Keeping up with Lomborg’s myriad misrepresentations of climate science can be exhausting, thankless work, so it’s nice to see delayed.oscillator obliterating his latest. Although I rather doubt anti-regulation propaganda organs like the op-ed section of the WSJ will stop printing his rubbish any time soon, media outlets who actually value their reputations might want to take note and avoid giving this serial obfuscator a platform to further spread his nonsense.

The closer we get to the present, the closer reality is about to hit us; we embrace for the clash and keep wandering backwards into the future…

Week 7

• Le Corbusier (1887-1965) introduces ‘towers in the park’  with the benefits of greenspace, sunlight and high density. The whole world experiments with his concepts. The impact of the car is unpredictable, unimaginable: modernism, the sum of the whole, transforms the world without adhering to one man’s complete vision.

• The inner city, between decline and gentrification, is a constantly moving target, adapting and dictating changes of lifestyle and livelihoods according to fashions of the time. The forces at play are beyond any planned intention. There is a planned drive to bring people in to the city again, and the market responds accordingly.
  

• Bjørn Lomborg proposes rational approaches to political problems. Nothing more, nothing less. It is controversial. Rational people love it, while most special interest groups feel undervalued. I wonder if he merely manages to see a tree without understanding, feeling and caring for the forest, and thus believes it is best to cure the world one problem at the time? I re-read “Small is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered” by E.F. Schumacher (1911-1977), but Plan 703 is not the place to bring forth too many alternative views.
  

Rushed Reflections

The week went by so quickly I could hardly find time to reflect on it, before the next one is to begin. November and December is writing, which means I am coming to a close with most of my reading. I can feel it in my head, all the thoughts maturing and preparing to be let free to express themselves. Like wild ghosts seeking a way to materialize, seeking a way to generate new insight. They are real however, and the challenge is to make them work for me and not the other way around.

My academic challenge, which in turn will be my professional challenge, is to find the core of the issue, and proceed by offering the correct analysis and reporting of the means. Good means (parts) will bring good ends (whole), I believe. Looking at the cost and benefit is indeed key to this, stresses Simpson, and if we can prove pro and con to everly alternative, then the recipient will rightly be able to make up his/her own mind. That’s what professionals do, I am told.

Conservatives often affirm that creating alarm over alleged global warming is meant to lead to another attempt at collectivist control of our lives. They say that radical environmentalism is the new communism. This makes sense but I think it misses two marks. First, it makes it sound as if the attempt would be innocent enough if only it failed. Second, it implies a certain conscious cynicism on the part of proponents of the climate change view of the world. I think both assumptions are wrong and that it matters that they are wrong.

The religious cult of climate change generates fervent belief in its followers and it will have done our society much damage even if they fail utterly to impose on us the massive socio-economic transformations toward global poverty they pursue. Its applications are ridden with large, crude errors: Today’s Wall Street Journal (10/29/09) mentions an article in the current issue of Science . The article explains how tax-subsidized ethanol turns out more carbon than gasoline.

My judgment that the climate change movement is a religious cult is based on common, ordinary observations: The forceful denial of contrary evidence, the demonization of non-believers, the attempt to shut up effective contradictors by having them fired, the apocalyptic beliefs, are all religious hallmarks of fanatical religiosity. Accordingly, most of the believers are completely sincere, I think, and all the more dangerous for that reason. It’s a strategic mistake to think they are corrupt. It’s easier to change the minds of the corrupt than of the religiously stupefied.

Secondly, much damage will have been done even if they fail utterly Curiously, reading a second book by an intelligent, calm, collected environmental advocate brought to my mind the damage the current “environmental hysteria” is causing, even if the hysterical ones never reach any of their goals. The first book was Bjorn Lomborg’s 2001 Skeptical Environmentalist in which the author uses hard facts and tight logic to destroy just about every single militant belief. Lomborg has done more than anyone, more than silly Al Gore himself, to expose the religious nature of the movement. Believers cannot read any part of the book without experiencing salutary doubt. That’s why it’s banned by the church of environmentalism. Yet, Lomborg insists he is fighting to improve mankind’s use of the physical environment. He is an environmentalist but one who prefers facts to wild myths of monsters under the bed.

