism, always latent in progressivism, is becoming explicit. Progressivism’s determination to regulate thought by regulating speech is apparent in the campaign by 16 states’ attorneys general and those of the District of Columbia and the Virgin Islands, none Republican, to criminalize skepticism about the supposedly “settled” conclusions of climate science. ...

“The debate is settled,” says Obama. “Climate change is a fact.” Indeed. The epithet “climate change deniers,” obviously coined to stigmatize skeptics as akin to Holocaust deniers, is designed to obscure something obvious: Of course the climate is changing; it never is not changing — neither before nor after theMedieval Warm Period (end of the 9th century to the 13th century) and the Little Ice Age (1640s to 1690s), neither of which was caused by fossil fuels. ...

The leader of the attorneys general, New York’s Eric Schneiderman, dismisses those who disagree with him as “morally vacant.” His moral content is apparent in his campaign to ban fantasy sports gambling because it competes with the gambling (state lottery, casinos, off-track betting) that enriches his government.

And of course, it's all for own good.

 

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Gubmnt, Climate Change, and Cronyism

Former student, Gerry Nicholls, is very witty. I've enjoyed reading things he writes for years. Here's a brilliant example. The conclusion:

Sure, I get the concept in theory: government-subsidized companies will invent something amazingly innovative and environmentally friendly, such as machines that run on the warmth generated by Trudeau’s “Sunny ways”.

Yet, the sad truth of economics is that companies which rely on government handouts are usually only good at innovating one thing: new ways to get government hand outs. [emphasis added]

So you see, for all our sakes we better hope the climate change alarmists are wrong or else we’ve had it.

It’s not that I’m not a “climate change denier” so much as I’m a “government competence denier.”

Too bad Gerry hasn't learned that the correct spelling is "gubmnt".

On Cost-Benefit Basis, the Paris AGW Conference Needs to Consider This

From Bjorn Lomborg:

The United Nations Climate Change Conference in Paris later this month is being billed as an opportunity to save the planet. It is no such thing. As I show in a new peer-reviewed paper, even if successful, the agreement reached in Paris would cut temperatures in 2100 by just 0.05° Celsius. The rise in sea level would be reduced by only 1.3 centimeters.

This may seem surprising: we constantly hear how every country has made important commitments to reduce CO2 emissions – the so-called “Intended Nationally Determined Contributions,” or INDCs. According to the UN’s climate chief, Christiana Figueres, “the INDCs have the capability of limiting the forecast temperature rise to around 2.7ºC by 2100, by no means enough but a lot lower than the estimated four, five, or more degrees of warming projected by many prior.” http://ow.ly/UNyZj

A facebook friend (Jeff C) has pointed out that there are many criticisms of Lomborg's position. See, for example, this site. I'll add that some appear to be valid, some don't.

• The criticism that he is not trained in science means little to me. Indeed, his graduate degrees are in political science, not environmental science. [See his Wikipaedia entry for more on his background].
  
  Most of his skepticism about Global Warming is based on concerns that economists refer to as "opportunity costs": what are the options? what are the assessments of the options? Unlike too many people writing about AGW, Lomborg continually refers to alternatives. Indeed, his academic work is in a bizskool, not in a science department. Bizskools emphasize the identification and assessment of alternatives.

• Like it or not, the climate models have been all over the place (or so it seems to me from the things I see). The variability and the missing of predictions has led numerous climate scientists to reassess the models, enrich them, and expand their complexity. This is good science. I note that Lomborg appears to have done the same thing, emphasizing more the costs of the actions and policies required by AGW treaties and de-emphasizing his skepticism.

• Any cost-benefit analysis begs the question of who benefits and who bears the costs.

• Most criticisms of Lomborg do not consider the benefits of global warming.

• Nevertheless, as much as I like Lomborg's approach and the questions he raises, I worry that he may be misrepresenting facts (just as I worry about the same tendency with so many AGW warriors). For example, see the criticisms not only in the above piece but also in
  An assessment of Lomborg's and the ensuing debate
  Author:

  van den Bergh, Jeroen C.J.M.
  Journal:

  Journal of integrative environmental sciences
  ISSN:

  1943-815X
  Date:

  2010/03
  Volume: 7

  Issue: 1

  Page: 23-52

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Have the Global-Warming Data Been Cooked?

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Antarctic Ice

It is easy to understand why people are confused about global warming issues when different scientists provide different bits of evidence about what is happening.

Quite clearly some glaciers are receding [the Athabasca Glacier in Jasper National Park is a good example]. But what is happening with the Polar Ice Caps?

Some will tell you all about loss of ice in certain parts of Antarctica. Others will tell you about massive ice growth in certain parts of the same continent.

Here is the latest from NASA [via Jack]:

A new NASA study says that an increase in Antarctic snow accumulation that began 10,000 years ago is currently adding enough ice to the continent to outweigh the increased losses from its thinning glaciers.

The research challenges the conclusions of other studies, including the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change's (IPCC) 2013 report, which says that Antarctica is overall losing land ice.

According to the new analysis of satellite data, the Antarctic ice sheet showed a net gain of 112 billion tons of ice a year from 1992 to 2001. That net gain slowed to 82 billion tons of ice per year between 2003 and 2008.

