The following is a recent summary of the current status of the attempt by the United Nations to control (extort money from taxpayers) global climate change through the reduction of "carbon emissions". They are as Mr. Lomborg says, "flogging a dead horse". It is a dead issue, or it should be.
First off, the science behind the myth of man-caused global warming is based on lies and political manipulation (see "climategate"). Second, there is much doubt that "carbon emissions", which really means carbon dioxide emissions, can cause or are causing global warming. In fact, in spite of all the burning of "evil" fossil fuels over the past couple of centuries or so, it looks like the Earth is cooling, not warming. As Lomborg says, let's get on with something important.
Peter
The Emperor’s New Climate-Change Agreement
Bjørn Lomborg
AUTHOR INFO
Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.
http://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/lomborg80/English
COPENHAGEN – Dressing up failure as victory has been integral to climate-change negotiations since they started 20 years ago. The latest round of talks in Durban, South Africa, in December was no exception.
Climate negotiations have been in virtual limbo ever since the catastrophic and humiliating Copenhagen summit in 2009, where vertiginous expectations collided with hard political reality. So as negotiators – and a handful of government ministers – arrived in Durban, expectations could not have been lower.
Yet, by the end of the talks, the European Union’s climate commissioner, Connie Hedegaard, was being applauded in the media for achieving a “breakthrough” that had “salvaged Durban,” and, most significantly, for achieving the holy grail of climate negotiations, a “legally binding treaty.” According to British climate minister Chris Huhne, the results showed that the United Nations climate-change negotiation system “really works and can produce results.”
Sure, the agreement would come into effect only in 2020 – which sounds oddly complacent when environmentalists and political leaders warned ahead of the Copenhagen conference that we had just six months or 50 days to solve the climate problem. But, as the British newspaper The Guardian assured readers, this was a breakthrough, because developing countries, including India and China, were, for the first time, “agreeing to be legally bound to curb their greenhouse gases.” And, just as importantly, the US was making the same promise.
Let’s take a look at the actual agreement reached in Durban that generated all that congratulatory back-slapping. It won’t take long: the document runs to two pages, contains no commitments to cut emissions, and outlines no policies to implement the undefined cuts. There is simply a promise “to launch a process to develop a protocol, another legal instrument, or an agreed outcome with legal force.”
An agreement to launch a legal process. That is what everyone got so worked up about? And, again, the negotiators merely promised to set themselves a deadline of 2015 to finish setting up this legal process, which would enter into force five years hence.
Just a few days later, the Indian environment minister, Shrimati Jayanthi Natarajan, stressed that there was no legally binding treaty: “India cannot agree to a legally binding agreement for emissions reduction at this stage of our development.…I must clarify that [Durban] does not imply that India has to take binding commitments to reduce its emissions in absolute terms in 2020.”
India was not alone. The day after the Durban conference, Canada officially withdrew from the Kyoto Protocol, which Russia and Japan have already declined to extend, leaving only the EU’s member states and a few other countries committed to further reductions.
Hollow victories have been central to climate negotiations since they began. The Durban agreement uncannily echoes the agreement reached in Bali in 2007 “to launch a comprehensive process to enable the full, effective, and sustained implementation of the [UN Climate] Convention through long-term cooperative action.” According to that deal – which was, of course, much celebrated at the time – a legal treaty was supposed to be ready for the 2009 Copenhagen meeting.
In Kyoto in 1997, the treaty was acclaimed as “a milestone in the history of climate protection,” and President Bill Clinton declared that “the United States has reached an historic agreement with other nations of the world to take unprecedented action to address global warming.”
Of course, the treaty had already been rejected in the US Senate by a 95-0 vote, and thus was dead on arrival. This, and lax interpretations of emissions in the years following Kyoto, meant that more emissions occurred under the protocol than had been expected to occur in its absence according to research undertaken by the economists Christoph Böhringer and Carsten Vogt.
Even at the start of global climate-change negotiations in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, the aim of putting the planet “on a course to address the critical issue of global warming” soon went awry. Rich countries fell 12% short of their promise to cut emissions to 1990 levels by 2000.
