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The Slow, Sure Death of “Climate Change” Lies

May 23, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics /by Alan Caruba

Even though President Obama continues to lie about “climate change” and employs the many elements of the federal government to repeat those lies, this huge hoax is dying.

Obama is on record saying that climate change “once considered an issue for the distant future, has moved firmly into the present” and is “affecting Americans right now.” Climate change as studied by climatologists is measured in terms of centuries whereas the weather is what is happening today. It has been happening before and since the rise of civilization. Obama’s claim that “climate-related changes are outside of recent experience” and “have become more frequent and/or intense” is a lie from start to finish.

The White House recently released its latest “National Climate Assessment.” It is 841 pages of outlandish claims that reflect the lies generated by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. When you consider that the federal government spends an estimated $2.6 billion annually in grants for climate research, about the only beneficiaries are those “scientists” employed to further the hoax.

The UN’s IPCC was created in 1983 and has issued a series of reports whose sole intention has been to frighten people around the world with claims of global warming that are scientifically baseless.

The Heartland Institute, a non-profit market-based think tank, responded by creating the Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) and by sponsoring a series of international conferences. The 9th conference will be July 7-9 in Las Vegas. That effort began in 2003 in cooperation with the Science & Environmental Project led by Dr. S. Fred Singer and was joined by the Center for the Study of Carbon Dioxide and Global Change.

I am an advisor to the Institute, having written about environmental and energy issues for several decades at this point.

Click on the image to view and download a free copy of the report.

Calling on thousands of scientists around the world, in 2013 the NIPCC published the first of a three-volume response to the IPCC’s fifth assessment. This year, it has published a volume of Climate Change Reconsidered devoted to biological impacts, a 1,062 page opus. The NIPCC is an international panel of scientists and scholars with no government affiliation or sponsorship, and it receives no corporate funding.

Writing in the Financial Post in October 2013, Lawrence Solomon, the executive director of Energy Probe, a Toronto-based environmental group, noted that “solar activity is now falling more rapidly than at any time in the last 10,000 years.” The Earth’s climate is primarily a reflection of solar radiation or the lack of it. From 1300 to 1850, the Earth was subject to a mini-ice age. While the global warming hoax began in the late 1980s, Solomon noted that, in the 1960s and 1970s, the scientific consensus was that the Earth “was entering a period of global cooling. The media in those years was filled with stories about a pending new ice age.

It was only the intervention of the UN’s IPCC that changed the “consensus” to one of global warming. A cooling cycle that began around fourteen years ago could lead to another mini-ice age or the planet could be on the cusp of a full-fledged one. On average, the interglacial periods of the Earth have lasted about 11,500 years and we are at the end of such a period.

Climate Change Reconsidered II devoted to biological impact features scientific studies that conclude:

“Atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is not a pollutant.” Considering that all vegetation on Earth depends on it, it is not surprising that another conclusion was that the ongoing rise in the air’s CO2 content is causing a great greening of the Earth.
As a result, “there is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels and that terrestrial ecosystems have thrived throughout the world as a result of warming temperatures and rising levels of atmospheric CO2. Multiple lines of evidence indicate animal species are adapting, and in some cases, evolving, to cope with climate change of the modern era.”
In addition, “rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels to no pose a significant threat to aquatic life and that a modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperate-related events.”

The irony of the latest NIPCC report, of course, is that it responds to the claims of global warming and carbon dioxide’s role at a time when the Earth is cooling. It makes one wish that all the talk about “greenhouse gases” is true enough to help us escape from the present cooling.

One thing we do know for sure is that the Greens talk of climate change has lost its grip on the public imagination and attention. As the cooling cycle continues, people around the world will be far more focused on increased evidence of massive ice sheets at both poles, on frozen lakes and rivers, on shortened growing seasons, and on the desperate need for more fossil fuels to warm our homes and workplaces.

Earth ‘Serially Doomed’: UN Issues New 15 Year Climate Tipping Point – But UN Issued Tipping Points in 1982 & 1989!

April 16, 2014/in Environment, Featured, News, Policy, Science /by Marc Morano

According to the Boston Globe, the United Nations has issued a new climate “tipping point” by which the world must act to avoid dangerous global warming.

