A Stand on Global Warming That I Agree With

This makes sense to me...



I'm reading Roger Pielke Jr.'s book The Climate Fix which also says sensible things about global warming.

My bottom line:

• I accept that CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but climate is so complex it isn't clear by how much the increased CO2 might affect the climate. Precaution is advisable but not the Precautionary Principle which goes overboard. The biggest greenhouse gas is water vapour, is the EPA going to ban water? There are more than two dozen greenhouse gases, so the focus on CO2 is a little suspect.


• I accept Pieke's iron law of climate policy which says that people favour reducing greenhouse gases and global warming risk, but not at the expense of GDP and economic growth.


• There are a lot of uncertainties in climate science, so lets start doing the simple, inexpensive things to avoid global warming, but lets put the real emphasis on improving the technology that will reduce the cost and/or the potential harm of global warming. That's the point that Lomborg is making in the above video.


• I fully subscribe to the Pielke's three "design criteria" for a successful policy to deal with global warming:
  
  
  1. Climate policies should flow with the current of public opinion rather than against it.
  
  
  2. Efforts to sell the public on policies that will create short-term economic discomfort cannot succeed if that discomfort is perceived to be too great. The greater the discomfort, the greater the chances of policy failure. Short-term costs must be commensurate with short-term benefits.
  
  
  3. Innovation in energy technology -- related both to the production of energy and to its consumption -- necessarily must be at the center of any effort to accelerate decarbonization of the global economy.
  
  
• Even though greenhouse gases are growing in the atmosphere, the rate of deposition by more advanced economies is falling. I see the current hysterial much like the ZPG hysteria of the 1960s that predicted global doom from over-population. Fifty years we have Japan, Europe, Russia, Canada, and many other developed countries with falling populations. The hysteria ignored the fact that as people got wealthier they have more kids. I think as countries get wealthier and more technologically advanced, the production of greenhouse gases will fall. It doesn't hurt to encourage this fall, but the fall is going to happen even without the histrionics and hysteria of the doom-and-gloom crowd.

Read Roger Pielke Jr.'s book The Climate Fix. It is deadly boring in some sections, but it is the best informed, most honest presentation of the "fix global warming" argument that I've read.