For 20 years, climate negotiators have repeatedly celebrated deals that haven’t panned out. Worse, for all practical purposes, the promises that have been made have had no impact on global CO2 emissions. They have only provided false hope that we have addressed climate change and allowed us to push it to the back burner for another few years. So, before we get too excited celebrating the “breakthrough” of Durban, we would do well to reflect on a two-decade history of flogging a dead horse.
We will never reduce emissions significantly until we manage to make green energy cheaper than fossil fuels. We must focus sharply on research and development to drive down alternative energy prices over coming decades.
The first step toward doing that is to end our collective suspension of disbelief when it comes to climate-change negotiations. We need to see through the hype and self-serving political spin. We owe it to the future to do better.
Bjørn Lomborg is the author of The Skeptical Environmentalist and Cool It, head of the Copenhagen Consensus Center, and adjunct professor at Copenhagen Business School.
Copyright: Project Syndicate, 2012.
www.project-syndicate.org
Showing posts with label Bjorn Lomborg. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bjorn Lomborg. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 10, 2012
Monday, November 12, 2007
Ignore Gore - But Not His Nobel Friends
Bjorn Lomborg, author and global warming "skeptic" actually has something good, or at least positive to say about the United Nation's IPCC. He is less kind to the co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize. Read what he has to say, and why.
Peter
IGNORE GORE - BUT NOT HIS NOBEL FRIENDS
By Bjorn Lomborg
This week, the United Nations' climate scientists will release a major report synthesising the world's best global warming research. It will be the first time we've heard from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since its scientists won the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore.
The IPCC's Assessment Report will tell policy-makers what to expect from man-made climate change. It is the result of rigorous and painstaking labour: more than can be said for the other Nobel Prize winner. The difference between Gore's claims and IPCC research is instructive. While Gore was creating alarm with his belief that a 20-foot-high wall of water would inundate low-lying cities, the IPCC showed us we should realistically prepare for a rise of one foot or so by the end of the century. Beyond the dramatic difference, it is also worth putting that one foot in perspective. Over the last 150 years, sea levels rose about one foot - yet, did we notice?
Most tellingly, while Gore was raising fears about the Gulf Stream halting and a new Ice Age starting, the scientists discounted the prospect entirely. The Gulf Stream takes warm water from around Mexico and pushes it toward Europe. Around 8,000 years ago, a melting lake in the region of the present-day Canadian Great Lakes broke through and a massive torrent of cold, fresh water flooded into the North Atlantic, significantly slowing the Gulf Stream for around 400 years. Gore worries that Greenland's ice shelves could melt and do the same thing again. Ice in Greenland is obviously melting. But over the next century, it'll spill 1,000 times less water into the ocean than occurred 8,000 years ago. It will have a negligible effect on the Gulf Stream. In his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claimed that scientists were discovering that the current is "surprisingly fragile". However, the IPCC scientists write in their 2007 report: "None of the current models simulates an abrupt reduction or shut-down" of the Gulf Stream.
But what sort of nightmare would ensue if Gore were right? Siberia-like conditions in Europe? Actually, no. Europe would need to plunge by almost 13C to get that cold. Halting the Gulf Stream wouldn't achieve anything near that. Gore and others have bought into a popular myth: that the Gulf Stream is the reason that western European winters are so much warmer than those of eastern North America. It is true the Gulf Stream provides a few degrees of extra heat to Europe, but it actually warms the west side of the North Atlantic almost as much. It's not the reason Europe is warmer than the US in winter; warm winds are.
Let's hear from the IPCC again: "Catastrophic scenarios about the beginning of an ice age... are mere speculations, and no climate model has produced such an outcome. In fact, the processes leading to an ice age are sufficiently well understood and completely different from those discussed here, that we can confidently exclude this scenario."Gore's claims have received a lot of notice. Hopefully, the careful work of the IPCC will also receive the attention that it deserves.
Source
Peter
IGNORE GORE - BUT NOT HIS NOBEL FRIENDS
By Bjorn Lomborg
This week, the United Nations' climate scientists will release a major report synthesising the world's best global warming research. It will be the first time we've heard from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) since its scientists won the Nobel Peace Prize with former US vice-president Al Gore.