The Boston Globe noted on April 16, 2014: “The world now has a rough deadline for action on climate change. Nations need to take aggressive action in the next 15 years to cut carbon emissions, in order to forestall the worst effects of global warming, says the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

Once again, the world is being warned of an ecological or climate “tipping point” by the UN.

In 1982, the UN issued a two decade tipping point. UN official Mostafa Tolba, executive director of the UN Environment Program (UNEP), warned on May 11, 1982, the “world faces an ecological disaster as final as nuclear war within a couple of decades unless governments act now.” According to Tolba in 1982, lack of action would bring “by the turn of the century, an environmental catastrophe which will witness devastation as complete, as irreversible as any nuclear holocaust.”

For a larger view click on the image.

As early as 1989, the UN was already trying to sell their “tipping point” rhetoric on the public. See: U.N. Warning of 10-Year ‘Climate Tipping Point’ Began in 1989 – Excerpt: According to July 5, 1989, article in the Miami Herald, the then-director of the New York office of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), Noel Brown, warned of a “10-year window of opportunity to solve” global warming. According to the 1989 article, “A senior U.N. environmental official says entire nations could be wiped off the face of the Earth by rising sea levels if the global warming trend is not reversed by the year 2000. Coastal flooding and crop failures would create an exodus of ‘eco-refugees,’ threatening political chaos.” (LINK) & (LINK)

It’s all so confusing. In 2007, UN IPCC chief Pachauri declared 2012 as the climate deadline to act or it would be “too late.” See: Celebrate! UN IPCC Chairman Pachauri: It’s Too Late to Fight Climate Change! – Pachauri in 2007: ‘If there’s no action before 2012, that’s too late. What we do in the next two to three years will determine our future. This is the defining moment’

Not to be outdone by the UN, Former Irish President Mary Robinson weighed in this week, issuing a more generous 20 year tipping point. “Former president says we have 20 years to save the world from climate change effects…Robinson calls for climate agreement by 2015.” Robinson noted that global leaders have “at most two decades to save the world”.

Not to be left out, NASA got in the climate tipping point act in 2009. See: NASA’s James Hansen Declared Obama Only First Term to Save The Planet! — ‘On Jan. 17, 2009 Hansen declared Obama only ‘has four years to save Earth’

For a larger view click on the image.

Watch Now: Morano rips NASA’s James Hansen: ‘Hansen said we only have 4 years left to save the planet in Jan.2009, We passed another Mayan calendar deadline’

But in 2012, the UN gave Obama and planet Earth another four year reprieve. See: Tipping points extended again: UN Foundation Pres. Warmist Tim Wirth: 2012 is Obama’s ‘last window of opportunity’ to get it right on climate change

Former Vice President Al Gore also created a 10 year climate tipping point in 2006: See: Climatologist Dr. Roy Spencer Mocks Gore for issuing 10-year tipping point in 2006: Al Gore’s 10-year climate warning – Only 2 years left & still no global warming – Spencer: ‘Gore told us in January 2006 that we had only 10 years left to solve the global warming problem’ – ‘In the grand tradition of prophets of doom, his prognostication is not shaping up too well…still no statistically significant warming’

Then, Michael Mann weighed in with his 2036 Mayan calendar type deadline. See: 2036 is the new 2012?! UN Scientist Michael Mann starts his own Mayan Calendar deadline: ‘Global Warming Will Cross a Dangerous Threshold in 2036′

Other global warming activists chose 2047 as the key date. See: Global warming activist scientists may not be the first to proclaim a doomsday year of 2047 as the end of time! — 2047 is the new 2012 — but global warming activists were beaten to Armageddon! – A Climate Depot analysis has uncovered that 2047 has long been seen as a successor to 2012 as an apocalyptic date.

