New School Politics

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In light of the Cap-and-Trade bill, recently defeated in the Senate, I thought it proper to post on a recent scientific studies on future warming trends.

First, published in early May, a study published in Nature Magazine contends that, contrary to what is supposed to be scientific consensus, there will be no global warming until at least and possibly as late as 2020. The study found that the earth’s temperature will actually drop from the present to 2015. And since we have already witnessed a global temperature decline since 1998 (again, you do not hear about this very often in the news, do you?), this means that by the end of the next decade, there will have actually been a drop in global temperatures for two whole decades.

No, you did not read that wrong. In an era of globalization, rising human greenhouse gas emissions, Inconvenient Truths, and Nobel Peace Prizes for environmentalists, we are in the midst of two decades of no global warming.

Here is a review of the study in the NYT.

What makes this finding even more amusing is that it flies in the face of the Nobel-laureate IPCC which has predicted a .3 degree centigrade increase in temperature over the next decade. As a matter of fact, in their predictions, the IPCC uses a grand total of 0 climate models that have predicted any “lull” in warming over the next 7 years, such as the above study found.

And let us also remember that even despite its model-based estimates of global warming, the IPCC still only predicts a rise in sea levels between 7 inches and (at most) 23 inches over the course of the entire 21st century.

One has to wonder if this is the sort of imminant and emminant global warming that Barack Obama thinks warrents an 80% cut in GHGs by 2050.

Popularity: 59% [?]

From the AP this morning:

Senate Republicans on Friday blocked a global warming bill that would have required major reductions in greenhouse gases, after a bitter debate over its economic costs and whether it would substantially raise gasoline and other energy prices.

Democratic leaders fell a dozen votes short of getting the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster on the measure and bring the bill up for a vote. The 48-36 vote failed to reach even a majority, a disappointment to the bill’s supporters.

Although few expected this bill to actually go very far, the fact that it was shot down so quickly is a good sign for now.

The Climate Security Act (co-sponsored by John Warner (R-VA) and Joe Lieberman (confused-CT)) calls for limiting emissions to 2005 levels by 2012, 30% below 2005 leves by 2030, and finally reducing emissions by 74% by 2050. With present population growth accounted for, that would mean that by 2050, per capita greenhouse gas emissions would be more than 90% less than what they are presently, which–according to one commentator who I unfortunately cannot recall in order to cite at this point–would reduce per capita emissions to a level not seen since around the time Thomas Jefferson was president.

The economic costs of the central planning will obviously be imense. Low-end estimates like that of the Energy Information Administration estimate the costs to economic output at somewhere between $1 and 2 trillion by 2030 (in 2000 dollars) while other estimates, like that of the Heritage Foundation, expect losses up to $4.8 trillion (in 2006 dollars) by 2030.

This cannot even account for the potential deadweight losses and stifled innovation that will result from the massive politicization and bureaucratization of economic planning. Its a wonder how an economy that runs on 85% fossil fuel could cope with such massive overhaul.

While it is a positive to see these massive regulations thwarted, the real battle will come in the next four years when we know we will have a president who supports a Cap-and-Trade scheme. And with a Congress that will likely have even greater Democratic majorities there should be a real worry for those who actually value the idea of economic freedom and remotely limited government. The coming years will really test whether Congressional Republicans (as few as they are) and the American people are willing to go the distance to prevent what the minority leader, I think, correctly calls “the largest restructuring of the American economy since the New Deal.”

Popularity: 45% [?]

From his Economic View column in the NYT, Tyler Cowen writes:

There has been plenty of talk about “predatory lending,” but “predatory borrowing” may have been the bigger problem. As much as 70 percent of recent early payment defaults had fraudulent misrepresentations on their original loan applications, according to one recent study. The research was done by BasePoint Analytics, which helps banks and lenders identify fraudulent transactions; the study looked at more than three million loans from 1997 to 2006, with a majority from 2005 to 2006. Applications with misrepresentations were also five times as likely to go into default.

This fact, however, falls upon the deaf ears of the Democrats, all of who touched upon the issue in Tuesday’s Nevada debate:

Edwards said, “We need a national law cracking down on predatory and payday lenders that are taking advantage of our most vulnerable families.”

Clinton argued that, “…because of the way the interest rates are going up, and many of the fraudulent and predatory practices that got people into them in the first place…” we need to extend credit and loosen bankrupcy laws for those in trouble.