"We're essentially in agreement with other studies that show an increase in ice discharge in the Antarctic Peninsula and the Thwaites and Pine Island region of West Antarctica," said Jay Zwally, a glaciologist with NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and lead author of the study, which was published on Oct. 30 in the Journal of Glaciology. "Our main disagreement is for East Antarctica and the interior of West Antarctica - there, we see an ice gain that exceeds the losses in the other areas." Zwally added that his team "measured small height changes over large areas, as well as the large changes observed over smaller areas."...

However,

"The good news is that Antarctica is not currently contributing to sea level rise, but is taking 0.23 millimeters per year away," Zwally said. "But this is also bad news. If the 0.27 millimeters per year of sea level rise attributed to Antarctica in the IPCC report is not really coming from Antarctica, there must be some other contribution to sea level rise that is not accounted for."

Not Only Is This the First Time I've Agreed with Trudeau or Suzuki, I Agree with Them BOTH in this Case.

Yup I agree with them both.

• Justin Trudeau called  David Suzuki's views "sanctimonious crap"
• Suzuki called Trudeau "a twerp"

Right on both counts! From Maclean's,

During a testy phone call, Justin Trudeau dismissed David Suzuki’s views on the Liberal climate change policy as “sanctimonious crap,” according to Suzuki. Suzuki revealed the contents of the conversation during an interview on SiriusXM’sEverything is Political with Evan Solomon. Suzuki says he fired back, calling Trudeau a “twerp.”

 

 

For a Good Time,.... (Andrew Lawton v David Suzuki)

For a good time, listen to radio AM980 from London at 1pm today. Here is the link to their netcast.

1. In one corner we have David Suzuki, arrogant non-scientist elitist interventionist who wants to control our lives and who proclaims gloom and doom while living high off the taxpayer hog and preaching about consumerism. He was in town to take part in a "Stop Harper" movement.
2. In the other corner we have radio talk-show host, Andrew Lawton. Andrew is right-wing. Not libertarian enough to suit me, and with tendencies toward social conservatism, which can be just as controlling-interventionist as the left. But Andrew is knowledgeable and smart.

I gather there were some interesting confrontations during the interview Lawton conducted with Suzuki. It was supposed be a press conference but only Andrew showed up!! ;-)

What if they gave a press conference and nobody came?

[disclaimer: I have known Andrew, though we are not close friends, for several years.]

The Earth Is Getting Greener!

No foolin', and this is good news: the earth's biomass of plants has been growing, and noticeably so. From the G&M [via JR]:

... between 2003 and 2012 (the last year... analyzed), something surprising happened: The trees started growing back. Their results showed that deforestation in Brazil and Indonesia slowed sharply, while better growing conditions in the savannahs of northern Australia and southern Africa added mass, and – most dramatically – the vast forests of China and Russia grew back at a considerable pace. The last point is especially significant: The boreal forest, which stretches across Northern Canada and Russia, stores almost 60 per cent of the world’s carbon (tropical rain forests store about half that much).

The result was, they reported, “an overall gain” in the world’s carbon-absorbing green matter – a result that has been reproduced in other recent studies showing an expansion of the global carbon sink.

And the conclusion is especiallyimportant:

The return of the trees teaches us a lesson. To reduce our destructive carbon output, the solution is not to reduce economic activity; rather, it’s to combine a booming urban economy with smart policies that make growth and ecology work in harmony.

The details in the link are interesting and worth a read.

Cut Fossil Fuel Subsidies

From Bjorn Lomborg's page on Facebook:

The United Arab Emirates just cut its fossil fuel subsidies significantly following the lead of countries like Indonesia and Malaysia, who have also managed to cut their subsidies.

That means less pollution, lower CO2-emissions and not least more money for more important areas such as health and education.

In its most recent report, the International Energy Agency estimates that the world spends $548 billion a year subsidizing fossil fuels. That’s $548 billion that could have been spent much better.

For the Copenhagen Consensus Centre, an expert panel including several Nobel Laureate economists found that phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels is one of the smartest things the world should focus on over the next 15 years.

The economists estimate that every dollar spent (you still need to help the most vulnerable to energy access) will create benefits for society and the environment of more than $15. The billions of dollars that governments save from phasing out fossil fuel subsidies could be spent on providing better health, education and nutrition, which could benefit hundreds of millions of people.

Plummeting oil prices is a window of opportunity to reduce the subsidies. Other countries with heavy subsidies should also grasp at this opportunity.

More on Dubai's subsidy cuts here:
http://www.economist.com/…/21660490-emirates-move-improve-i…

My op-ed in The Globe and Mail on the topic: 
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/…/its-time-…/article24002168/

The Copenhagen Consensus Center's latest research on energy: 
http://www.copenhagenconsensus.com/post-2015-consens…/energy

He made these comments on Facebook, linking to this article in The Economist. He has an excellent way of identifying the problems of opportunity costs and spin-off effects.

Cut the fossil-fuel subsidies and it reduces massive distortions and inefficiencies in the economy.

An added benefit is that cutting fossil-fuel subsidies will lead to less use of fossil fuels [the reduced subsidy to sellers shifts the supply curve to the left, leading to an increase in the equilibrium price and a reduction in the quantity demanded]. And this reduction in the consumption of fossil fuels will lead to reduced CO2 emissions and (assuming there is a relationship) reduced global warming.

"My AGW Trumps Your Maunder Minimum" [or vice versa!]