Finding no date agreement, 20 governments chose 2030 as the scary deadline: See: Skeptics Repent! We are all doomed! Report: More than 100 million people will die by 2030 if world fails to act on climate — Reuters: ‘More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2% of GDP by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday. As global avg. temps rise due to ghg emissions, the effects on planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organisation DARA’

The tipping point rhetoric seems to have exploded after 2002. See: Tipping Points In Env. Rhetoric: An Unscientific Survey of Nexis: After June 2002, news media’s use of tipping point in the context of global warming and climate change exploded’ — ‘Between June 2002 and June 2005 – CC: 262; GW: 303. Between June 2005 and June 2008 – CC: more than 3,000; GW: more than 3,000* Between June 2008 and June 2011 – CC: more than 3,000; GW: 2903 Between June 2011 and June 2012 – CC: 1,348; GW; 637 Of course, the problem with tipping points is that they can never be proven wrong; only right in retrospect. And that, of course, makes citing them a wonderful rhetorical device for doomsayers’

UNEP Warns of New ‘Tipping Points’ Being Reached — ’20-30 years into future…far enough away that it can be forgotten when date approaches & Armageddon hasn’t yet arrived on schedule’

Perhaps the best explanation of tipping points comes from UK scientist Philip Stott.

See: UK Scientist Philip Stott ridiculed “tipping point” claims in 2007. “In essence, the Earth has been given a 10-year survival warning regularly for the last fifty or so years. We have been serially doomed. […] Our post-modern period of climate change angst can probably be traced back to the late-1960s, if not earlier. By 1973, and the ‘global cooling’ scare, it was in full swing, with predictions of the imminent collapse of the world within ten to twenty years, exacerbated by the impacts of a nuclear winter. Environmentalists were warning that, by the year 2000, the population of the US would have fallen to only 22 million [the 2007 population estimate is 302,824,000]. […] In 1987, the scare abruptly changed to ‘global warming’, and the IPCC (the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was established (1988), issuing its first assessment report in 1990, which served as the basis of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC).”

Inconvenient History of Climate ‘Tipping Point’ Warnings

UK’s Top Scientist Sir David King in 2004: ‘Antarctica is likely to be the world’s only habitable continent by the end of this century if global warming remains unchecked’

NASA scientist James Hansen has been warning of a “tipping point” for years now. See: Earth’s Climate Approaches Dangerous Tipping Point – June 1, 2007 – Excerpt: A stern warning that global warming is nearing an irreversible tipping point was issued today” by James Hansen.

Former Vice President Al Gore invented his own “tipping point” clock a few years ago. Excerpt: Former Vice-President Al Gore came to Washington on July 17, 2008, to deliver yet another speech warning of the “climate crisis.” “The leading experts predict that we have less than 10 years to make dramatic changes in our global warming pollution lest we lose our ability to ever recover from this environmental crisis,” Gore stated.

Prince Charles claimed a 96-month tipping point in July 2009. Excerpt: The heir to the throne told an audience of industrialists and environmentalists at St James’s Palace last night that he had calculated that we have just 96 months left to save the world. And in a searing indictment on capitalist society, Charles said we can no longer afford consumerism and that the “age of convenience” was over.

Get ready, we only have 190 years! Scientists ‘expect climate tipping point’ by 2200 – UK Independent – June 28, 2010 – Excerpt: “13 of the 14 experts said that the probability of reaching a tipping point (by 2200) was greater than 50 per cent, and 10 said that the chances were 75 per cent or more.”

‘World has only ten years to control global warming, warns Met Office – UK Telegraph – November 15, 2009 – Excerpt: Pollution needs to be brought under control within ten years to stop runaway climate change, according to the latest Met Office predictions. […] “To limit global mean temperature [increases] to below 2C, implied emissions of CO2 to the atmosphere at the end of the century fall close to zero in most cases.”

In 2013, the UN extended the deadline again. See: Earth Gets 15 Year Reprieve From Climate Doom?!: UN in 1989: World has a ’10-year window of opportunity to solve’ global warming — Now in 2013: ‘UN needs global warming answer by 2015′ – New date is the latest in a long history of flexible global warming deadlines

The UN chief Ban Ki-moon further shortened the “tipping point” in August 2009, when he warned of ‘incalculable’ suffering without climate deal in December 2009!

Newsweek magazine waded into the tipping point claims as well. Newsweek wrote: “The longer the planners delay, the more difficult will they find it to cope with climatic change once the results become grim reality.” But, Newsweek’s “tipping point” quote appeared in a April 28, 1975 article about global cooling! Same rhetoric, different eco-scare.