Obama agreed, “Hillary’s exactly right, but we’ve got to modify some of the fraudulent practices, predatory lending practices.”

It sounds wonderful to the economically illiterate, but this season’s buzzword–“predatory” lending–does not so much as pass the smell test. The fact is that the phenominan–if you can call it that–is easily explained by the price system. If the price of credit goes down, and lenders have access to a greater supply of funds then demand from consumers goes up as they are able to borrow more then they previously could. With more credit, consumers are able to buy higher end goods, which they otherwise wouldn’t have access to–such as homes–and the price for those goods grows.

In reality, neither the lenders nor borrowers were “predatory.” Each demanded more credit as credit became cheaper. Unfortunately for both, the credit bubble burst and they are suffering the consequences of unsustainable financing. But the fact remains, it makes no sense to call either party “predatory” considering they both got screwed. And I believe that is the point that Professor Cowen would ultimately make.

In the same column, Cown spoke on lethal cold fronts:

Spells of extreme cold kill over 27,000 Americans each year, or about 700 people each very cold day. Heat waves may receive more publicity, but it turns out that cold periods — days with an average temperature below 30 degrees —have more significant and longer-lasting effects on human mortality. More people die in cold periods than in homicides.

Extreme cold brings cardiovascular stress as human bodies struggle to adjust to the temperature; many of the deaths in these periods come through heart attacks. Heat waves tend to kill people who were already weakened and would have died soon anyway; cold periods bring additional people to the verge of death.

When retired people move to a warmer state, their life expectancy rises dramatically. In fact, 8 to 15 percent of the increase in American life expectancy over the last 30 years comes from people moving to warmer climates, according to research done by two economics professors, Olivier Deschenes at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and Enrico Moretti, at the University of California, Berkeley.

Much is made of how a warming trend could hurt us, but, not only do I assume that those are under the most severe of scenarios, not much is made of if and how warming can help. Not only do many more humans die from the cold than from the heat, but productivity also flurishes when it is warmer. For instance estimates generally hover around the consensus that warming and greater CO2 has contributed to a 15% growth in crop yields since 1950.

This wisdom regarding warming is certainly unconventional, but it is worth discussing openly. I believe the reason we never hear about it is that global warming skepticism is strongly condemned by the mainstream.

Popularity: 27% [?]

Here is an eye-popping link enumerating scores of different trends which have been linked to global warming.

Some of my personal favorites: rape, suicide, teen drinking, terrorism, child insomnia, less circumcision, polar bear cannibalism, poisonous spiders invading Scotland, rainfall increase, rainfall decrease, more colorful trees, less colorful trees, taller mountains, smaller mountains, and, best of all, another ice age.

The climate change sensation is prevalent in contemporary culture, and while the pressure is strong to hop on the band-wagon, any independent and rational thinker will notice it wreaks of dubious logic and claims. For instance, the current Secretary-General of the UN blames global warming as the primary culprit in the Darfur conflict. And, while the Sudanese campaign has been motivated in part by desertification of land in the north, it is giant leap to blame global warming for local weather trends. Not to mention the fact that by blaming climate change you are invariably evading the real issue which is that no government or people have the right to systematically violate people’s lives and property in the manner that the Sudanese government is doing.

An articulate editorial in the WSJ today posits how mob mentality may be perpetuating the matter:

How this honor has befallen the former Veep could perhaps be explained by another Nobel, awarded in 2002 to Daniel Kahneman for work he and the late Amos Tversky did on “availability bias,” roughly the human propensity to judge the validity of a proposition by how easily it comes to mind.

Their insight has been fruitful and multiplied: “Availability cascade” has been coined for the way a proposition can become irresistible simply by the media repeating it; “informational cascade” for the tendency to replace our beliefs with the crowd’s beliefs; and “reputational cascade” for the rational incentive to do so.

Mr. Gore clearly understands the game he’s playing, judging by his resort to such nondispositive arguments as: “The people who dispute the international consensus on global warming are in the same category now with the people who think the moon landing was staged in a movie lot in Arizona.”

Two things to remember are, a) its bad when open, rational debate is not tolerated and people blindly follow the leader and b) environmentalist politics are consequential and if people truly accept the idea that there are catastrophic warming trends, logically, regulations will follow that could severely hamstring the economy by attacking both its energy sources and its related price system.