The IPCC's Assessment Report will tell policy-makers what to expect from man-made climate change. It is the result of rigorous and painstaking labour: more than can be said for the other Nobel Prize winner. The difference between Gore's claims and IPCC research is instructive. While Gore was creating alarm with his belief that a 20-foot-high wall of water would inundate low-lying cities, the IPCC showed us we should realistically prepare for a rise of one foot or so by the end of the century. Beyond the dramatic difference, it is also worth putting that one foot in perspective. Over the last 150 years, sea levels rose about one foot - yet, did we notice?
Most tellingly, while Gore was raising fears about the Gulf Stream halting and a new Ice Age starting, the scientists discounted the prospect entirely. The Gulf Stream takes warm water from around Mexico and pushes it toward Europe. Around 8,000 years ago, a melting lake in the region of the present-day Canadian Great Lakes broke through and a massive torrent of cold, fresh water flooded into the North Atlantic, significantly slowing the Gulf Stream for around 400 years. Gore worries that Greenland's ice shelves could melt and do the same thing again. Ice in Greenland is obviously melting. But over the next century, it'll spill 1,000 times less water into the ocean than occurred 8,000 years ago. It will have a negligible effect on the Gulf Stream. In his movie An Inconvenient Truth, Gore claimed that scientists were discovering that the current is "surprisingly fragile". However, the IPCC scientists write in their 2007 report: "None of the current models simulates an abrupt reduction or shut-down" of the Gulf Stream.
But what sort of nightmare would ensue if Gore were right? Siberia-like conditions in Europe? Actually, no. Europe would need to plunge by almost 13C to get that cold. Halting the Gulf Stream wouldn't achieve anything near that. Gore and others have bought into a popular myth: that the Gulf Stream is the reason that western European winters are so much warmer than those of eastern North America. It is true the Gulf Stream provides a few degrees of extra heat to Europe, but it actually warms the west side of the North Atlantic almost as much. It's not the reason Europe is warmer than the US in winter; warm winds are.
Let's hear from the IPCC again: "Catastrophic scenarios about the beginning of an ice age... are mere speculations, and no climate model has produced such an outcome. In fact, the processes leading to an ice age are sufficiently well understood and completely different from those discussed here, that we can confidently exclude this scenario."Gore's claims have received a lot of notice. Hopefully, the careful work of the IPCC will also receive the attention that it deserves.
Source
Monday, August 13, 2007
Live Earth Interview With Bjorn Lomborg: Rational Environmentalist
The organization Live Earth, that was used by Al Gore to put on the series of world-wide concerts promoting their version of the global climate issue published the following interview with Bjorn Lomborg. Mr. Lomborg, the author of the book "The Skeptical Environmentalist", has long been critical of the hype and inaccuracies surrounding the global warming issue.
I am happy, and a bit surprised to see this interview published. I hope it is a sign of more reasoned thinking related to global warming.
Peter
The sceptical environmentalist
There are two sides to every story – and global warming is no exception. Thus far, much has been said via Live Earth about the potentially catastrophic dangers of allowing climate change to continue unchecked. But there is an alternative perspective.
Bjorn Lomborg, named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2004 and author of the bestselling The Sceptical Environmentalist, is the poster boy for that perspective.
An adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Bjorn believes sweeping calls for action are little more than scare-mongering and insists that taking drastic, here-and-now measures is the worst way to spend the world’s financial resources. Live Earth UK caught up with him to take a long, cool look at global warming.
LE: You’re a self-confessed environmental sceptic. Does that mean you believe global warming is just an urban myth?
BL: To be sure, global warming is real, and it is caused by CO2. The trouble is that today’s best climate models show that immediate action will do little good. The Kyoto Protocol will cut CO2 emissions from industrialised countries by 30% below what they would have been in 2010 and by 50% in 2050. Yet, even if everyone (including the United States) lived up to the protocol’s rules, and stuck to it throughout the century, the change would be almost immeasurable, postponing warming for just six years in 2100.
Likewise, the economic models tell us that the cost would be substantial ¬– at least $150 billion a year. In comparison, the United Nations estimates that half that amount could permanently solve all of the world’s major problems: it could ensure clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, and education for every single person in the world, now.