For an explanation of why climate fear promoters are failing to convince the public, see: MIT Climate Scientist: ‘Ordinary people see through man-made climate fears — but educated people are very vulnerable’ – July 6, 2009]

More Related Links:

Warmists Prep for UN Summit: ‘World headed for irreversible climate change in five years, IEA warns’: ‘The world will ‘lose for ever’ the chance to avoid dangerous climate change’ — ‘The door is closing,” Fatih Birol, chief economist at the International Energy Agency…Every month now counts: if the world is to stay below 2C of warming’

UK greenie George Monbiot 2002 warned we only had 10 years! ‘Famine can only be avoided if the rich give up meat, fish and dairy’– Monbiot on December 24, 2002: ‘Within as little as 10 years, the world will be faced with a choice: arable farming either continues to feed the world’s animals or it continues to feed the world’s people. It cannot do both’

1924: Top Scientists Say That Earth Is Doomed (April 16, 1924) – ‘It is the firmest conviction of a group of serious scientists of established reputation, who have devoted their lives to a dispassionate and careful examination of geological and astronomical evidence. This group includes such investigators as Dr. Max Valier, of Munich. Engineer Hanne Hoerbiger, of Vienna, Dr. Voigt, of Berlin; and Professor F. Queisser. of Prague’

New Ecology Paper Challenges ‘Tipping Point’ Meme

Analysis: ‘Al Gore’s 10-Year ‘Scorching’ Prophesy Emerging As A Grand Hoax…Global Temperatures Declined Over Last Decade’

Gore Losing: No cause for alarm at 5-year mid-point of Armstrong-Gore climate ‘bet’ — ‘Gore should be pleased to find concerns about a ‘tipping point’ have turned out to be unfounded’ – ‘The latest global temperature is exactly where it was at the beginning of the ‘bet’ — ‘The IPCC’s forecasting procedures have been found to violate 72 of the 89 relevant principles’

ALERT: Obama (& Planet Earth) Granted Last Minute Reprieve! Four years ago, the world’s greatest climatologist James Hansen gave Obama until Jan. 17, 2013 to save the planet’

Doomster Paul Ehrlich is back and just as wrong as ever! Remember when we all starved to death in the 1980s, just as I predicted? It might happen AGAIN! – Ehrlich: ‘We risk a global collapse of our civilization as we know it. Climate change is just one of our problems. We cannot avert calamity without tackling it and other pressing ecological concerns’

Flashback: ‘Accurate Tribute to Paul Ehrlich: ‘Mad…Kook…Lunatic…Disgraced…Worse than Hitler…fear-monger…parasite on Academic system’

UK Guardian: ’50 months to avoid climate disaster’ — ‘On a very conservative estimate, 50 months from now, the dice become loaded against us in terms of keeping under a 2C temp rise’

Forty Year Cycle Of Scientific Psychosis Discovered: ‘There appears to be a forty year cycle of mental illness in the scientific community’ — ‘This is what they were saying in 1970′: ‘Civilization will end within 15 or 30 years unless immediate action is taken against problems facing mankind; — George Wald, Harvard Biologist — ‘We are in an environmental crisis which threatens the survival of this nation, and of the world as a suitable place of human habitation.’ — Barry Commoner, Wash. U biologist’

MIT to Obama: Only 4 years left to stop global warming: ‘It is quite possible that if this is not done over the next four years, it will be too late’ — MIT to Obama: ‘We can no longer pretend that addressing climate change will be without real costs’ — ‘You have the power and the opportunity to lay the groundwork for a new clean-energy policy that will help us avoid the worst consequences of climate change,” said the letter, published in the MITTechnology Review’

Flashback 2007: Climatologist Dr. Michaels mocks ‘tipping points’: ’We have to do something in 10 years — they have been saying that for two years. Why don’t they at least subtract 2 and make it 8?’

