[Reader-list] Climate Change: A Contrarian View

[Yazad Jal]

CCS Position Paper on the Delhi Climate Change Meet
Climate Change: A Contrarian View

A provocative evaluation of the UN's CoP 8 meet in Delhi. Several similar critiques from varied points of view are available on the CCS website www.ccsindia.org. The site also has a large number of downloadable documents and links to other sites very relevant to the issues. We hope you will be able to use this information in your task of providing full and balanced understanding of these critical policy matters to your audience.

As the international travel and conference agency, known as the UN, brings 4000 delegates from 187 countries to Delhi for the CoP-8 meeting on climate change, a lot of hot air will be generated. But not a single CO2 molecule will be exhaled discussing the science and policy of climate change. The agenda makes it clear that the purpose is to find ways for developing countries to adapt to the effects of the climate change. Did I say find ways? A Times of India headline reveals the real intention: It's all about money! Yes, fund whatever projects that can bring money to the developing countries. The climate change is just another excuse to collect. ransom, sin fines, guilt money, development aid, alms, take your pick. And that's not all-we are supposed to feel morally superior to the givers.

The Circular Science of Climate Change

The collection game will go on, but let's ask about the science of climate change. Temperatures are lower today than in the Middle Ages. Between the mid-1940s and mid-1970s, global temperatures actually fell. Scientists at the time warned of the coming ice age. History is full of cycles of warming and cooling and we cannot as of now explain why these cycles occur. 

Any theory or model that claims to explain the rise in temperatures since mid-1970s should also be able to explain the previous cooling and then warming before mid-1940s. No such theory has been offered. How could we trust a model that explains only a miniscule part (post-1970s) of the whole phenomenon of global temperature cycles? 

The ice age cycle repeats at about 10,000 years. It is difficult to predict the exact timing of the next one. Why is no one interested in building models to forecast the next ice age, which given the history seems more certain than the alleged vapour age? Isn't it likely that 100 years hence the worry may just be about global cooling? (Swaminathan Aiyar, August 2002) 

Temperatures recorded via satellites and weather balloons, more accurate than those measured on the surface, show no discernible warming trend in the past two decades. Extrapolations of the satellite data suggest at most a slight warming by the year 2100. The evident conflict with the current climate change models surprisingly doesn't raise much concern.

In the Skeptical Environmentalist, Bjorn Lomborg provides persuasive scientific arguments challenging the orthodoxy. (See some of his most telling tables & figures here.) One of his green critics even admits: He also did a fairly convincing job of revealing statistical liberties taken by some environmental organisations and authors, probably enough to keep them on their toes in future endeavors (Brian Czech brianczech at juno.com).

Skepticism about global warming is not limited to professors of statistics and the carbon industry. Both The 1996 Leipzig Declaration and the 1998 Oregon Petition (signed by over 17,000 scientists, two-thirds with advanced degrees) are subscribed to by well-recognised experts, including members of the National Academy of Sciences and scientist-participants in the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). (See http://www.sepp.org for the Oregon Petition.)

It has become a habit to link any harmful changes in the climate to global warming. No amount of evidence seems to restrain this knee-jerk reaction. The Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society provides the example of El Niño of 1997 and 1998 in the US. It was accused of devastating tourism, increasing allergies, melting the ski-slopes and causing 22 deaths by dumping snow in Ohio. The article in the Bulletin estimated both costs and benefits of the 1997-98 Niño. The damage was estimated at $4 billion. The benefits amounted to some $19 billion! El Niño has positive effects?! The higher winter temperatures saved an estimated 850 lives and reduced heating costs and spring floods. Moreover, the historical connection between past Niños and fewer Atlantic hurricanes also held up. The US avoided huge loses since no big Atlantic hurricanes occurred in 1998. These benefits however were not reported as widely as the losses.

James Hansen (The Global Warming Debate), a pessimist climatologist, shows that the growth rate of greenhouse gases in the period 1988-1998 has been flat, a period in which the world has experienced probably the largest decadal increase in material production. Besides, carbon dioxide is not only pollution; it is the food of plants. Its higher concentrations would increase plant growth. We cannot accurately estimate these benefits, just as we cannot accurately estimate the costs. But does this justify the focus only on the costs? 

The Irrational Policy Prescriptions

Let's for the sake of argument take the pessimists at their models. Would their solution, the Kyoto Protocol, save us from their predicted catastrophe? Tom Wigley, one of the main authors of IPCC reports, shows that strict implementation of Kyoto would diminish the expected temperature increase of 2.1°C in 2100 to an increase of 1.9°C instead. To put it another way, the temperature increase that the planet would have experienced in 2094 would be postponed to 2100! What's the cost of lengthening the planet's life by six years?