The second book, published in 2005, is titled Collapse , with blinding clarity of purpose. The book systematically warns us of eventual (not eminent) societal disaster if we don’t collectively change our ways, a standard message from green and assorted doomsday sayers. The author, Jared Diamond however is difficult to dismiss out of hand. He has real scientific training, in the form of a doctorate in Physiology from Cambridge University. He possesses all the good academic credentials one wishes for (I, for one, take such things seriously.) Then, he is enormously well read in addition to having amassed much field experience, all by choice. Finally, Diamond gave us before Collapse, the luminous and commercially very successful 1997 Guns, Germs and Steel. (It’s rare that thick books written with scholarly care become commercial successes.)

I found myself reading Collapse reluctantly because of its announced objective of warning us of coming environmentally-caused disaster. I have heard so much tripe, so much non-sense, so many lies, I have witnessed so many exercises in stubborn stupidity about the environment than my mind is more than half-shut to anything that sounds “environmental.” It’s become so bad, I actively avoid “organic” produce at the supermarket. I tell myself that I may not be able to stop the tide but that, as a man of conscience, I don’t have to swim with it, an imbecilic smile painted on my face. And yet, Diamond is fairly persuasive. He is no threatening us with hundred-foot waves crashing over New York City. Instead, he carefully lays out several scenarios based on the continuation of current practices. I am left with the impression, even after close critical scrutiny, that one or more of his scenarios are plausible. It seems to me we might be preparing ourselves for a non-cataclysmic descent into serious poverty because, collectively, we mismanage the physical environment, all in concrete, measurable ways.

The damage the climate change jihadists will have done is to have closed through their excesses the minds and hearts of rational people to possible improvements on current practice. Some, many, of these improvements are possible without grievous assault on conservative consciences or on rationality.

First, what I don’t believe. I don’t give a rat’s ass about my carbon footprints (or about Silly Al’s hundred times larger footprint).Let me repeat what I have said several times on this blog: The Norse inhabitants of Greenland (so-called “Vikings”) were eating home-raised beef around the year 1100, something you could not do now, after “global warming.” It was warmer then, before cars, before the Industrial Revolution, before anything, when mankind’s numbers were very small. End of idea of man-made global warming! By the way, Jared Diamond has a beautifully detailed account of the Norse Greenland settlements in Collapse. If you want to learn more about the un-going causes of my unbelief, follow the “Climate change” link on the front page of this blog.

Yet, I would not be surprised if unprecedented large numbers of people, acting mostly with ideas and ethics derived from a time when people were few and technologically weak, managed to do real damage. The idea is not absurd but it has almost escaped our attention because of our need to protect ourselves from the shrill, irrational mendacity of mainstream environmentalists. And then, precisely because I am a conservative, I like good resource management. That’s one of the reasons I put my faith in the market in the first place. (Another reason to dislike all socialism is that it’s inherently wasteful.) As a conservative, I am bound to dislike waste. It’s apparent to me that some of our everyday habits are wasteful and that they could be improved without reducing the area of legitimate individual liberty. Below are three examples.

Every durable good I buy from a store seems to me obviously over-packaged, not a little but a lot. It may well be that I am misunderstanding some of the functions of elaborate packaging but it should not be impossible to explain them to me. Consumers should encourage wholesalers and retailers alike to justify their packaging practices on the package itself. I am not calling for more regulation of manufacturing or of retail, but for greater transparency sanctioned by consumer choice alone. That would economize on transport costs and yes, save trees. (I like trees; shoot me!)

I drive a medium-size pick-up truck. I have my own reasons for this, one of which is the arms race on the highways. It’s a moderate gas guzzler. I estimate that about one third or the mileage I put on this vehicle is on flat ground, within a shortish distance of my house. I wouldn’t mind bicycling there when the weather is good (most of the year). I wouldn’t mind saving gas money and depriving the government of some tax revenue and it would not be bad for my health. Except that it might be terminally bad for my health. Motor vehicles are mixed too closely with bikes for safety and many drivers are mindless road-hogs. It seems to me it should be possible better to separate the two kinds of traffic, at least in many places, at minimum cost and by steps. And, by the way, since the laws are already on the books, I wouldn’t mind draconian enforcement of stop signs regulations. Jumping one just cost one of my friends $500. He is not likely to do it again soon.

I have priced solar heating options for my house. Even in sunny California they take too long to pay for themselves to be economically attractive, in the narrow meaning of “economic.” Yet, as a luxury choice, some of them make sense. Think of it this way: Solar heating is no more extravagant than gambling, whoring, or owning some fancy cars. It’s comparable to a sturdy beer habit. ($30/week= $1600/year= $25,000 over fifteen years.) If I ever take the step, it will be because it separates me to a significant extent from government-regulated and government-colluding big corporations. It will be a positive step toward personal autonomy, with the additional merit of taking revenue away from government. (It’s devilishly difficult to tax sunlight though I am sure they will try.) In addition, taking energy from the sun is technologically elegant. It would give me the kind of aesthetic satisfaction that others get from a fancy car, precisely.