Another Atmospheric Scientist Dissents: Calls fears of CO2 tipping point ‘alarmist, ludicrous, and totally without foundation’ – July 13, 2009 – ‘Over geologic time there has been 15 to 25 times more CO2 than current concentrations’

Media Tipping Point! Houston Chronicle Reporter Reconsiders Science is ‘Settled’ Claims! ‘I am confused. 4 years ago this all seemed like a fait accompli’ – September 6, 2009

Antarctic Tipping Point? ‘If we don’t act soon, the planet will become a barren ball of ice and snow’ – October 2, 2009 – ’5 of the 6 years with the greatest Southern Hemisphere sea ice extent have occurred in just the last decade’

2007 – GLOBAL WARMING ALARMISM REACHES A TIPPING POINT – October 26, 2007

Climate Depot’s Morano on new alarmist National Academy of Sciences’ climate ‘tipping point’ study: It ‘openly shills for more climate funding for its members’ — Morano: ‘The organization [NAS] is virtually 100% dependent on government funding. So when they do a study like this – and they’ve done other studies in the past – you know the outcome of these studies before they do them. The actual funding quote from new study is: ‘The sudden changes in the climate is full of uncertainties. The world can prepare by better monitoring,’ Morano offers. ‘And it goes on [to say that] because of budget cuts and aging satellites, we have fewer measurements than we did a few years ago.’ – ‘When the NAS is advocating for a carbon tax, it’s not too surprising that all [their] reports are going to fall in line.’

Former Greenpeace co-founder turned climate skeptic Dr. Patrick Moore calls NAS ‘tipping point’ study ‘pure junk’: ‘Low point for US National Academy of Science. Warns of ‘tipping points’ in climate like ‘drunk drivers’

AP’s Seth Borenstein: ‘FEDERAL STUDY WARNS OF SUDDEN CLIMATE CHANGE WOES’

See: NAS Corrupted Warmist Ralph Cicerone: Turned Org. into political advocacy group: $6 million NAS study used to lobby for climate bill

Flashback: MIT’s Lindzen Slams: ‘Ralph Cicerone of NAS/NRC is saying that regardless of evidence the answer is predetermined. If gov’t wants carbon control, that is the answer that the Academies will provide’

Cicerone’s Shame: NAS Urges Carbon Tax, Becomes Advocacy Group — ‘political appointees heading politicized scientific institutions that are virtually 100% dependent on gov’t funding’

Is Lying About Climate Change Okay?

April 10, 2014/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Regulation, Science /by Alan Caruba

Those of us who have chronicled the global warming hoax, now called “climate change”, know that it is based on decades of lies about carbon dioxide and other “greenhouse gas” with predictions that the Earth will heat up and cause massive problems unless those emissions are drastically reduced by not using coal, oil and natural gas.

Two American think tanks, The Heartland Institute and the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT) have been among those exposing those lies for years. The lies have been generated and led by the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC).

“Despite the panel’s insistence that the Earth is getting hotter, five different datasets show that there have been no observable warming for 17 and a half years even as carbon dioxide levels have risen 12%,” notes Christopher Monckton, a science advisor to Britain’s former Prime Minister Thatcher. “The discrepancy between prediction and observation continues to grow.”

Recently, two Chinese assistant professors of economics, Fuhai Hong and Xiaojian Zhao, were published in the American Journal of Agricultural Economics. Their paper, “Information Manipulation and Climate Agreements”, openly advocated lying about global warming/climate change in order to get nations to sign on to the International Environmental Agreement.

“It appears that news media and some pro-environmental organizations,” they noted, “have the tendency to accentuate or even exaggerate the damage caused by climate change. This article provides a rationale for this tendency.”

Craig Rucker, CFACT’s Executive Director, responded to the Chinese authors saying “They’re shameless.” Theirs and others ends-justify-the-means tactics reflects the attitudes and actions of environmental organizations and serves as a warning to never accept anything they say on any aspect of this huge hoax.

CFACT’s President and co-founder, David Rothbard, noted that “Global warming skeptics have long charged that alarmists are over-hyping the dangers of climate change.” How long? Back in 1989, the late Stanford University professor, Stephen Schneider, said, “So we have to offer up scary scenarios, make simplified, dramatic statements, and make little mention of any doubts we might have. This ‘double ethical bind’ which we frequently find ourselves in cannot be solved by any formula. Each of us has to decide what the right balance between being effective and being honest.”

There is no “right balance” between telling lies and telling the truth when it comes to science or any other aspect of our lives. Suffice to say that thousands of scientists who participated in the IPCC reports over the years supported the lies, but many have since left and some have openly denounced the reports.