The cost of Kyoto, for the US alone, will be higher than the cost of providing universal access to clean drinking water and sanitation. That would save two million lives every year, and prevent half a billion people from becoming seriously ill. And that is the best case. If we include the cost of corruption, waste, and inefficiency inherent in any government program, not to mention the cost of coordinating all the world's governments like the UN summits, the total cost could approach $1 trillion. For comparison, the total global-aid budget today is about $50 billion a year. (Economist, August, 2001 )

The advocacy of sustainable development is to put limit on economic growth. But better environment is like any other good and the wealthier the people, the more they would be able to purchase it. The people of the third world have urgent need for potable water, sanitation, and clean indoor air (instead of suffering from the smoke of fuel wood and dung cakes). The green imperialists forget their immediate real needs.

Let's ask then what damages the planet would suffer by the projected global warming. What's the cost of dumping Kyoto? There are as many answers as the number of fundraisers done by Greenpeace in a typical month. The cost is that anything and everything can happen if the green gods are not offered the sacrifice.

The water level of the oceans would rise and land would be submerged. On the other hand, ice would melt and more usable land would become available. Climatic changes would decimate some flora, but increased CO2 concentrations would raise growth. There are trade-off on all counts. Any rational assessment would have to focus on costs as well as benefits. Just as in the case of El Niño discussed earlier. These however are unnecessary details for the crusaders trying to save us from ourselves. They demand massive sacrifice without much inkling of the benefits.

Moreover, the fundamental premise of the idea-that economic growth, if left unconstrained and unmanaged by the state, threatens unnecessary harm to the environment and may prove ephemeral-is dubious. First, if economic growth were to be slowed or stopped-and sustainable development is essentially concerned with putting boundaries around economic growth-it would be impossible to improve environmental conditions around the world. Second, the bias toward central planning on the part of those endorsing the concept of sustainable development will serve only to make environmental protection more expensive; hence, society would be able to "purchase" less of it.

Dustbin of Doomsday Predictions

Dr Ehrlich predicted in his best selling 1968 book The Population Bomb that "the battle to feed humanity is over. In the course of the 1970s the world will experience starvation of tragic proportions-hundreds of millions of people will starve to death."

That did not happen. Instead agricultural production in the developing world has increased by 52% per person since 1961. Since 1800 food prices have decreased by more than 90%, and in 2000 prices were lower than ever before. This is just one example of doomsday predictions that have never materialised.  (See Surviving The Apocalypse  for the many other.)

If there is one country or rather a civilisation that can demonstrate human capacity of survival against all odds, resilience, and resourcefulness to solve problems, it is India. If the pessimists can take only that lesson home, India would have served well her role as the host.

Contact: Parth J Shah at 98111-45667; parth at ccsindia.org or forparth at hotmail.com

References

Science:

Climate Change: Challenging The Conventional Wisdom  by Julian Morris

A Climate of Uncertainty In Thegreenhouse Century by Robert C. Balling  

Energy for Sustainable Devlopment by Robert L.Bradley Jr

Climate Science and Policy: Making the Connection by ESEF

Global Warming And Other Eco-Myths by Ronald Bailey 

The True State Of The Planet by Ronald Bailey 

The State of the World's Forests 2001 

Review of The 2001 U.S. Climate Action Report

National Academy of Sciences Raises More Climate Questions

New Study Distorts Health Benefits of Greenhouse Gas Reduction By Joel Schwartz

Newest IPCC Report on Global Warming Fails to Deliver Sound Policymaking Models By Kenneth Green 

Policy:

Incentive-based Approaches for Mitigating Greenhouse Gas Emissions: Issues and Prospects for India  by Shreekant Gupta

The Political Economy of Climate Change Science by Roger Bate

Bootleggers, Baptists & Global Warmiing by Bruce Yandle

Malaria & Climate Change by Richard Tren, Africa Fighting Malaria

The Precautionary Principle

Sustainable Development

Renewable Energy

Free Market Environmentalism :  An Interview with Terry Anderson PERC Executive Director 

Recent News and Publications on Climate Change from Reason Public Policy Institute

PERC Points

Global Warming is good for you



The Human Costs of Global Warming Policy by Fran Smith 

The Consequences of Climate Change

Reducing Global Warming Through Forestry and Agriculture

Ethanol Mandate: Forcing Outdated Technology that May Not Even Work By Joel Schwartz

Farming for the Future:Agriculture's Next Generation by J. BISHOP GREWELL

Additional Sources:

Long Hot Year

Climate Change Science

Report & Reprint Series of Massachusetts Inst. of Technology

Correcting Myths About Global Warming : Books, Sites & Articles 





-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mail.sarai.net/pipermail/reader-list/attachments/20021028/19d8f637/attachment.html