And, of course, there are powerful reasons of national security why we should wish to extract less and less of our energy from the bad neighborhoods where we undoubtedly finance those who want to slaughter us.

Those are just three small examples above of how one can be a conservative environmentalist. I am sure there are many more. We must just resist the green crazies’ ability to annoy us until we can’t think straight anymore.

Bjørn Lomborg, head of the Copenhagen Consensus, brings some much-needed common sense to the global warming debate. Reporting from Vanuatu, he finds that many of the locals haven’t even heard of global warming.

Torethy Frank is one of them. She has other priorities, such as escaping crushing poverty: “Torethy and her family of six live in a small house made of concrete and brick with no running water. As a toilet, they use a hole dug in the ground. They have no shower and there is no fixed electricity supply.”

You can see why the two degrees of projected warming over the next century are not at the top of her “problems to solve” list. I would argue that ending global poverty should be a little higher on ours. Certainly higher than global warming.

WaPo has a new section called “Planet Panel: Views and Debates on Climate Change Policy”.

In it, you’ll find opinions by ten ostensible experts on the question (emphasis mine) “What Doubt is There About the Science Behind Global Warming?“

How many of the experts actually have a relevant science background?

• Rick Edmund – pastor, United Methodist Church (edu –?)
• Donald Boesch – biological oceanographer
• Lars Josefsson – energy co. CEO (edu – engineering/”technical physics”)
• David Hales – college president (edu – poli sci)
• David Hone – adviser to Shell (edu – petro engineering)
• Robert Shapiro – business consultant (edu – econ)
• William O’Keefe – CEO Marshall Institute, former API CEO (edu – ?)
• Bill McKibben – environmentalist/350.org (edu – journalism)
• Bjorn Lomborg – director Copenhagen Consensus Centre (edu – poli sci)
• Reid Detchon – UN energy foundation VP (edu – ?)

I am not proposing that one must have a doctorate in a relevant field in order to have an opinion on climate as a topic, but if the Washington Post is going to make the question explicitly about the science, how can they justify having a single scientist with a somewhat-relevant background? Several, perhaps all, of the other experts listed might be experts on policy questions (although in the cases of and O’Keefe and Lomborg, doubtful), but that isn’t what the question was asking. Nor is it any better that the answers were largely in agreement about the reality of the scientific consensus on the need for mitigation. If you had the resources of the Washington Post and wanted to assemble a panel on a question about the science of a specific topic, how many relevant scientists would you have included? My guess is more than one.

This is simply disgraceful. Although hardly surprising, from the paper that elsewhere counts George Will among its authorities on climate.

(Nederlandse versie hier)

Lomborg suggests we keep on gambling with the planet’s climate by postponing measures far into the future. Not a good idea.

The problem with CO2 is that a large part of our emissions stays in the atmosphere for centuries or even millennia. On top of that, the climate responds slowly to changes in greenhouse gas concentrations. This combination leads to great risks for the future climate if we don’t curb our emissions soon. This is being consistently ignored by Lomborg’s analyses.

If big changes, such as melting of the great icesheets, are initiated due to elevated concentrations of greenhouse gases, they are not necessarily reversible. The costs of taking measures now is lower than the costs of cleaning up our mess later; that is the conclusion of e.g. McKinsey ( here and here), the Stern review, and the International Energy Agency. The bottom line of these studies is that for about 1% of global GDP the most dramatic consequences of climate change can be prevented. The costs of unlimited global warming are much greater.

Unfortunately risks that only materialize far into the future are underestimated and undervalued by people, with respect to the cost of limiting those risks. Take smoking: For many people, stopping that ‘nice’ habit is too large a price to pay in order to limit future health risks. And it’s addictive of course. Just like our high energy use is, apparently. In contrast to smoking, actively decreasing climate risks is complicated by the ‘tragedy of the commons’, which Lomborg frequently (ab)uses in his argument. Another one of his favorites is to put up a false dilemma.

Let’s indeed look for solutions that keep the consequences of global warming within acceptable limits (and outside of the dikes). A precondition for that is of course that we base ourselves on the scientific insights about the climate system. Lomborg seems to have another view.