As the latest IPCC summary of its report has garnered the usual verbatim media coverage of its outlandish predictions, The Heartland Institute has released its own 1,062 page report from the “Nongovernmental International Panel on Climate Change (NIPCC) called “Climate Change Reconsidered II: Biological Impacts. An 18-page summary is available at http://ClimateChangeReconsidered.org.

Among its findings:

Atmospheric carbon dioxide is not a pollutant.
There is little or no risk of increasing food insecurity due to global warming or rising atmospheric CO2 levels.
Rising temperatures and atmospheric CO2 levels do not pose a significant threat to aquatic life.
A modest warming of the planet will result in a net reduction of human mortality from temperature-related events.

Based on hundreds of peer-reviewed studies, the NIPCC report is free of the lies that are found in the IPCC report whose studies have been, at best, dubious, and at worst, deliberately deceptive.

In light of the natural cooling cycle the Earth has been in that is good news and it will be even better news when the planet emerges from the cycle that reflects the lower levels of radiation from the Sun.

On March 31, CNS News reported that “The United Nation’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s latest report estimates it will cost developed nations an additional $100 billion each year to help poorer nations adapt to the devastating effects of ‘unequivocal’ global warming, including food shortages, infrastructure breakdown, and civil violence. But that figure was deleted from the report’s executive summary after industrial nations, including the United States, objected to the high price tag.”

The price tag reveals the IPCC’s real agenda, the transfer of funds from industrial nations to those less developed. It’s about the money and always has been. It’s not global warming the planet needs to survive, it is the costly lies about it.

Climate Consensus: Do Little for Now by DANIEL SUTTER

April 9, 2014/in Economy, Environment, News, Policy, Regulation /by Foundation for Economic Education (FEE)

The 2007 report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) projects that continued emission of greenhouse gasses (GHG) will raise the earth’s temperature by 1.8°C (3.2°F) and sea level by one foot by 2100. Projected climate changes, if they come to pass, will have a number of effects on society, though not all of those effects will be negative.

Although debate over the IPCC’s projections continues, less attention has been focused on the ultimately more important result: Cost-benefit analysis (CBA) implies we should do very little to prevent climate change. Instead, we should create wealth. Expanding the productive capacity of the economy will compensate future generations better than reductions in GHG will. A richer world in 2100, after all, will be able to afford to do things like relocating people affected by rising sea levels and constructing new port facilities and seawalls.

A report by the liberal Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University observes, “Economists frequently . . . calculate the optimal policy response [to climate change]. This calculation often leads to the conclusion that relatively little should be done for now.”

Cost-Benefit Analysis

Businesses operate under the discipline of profit and loss based on market prices. Profit signals that an action generates benefits for the economy. Government does not face the discipline of profit and loss, but CBA, performed honestly, offers guidance about whether government actions benefit society.

Measures to reduce GHG emissions today typically fail a cost-benefit test due to the discounting of benefits. Discounting refers to applying a real interest rate to future values. Two arguments support discounting in CBA. The first is impatience, or what economists call time preference: $100 is worth more today than it is one year from now, even without inflation. The second is the return on savings and investment, or the opportunity cost of capital. Money spent now to reduce GHG could be saved and invested instead. The interest rate equates impatience and the return on investment on the margin, as investors must be compensated for delaying consumption.

Discounting

The mathematics of discounting makes values more than about 50 years in the future worth little today. The federal government makes cost-benefit calculations using 3 percent and 7 percent annual real (or adjusted for inflation) interest rates, approximating the historical risk-free interest rate and the annual real return on stocks. The present value of $1 million 100 years from now is $52,000 at a 3 percent discount rate, and $1,150 at a 7 percent discount rate. To see how this affects climate change economics, suppose that spending $100 billion annually—starting right now—we could prevent $1 trillion in annual damage, beginning in 100 years. The ratio of $10 in benefits to every $1 in costs appears favorable, but this fails a benefit-cost test at either a 7 percent or 3 percent real discount rate.