The concern about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) has been challenged by a Northumbrian mathematician. From the Washington Post [via Jack]:

This week, warnings of an impending “mini ice age,” set to hit in the 2030s, have been circulating in the media. ...

The ice age idea got rolling last week when researcher Valentina Zharkova, a professor of mathematics at Northumbria University in England, presented some of her recent research into solar variations at the Royal Astronomical Society’s National Astronomy Meeting in Wales. The presentation was based on a study ... which presented a technique for understanding variations in solar radiation and made some predictions about how this radiation will change in the near future. Most notably, the research predicts that between 2030 and 2040, solar activity should drop significantly, leading to a condition known as a “solar minimum.” ...

According to the research, solar activity at this time should resemble conditions last seen in the mid-1700s during a period known of low solar radiation known as the “Maunder Minimum.” The interesting thing about this period was that it coincided with a “little ice age” in Europe and North America — a time marked by unusually cold temperatures and bitter winters. Now that Zharkova and her colleagues are predicting another solar minimum coming up, media coverage has jumped on the idea that a modern “mini ice age” is in store.

Michael Mann, a leading proponent of concern about AGW (and whose work has been seriously criticized [see this] ), doesn't buy it, but his apparent only explanation is

As far as the solar variations go, “The effect is a drop in the bucket, a barely detectable blip, on the overall warming trajectory we can expect over the next several decades from greenhouse warming,” said Michael Mann, distinguished professor of meteorology at Pennsylvania State University, in an e-mail to The Washington Post.

The article points out that Zharkova refuses to go on the record scientifically as to whether her predicted mini-ice-age would have much of an impact on the earth's temperature. It does add, however, that

On the one hand, Zharkova maintains that her research was not intended to make assumptions about the effects of solar variation on climate — only to lay out predictions about the solar activity itself. “What will happen in the modern Maunder Minimum we do not know yet and can only speculate,” she says. On the other hand, she adds, her gut assumption is that temperatures will drop as they did 370 years ago.

If You Agree with What Is Being Reported about the Climate Conference in Toronto...

There is a conference about climate change going on in Trono these days. It is filled with people who have lots of rhetoric and considerable disdain for the scientific process. Matt Ridley explains why. His article is quite lengthy, but it is worth taking some time to read it.

 [I]nch by inch, the huge green pressure groups have grown fat on a diet of constant but ever-changing alarm about the future. That these alarms—over population growth, pesticides, rain forests, acid rain, ozone holes, sperm counts, genetically modified crops—have often proved wildly exaggerated does not matter: the organisations that did the most exaggeration trousered the most money. In the case of climate, the alarm is always in the distant future, so can never be debunked.

These huge green multinationals, with budgets in the hundreds of millions of dollars, have now systematically infiltrated science, as well as industry and media, with the result that many high-profile climate scientists and the journalists who cover them have become one-sided cheerleaders for alarm, while a hit squad of increasingly vicious bloggers polices the debate to ensure that anybody who steps out of line is punished. They insist on stamping out all mention of the heresy that climate change might not be lethally dangerous.

Today’s climate science...is based on a “pre-ordained conclusion, huge bodies of evidence are ignored and analytical procedures are treated as evidence”. Funds are not available to investigate alternative theories. Those who express even the mildest doubts about dangerous climate change are ostracised, accused of being in the pay of fossil-fuel interests or starved of funds; those who take money from green pressure groups and make wildly exaggerated statements are showered with rewards and treated by the media as neutral.

Ridley goes on to provide numerous examples to support these assertions. He labels himself not as a denier and not as a skeptic; rather he refers to himself as a "lukewarmer", a label that probably suits Bjorn Lomborg as well:

This is the “lukewarmer” school, and I am happy to put myself in this category. Lukewarmers do not think dangerous climate change is impossible; but they think it is unlikely.

He continues,

Barack Obama says that 97 per cent of scientists agree that climate change is “real, man-made and dangerous”. That’s just a lie (or a very ignorant remark): as I point out above, there is no consensus that it’s dangerous.

So where’s the outrage from scientists at this presidential distortion? It’s worse than that, actually. The 97 per cent figure is derived from two pieces of pseudoscience that would have embarrassed a homeopath. The first was a poll that found that 97 per cent of just seventy-nine scientists thought climate change was man-made—not that it was dangerous. A more recent poll of 1854 members of the American Meteorological Society found the true number is 52 per cent.

The second source of the 97 per cent number was a survey of scientific papers, which has now been comprehensively demolished by Professor Richard Tol of Sussex University, who is probably the world’s leading climate economist. As the Australian  blogger Joanne Nova summarised Tol’s findings, John Cook of the University of Queensland and his team used an unrepresentative sample, left out much useful data, used biased observers who disagreed with the authors of the papers they were classifying nearly two-thirds of the time, and collected and analysed the data in such a way as to allow the authors to adjust their preliminary conclusions as they went along, a scientific no-no if ever there was one. The data could not be replicated, and Cook himself threatened legal action to hide them. Yet neither the journal nor the university where Cook works has retracted the paper, and the scientific establishment refuses to stop citing it, let alone blow the whistle on it. Its conclusion is too useful.

