12/06/09 Taipei, Taiwan – “In questions of science, the authority of a thousand is not worth the humble reasoning of a single individual.” – Galileo Galilei, contrarian astronomer.
In times of yore, annoyingly inquisitive skeptics were urged to avoid engaging in impolite subjects such as religion and politics and, instead, were encouraged to chitty-chat about more benign topics, like the weather. Alas, thanks to a rather inconvenient documentary, our atmospheric conversational safe haven was not to last long into the new century. Now even the weather – and, more to the point, who or what causes it – is considered out of bounds, certainly in politically “mixed” company.
There is little doubt that global warming is a touchy subject. One questions it the same way one questions a man’s right to bear arms south of the Mason Dixon line: with his hands above his head and at his own peril.
But why so uptight? Is it simply that folks don’t like to converse on topics they disagree on, as if – if they could only learn to ignore their differences – they might just resolve themselves naturally? Hmmn…
It could be that the debate touches on a variety of other subjects, simmering close below the surface, that we humans are also uncomfortable discussing. Believers, perhaps, feel a sense of guilt. They’ve driven too far, watched too many YouTube clips, eaten too many hamburgers and, in doing so, generally contributed enough tons of CO2 to end civilization as we know it. That’s gotta be hard to live down. No wonder they don’t want the subject raised.
But what about the skeptics? Well, they’ve got their own problems to deal with.
To hold that anthropogenic global warming (AGW) is a farce, that the books were – if you’ll pardon the pun – cooked, you’d have to believe that governments around the world are colluding to extort a crippling tax on citizens in an effort to save us from – gulp – ourselves. You’d have to suspect that those same governments were in bed with high-flying investment firms and individual insiders who might stand to pocket billions inventing and trading carbon credits and various other enviro-derivatives. And you’d have to believe that an Academy Award winning Nobel Peace Prize recipient is either a mildly convincing actor…or a menace to humanity…or, indeed, both.
But that’s not all. As of a couple of weeks ago, to suspect that AGW is a con, you must believe that private emails exchanged between climatologists responsible for providing the “consensus” data – emails in which were divulged methods of suppressing data, excluding dissenting viewpoints and manipulating evidence – were in some way damning or that they might actually undermine the scientific credibility of the heretofore unchallengeable AGW doctrine.
By now you have surely heard about the “Climategate” scandal setting the blogosphere ablaze. In case you accidentally stumbled on this fringy outlet and you usually stick to the mainstream media, here’s a very quick wrap of what you likely missed. In late November, hackers broke into the University of East Anglia’s Climate Research Unit (CRU) in England, one of the four official sources of global temperature data used by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, or IPCC. The exposed emails and files were then leaked to various media outlets and published on Al Gore’s “Internet.” The results were, ahem, interesting…
Here are a couple of teasers:
“I’ve just completed Mike’s Nature trick of adding in the real temps to each series for the last 20 years (i.e. from 1981 onwards) amd from 1961 for Keith’s to hide the decline.”
And…
“The fact is that we can’t account for the lack of warming at the moment and it is a travesty that we can’t. The CERES data published in the August BAMS 09 supplement on 2008 shows there should be even more warming: but the data are surely wrong. Our observing system is inadequate.”
Professor Phil Jones, CRU director, has stepped aside from his post at the University while an independent investigation is underway there. And, in what may be a sheer coincidence, the Oscar-decorated Nobel Laureate mentioned above has since canceled the lecture he planned to deliver at the crucial Copenhagen Climate Summit, due to kick off on Monday. Organizers would like disappointed fans and nut-job conspiracy theorists with long-range scopes to know that full refunds will be given in lieu of his presentation.
But what does this have to do with finance and economics, readers wonder. Actually, quite a lot.
Estimates vary on how much a proposed “cap-and-trade” plan might cost. Depending on where you get your figures – which seems to be a recurring caveat surrounding this whole discussion – annual cost to the US alone could be between $200-$350 billion, or roughly $1,750 – $3,000 per household. (We did see one global estimate of $23 trillion…but decided to discard that as a statistical outlier.)
President Obama himself said that energy costs were likely to “skyrocket” under his plan. One memorandum cited by various newsagencies, which was prepared for Obama’s transition team after last November’s election, estimates that, “Economic costs will likely be on the order of 1 percent of GDP, making them equal in scale to all existing environmental regulation.”
Critics, predictably, rebuke those figures, claiming that they are typically inflated and that their government would never spend that much money on a bogus scheme. Besides, “how can you put a price on human life…huh, huh!?”
Depending on what side of the debate you reside – skeptic or believer – action or inaction will cost you, respectively, thousands of dollars per year in additional taxes and the surrender of your liberty to a world government, or, your life and that of all future generations.
That’s quite a debate we’re not allowed to have for fear of offending polite company, eh?