Some observers respond to this math by arguing against discounting in climate change economics. Time preference is a questionable argument in intergenerational settings because future beneficiaries will not have to wait 100 years to realize climate benefits. But the opportunity cost argument remains. The Stern Commission in the U.K. applied an implausibly low discount rate to its calculations. Others imagine current benefits from GHG reductions rendering discounting irrelevant. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) included private benefits in a CBA of higher fuel economy standards to reduce GHG emissions, arguing that making people purchase higher-mileage cars than they prefer makes car buyers better off. Creating benefits today effectively makes reducing GHG a free lunch.

Wealthier is Healthier

Resources put into reducing GHG can’t be invested elsewhere, so the opportunity cost of GHG reduction amounts to the returns that could have been expected, based on historical rates. Maintaining opportunities to invest and create wealth for future generations requires the institutions of a market economy, or a high level of economic freedom, as the Fraser Institute’s Economic Freedom of the World: 2012 Annual Report demonstrates. Bequeathing a higher standard of living to future generations also requires preserving economic freedom. Discounting mathematics ultimately tells us that economic freedom addresses climate change more effectively than energy central planning through carbon taxes or cap-and-trade.

Compensating the “victims” of climate change with extra wealth does have a potential limit. Extra resources provide inadequate compensation if climate change dramatically alters the world. Money will not typically fully compensate for a catastrophic injury; a quadriplegic is unlikely to enjoy the same level of utility or satisfaction after his injury, even if his medical bills and care needs are paid. Wealth accumulation would not adequately compensate future generations if climate change produced a world like those depicted in Waterworld and The Day After Tomorrow. Future generations would not be adequately compensated if climate change destroyed the economy’s ability to produce goods and services. Fortunately Waterworld is the stuff of Hollywood fiction; the largest of the upper range of sea level rise in any 2007 IPCC climate scenario is about 2 feet. That will have serious consequences, but it will hardly flood the entire world. It can be offset by wealth accumulation.

A Hundred-Year Plan?

Property rights and prices lead basically self-interested people to worry about the future. For example, property rights and markets for existing homes provide owners with incentives to keep their houses livable long after they plan to own them. And yet the mathematics of discounting implies that events too far in the future should not affect decisions much today. Growth, progress, and creative destruction limit the horizon for detailed planning in a market economy. Imagine a business in 1900 trying to plan its operations in 2000. The plan could not have included automobiles, planes, television and radio, satellites, computers, and many other conveniences of modern life.

Now let’s project ahead and consider planning for climate change. A number of fundamental innovations could substantially reduce if not eliminate the threat from climate change, such as effective, low-cost carbon sequestration or effective weather modification to smooth out precipitation patterns. And the development of a radical new clean energy source like nuclear fusion could render remaining stocks of fossil fuels uneconomic at any price.

Conclusion

A dynamic market economy will feature too much creative destruction to allow detailed planning for the distant future. Nothing is sure in a market economy 10 years from now, much less 100 years, and discounting in cost-benefit analysis simply reflects this reality. The economic future becomes more predictable when government controls economic activity, but then stagnation results. Discounting in climate change economics tells us to create wealth to protect future generations. Economic freedom and the institutions of the market economy, not central planning of energy use, are the prudent policy approaches to a changing climate.

ABOUT DANIEL SUTTER

Daniel Sutter is the Charles Koch Professor of Economics at the Johnson Center for Political Economy at Troy University.

EDITORS NOTE: The featured image is courtesy of FEE and Shutterstock.

A History of the Disastrous Global Warming Hoax

March 28, 2014/1 Comment/in Environment, Must Read, News, Policy, Politics, Regulation, Science, Waste, Fraud and Abuse /by Alan Caruba

“It is the greatest deception in history and the extent of the damage has yet to be exposed and measured,” says Dr. Tim Ball in his new book, “The Deliberate Corruption of Climate Science”.

Dr. Ball has been a climatologist for more than forty years and was one of the earliest critics of the global warming hoax that was initiated by the United Nations environmental program that was established in 1972 and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) established in 1988.

Several UN conferences set in motion the hoax that is based on the assertion that carbon dioxide (CO2) was causing a dramatic surge in heating the Earth. IPCC reports have continued to spread this lie through their summaries for policy makers that influenced policies that have caused nations worldwide to spend billions to reduce and restrict CO2 emissions. Manmade climate change—called anthropogenic global warming—continues to be the message though mankind plays no role whatever

There is no scientific support for the UN theory.