He concludes,

None of this would matter if it was just scientific inquiry, though that rarely comes cheap in itself. The big difference is that these scientists who insist that we take their word for it, and who get cross if we don’t, are also asking us to make huge, expensive and risky changes to the world economy and to people’s livelihoods. They want us to spend a fortune getting emissions down as soon as possible. And they want us to do that even if it hurts poor people today, because, they say, their grandchildren (who, as Nigel Lawson points out, in The Facts, and their models assume, are going to be very wealthy) matter more.

Yet they are not prepared to debate the science behind their concern. That seems wrong to me.

As I said at the outset, Ridley's article is quite lengthy. The above quotes represent no more than about 5% of it. I've left out his examples, his more detailed arguments, and his references.

If you uncritically accept the pronouncements from the politicians at the Climate Conference in Trono, please, PLEASE read Ridley's piece. Even if you don't like it, even if you think he omits important information, even if you have a different set of subjective estimates of the probabilities he discusses, what he says in the article merits your attention.

More Wisdom from Bjørn Lomborg

Lomborg understands that in a world of scarcity, choices involve costs and that trade-offs must be made.

Pope Francis's concern for the poor is clear, so it is understandable that climate change is the topic of his forthcoming Encyclical — a Papal letter that is sent out to the world. Climate change will hit the most destitute people first and worst.

But the climate policies of today will do little for the poor. This doesn’t mean that we should ignore climate change. There are two compelling actions that should be part of the Pope’s prescription. Phasing out subsidies for fossil fuels would not only help the planet, it would free money to spend on education and health. And the rich world needs to increase investments in green energy research, to speed the day when renewable energy sources can outcompete fossil fuels

But we also need to recognize that the actions that would most help the world's poor are not climate policies. Ensuring freer trade, greater access to family planning, and nutritional interventions cost a fraction of expensive, inefficient climate policies. When helping the world's poorest is the goal, these are the investments that would truly make the biggest difference.

The above is what Lomborg posted on Facebook with this link to a recent op-ed piece he wrote.

Reasoned Debate on Global Warming

David Henderson at EconLog has this wonderful post about a debate/discussion on global warming and climate change. It is worth reading his summary even if you don't listen to the actual discussion or read the transcript.

In his introduction, David writes:

In the area of global warming, it's hard to find a civil discussion between two experts who disagree. This is one. Partly, I think, it's because Russ [Roberts] does a good job of being even-handed and drawing out the facts and conjectures. But probably more important is that both Christy and Emmanuel are reasonable people.

I love that both speakers acknowledge what they do and do not know. They argue less from established positions and more from different interpretations and explanations of the data on which they agree.

I urge EVERYONE to read this post at the very least and preferably to follow the links to the original transcript.

More People Should Read and Heed Bjørn Lomborg

Bjørn Lomborg is one of my heroes. He cares about making people better off, and he cares about doing so efficiently, without regard for the heavy emoting that comes from too many different sources. Here is his latest piece from the Wall Street Journal as he reproduced the column on Facebook:

My new op-ed in Wall Street Journal:

Opponents of free debate are celebrating. Last week, under pressure from some climate-change activists, the University of Western Australia canceled its contract to host a planned research center, Australia Consensus, intended to apply economic cost-benefit analysis to development projects—giving policy makers a tool to ensure their aid budgets are spent wisely.

The new center in Perth was to be a collaboration with a think tank I run, Copenhagen Consensus, which for a decade has conducted similar research. Working with more than 100 economists, including seven Nobel laureates, we have produced research that measures the social and economic benefits of a wide range of policies, such as fighting malaria, reducing malnutrition, cutting air pollution, improving education and tackling climate change.

Therein lay the problem. This kind of comparison can upset those who are committed to advocating less effective investments, particularly poor responses to climate change.

Copenhagen Consensus research shows that policy makers considering climate change have practical solutions. Cutting fossil-fuel subsidies is a great idea. Each year $550 billion is wasted, mostly by developing nations, on subsidies that mainly help the rich. A dramatic increase in spending on green-energy R&D is needed, as innovation will drive down the price of green energy to the point that it can outcompete fossil fuels. A well-crafted carbon tax would help too.

But our analyses also show that Kyoto-style approaches—poorly designed EU climate policies, or the pledge to hold warming to two degrees Celsius—are costly and ineffective. There are much better ways we could spend money to help the planet.

That conclusion draws the ire of some climate-change activists. When the collaboration between Copenhagen Consensus and the University of Western Australia was announced, the Australian Climate Council, led by paleontologist Tim Flannery, called it “an insult to the scientific community.” Making up facts, the Climate Council warned supporters that I think “we shouldn’t take any steps to mitigate climate change.” This set the tone for the ensuing attacks.

A Sydney Morning Herald columnist wrote that I had produced “anti climate change” work: a documentary, called “Cool It,” exploring the smartest solutions to climate change. In this columnist’s topsy-turvy world, one need never even question the science of global warming to be “anti climate change.”

Under pressure, the university canceled its contract with the Australian government to host the new research center. The UWA’s vice chancellor said he believed the center would have delivered “robust, evidence-based knowledge and advice” but that “the scale of the strong and passionate emotional reaction was one that the university did not predict.”

A small but loud group of opponents deliberately ignored the Copenhagen Consensus’s endorsement of smart climate policies. They also ignored that most of our research has nothing to do with climate. The bulk of our papers focus on health, education, nutrition and the many other areas where relatively small investments can help millions.