LE: Why are you so critical of the emerging global efforts to control climate change?
BL: Making global warming the world's top priority means that we shuffle other major challenges down our "to do" list. Some climate change activists actually acknowledge this: Australian author Tim Flannery recently told an interviewer that climate change is "the only issue we should worry about for the next decade." Tell that to the four million people starving to death, to the three million victims of HIV/AIDS, or to the billions of people who lack access to clean drinking water. Human-caused climate change deserves attention, but the world faces many other vast challenges. Whether we like it or not, we have limited money and a limited attention span for global causes. We should focus first on achieving the most good for the most people.
LE: Does that really justify ignoring global warming altogether? Surely failing to take immediate action will only cause more acute problems further down the line.
BL: Of course, in the best of all worlds, we would not need to prioritise. We could do all good things. We would have enough resources to win the war against hunger, end conflicts, stop communicable diseases, provide clean drinking water, broaden educational access, and halt climate change. But we don’t. So we have to ask the hard question: if we can’t do it all, what should we do first?
2
LE: So, assuming international attention should be focused somewhere other than reducing CO2 emissions, what should we be doing instead?
BL: The Copenhagen Consensus project in 2004 brought together top-class thinkers, including four Nobel Laureate economists, to examine what we could achieve with a $50 billion investment designed to "do good" for the planet.
They examined the best research available and concluded that projects requiring a relatively small investment - getting micro-nutrients to those suffering from malnutrition, providing more resources for HIV/AIDS prevention, making a proper effort to get drinking water to those who lack it - would do far more good than the billions of dollars we could spend reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change.
LE: But surely the effects of climate change, if it is allowed to continue unchecked, will do just as much damage to the human race as malnutrition or AIDS – if not more?
BL: Carbon reduction activists argue that focusing exclusively on climate change will bring many benefits. They point out, for example, that malaria deaths will climb along with temperatures, because potentially killer mosquitoes thrive in warmer areas. And they would be right. But it's not as simple as the bumper sticker slogan "Fight climate change and ward off malaria."
If America and Australia are somehow inspired by the Live Earth concerts to sign the Kyoto Protocol, temperatures would rise by slightly less. The number of people at risk of malaria would be reduced by about 0.2% by 2085. Yet the cost of the Kyoto Protocol would be a staggering $180 billion a year. In other words, climate change campaigners believe we should spend $180 billion to save just 1,000 lives a year.
LE: Given that we’re talking about saving human lives, isn’t that a price worth paying?
BL: For much less money, we could save 850,000 lives each and every year. We know that dissemination of mosquito nets and malaria prevention programs could cut malaria incidence in half by 2015 for about $3 billion annually – less than 2% of the cost of Kyoto. The choice is stark. Indeed, the Copenhagen Consensus experts discovered that for every dollar invested in Kyoto-style battling climate change, we could do up to 120 times more good with in numerous other areas.
Here’s another fact to consider: the entire death toll from the Southeast Asian tsunami is matched each month by the number of worldwide casualties of HIV/AIDS. A comprehensive prevention program providing free or cheap condoms and information about safe sex to the regions worst affected by HIV/AIDS would cost $27 billion and save more than 28 million lives. This, say the economists who took part in the Copenhagen Consensus, makes it the single best investment that the world could possibly make. The social benefits would outweigh the costs by 40 to one.
And according to UN estimates, for $75 billion a year – half the cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocol – we could provide clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, and education to every single human being on Earth. Shouldn’t that be a higher priority?
3
LE: Are you suggesting we do nothing at all to combat climate change?
BL: No, but the problem needs to be dealt with in a responsible way. There can be no ten-year quick-fix solution; climate change is a 100-year problem. We need to find a viable, long-term strategy that is smart, equitable, and doesn’t require inordinate sacrifice for trivial benefits. Fortunately, there is such a strategy: research and development. Investing in R&D of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would leave future generations able to make serious and yet economically feasible and advantageous cuts. A new global warming treaty should mandate spending 0.05% of GDP on R&D in the future. It would be much cheaper, yet do much more good in the long run.