CO2, despite being a minor element of the Earth’s atmosphere, is essential for all life on Earth because it is the food that nourishes all vegetation. The Earth has passed through many periods of high levels of CO2 and many cycles of warming and cooling that are part of the life of the planet.

“Science works by creating theories based on assumptions,” Dr. Ball notes, “then other scientists—performing their skeptical role—test them. The structure and mandate of the IPCC was in direct contradiction of this scientific method. They set out to prove the theory rather than disprove it.”

“The atmosphere,” Dr. Ball notes, “is three-dimensional and dynamic, so building a computer model that even approximates reality requires far more data than exists and much greater understanding of an extremely turbulent and complex system.” No computer model put forth by the IPCC in support of global warming has been accurate, nor ever could be.

Most of the reports were created by a small group of men working within the Climate Research Unit (CRU) of the University of East Anglia and all were members of the IPCC. The result was “a totally false picture supposedly based on science.”

The revelations of emails between the members of the CRU were made available in 2009 by an unknown source. Dr. Ball quotes Phil Jones, the Director of the CRU at the time of the leaks, and Tom Wigley, a former director addressing other CRU members admiting that “Many of the uncertainties surrounding the cause of climate change will never be resolved because the necessary data are lacking.”

The IPCC depended upon the public’s lack of knowledge regarding the science involved and the global warming hoax was greatly aided because the “mainstream media bought into and promoted the unproven theory. Scientists who challenged were denied funding and marginalized. National environmental policies were introduced based on the misleading information” of the IPCC summaries of their reports.

“By the time of the 2001 IPCC Third Assessment Report, the politics and hysteria about climate change had risen to a level that demanded clear evidence of a human signal,” notes Dr. Ball. “An entire industry had developed around massive funding from government. A large number of academic, political, and bureaucratic careers had evolved and depended on expansion of the evidence. Environmentalists were increasing pressure on the public and thereby politicians.”

The growing problem for the CRU and the entire global warming hoax was that no clear evidence existed to blame mankind for changes in the climate and still largely unknown to the public was the fact that the Earth has passed through many natural cycles of warmth and cooling. If humans were responsible, how could the CRU explain a succession of ice ages over millions of years?

The CRU emails revealed their growing concerns regarding a cooling cycle that had begun in the late 1990s and now, some seventeen years later, the Earth is in a widely recognized cooling cycle.

Moreover, the hoax was aimed at vast reductions in the use of coal, oil, and natural gas, as well as nuclear power to produce the electricity on which all modern life depends. There was advocacy of solar and wind power to replace them and nations undertook costly programs to bring about the reduction of the CO2 “fossil fuels” produced and spent billions on the “green” energy. That program is being abandoned.

At the heart of the hoax is a contempt for mankind and a belief that population worldwide should be reduced. The science advisor to President Obama, John Holdren, has advocated forced abortions, sterilization by introducing infertility drugs into the nation’s drinking water and food, and other totalitarian measures. “Overpopulation is still central to the use of climate change as a political vehicle,” warns Dr. Ball.

Given that the environmental movement has been around since the 1960s, it has taken decades for the public to grasp its intent and the torrents of lies that have been used to advance it. “More people,” notes Dr. Ball, “are starting to understand that what they’re told about climate change by academia, the mass media, and the government is wrong, especially the propaganda coming from the UN and the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.”

“Ridiculous claims—like the science is settled or the debate is over—triggered a growing realization that something was wrong.” When the global warming advocates began to tell people that cooling is caused by warming, the public has realized how absurd the entire UN climate change argument has been.

Worse, however, has been “the deliberate deceptions, misinformation, manipulation of records and misapplying scientific method and research” to pursue a political objective. Much of this is clearly unlawful, but it is unlikely that any of those who perpetrated the hoax will ever be punished and, in the case of Al Gore and the IPCC, they shared a Nobel Peace Prize!

We are all in debt to Dr. Ball and a score of his fellow scientists who exposed the lies and debunked the hoax; their numbers are growing with thousands of scientists signing petitions and participating in international conferences to expose this massive global deception.