Climate of fear
Adam Smith blog
By Madsen on Environment
Michael Crichton's new thriller, State of Fear, is about eco-terrorists who plot a series of natural disasters -- earthquakes, underwater landslides, a tsunami - to prove that global warming is a threat to humanity. A ragtag band of scientists and lawyers uncovers the scheme.
At the end of the book the author sets out a five-page summary of his take on global warming, plus a 14-page bibliography of works supporting his views. Here are just a few of the points he makes in that summary, emphasizing his own uncertainty as well as general ignorance:
? Atmospheric carbon is increasing, and human activity is the probable cause.
? We are also in the middle of a natural warming trend that began about 1850 as we emerged from a four-hundred-year old cold spell known as the "Little Ice Age."
? Nobody knows how much the present warming trend might be a natural phenomenon.
? Nobody knows how much of the present warming trend might be man-made.
? Nobody knows how much warming will occur in the next century.
? I suspect that part of the observed surface warming will ultimately be attributable to human activity. I suspect that the principal human effect will come from land use, and that the atmospheric component will be minor.
? There are many reasons to shift away from fossil fuels, and we will do so in the next century without legislation, financial incentives, carbon-conservation programs, or the interminable yammering of fearmongers.
? I suspect the people of 2100 will be richer than we are, consume more energy, have smaller global population, and enjoy more wilderness than we have today. I don't think we have to worry about them.
The Copenhagen Consensus took the view that since we do not have infinite resources to spend on everything worthwhile, we should prioritize those where we can do more good more effectively. They identified such areas as HIV/AIDS, malnutrition, subsidies & trade liberalization, malaria, new agricultural technology, and water & sanitation projects. At sixteenth, under 'bad projects' came the Kyoto Protocol. In view of the good which could be achieved elsewhere with the money, it seems extraordinary that so much of it is being expended for such feeble results. |