Philanthropists, donors and policy makers must prioritize development goals. What Copenhagen Consensus does is ensure that such parties understand the price tags and potential outcomes for each option.

This work has shown that some aid projects do phenomenally well: For instance, providing contraception to the 215 million women across the globe who lack access to it would reduce maternal mortality and boost growth, producing $120 in social benefits for each dollar spent.

Other policies have lower multipliers. Getting sanitation to the poorest half of the world, for example, would produce only $3 of benefits for each dollar spent. This is worthy, but for a government with a limited development budget, it probably isn’t the first place to spend money.

We should focus resources where they will do the most good—not where they will make us feel the most good. The United Nations is setting 169 global development targets for the next 15 years. These are laudable aims, but together they’re a laundry list: reduce arms trafficking; finance sustainable forest management; achieve universal access to drinking water; halve deaths and injuries from traffic accidents; increase market access for “small-scale artisanal fishers.”

Studies by Copenhagen Consensus show that if the U.N. focused on only 19 of the most efficient projects, each dollar of development spending would do four times more good.

There is a strong sense among some climate-change activists, however, that global warming should not be subject to such comparison. Thus it is easier for them to use emotional labels like “climate denier” than to acknowledge our entire volume of research on aid, development, environmental and health spending, simply because in one specific area, current climate policy, some findings don’t line up with their unyielding views.

“Australia’s culture of open debate is increasingly sick,” Tim Wilson, Australia’s human rights commissioner, wrote Monday. “Outrage, confected or otherwise, is a popular tool to condemn your opponents because it avoids the need to actually debate ideas.”

An 88-year-old UWA fellow said he had never seen anything like this at the university. “People have been rejected on account of insufficient abilities but not because they do not have the right type of view,” Prof. Hank Greenway told the Australian.

What is the lesson for young academics? Avoid producing research that could produce politically difficult answers. Steer clear of results that others might find contentious. Consider where your study could take you, and don’t go there if it means upsetting the status quo.

The Australian government remains committed to Australia Consensus, and I am still enthusiastic about working with academics to build a research center that will be judged on its actual output, improving global efforts on aid and development.

Our research will continue to go where the economic evidence leads, rather than where idealism might make us want to end up. Facts must never, ever be seen as an unwelcome contribution to policy debate.

http://www.wsj.com/…/the-honor-of-being-mugged-by-climate-c…

Electric Cars: The Social Costs Dramatically Outweigh the Social Benefits

Electric cars sounds as if they might be the answer to big-city smog, air pollution, and the contribution to CO2 emissions and whatever those emissions might add to global warming. However electric cars are not now generating net social benefits,  and won't be for many years to come. From the very sensible Bjørn Lomborg,

The electric car seems great. Except, it isn't yet.

The social costs of the electric car: $223 billion.
The social benefits: about $0.5 billion.
Not a good deal. [EE: the details are set out in the link above]

25 million electric cars would over their lifetimes cut CO₂ worth $0.5 billion. Great. But they would cost $188 billion in direct subsidies, and more air pollution from power plants would kill more than 700 people each year, costing society over their lifetimes about $35 billion in damages....

It is advertised as a zero-emissions car, but in reality it only shifts emissions to electricity production, with most coming from fossil fuels. As green venture capitalist Vinod Khosla likes to point out, "Electric cars are coal-powered cars."...

For now, focus on much cleaner hybrids, clean up coal fired power and then innovate green energy and batteries until the electric car is worthwhile in a couple of decades.

Have the Global-Warming Data Been Cooked?

There's a good reason to be a climate skeptic, especially if the reported data are unreliable (from the Telegraph). According to this article, there have been systematic adjustments upward  of the temperature data from weather stations all around the world.

Following my last article, Homewood checked a swathe of other South American weather stations around the original three. In each case he found the same suspicious one-way “adjustments”. First these were made by the US government’s Global Historical Climate Network (GHCN). They were then amplified by two of the main official surface records, the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (Giss) and the National Climate Data Center (NCDC), which use the warming trends to estimate temperatures across the vast regions of the Earth where no measurements are taken. Yet these are the very records on which scientists and politicians rely for their belief in “global warming”.

He adds,

Homewood has now turned his attention to the weather stations across much of the Arctic, between Canada (51 degrees W) and the heart of Siberia (87 degrees E). Again, in nearly every case, the same one-way adjustments have been made, to show warming up to 1 degree C or more higher than was indicated by the data that was actually recorded.

I'm not a global-warming denier, but I certainly am skeptical, and stories like these just add to my skepticism.

As Bjorn Lomborg has written so often, basic air pollution is a much more serious problem in developing economies.

 

Settled Science? Colour Me Skeptical

Long-time readers of EclectEcon know that I am a global-warming skeptic. Not a denier but a skeptic. I just don't know what to believe, given all the spin put on things.

For example, both the Washington Post and the NYTimes recently published stories about how NASA scientists say the earth is warmer. But then yesterday, the Daily Mail published a piece saying there is considerable uncertainty about the numbers used for that report.

In a press release on Friday, Nasa’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) claimed its analysis of world temperatures showed ‘2014 was the warmest year on record’.

The claim made headlines around the world, but yesterday it emerged that GISS’s analysis – based on readings from more than 3,000 measuring stations worldwide – is subject to a margin of error. Nasa admits this means it is far from certain that 2014 set a record at all.