Joel Bowman
Joel Bowman is managing editor of The Daily Reckoning. After completing his degree in media communications and journalism in his home country of Australia, Joel moved to Baltimore to join the Agora Financial team. His keen interest in travel and macroeconomics first took him to New York where he regularly reported from Wall Street, and he now writes from and lives all over the world.
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Judging from this article on bbc news, they think they have an agreement “in the bag” already:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/8397742.stm
The are going through the 5 stages of grief.
They are just trying to make a move before the entire thing unravels. The only problem is that the Senate will never ratify an treaty out of Copenhagen.
Smart people are growing tired of the “prophets of doom (POD)” spiel. According to the PODs we all should be dead by now, twice over. Starved, diseased, poisoned, bombed, and burned to death over and over — if not killed by spiteful computers over the millenium.
The Doomers of Gaia (DOGs) need to get a life, and stop trying to push everyone else into the great dieoff.org.
Between terrorists and doomers, it isn’t clear who is the greatest threat.
it is far easier to not believe in global warming than to believe it! If you don’t believe, the average consensus is that you can do whatever you want when you want it with no bad repurcussions. Those who do believe in global warming have to carry a burden the average joe doesn’t WANT to bear but feels that its their obligation to try and help the situation. so many write off global warming as a nut left wing mysticism but what if youre wrong!??! what if your children and YOUR decendents for THOUSANDS OF YEARS have to deal with a mistake. Are you going to have “WHOOPS” written on your tombstone?
Rich big wigs stand to make money on EVERY direction the debate goes! some rich guys will lose, some will gain. That is a certainty. But that doesn’t mean to write off the point of global warming. Check the facts and you will find Many more scientfic believers than deniers! often the deniers are backed by big oil
Lets be real!
http://www.newsweek.com/id/32482
Now I have respect for Austrian economics ever since the crash and Ive started researching. Ive learned a lot. But one thing I don’t understand is how in the back pocket of the oil companies are some of you libertarians/ republicans are without even knowing it.:
When you use combustion engines their nature is to leave around bad particles. In a confined space it isn’t a debate. Well the EARTH is a confined space too! We have air filters for our houses, we dont for the Earth! we are a giant lab experiment and if we mess up the equation it spells disaster.
The funny thing about it is that when the Sh** really hits the fan you wont even call it science, you’d rather call it the apocalypse because its simpler that way.
What a load of crap. If you knew ANYTHING about science you would know that there was nothing in the e-mails that “hurt” the consensus view. Do you do any ACTUAL research. Did you talk to any scientists about what was meant in the e-mails, or did you just “take dictation” from the flat earthers?
I tend to like the economic viewpoints on this site, but the political and science related articles usually miss base. Sometimes it is better to stick to your knitting.
This is absolutely worth watching:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7nnVQ2fROOg&feature=player_embedded
And the whole rhetoric is repeated in this article:
“Here are a couple of teasers:”
Well, it’s all there is!
BillWest, there is no such thing as a consensus in science. The only “consensus” there is in the climate science was coerced and manufactured with methods that belong to politics, not science.
The published data from the CRU is not enough to prove that AGW is wrong. However the data proves beyond reasonable doubt that AGW theory has not yet been tested at all by scientific community, and as such it is just one of many climate theories (and there are dozens of them in case you are not aware).
Why AGW theory is being pushed by politicians is perfectly clear – because it holds the highest PR and self-advertising potential. But if you allow politicians to do science for you – well, it’s your choice but don’t pretend that your faith has anything to do with science.
Joel-I’ve found excellent guidance in your articles, but please stick to subjects that don’t expose your ignorance.
Not be an alarmist, but there is certainly a scientific consensus that
1. CO2 and methane trap outgoing long wave radiation, regardless of where they originate. Indisputable.
2. The last two decades have been warmer than much of what preceded it. If it were otherwise, then most glaciers would be growing, not shrinking. There are exceptions, but this is just about indisputable.
3. Human activities add enormous amounts of CO2 and methane to the atmosphere, making concentrations as high as they’ve ever been.
The fact that there is also consensus that
1. There are natural climate cycles cause by all sorts of mechanisms we don’t fully understand.
2. The carbon cycle is very complex, which could lead to fortunate or unfortunate results.
doesn’t change the other points.
There are literally thousands of scientists working on climate change around the world. They are all colluding? Get a grip, man!
Green Chilies, the incremental CO2 absorption above 200 ppm is small and vanishing.
2. The last two decades are not the climatic maximum, despite much recent bias and manipulation, appearing to be fraudlent, to report otherwise.
3. CO2 concentrations, are not as high as they have ever been. A statement almost as geologically ignorant as Gore’s “millions of degrees” about the Earth’s interior.
4. There is no consensus. There are a number of academic bums