This approach would be much cheaper than Kyoto and many more times cheaper than a Kyoto II. It would involve all nations, with richer nations naturally paying the larger share, and perhaps developing nations being phased in. It would let each country focus on its own future vision of energy needs, whether that means concentrating on renewable sources, nuclear energy, fusion, carbon storage, or searching for new and more exotic opportunities.
LE: An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about global warming presented by Al Gore, has received mixed reactions around the world: some view it as a timely call to arms, others have branded it blatant propaganda. What were your thoughts?
BL: An Inconvenient Truth makes three points: global warming is real; it will be catastrophic; and addressing it should be our top priority. Inconveniently for the film’s producers, however, only the first statement is correct.
Gore shows that glaciers have receded for 50 years. But he doesn’t acknowledge they have been shrinking since the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s, long before industrial CO2 emissions. Likewise, he considers Antarctica the canary in the coalmine, but again doesn’t tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2% of Antarctica that is dramatically warming, while ignoring the 98% that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The UN climate panel estimates that Antarctica’s snow mass will actually increase during this century. And, whereas Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, he fails to mention that ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing.
The movie shows scary pictures of the consequences of the sea level rising 20 feet (seven metres), flooding large parts of Florida, San Francisco, New York, Holland, Calcutta, Beijing, and Shanghai. Were realistic levels not dramatic enough? The United Nations panel on climate change suggests a rise of only 1-2 feet during this century, compared to almost one foot in the last century.
4
Similarly, Europe’s deadly heat waves in 2003 lead Gore to conclude that climate change will mean more fatalities. But global warming would mean fewer deaths caused by cold temperatures, which in most of the developed world vastly outweigh deaths caused by heat. In the UK alone, it is estimated that the temperature increase would cause 2,000 extra heat deaths by 2050, but result in 20,000 fewer cold deaths.
Financial losses from weather events have increased dramatically over the past 45 years, which Gore attributes to global warming. But all or almost all of this increase comes from more people with more possessions living closer to harm’s way. If all hurricanes had hit the US with today’s demographics, the biggest damage would have been caused not by Katrina, but by a hurricane in 1926. Allowing for changes in the number of people and their wealth, flood losses have actually decreased slightly.
The movie invites viewers to conclude that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, with Gore claiming that the warm Caribbean waters made the storm stronger. But when Katrina made landfall, it was not a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane; it was a milder Category 3. In fact, there is no scientific consensus that global warming makes hurricanes more destructive, as he claims. The author that Gore himself relies on says that it would be “absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming.”
At the climax of his movie, Gore argues that future generations will chastise us for not having committed ourselves to the Kyoto Protocol. More likely, they will wonder why, in a world overflowing with inconvenient truths, Gore focused on the one where we could achieve the least good for the highest cost.
LE: So, are we to assume the global Live Earth events of July 2007 left you cold?
BL: It's honourable that the Live Earth organisers are so concerned about the far-off future, but you have to wonder why there is so little concern about the much-worse present. I don't want to stop anyone from caring about climate change, only to encourage a sense of perspective. There is a massive amount of good that we can do through practical, affordable approaches like HIV/AIDS education, malaria prevention, and the provision of micro-nutrients or clean water. This is the message I would like to ring out: we should focus on the best ideas first. At the Live Earth events, unfortunately, that is not what we heard.
I am happy, and a bit surprised to see this interview published. I hope it is a sign of more reasoned thinking related to global warming.
Peter
The sceptical environmentalist
There are two sides to every story – and global warming is no exception. Thus far, much has been said via Live Earth about the potentially catastrophic dangers of allowing climate change to continue unchecked. But there is an alternative perspective.
Bjorn Lomborg, named one of the 100 most influential people in the world by Time magazine in 2004 and author of the bestselling The Sceptical Environmentalist, is the poster boy for that perspective.
An adjunct professor at the Copenhagen Business School, Bjorn believes sweeping calls for action are little more than scare-mongering and insists that taking drastic, here-and-now measures is the worst way to spend the world’s financial resources. Live Earth UK caught up with him to take a long, cool look at global warming.
LE: You’re a self-confessed environmental sceptic. Does that mean you believe global warming is just an urban myth?