Yet the Nasa press release failed to mention this, as well as the fact that the alleged ‘record’ amounted to an increase over 2010, the previous ‘warmest year’, of just two-hundredths of a degree – or 0.02C. The margin of error is said by scientists to be approximately 0.1C – several times as much.

 

As a result, GISS’s director Gavin Schmidt has now admitted Nasa thinks the likelihood that 2014 was the warmest year since 1880 is just 38 per cent. However, when asked by this newspaper whether he regretted that the news release did not mention this, he did not respond.

In other words, maybe. Or maybe not. And the misrepresentation of the data just adds to one's skepticism.

Beaver Farts and Greenhouse Gases

Once many years ago I read the hypothesis that methane from dinosaur farts caused climate change. Here's a link suggesting the same thing.

Now recent research tells us that the growing population of beavers in marshes is also contributing to greenhouse gases [via Jack]:

“It has long been known the release of methane from beaver ponds is more intense than for other types of wetlands. With the species’ re-establishment and population growth in regions where beavers have been introduced, we set out to quantify whether the methane produced would be large enough to be significant...”

“We found that valuable habitat area has been established by beavers over the last century,” Mr. Whitfield said.

“While this habitat contributes to the global methane gas emissions, the magnitude of this methane source is lower than many other natural sources and unlikely to be a dominant climate change driver.”

Contributing? Yes, but not much apparently.

The Truth about China, Pollution, and CO2

Tyler Cowen says it here:

First, China is notorious for making announcements about air pollution and then not implementing them.  This is only partially a matter of lying, in part the government literally does not have the ability to keep its word.  They have a great deal of coal capacity coming on-line and they can’t just turn that switch off.  They’re also driving more cars, too.

Second, China falsifies estimates of the current level of air pollution, so as to make it look like the problem is improving when it is not.  Worse yet, during the APEC summit the Chinese government blocked the more or less correct estimates coming from U.S. Embassy data, which are usually transmitted through an app.  ...

Third, a lot of the relevant Chinese regulatory apparatus is at the local not federal level (in fact it should be more centrally done, even if not fully federalized in every case).  There are plenty of current local laws against air pollution which are simply not enforced, often because of corruption, and often that pollution is emanating from locally well-connected, job-creating state-owned enterprises.  Often the pollution comes from one locality and victimizes another, especially in the north of the country. ....  The Chinese also do not have anything close to a consistently well-staffed environmental bureaucracy.

Fourth, if you look at the history of air pollution, countries clean up the most visible and also the most domestically dangerous problems first, and often decades before solving the tougher issues.  For China that highly visible, deadly pollutant would be Total Particulate Matter, which kills people in a rather direct way, and in large numbers, and is also relatively easy to take care of. ... The Chinese people (and government) are much more worried about TPM than about carbon emissions, which is seen as something foreigners complain about.  Yet TPM is still getting worse in China, and if it is (possibly) flat-lining this year that is only because of the economic slowdown, not because of better policy.

When will China cap carbon emissions?  “Fix TPM and get back to me in twenty years” is still probably an underestimate.  Don’t forget that by best estimates CO2 emissions were up last year in China by more than four percent.  How many wealthier countries have made real progress on carbon emissions?  Even Denmark has simply flattened them out, not pulled them back.

I Am a Skeptic. Does That Make Me a Criminal?

Science is advanced when people are skeptical of received doctrines and "settled science". Advancing both knowledge and our understanding requires an open mind and a willingness to question the mainstream. And yet, throughout the ages, skeptics have been persecuted by religious and political leaders.

You would think humans could learn from this history. But no, assuming these remarks were not taken out of context [via Jack].

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., says he wants a law to punish politicians who dissent from man-made climate change theory - and calls them "contemptible human beings."

Kennedy made the remarks in an interview with Climate Depot at a climate march in New York on Sunday:

Kennedy Jr. accused skeptical politicians of "selling out the public trust." "Those guys are doing the Koch Brothers bidding and are against all the evidence of the rational mind, saying global warming does not exit. They are contemptible human beings. I wish there were a law you could punish them with. I don't think there is a law that you can punish those politicians under."

Kennedy also said he thinks the successful pro-energy Koch brothers should be "in jail...with all the other war criminals":

"I think it's treason. Do I think the Koch Brothers are treasonous, yes I do," Kennedy explained.

"They are enjoying making themselves billionaires by impoverishing the rest of us. Do I think they should be in jail, I think they should be enjoying three hots and a cot at the Hague with all the other war criminals," Kennedy declared.

And, Kennedy's not the only climate activist who would like to see dissenters jailed.

As the Media Research Center's Business and Media Institute (BMI) chronicled in a May 2014 analysis, pro-climate change theory media and scientists have long promoted the idea of throwing anyone who disagrees with them in jail - even to the point of calling for "climate Nuremberg" trials.

So much for constitutional freedoms of speech, press, and expression. So much for competition in the marketplace of ideas.

Even if it turns out that I am incorrect to be skeptical (I'm skeptical with good reason, for now, I think. See this, this, and this.), I hope the fundamental constitutional freedoms will not be abridged in this or any other debates or discussions concerning science and public policy.

Addendum: also see this by Bjorn Lomborg

Related articles

On Global Warming: Unlike Judith Curry, I'm a 3-4, Up From a 1-2

Can 73 Climate-Change Models ALL Be Wrong?