The fact remains that the scientific data does not add up to the earth melting. For one, humans contribute a very small fraction of the greenhouse effect (try less than 2%). Moreover, the earth warmed more during the first half of the twentieth century then the second half and actually cooled for much of the period from the 50s-80s (hence, the “global cooling” scare), all the while industrial emissions were increasing steadily.

Such inconsistencies, among others, are not addressed in the mainstream. A documentary released in the UK in the past year called “The Great Global Warming Swindle” is a very informative source. Ultimately it demonstrates that “the debate” is not over–as a matter of fact, it has never even started–and that before we do anything too crazy the world should start openly and freely discussing the issue.

ADDENDUM: In a comment, Simmons said he did not believe me when I said that human contribution to the Greenhouse effect was just about 2% of the total greenhouse effect. While it is difficult to measure the exact contribution of humans, even what I consider generous estimates, measure human contribution at no more that 2 and a fraction %. From Junk Science:

Humans can only claim responsibility, if that’s the word, for abut 3.4% of carbon dioxide emitted to the atmosphere annually, the rest of it is all natural (you can see the IPCC representation of the natural carbon cycle and human perturbation here or a simple schematic from Woods Hole here).

Half our estimated emissions fail to accumulate in the atmosphere, “disappearing” into sinks as yet undetermined. Humans’ total accumulated carbon contribution could account for perhaps a quarter of the total non-water greenhouse gases (that is, accounting for all the increase since the Industrial Revolution regardless of source and irrespective of whether warming from any cause might result in an increase in natural emission to atmosphere — we’re simply claiming the lot as anthropogenic or human-caused here).

Assuming that water vapor accounts for about 70% and clouds (mostly water droplets) accounts for another 20%, thus water in it’s various forms is 90% of the total greenhouse effect, leaving 10% for non-water greenhouse effect (we know we cited 95% above — see “important distinction“). Of this remaining 10%, mainly atmospheric carbon, humans might be responsible for 25% of the total accumulated atmospheric carbon, meaning 0.25 x 0.1 = 0.025 x 100 = 2.5% of the total greenhouse effect.

Within the given range, 2.5% is the maximum estimation because  it used the maximum estimates of CO2’s greenhouse composition and human emmisions of C02. Being that CO2 may be as little as 4 or 5% of the greenhouse effect, and humans may contribute as little as 3.4% of CO2, a reasonable estimate would also pin human greenhouse effect as low as (.034 x .05) .17%.

Popularity: 33% [?]

Mark Steyn writes:

Well, the average US household consumes 10,656 kilowatt-hours of electricity. In 2006, the Gores wolfed down nearly 221,000kWh.

Lesson: before you can save the world from other people, you should try saving the world from yourself.

Popularity: 25% [?]

In the past, the Live ___ concerts have been hugely successful. Both, Live Aid and Live 8, have had a clear purpose in mind: raise money to either pay off debt or help to feed starving children. Al Gore, however, utilized his well-publicized Live Earth to “kick start a global movement” to react to global warming. Not everyone agrees with global warming, and there are certainly ways to persuade individuals to look at scientific backup in its favor.

Is a concert, however, the best way? After briefly attending the Washington, DC gathering at the National Museum of the American Indian and watching bits and pieces of the concert on TV, I can conclusively say that it’s most definitely not. Although it was the most watched webcast ever, it was not very well attended at the various locations throughout the world. Furthermore, would an anti-global warming activist attend or watch the concert? Short snippets between musical acts were dedicated to global warming lessons, most of which were ridiculously stupid.

The LA Times and several other sites point out some interesting facts about the concert, showcasing the hypocrisy of many of its participants. LA Times columnist Jonah Goldberg sums up the concert perfectly:

considering the energy required to put on the show, the nine Live Earth concerts doubtlessly raised more CO2 than awareness. NBC’s three-hour televised version got trounced by “Cops” and “America’s Funniest Home Videos.” Moreover, surely most of the people who attended or tuned in already knew about global warming before they saw the video tutorial about Ed Begley Jr.’s eco-friendly home and sanctimony-powered go-cart.

While I appreciate Gore’s efforts in attempting to help to solve the global warming problem, it’s difficult not to view much of this global warming “awareness” as hypocrisy as well.  I’m not a staunch global-warming observer, but I don’t refuse to acknowledge that it exists either.  Gore’s excellent film “An Inconvenient Truth” provides some excellent facts and justification for his claims.  Regardless of global warming’s existence, Gore should have realized the impropriety his concert practiced.  Why hold a concert railing against a problem you’re claiming to solve?

Popularity: 33% [?]