Professor Bainbridge...on law, politics, religion, culture & food

Uggg...please don’t bring up the Tories in this regard. It’s one thing to accept the premises of Global Warming itself, and another, as the Tories have done, to accept the standard Western European tropes for “addressing” the issue.

I’m also widely apathetic on the issue, but if for political efficiency US conservatives need to address it, we need to make a standard rule that you never say the word “Global warming” without also including the phrase “free market response.” There are simple, compelling, free market responses to the argument. Don’t simply concede defeat.

While I agree we should be good stewards of the environment form many reason I dont think that you position on global warming is sound.  Your proposition assumes that (a) global warming is real (not just part of earth’s cycles and fudged numbers by interested parties), (b) if real, it is bad (who says that the climate that existed for the past few decades is the ideal climate for earth, there have many other periods of higher/lower tempatures), (c) if it is bad humans caused it (there are other factors like the sun and water vapor that are not accounted for in all the reports about global warming, just think about the shear amount of energy involved in one hurricane then extroplate out to the entire climate) (d) if humans caused it they can do something to stop it (look critically if the supposed fixes that gore and company suggest will work)

MC, what are the free market responses?  If it is cost effective for businesses to pollute, will they not continue to pollute?  Particularly if their primary objective is to return the highest possible dividends to their shareholders?  Will consumers pay 30% higher prices for eco-friendly products when a less eco-friendly product is right next to it?  I highly doubt that enough consumers will pay a higher price to force the producers to change.  Maybe I’m wrong, but I doubt it.

Eli - this can also be looked at as an issue of self-preservation.  I’m rather skeptical about man’s influence.  But even if our influence is marginal, that doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t act at the margins.  More importantly, civilization has prospered at the climate over the last 250 years, there’s an inherent self-preservation issue that needs to be considered.  Advancement was very slow until the last two or three centuries, could global climate have something to do with that?  Finally, we should consider the consequences of climate change - not just the hysterical doomsday scenarios of the left but the practical aspects of it.  More rain in southern California becomes a problem because our roads aren’t built for constant heavy rain fall - nor are many of our buildings, being on hills and all.  The economic costs of floods, mudslides, and other natural disasters can be huge, and well worth considering in our response.

There are no conservatives in the UK, the breed has not existed in a decade.  Going green involves tradeoffs, until the national debates includes cost/benefits analysis it is pointless.  Better to stay above the angry green fray.

As someone who has been touting the benefits and necessity of conserving (wise use) our abundant resources long before (nearly six decades now)most enviro-worshippers were born.

I have watched the USA recognize the once wrongful use of our resources and turn those abuses around. This is a vastly different country now then it was back when TR instituted the first national conservation laws.

However, There is a vast diference between being good stewards and being chicken littles who have fallen for the politically generated fraud of anthropogenically caused climate.

There is a major difference between basic sound conservation and being against pollution and the don’t used our resources as the base of the global warming scam that is Kyoto and carbon offsets and wealth transfers being touted by chareletans spewing foul pollution as they scan and scam the world in their private jets getting filthy rich.

The leftists egalitarians of the world have used climate change to transfer the wealth and control the rich countries (USA) under a one world (UN?) body.

That they have destroyed objective science (Now consensus is fact)shows the extent to which they will go to attain their ends.

What is needed now is brave souls in the scientific, educational, and pundrity to expose it for what it is - a leftist scam that is so well ingrained (from bambi to Ranger Rick)in children (And still is if you check their text books)that most people believe it’s true.

These are many of the same fools that don’t believe in God because they cant prove He exists.
but they’ll not hesitate to worship His creation.

Dang, Ive read nearly every issue of Nature, Science and Scientific American for the last 18 years and the science looks awfully good to me. It has slowly been constructed over many years with many challenges. I faithfully read the sites that claim to prove it false and most of the citations are from old studies or just poorly done studies. I think there is a reason these things dont make it into peer reviewed journals. I disagree with most of the far left’s economic approaches but the science is pretty good.Of course it is possible that a small minority of people in one country are correct.

Steve

Quite frankly, I’m not skilled enough to take on Global Warming statistics or math.  I am able to take on incredibly stupid alarmism ("Headline from the Canadian ...:  ‘Over 4.5 Billion people could die from Global Warming-related causes by 2012’

“In case you are struggling with the math, that means that they believe Global Warming could kill three quarters of the world’s population in the next five years.  And the media treats these people with total respect, and we skeptics are considered loony?” http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/01/oh_my_god_were_.html ).

If you take the IPCC at its word, the most likely Warming the world will experience will add a foot or two of ocean water fifty to a hundred years from now.  With a range that large, it’s safe to say that we’re still not sure about some important aspects of Global Warming.

But taking the IPCC at its word, we’ve got to accept that there are negative externalities of some activities.  Unfortunately aside from CO2 emisions, nobody’s quite sure what those activities are.  The IPCC isn’t sure if water vapor will increase or decrease warming.  Aside from cutting CO2 emissions, there isn’t much to target.

But there’s a settled scientific claim that CO2’s impact is about petered out ( http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/2007/06/diminishing-ret.html ).  The conservative view I subscribe to isn’t to deny Global Warming, but to take something of a wait and see approach.  Largely because economists have pointed out that money not spent abating warming today is essentially invested in the economy and can be used to abate warming tomorrow or in 50 years.  If our economy grows at a reasonable pace for 50 years we will have more money left over after cleaning up with new technologies than we would have by spending the money today and having a smaller economy grow at a slower rate.

Sorry, but its not a settled claim. Actual CO2 rise depends a lot on what happens in the rest of the world as it modernizes. Then there are all the feedback loops as noted by the first commenter. The oceans will probably lose some buffering capacity as they warm. If more ice melts it will probably mean more water vapor which generally causes tmps to go up. It could also mean more cloud cover too and I dont think there are adequate studies to determine the effects of clouds on temperature. Yes the world has always returned to lower temps but first, it has never had this artificial source of CO2 to contend with and second, its a long time and tough times before things get back to normal.

Steve

I may be responding to somebody who was not responding to me.  But my “settled claim” statement was sloppy, and may need clarification any way.

By “there’s a settled scientific claim that CO2’s impact is about petered out” I do not mean that we won’t produce more CO2.  There’s no way for a scientist to make such a claim.  Instead I mean that it’s settled science that CO2’s affect on the environment is not linear.  If the atmosphere is X% CO2 on day 1, and 2X% CO2 years later—and that doubling of CO2 can be blamed for a temperature rise of 1 degree C—then another doubling will not add another degree.  It is settled science that a second doubling (going to 4X%) would add less than a degree.  CO2 heats the air by absorbing certain wavelengths of light, but it only absorbs particular wavelengths.  As more CO2 enters the air, then those wavelengths all get absorbed, and at some point more CO2 has no affect on temperatures.

The continued increased temperatures are based on the idea that once CO2 peters out something else starts up.  CO2 absorbs all its wavelengths, then methane starts absorbing all its wavelengths, and then there’s more water vapor in the air, etc.  My point is that CO2 reduction doesn’t make much sense to me if CO2’s effect is diminishing.  It seems that we ought to worry about other gases.  But then nobody really seems to have the same list of other gases.  Water vapor shows up a lot, but the IPCC isn’t sure if more water vapor will absorb energy and heat up the place, or block light and cool down the place.