(For more background on how Lomborg bends the science, see here)

A few cost estimates:

IEA: The investment required to prevent dangerous climate change is “an average of some 1.1% of global GDP each year from now until 2050. This expenditure reflects a re-direction of economic activity and employment, and not necessarily a reduction of GDP.” In fact, this investment partly pays for itself in reduced energy costs alone (not even counting the pollution reduction benefits)! (via Joe Romm)

Stern: “Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.”

McKinsey: “The macroeconomic costs of this carbon revolution are likely to be manageable, being in the order of 0.6–1.4 percent of global GDP by 2030. To put this figure in perspective, if one were to view this spending as a form of insurance against potential damage due to climate change, it might be relevant to compare it to global spending on insurance, which was 3.3 percent of GDP in 2005.”

“The world’s problem is not too many people, but lack of political and economic freedom”

~Julian Simon

The PRC Forum – Julian Simon (1 of6)

The PRC Forum – Julian Simon (2 of6)

The PRC Forum – Julian Simon (3 of6)

The PRC Forum – Julian Simon (4 of6)

The PRC Forum – Julian Simon (5 of6)

The PRC Forum – Julian Simon (6 of6)

“Adding more people causes problems. But people are also the means to solve these problems. The main fuel to speed the world’s progress is our stock of knowledge; the brakes are our lack of imagination and unsound social regulations of these activities. The ultimate resource is people—especially skilled, spirited, and hopeful young people endowed with liberty—who will exert their wills and imaginations for their own benefits, and so inevitably they will benefit the rest of us as well.”

- Julian Simon, “Introduction,” in Simon, ed., The State of Humanity (Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1995), p. 27.

Background Articles and Videos

Julian Simon

“…Julian Lincoln Simon (February 12, 1932 – February 8, 1998)^[1] was a professor of business administration at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute at the time of his death, after previously serving as a longtime business professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.^[2]

Simon wrote many books and articles, mostly on economic subjects. He is best known for his work on population, natural resources, and immigration. His work covers cornucopian views on lasting economic benefits from natural resources and continuous population growth, even despite limited or finite physical resources, empowered by human ingenuity, substitutes, and technological progress. His works are also cited by libertarians in support of freedom from government interference.^{[citation needed]} He died in Chevy Chase, Maryland. …”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dtbn9zBfJSs

Julian Simon Remembered: It’s A Wonderful Life

by Stephen Moore

“…Today, many of Julian Simon’s views on population and natural resources are so triumphant that they are almost mainstream. No one can rationally look at the evidence today and still claim, for example, that we are running out of food or energy. But those who did not know Julian or of his writings in the 1970s and early 1980s cannot fully appreciate how viciously he was attacked—from both the left and the right. Paul Ehrlich once snarled that Simon’s writings proved that “the one thing the earth will never run out of is imbeciles.” A famous professor at the University of Wisconsin wrote, “Julian Simon could be dismissed as a simpleminded nut case, if his ideas weren’t so dangerous.”

To this day I remain convinced that the endless ad hominem attacks were a result of the fact that—try as they would—Simon’s critics never once succeeded in puncturing holes in his data or his theories. What ultimately vindicated his theories was that the doomsayers’ predictions of global famine, $100 a barrel oil, nuclear winter, catastrophic depletion of the ozone layer, falling living standards, and so on were all discredited by events. For example, the year 2000 is almost upon us, and we can now see that the direction in which virtually every trend of human welfare has moved has been precisely the opposite of that predicted by Global 2000. By now Simon and Kahn’s contrarian conclusions in The Resourceful Earth look amazingly prescient.

The ultimate embarrassment for the Malthusians was when Paul Ehrlich bet Simon $1,000 in 1980 that five resources (of Ehrlich’s choosing) would be more expensive in 10 years. Ehrlich lost: 10 years later every one of the resources had declined in price by an average of 40 percent.

Julian Simon loved good news. And the good news of his life is that, today, the great bogeyman of our time, Malthusianism, has, like communism, been relegated to the dustbin of history with the only remaining believers to be found on the faculties of American universities. The tragedy is that it is the Paul Ehrlichs of the world who still write the textbooks that mislead our children with wrongheaded ideas. And it was Paul Ehrlich, not Julian Simon, who won the MacArthur Foundation’s “genius award.” …”

http://www.cato.org/pubs/policy_report/cpr-20n2-1.html

Bjorn Lomborg: Our priorities for saving the world

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Bjorn Lomborg: Saving The World: The Importance of Getting The Priorities Right

(English version here)

Bjorn Lomborg pleit er in het NRC van 25 augustus voor om de CO2 uitstoot niet nu te verminderen, maar pas in de toekomst. Zijn redenering doet me denken aan de spreuk “morgen gaan we sparen”, die in veel huishoudens aan de muur hangt. Wat een mooi voornemen, elke dag weer!