BL: To be sure, global warming is real, and it is caused by CO2. The trouble is that today’s best climate models show that immediate action will do little good. The Kyoto Protocol will cut CO2 emissions from industrialised countries by 30% below what they would have been in 2010 and by 50% in 2050. Yet, even if everyone (including the United States) lived up to the protocol’s rules, and stuck to it throughout the century, the change would be almost immeasurable, postponing warming for just six years in 2100.
Likewise, the economic models tell us that the cost would be substantial ¬– at least $150 billion a year. In comparison, the United Nations estimates that half that amount could permanently solve all of the world’s major problems: it could ensure clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, and education for every single person in the world, now.
LE: Why are you so critical of the emerging global efforts to control climate change?
BL: Making global warming the world's top priority means that we shuffle other major challenges down our "to do" list. Some climate change activists actually acknowledge this: Australian author Tim Flannery recently told an interviewer that climate change is "the only issue we should worry about for the next decade." Tell that to the four million people starving to death, to the three million victims of HIV/AIDS, or to the billions of people who lack access to clean drinking water. Human-caused climate change deserves attention, but the world faces many other vast challenges. Whether we like it or not, we have limited money and a limited attention span for global causes. We should focus first on achieving the most good for the most people.
LE: Does that really justify ignoring global warming altogether? Surely failing to take immediate action will only cause more acute problems further down the line.
BL: Of course, in the best of all worlds, we would not need to prioritise. We could do all good things. We would have enough resources to win the war against hunger, end conflicts, stop communicable diseases, provide clean drinking water, broaden educational access, and halt climate change. But we don’t. So we have to ask the hard question: if we can’t do it all, what should we do first?
2
LE: So, assuming international attention should be focused somewhere other than reducing CO2 emissions, what should we be doing instead?
BL: The Copenhagen Consensus project in 2004 brought together top-class thinkers, including four Nobel Laureate economists, to examine what we could achieve with a $50 billion investment designed to "do good" for the planet.
They examined the best research available and concluded that projects requiring a relatively small investment - getting micro-nutrients to those suffering from malnutrition, providing more resources for HIV/AIDS prevention, making a proper effort to get drinking water to those who lack it - would do far more good than the billions of dollars we could spend reducing carbon emissions to combat climate change.
LE: But surely the effects of climate change, if it is allowed to continue unchecked, will do just as much damage to the human race as malnutrition or AIDS – if not more?
BL: Carbon reduction activists argue that focusing exclusively on climate change will bring many benefits. They point out, for example, that malaria deaths will climb along with temperatures, because potentially killer mosquitoes thrive in warmer areas. And they would be right. But it's not as simple as the bumper sticker slogan "Fight climate change and ward off malaria."
If America and Australia are somehow inspired by the Live Earth concerts to sign the Kyoto Protocol, temperatures would rise by slightly less. The number of people at risk of malaria would be reduced by about 0.2% by 2085. Yet the cost of the Kyoto Protocol would be a staggering $180 billion a year. In other words, climate change campaigners believe we should spend $180 billion to save just 1,000 lives a year.
LE: Given that we’re talking about saving human lives, isn’t that a price worth paying?
BL: For much less money, we could save 850,000 lives each and every year. We know that dissemination of mosquito nets and malaria prevention programs could cut malaria incidence in half by 2015 for about $3 billion annually – less than 2% of the cost of Kyoto. The choice is stark. Indeed, the Copenhagen Consensus experts discovered that for every dollar invested in Kyoto-style battling climate change, we could do up to 120 times more good with in numerous other areas.
Here’s another fact to consider: the entire death toll from the Southeast Asian tsunami is matched each month by the number of worldwide casualties of HIV/AIDS. A comprehensive prevention program providing free or cheap condoms and information about safe sex to the regions worst affected by HIV/AIDS would cost $27 billion and save more than 28 million lives. This, say the economists who took part in the Copenhagen Consensus, makes it the single best investment that the world could possibly make. The social benefits would outweigh the costs by 40 to one.
And according to UN estimates, for $75 billion a year – half the cost of implementing the Kyoto Protocol – we could provide clean drinking water, sanitation, basic health care, and education to every single human being on Earth. Shouldn’t that be a higher priority?
3
LE: Are you suggesting we do nothing at all to combat climate change?