Climate Skeptics 'Should Be in Hague'...

Arctic Sea Ice: Trying to Distinguish a Changing Long-Term Trend from Short-Term Deviations from the Trend

Apparently Arctic Sea ice has grown dramatically over the past two years, contrary to the predictions of the more dire forecasts.

The most widely used measurements of Arctic ice extent are the daily satellite readings issued by the US National Snow and Ice Data Center, which is co-funded by Nasa. These reveal that – while the long-term trend still shows a decline – last Monday, August 25, the area of the Arctic Ocean with at least 15 per cent ice cover was 5.62 million square kilometres.

This was the highest level recorded on that date since 2006, ... and represents an increase of 1.71 million square kilometres over the past two years – an impressive 43 per cent.

Other figures from the Danish Meteorological Institute suggest that the growth has been even more dramatic. Using a different measure, the area with at least 30 per cent ice cover, these reveal a 63 per cent rise – from 2.7 million to 4.4 million square kilometres.

Who knows what the long-term trend really is and whether it has changed? Different people take different years as their starting point for measuring the long-term trend, and they obtain quite different trend lines as a result. As I wrote nearly two years ago, who knows?

...year-to-year fluctuations seriously mask the long-term trends, if there are any.

Is the growth in Arctic Sea ice over the past two years just a blip deviation from a downward trend? Or is it a sign that the downward trend doesn't exist, no longer exists, has shifted, or is much flatter than some have argued?

In trying to answer this question, remember that forecasting errors have confidence intervals that expand massively the farther into the future one tries to predict, looking like exponential horns. E.g. Google references many images showing this phenomenon.

Fit a trend line to global temperatures (keeping in mind that even that concept is contentious). Then calculate the variance around that trend line. Now use that variance to project confidence intervals for future global temperatures. Once that is done, you are led to the inexorable conclusion that it is very difficult to say with much confidence what will happen in the future to global temperatures.

Here is one attempt. This one uses just short time segments to make forecasts, and even these confidence intervals expand.

Other images there have different starting points and use different estimation techniques. One of my favourites is this one, indicating that the IPCC predicted much greater deviation from long term trend than seems to be occurring:

Related articles

Using and Misusing Confidence Intervals

More on the IPCC's Latest Leaked Document on Global Warming

Stunning satellite images show summer ice cap is thicker and covers 1.7million square kilometres MORE than 2 years ago...despite Al Gore's prediction it would be ICE-FREE by now

Computer models confounded as Antarctic sea ice hits new record high...

On Global Warming: Unlike Judith Curry, I'm a 3-4, Up From a 1-2

People on both sides of the global warming debate have seriously and egregiously tried to bully me. The phrase "settled science" annoys and disturbs me to the point that I resent the positions of people who use it. Further, the behaviour of some of the scientists supporting the IPCC just adds to the skepticism one must have for their views.

At the same time, receding glaciers and the dramatic loss of glacial shelf ice in the Antarctic make it difficult to be completely oblivious to, or in denial about, the possibilities that global warming has happened and may continue.

My own views are far from settled [see this, which I wrote nearly 5 years ago].

Over the past few years, I have been drawn increasingly to the writings of Bjorn Lomborg. He takes a very detached view, not necessarily pushing any agenda other than analysis and dealing with feasible alternatives. Recently he pointed to this interview with Judith Curry. Excerpts:

TONY THOMAS: If the skeptic/orthodox spectrum is a range from 1 (intense skeptic) to 10 (intensely IPCC orthodox), where on the scale would you put yourself

(a) as at 2009

(b) as at 2014,

and why has there been a shift (if any)?
JUDITH CURRY: In early 2009, I would have rated myself as 7; at this point I would rate myself as a 3.  Climategate and the weak response of the IPCC and other scientists triggered a massive re-examination of my support of the IPCC, and made me look at the science much more sceptically. ...

THOMAS: Re the halt to warming in the past 15-17 years, has this been adequately explained to the public? If it continues a few more years, is that the end of the orthodox case?
CURRY: Regarding the hiatus in warming, I would say that this has not been adequately explained to the public, the IPCC certainly gave the issue short shrift.

The hiatus is serving to highlight the importance of natural climate variability.  If the hiatus continues a few more years, climate model results will seriously be called into question.  When trying to understand and model a complex system, there is, unfortunately, no simple test for rejecting a hypothesis or a model.

THOMAS: What empirical evidence is there, as distinct from modelling, that ‘missing heat’ has gone into the deep oceans?
CURRY: Basically, none.  Observations below 2 km in the ocean are exceedingly rare, and it is only since 2005 that we have substantial coverage below 700 metres. ...

THOMAS: Since the first IPCC report a quarter century ago, what has been the most significant advance in the case that 50+% of recent warming is human-caused?
CURRY: The period of global warming from 1976-1998.

THOMAS: Similarly, what has been the most significant advance in the case that 50+% of recent warming is NOT human-caused?
CURRY: The stagnation in global temperatures since 1998 is causing scientists to take a much closer look at natural climate variability.

Contrast the statements and analysis of Lomborg or Curry with the histrionics of Desmond Tutu, who clearly has little idea about economics OR science.

Is It a Good Idea to Lie to Make Your Point about Global Warming?