Het probleem met CO2 is enerzijds dat een groot deel ervan honderden jaren in de atmosfeer verblijft, en anderzijds dat het klimaat traag reageert op veranderingen in de broeikasgasconcentratie. Deze combinatie zorgt ervoor dat ongebreidelde uitstoot van meer CO2 tot grote risico’s leidt voor het toekomstige klimaat. In Lomborg’s analyse wordt dit stelselmatig over het hoofd gezien.

Als grote veranderingen, zoals het smelten van grote massa’s landijs, eenmaal in gang zijn gezet door toedoen van een te hoge concentratie aan broeikasgassen, zijn ze niet zomaar omkeerbaar. Het uitstellen (afstellen…?) van emissiereductie gaat met grote risico’s gepaard voor de toekomst. Ook de kosten van uitstel van maatregelen zijn hoger dan die van het nemen van maatregelen nu; dat is de conclusie van bijvoorbeeld McKinsey (zie hier en hier), het Stern review, en de International Energy Agency (zie onder). Voor ongeveer 1% van het globale BNP kunnen we ernstige klimaatverandering voorkomen, is de bottom line (zie onder). De kosten van ongelimiteerde klimaatverandering pakken waarschijnlijk veel hoger uit.

Risico’s die pas in de verre toekomst plaatsvinden worden vaak onderschat, en men getroost zich meestal niet veel moeite om die risico’s te beperken. Neem roken: Stoppen met die ‘fijne’ gewoonte is voor velen blijkbaar een te grote prijs om toekomstige gezondheidsrisico’s te beperken. Daarnaast is het verslavend natuurlijk. Net als ons hoge energieverbruik blijkbaar. In tegenstelling tot roken wordt het actief beperken van klimaatrisico’s ook nog gecompliceerd door de zogenaamde ‘tragedy of the commons’, waar Lomborg dankbaar misbruik van maakt in zijn argumentatie.

Laten we inderdaad naar oplossingen zoeken die de klimaatverandering binnen de perken –en buiten de dijken- zal houden. Een voorwaarde daarvoor is natuurlijk dat we ons baseren op wetenschappelijke inzichten over het klimaatsysteem. Lomborg ziet dat blijkbaar anders.

Enkele kostenschattingen:

IEA: The investment required to prevent dangerous climate change is “an average of some 1.1% of global GDP each year from now until 2050. This expenditure reflects a re-direction of economic activity and employment, and not necessarily a reduction of GDP.” In fact, this investment partly pays for itself in reduced energy costs alone (not even counting the pollution reduction benefits)! (via Joe Romm)

Stern: “Using the results from formal economic models, the Review estimates that if we don’t act, the overall costs and risks of climate change will be equivalent to losing at least 5% of global GDP each year, now and forever. If a wider range of risks and impacts is taken into account, the estimates of damage could rise to 20% of GDP or more.
In contrast, the costs of action – reducing greenhouse gas emissions to avoid the worst impacts of climate change – can be limited to around 1% of global GDP each year.”

McKinsey: “The macroeconomic costs of this carbon revolution are likely to be manageable, being in the order of 0.6–1.4 percent of global GDP by 2030. To put this figure in perspective, if one were to view this spending as a form of insurance against potential damage due to climate change, it might be relevant to compare it to global spending on insurance, which was 3.3 percent of GDP in 2005.”

I got an email from my brother thanking me for the Zoolander references in yesterday’s blog post about the “Faces of Coal” Astroturfing. His only complaint is that there wasn’t more Mugatu.

Well, after reading Bjørn Lomborg’s nonsense in today’s WSJ, I can honestly say:

I FEEL LIKE I’M TAKING CRAZY PILLS!

Lomborg may classify me as an alarmist, but when I listen to him it makes my head want to explode because he wants to have it both ways.  He says climate change is not a pressing crisis, but one that can be solved through middling, weak policies and technology research. But then he says solving climate change will be beneficial and cheap. Not to be crude, but WTF?

This is the most backwards thinking since Exxon was named Forbes’ “Green company fo the Year” (BTW, Forbes says Exxon is “green” because of its support of natural gas! Again–WTF?!?)

Lomborg claims that climate change will not be serious and damaging– it might even be beneficial! His argument? Loss of agricultural productivity, etc, in one area will be offset by gains in another.  Just tell us that while we in Texas are suffering under the worst drought and hottest temperatures ever– our loss is North Dakota’s gain?  I’m sure Texas will be glad that our farming and cattle operations will move to Oklahoma and Nebraska– and we can just bake in the sun with no water.

