Something to Worry About
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By Nick Schulz : BIO 31 Mar 2006
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The alarm bells are ringing louder than ever in global warming circles. An impressive amount of ink has been spilled to scare you in to thinking that the planet is doomed if we don't do something about climate change, and soon.
As alarmists flood the media with scare stories, however, they are distracting the public from the economic and practical realities that will determine planetary health. And they are doing so just as some less heralded news reports demonstrate that the alarmists' prescription for our ailing planet is failing badly.
But first, the alarm bells. Consider:
This week Time magazine has a "special report" on global warming with the cover blaring "Be Worried. Be Very Worried."
Australian alarmist Tim Flannery has a new doomsday book out "The Weather Makers: How Man Is Changing the Climate and What I t Means for Life on Earth."
The Washington Post recently featured a front page article about melting ice in Antarctica.
ABCNews recently attacked skeptic scientists such as the University of Virginia's Pat Michaels.
A cover story in the New Republic this month attacked the popular writer Michael Crichton for his skeptical views on catastrophic anthropogenic climate change.
The New Yorker's Elizabeth Kolbert recently published a book with the telling title "Field Notes From a Catastrophe."
And the Advertising Council and Environmental Defense have just launched the first "public awareness" campaign on global warming.
Phew. That's considerable output in just a few weeks. And later this year Al Gore has an alarmist documentary he has produced coming out called An Inconvenient Truth so expect the bells to keep tolling.
According to Time, "the global climate seems to be crashing around us," and that "this is precisely what [scientists] have been warning would happen if we continued pumping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere, trapping the heat that flows from the sun and raising global temperatures." Time points to heat waves, floods, storms fires and glacial melts as evidence that we've reached a "tipping point" and says "scientists have been calling this shot for decades."
Time is right about scientists issuing warnings for decades. It just hasn't always been about global warming. Three decades ago, as Rich Karlgaard of Forbes reminds us this week, Newsweek magazine was warning not about global warming, but about global cooling. And the rhetoric was just as alarmist then. According to Newsweek at the time, "There are ominous signs that the Earth's weather patterns have begun to change dramatically...with serious political implications for just about every nation on Earth."
But just because scientists and their acolytes in the media were badly wrong a mere thirty years ago, doesn't mean they are wrong today. It doesn't mean they are right, but let's stipulate that the planet is warming and greenhouse gases due to man's activities have some effect. What then should we do?
Alarmists have called for curbing greenhouse gas emissions and pushed for a global treaty, the Kyoto Protocol, to enforce reductions in emissions. All along, skeptics have pointed out that mandating curbs on greenhouse gas emissions is unlikely to work -- the technologies to do so don't yet exist so reducing emissions means a costly reduction in energy use, one that would place considerable burdens on the poorest in society. Evidence is beginning to come in that bolsters the skeptics' arguments.
The countries of Europe have been the most enthusiastic proponents of the Kyoto Protocol. And in recent years they have been trying to meet their targets under the treaty. Trying, but failing.
According to a recent report compiling statistics from the European Environment Agency:
"Total greenhouse gas emissions in the EU-15 decreased by a mere 1.7% between 1990 and 2003 with CO2 alone growing by 3.4%... Under the Kyoto Protocol on climate change, the EU has committed to reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 8% compared to 1990 levels."
Even Britain, whose Tony Blair has frequently been one of the chief boosters of Kyoto-like reductions, will not make its targets, according to a report just out this week.
Keep in mind that the overall effect of Kyoto, while costly, would be insignificant -- no bang for a lot of bucks. As Bjorn Lomborg and many others have pointed out, using the assumptions of alarmists, Kyoto would delay the warming of the planet for a mere six years. In other words, the earth's temperature in, say, 2100 without Kyoto in effect will be reached in 2106 instead if Kyoto is widely adopted.
To achieve the ultimate goals of the alarmists, it would require several Kyotos to meet their demands. And if Europe, the most enthusiastic backer of Kyoto can't meet its emissions targets under Kyoto, what hope is there that many more draconian Kyoto-like initiatives are possible?
It is curious that the alarmists are largely silent on the failures of Kyoto in Europe. Skeptics have been pointing out the economic and technological realities of mandatory emissions reductions for years now. Skeptics have also raised alternative ways of tackling problems associated with climate change and extreme climate scenarios -- problems that exist whether or not we pump greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.
But so blinded are the alarmists that they are largely ignoring potentially beneficial initiatives. One such effort is the Asia-Pacific Partnership for Clean Development and Climate Change (AP6) which is backed by the governments of the United States, India, China, South Korea, Japan and Australia. The AP6 is designed to permit the robust economic growth that the developing world so badly needs while beginning to address concerns over pollution, energy efficiency and emissions. To get a sense of how out of touch the alarmists are on practical realities, in its nine(!) articles on global warming in its latest special issue, Time didn't devote a single one to AP6.
Amazingly, one article Time suggests "maybe we can begin by living more like the average Chinese or Indian – before they start living like us." According to the CIA World Factbook, the per capita GDP on India is $3,400 a year, and $6,200 a year in China. In the United States it's $41,800. So yes, Time is indeed advocating cutting living standards by as much as ten times. If you want something to "be worried" about, as Time asserts on its cover, well there you have it.