I think I understand and follow the argument here. At the same time it repulses me. The essence of the argument is, "It's okay to lie about global warming so we jolt people into taking action."

According to a pair of economists who have recently published a peer-reviewed paper in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, lying about climate change in order to advance an extremist environmental agenda is a great idea.

The abstract of their paper notes:

It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency by using a modified International Environmental Agreement (IEA) model with asymmetric information. We find that the information manipulation has an instrumental value, as it ex post induces more countries to participate in an IEA, which will eventually enhance global welfare. From the ex ante perspective, however, the impact that manipulating information has on the level of participation in an IEA and on welfare is ambiguous.

 In other words, "Trust us. We know what's best for you."

Biofuels Increase CO2 Emissions

Biofuels are not an answer for reducing CO2 emissions [via Gabriel].

The conclusions deal a blow to what are known as cellulosic biofuels, which have received more than a billion dollars in federal support but have struggled to meet volume targets mandated by law.

They actually increase CO2 emissions:

A $500,000 study paid for by the federal government and released Sunday in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Climate Change concludes that biofuels made with corn residue release 7 percent more greenhouse gases in the early years compared with conventional gasoline.

It looks more like cronyism than environmentalism to me.

More Insights from Bjørn Lomborg about Global Warming and Poverty

He writes,

What's the better way to help the world's poor? Cutting carbon emissions, or giving them access to cheap energy?

In the West, we take our supply of electricity for granted. After a century, we’ve forgotten that plentiful, affordable and dependable energy is the lifeblood of modern civilisation and prosperity. Discussions about saving the world seldom acknowledge the 1.3 billion people living without any electricity whatsoever. Their problems seem otherworldly to us — and weneglect the fact that the same sort of access to cheap electricity would substantially improve their lives. When it comes to helping the world’s poor, a topic like climate change seems to interest the West far more than such mundane matters as helping them power their houses.

A link to his most recent piece is here. Nice title: Let Them Eat Carbon Credits.

He adds,

Dr Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote in theSunday Telegraph last weekend about how the industrialised economies’ greenhouse emissions have wrecked the world. He urges us to cut fossil fuel-based pollution, to help the world’s poor. Sadly, it does not seem to occur to the well-meaning Dr Williams to ask whether we best help the poor by cutting carbon emissions — or by focusing on the provision of affordable food, medicine or energy. It seems not to occur to him that there is a trade-off.

So yes, climate change is an important problem. But presenting people with a one-sided, ineffective message helps no one.

Storm Porn, Canadian Style

A year or so a go, I wrote about "storm porn" and chided major news outlets for trying to over-dramatize every weather event.

I admit it. I have a ghoulish curiosity about storms. So do lots of people. Storm chasers are a good example. So are all the people who watch the all-news channels during storms and boost those ratings. But I tire of reporters leaning into the wind and rain, wading in the water, and shouting the obvious extreme cliches.

The latest version of storm porn comes from the East Coast of Canada and is called "The Double Bomb" Monster Storm.

According to my analysis, the storm deepened from 1,008 millibars to 958 millibars in exactly 24 hours, between 9 a.m. Tuesday and 9 a.m. Wednesday, Eastern time, per the high-resolution NAM model. Even more impressively, the storm’s central pressure dropped by 24 millibars in just a six-hour period between midnight and 6 a.m. Wednesday—a deepening rate four times that necessary for a “bomb.”

Such an intensification rate has rarely occurred outside of tropical cyclones and is almost unprecedented for a winter storm.

The result is meteorological eye-candy for those not in the direct path. ...

In Canada, the storm will display its full fury: Meteorologists in Nova Scotia are already comparing it to “White Juan”—an infamous blizzard that buried the Halifax area under nearly three feet of snow in February 2004.

Later on Wednesday, as the storm makes its closest approach to Canada, forecastersare anticipating winds near hurricane force with gusts much higher just offshore. Snow totals could top two feet, and much of the region is essentially shut down.

No live shots of journalists braving the "double bomb" are necessary, folks. Numbers and videos from people who live there will tell a good enough story for me.

Maybe It's Time for a Carbon Subsidy?

I honestly don't know what to believe about global warming. But if, in fact, the earth is cooling because of something having to do with solar activity, wouldn't it be a good idea to create more greenhouse gases to offset the global cooling? [see this, for just one example, ht MK]

If so, maybe we need carbon fuel subsidies. Maybe we need taxes, not subsidies, for solar panels and wind turbines.

It Is Time to Reduce the Use of Biofuels

Bjorn Lomborg writes,

Biofuels in the EU take up an area of European farmland larger than the size of Belgium, enough land to feed 100 million people. And the US, whose biofuels program is about twice as large, is now burning more than 5% of all calories in the world. But while biofuels cost billions in subsidies and increase food prices around the world, they barely cut emissions and actually harm the environment.

Last week the EU could have become the first major political actor to curb the increase of biofuels. Unfortunately, the Council of Ministers failed to agree on a proposal to cap their use at 7% of total transport. This would still would have been far too high, but an improvement on the current 10%.

The reduction would have been good for the world’s poor, good for the environment and good for taxpayers. Moreover, the climb-down could have been good news for finding smarter climate solutions in the future. The unexpected delay is truly disappointing.

Read my new article in The Telegraph: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/energy/biofuels/10520736/The-great-biofuels-scandal.html