But then he advocates radical geoengineering policies like cloud-seeding to have clouds’ albedo effect shelter the earth from more direct sunlight.  (Too bad Lomborg, not a scientist, hasn’t kept up with the scientific debate, or else he would’ve read that increased water vapor and clouds would actually speed up global warming) He then claims that doing this to “Solve” global warming could save $20 TRILLION dollars.

So,let me make sure i understand this correctly:

Argument 1: Climate Change won’t be Costly

Argument 2: Solving warming will save $20 Trillion Dollars.

Any disconnect here?  On what alternate plane of existence does $20 Trillion Dollars not amount to a @#$%load of money? (And here I was under the delusion that Lomborg was an economist)

Lomborg completely ignores the real solutions here: energy efficiency and renewables.  According to McKinsey and Company, we can cut our greenhouse gas emissions 35-40% as a country at a net cost savings using technology already in hand. Already in Texas, we see the effect that having wind as part of our electrical generation reduces costs, as evidenced by lower electrical rates in the West ERCOT zone where the wind is, over areas relying more on oil, gas, coal, and nuclear.

Lomborg has not only missed the boat– he’s not even anywhere near the shore.  Solving climate change will bring Texas millions of new green jobs and spur a technology revolution that will change how we live in the same way the Internet and computer revolution has– and all of those changes are for the better.  But you don’t have to take my word for it:  read a transcript of a debate between Lomborg and Jeffrey Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute at Colombia University from Fareed Zakaria GPS a few months back.  Also read here someone who spend their time cataloging the ways that Lomborg misrepresents the facts in his writings.

The World Cancer Research Fund are now saying that cooked meats, such as ham and salami and bacon, can cause cancer and should be banned from lunch boxes.

They have form in this area and have been warning for some time.  Do I eat much cooked meats?  Not really, as I possibly eat them once or twice a month.  I did eat a bit more at the weekend, but it was my party.

They also provoked this blast from the Daily Mail.  I’ve read that and that perhaps says one important thing and that is moderation in all things.

But what is missing from all of this research and rants is any degree of statistical sense.

We could take a silly example, which states that if you spend all your time on a computer, playing computer games as a child that this is bad for your health.  Other research could also say that playing on railway tracks is also bad.  They both probably are, but the second is many times more dangerous than the first and people these days tend to lump everything as equally bad.

Now my worry about this “ham sandwich is bad for you”  scare is that I’ve never seen any relative risk information compared to say cigarettes, obesity, excessive drinking or spending eight hours a day on a sunbed.  So you get the obese smoker giving up cooked meats as his bit towards better health.

So what are the relative risks?

The best book on the subject is The Skeptical Environmentalist by Bjorn Lomborg.  He analyses the risks and prints them in detail.  Everyone should read his book.  You may not agree with everything he says, but it will certainly make you think.

But bear in mind one thing;  if you want to live a long time, you can increase your chances by not smoking, eating a good diet, exercising and maintaining a healthy weight.  I do all four.  But then so did my late wife and she died at fifty-nine!

One point about diet is that diagnosed coeliacs on a gluten-free diet have a twenty-five percent less chance of cancer.  That more than mitigates the bad affects of a ham sandwich in gluten-free bread.

James Fallows- congratulating the NY Times for actually having the stones to point out that the “death panel” claims are, in fact, lies- succinctly sums up why shameless fabricators like Marc Morano, Bjorn Lomborg, and Ian Plimer are so effective in distorting the public discourse:

In general, even on the most extreme, out-of-the-realm-of-fact political claims, every powerful instinct in the news media shies from calling something “false” in favor of adjectives like “controversial” or “disputed,” or sometimes “partisan.” …[T]he “objective” instincts of the news media can tie it in knots when one side to a political argument is perfectly willing to say obviously false things. It’s hard for mainstream publications to say outright that something is false or a lie.

Although I don’t have much to add to the Alan Robock guest RealClimate post on Lomborg/AEI’s profoundly misleading cost-benefit “analysis” on geo-engineering, I will shamelessly point back to a post I wrote over a year ago on AEI and geo-engineering that covered much of the same ground in terms of ignored negative consequences.

Popular Science has an article describing a geo-engineering scheme to solve global warming, one that apparently Bjorn Lomborg supports. They claim that Bjorn “made no apologies for his about face concerning his former climate-change skepticism.”