BL: No, but the problem needs to be dealt with in a responsible way. There can be no ten-year quick-fix solution; climate change is a 100-year problem. We need to find a viable, long-term strategy that is smart, equitable, and doesn’t require inordinate sacrifice for trivial benefits. Fortunately, there is such a strategy: research and development. Investing in R&D of non-carbon-emitting energy technologies would leave future generations able to make serious and yet economically feasible and advantageous cuts. A new global warming treaty should mandate spending 0.05% of GDP on R&D in the future. It would be much cheaper, yet do much more good in the long run.
This approach would be much cheaper than Kyoto and many more times cheaper than a Kyoto II. It would involve all nations, with richer nations naturally paying the larger share, and perhaps developing nations being phased in. It would let each country focus on its own future vision of energy needs, whether that means concentrating on renewable sources, nuclear energy, fusion, carbon storage, or searching for new and more exotic opportunities.
LE: An Inconvenient Truth, the documentary about global warming presented by Al Gore, has received mixed reactions around the world: some view it as a timely call to arms, others have branded it blatant propaganda. What were your thoughts?
BL: An Inconvenient Truth makes three points: global warming is real; it will be catastrophic; and addressing it should be our top priority. Inconveniently for the film’s producers, however, only the first statement is correct.
Gore shows that glaciers have receded for 50 years. But he doesn’t acknowledge they have been shrinking since the Napoleonic wars in the early 1800s, long before industrial CO2 emissions. Likewise, he considers Antarctica the canary in the coalmine, but again doesn’t tell the full story. He presents pictures from the 2% of Antarctica that is dramatically warming, while ignoring the 98% that has largely cooled over the past 35 years. The UN climate panel estimates that Antarctica’s snow mass will actually increase during this century. And, whereas Gore points to shrinking sea ice in the Northern Hemisphere, he fails to mention that ice in the Southern Hemisphere is increasing.
The movie shows scary pictures of the consequences of the sea level rising 20 feet (seven metres), flooding large parts of Florida, San Francisco, New York, Holland, Calcutta, Beijing, and Shanghai. Were realistic levels not dramatic enough? The United Nations panel on climate change suggests a rise of only 1-2 feet during this century, compared to almost one foot in the last century.
4
Similarly, Europe’s deadly heat waves in 2003 lead Gore to conclude that climate change will mean more fatalities. But global warming would mean fewer deaths caused by cold temperatures, which in most of the developed world vastly outweigh deaths caused by heat. In the UK alone, it is estimated that the temperature increase would cause 2,000 extra heat deaths by 2050, but result in 20,000 fewer cold deaths.
Financial losses from weather events have increased dramatically over the past 45 years, which Gore attributes to global warming. But all or almost all of this increase comes from more people with more possessions living closer to harm’s way. If all hurricanes had hit the US with today’s demographics, the biggest damage would have been caused not by Katrina, but by a hurricane in 1926. Allowing for changes in the number of people and their wealth, flood losses have actually decreased slightly.
The movie invites viewers to conclude that global warming caused Hurricane Katrina, with Gore claiming that the warm Caribbean waters made the storm stronger. But when Katrina made landfall, it was not a catastrophic Category 5 hurricane; it was a milder Category 3. In fact, there is no scientific consensus that global warming makes hurricanes more destructive, as he claims. The author that Gore himself relies on says that it would be “absurd to attribute the Katrina disaster to global warming.”
At the climax of his movie, Gore argues that future generations will chastise us for not having committed ourselves to the Kyoto Protocol. More likely, they will wonder why, in a world overflowing with inconvenient truths, Gore focused on the one where we could achieve the least good for the highest cost.
LE: So, are we to assume the global Live Earth events of July 2007 left you cold?
BL: It's honourable that the Live Earth organisers are so concerned about the far-off future, but you have to wonder why there is so little concern about the much-worse present. I don't want to stop anyone from caring about climate change, only to encourage a sense of perspective. There is a massive amount of good that we can do through practical, affordable approaches like HIV/AIDS education, malaria prevention, and the provision of micro-nutrients or clean water. This is the message I would like to ring out: we should focus on the best ideas first. At the Live Earth events, unfortunately, that is not what we heard.
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