Once again, Popular Science is completely mis-characterizing Bjorn’s position, and by doing so slandering and discrediting the views of one of the most rational voices in the entire global warming debate (which is something they and most other environmentalists can’t seem to stand). For the remote chance they’ll actually read this, I’ll explain once again how they’re going so wrong on Bjorn’s stance:

Bjorn Lomborg doesn’t deny global warming. On the contrary, he thinks that it is a real phenomena that will likely affect the planet over the next several hundred years, just as the IPCC has explained. His main point is that during those several hundred years there are several things to think about:

1. Minor warming is good for humans, as it gives us more time to raise crops – helping the second largest industry on the planet, agriculture.
2. The existing proposals for dealing with global warming are all fantastically expensive, and most would only delay it, at best.
3. The effects of global warming are projected (by scientists, not Al Gore) to be quite minor for at least the next 50 years, let alone hundred.
4. There are millions of people dying, right now, from issues such as malaria or contaminated water. People who’s deaths are entirely preventable, and who, if you don’t care about their lives, would still represent a huge boost to the world economy if they were alive.

Putting all of this together, you see why there’s nothing unusual about Bjorn Lomborg supporting a much cheaper geo-engineering scheme to solve our problems with global warming: it makes more sense. Spend what money we have now to save people’s lives, and solve other basic human condition problems around the planet. Let the earth warm a little bit if it’s going to over this period. Simultaneously, develop (you don’t even have to deploy) cheaper and better ways to deal with the problems of global warming. When the earth does start to warm to a point where we’ll actually start experiencing problems, engineer them away. It’s a plan that’s drastically cheaper and saves millions of lives worldwide – but because it doesn’t demand political action now, he gets demonized over it, and apparently from Popular Science, as well.

…want more convincing.

David Davis

I remain for now convinced that the “organic” boom was a deliberately organised socialist post-Bandung scam designed to starve people. It was also designed to appeal to “opinion-formers” in the rich West, whose populations (even the relatively poor) could just about afford the on-costs of food, collectively loaded onto their economies, without too many people noticeably starving to death inconveniently on-camera. The “green revolution” had seen to survival – the plan then was to pander to media-induced collective guilt, and to worship at the Altar of Rachel Carson.

So, for me, it is good that the infamous last pages, of the sad, shameful and ignomineous last chapter in the history of “organic food”, are even now being written.

“Organic” as applied to this stuff, was a meaningless term. All that “organic” means, in any worthwhile sense, is _”of living matter”_ . Organic chemistry was in effect founded by Wohler in 1828 when he correctly synthesised Urea from materials not otherwise dierectly derived from living creatures. The word has, like “liberal”, capitalism”, “freedom”, “democracy” and others, been hijacked by deliberately-bad-people for the purposes of de-civilisation.

But if the poor tormented farmers of places such as Africa could be left alone, even for a few seasons, and not serially macheted, kalashnikov’d, terrorised, Mugabed or UNned, then perhaps they even might be able to grow and eat (they should be so lucky) and even sell some of what comes out of the ground. They might even be able to do it without much ammonium nitrate, which might be preferable since – owing to Kyoto and the GreeNazis not listening to Bjørn Lomborg, many of them lack enough water to make it worthwhile.

If our recession ends soon enough, then they might even be able to position the stuff as “organic” – always assuming the EU lets them send it here in the first place.

In the Financial Times, Lomborg is doing his usual thing in duping the media into believing he’s saying one thing when he’s really saying another- the headline blares “Sceptic switches tack”, and notes that Lomborg wants a climate treaty. Of course he’s still opposing CO2 emissions reductions- so in that it’s the same old song and dance in a slightly different costume.

It is worth noting, however, that he explicitly endorses cutting black-carbon (“soot”), a mitigation tool that seems to be gaining increasing popularity even among those opposed to (the still much needed but politically less popular) carbon emission reductions. As Copenhagen looms, I wouldn’t be surprised to see BC reductions and efficiency increases emerge as a possible bridge between the “common but differentiated responsibilities” of the developed and developing worlds.

[Via CF]

Why this approach to Global Warming is not popular? Thanks, Esquire.

Summarizing it poorly (please read the article), Lomborg argues that helping wealth and development in poor countries and researching clean forms of fuel is a wiser way to spend money than struggling to cut CO2 emissions by force.

Of course the issue is really complex. Despite of my sensationalist title, my opinion is that we should discuss this problem more under a realistic and economic view and stop fantasizing that countries will suddenly stop progress in order to preserve our planet.

Unfortunately, the conventional-Gore-way approach is just too demagogic. It is like, to use one of Lomborg’s comparisons, eliminating car accidents by reducing worldwide the speed limit to 5 miles/hour. Easy but not achievable.

Bjorn Lomborg wrote recently about how the Goreans – catastrophiliacs – will make great horror film makers. They scare people silly-

The continuous presentation of scary stories about global warming in the popular media makes us unnecessarily frightened. Even worse, it terrifies our kids.

[...]

In the US, the ABC television network recently reported that psychologists are starting to see more neuroses in people anxious about climate change. An article in the Washington Post cited nine-year-old Alyssa, who cries about the possibility of mass animal extinctions from global warming. In her words: “I don’t like global warming because it kills animals, and I like animals.” From a child who is yet to lose all her baby teeth: “I worry about [global warming] because I don’t want to die.”

The newspaper also reported that parents are searching for “productive” outlets for their eight-year-olds’ obsessions with dying polar bears. They might be better off educating them and letting them know that, contrary to common belief, the global polar bear population has doubled and perhaps even quadrupled over the past half-century, to about 22,000. Despite diminishing – and eventually disappearing – summer Arctic ice, polar bears will not become extinct. After all, in the first part of the current interglacial period, glaciers were almost entirely absent in the northern hemisphere, and the Arctic was probably ice-free for 1,000 years, yet polar bears are still with us.

Another nine-year old showed the Washington Post his drawing of a global warming timeline. “That’s the Earth now,” Alex says, pointing to a dark shape at the bottom. “And then it’s just starting to fade away.” Looking up to make sure his mother is following along, he taps the end of the drawing: “In 20 years, there’s no oxygen.” Then, to dramatise the point, he collapses, “dead”, to the floor.

And these are not just two freak stories. In a new survey of 500 American pre-teens, it was found that one in three children, aged between six and 11, feared that the earth would not exist when they reach adulthood because of global warming and other environmental threats. An unbelievable one-third of our children believe that they don’t have a future because of scary global warming stories.

Since I believe in free speech, I think the catastrophiliacs have every right to scare people. Parents should keep kids away from Gorean propaganda. That should do the trick.

—

Mira Kamdar writes-

The die was cast for India’s development path on July 22, 1947, when India’s Constituent Assembly resolved to replace Mahatma Gandhi’s spinning wheel, or charka, with the emperor Ashoka’s wheel of dharma on the Indian national flag. The move symbolically rejected what the incoming government abandoned upon assuming office: Gandhi’s vision of an equitable and sustainable agrarian society based on self-sufficient, pared-down consumption.

For Gandhi, the spinning wheel symbolized the need to assume personal responsibility for consumption as a first step toward achieving justice and freedom for all. But Jawaharlal Nehru, India’s first prime minister, believed in industrialization and urbanization, famously calling the new mega-dam projects his government underwrote the “temples of modern India.”

[...]

When asked what he thought about Western civilization, Gandhi famously replied, “It would be a good idea.” He also said that “Earth provides enough to satisfy every man’s need, but not every man’s greed.” For Gandhi, greed led to violence, violence to militarism, militarism to war, and war to annihilation. His philosophy of non-violence was aimed at the most basic form of human aggression: the appetite for more than one’s share.

India’s essential challenge is to take up Gandhi’s mantle and boldly imagine a future that is different from the West’s present. Of course, no one is under the illusion that India or any other country will abandon its cities for a life as simple as the one Gandhi strove to live; but that doesn’t mean that India can’t look to Gandhi’s core values for inspiration.

[...]

Nehru’s vision has had a good run; now it is time to bring back Gandhi’s.

There exist people in this world whose ethics consists of keeping people backward, denying them the “good life” which a free market can provide, and reducing their average life span – by force. All this would have been the consequence of Gandhian socialism, if it had been implemented. Thankfully, the man believed in non-violence more than he did in self-reliance. Regrettably, his disciple Nehru believed in soviet style state coercion more than he did in development. That’s why India is the way it is. But I guess it wouldn’t have mattered either way – if a majority of Indians really did believe in freedom, they could have had it any day they wanted.

Anyway, here’s what Mises wrote half a century ago about, for lack of a better phrase, Gandhian hypocrisy-

Mahatma Gandhi expresses a loathing for the devices of the petty West and of devilish capitalism. But he travels by railroad or by motor car and, when ill, goes for treatment to a hospital equipped with the most refined instruments of Western surgery. It does not seem to occur to him that Western capital alone made it possible for the Hindus to enjoy these facilities.