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Thursday, December 09, 2004

Climate Change

Andrei Illarionov, chief economic adviser to the president of the Russian Federation, writes in the Australian about Global Warming and the Kyoto Protocol:

The fact is the Kyoto protocol that will be a global treaty within months is based on fraudulent science. Assertions that global temperatures are higher today than any time in the past are completely false. Fluctuations in climate patterns have existed for millions of years -- for all earth history. Global temperatures were higher in the Roman times when grapes were grown on British islands and Hannibal's elephants walked through the Alps into Italy. They were higher in the medieval period when the Vikings found and colonised the island that they have called Greenland and when Norwegians grew grain on the fields that are 300m in altitude higher than it is possible to do today. Temperature variations in the course of the earth's history have been much greater than the increase of 0.6 degrees Celsius estimated by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for the last century. In the past, the earth's climate was warmer, the global temperature rose faster, sea level was higher, floods were more severe, droughts lasted longer and hurricanes were more devastating than they were in the 20th century. Moreover, the best available temperature data from satellites show negligible temperature changes over the past several decades.
I am not willing to say at this point that human caused climate change isn't happening. I do not think though that the Kyoto treaty is the right answer even if it is happening. First, we need better, and less politicized, science on climate change. We don't know enough yet to have any realistic hope of effecting the climate in a desired direction. If, as Kyoto proponents claim, the CO2 from hydrocarbons is causing extreme climate change, then the amount of lowered CO2 emissions from following Kyoto are not nearly enough to make a difference. At the same time, by halting economic development, they will make us less able to respond to challenges a changing climate (whether human caused or not) will present to us.

5 Comments:

Blogger The probligo said...

Yeah, so I guess that the 8% reduction in the size of the north polar ice cap over the past ten years is a myth of fauxscience as well.

Ok.

12/11/2004 11:56:00 AM  
Blogger Dave Justus said...

I don't believe either I or the article I linked to said anything that climate change isn't occuring.

The fact that is is occuring doesn't automatically mean it is human caused.

Even if it is human caused, that doesn't mean we understand what is causing it.

Even if, as some theorize, global warming is caused by CO2 emissions from burning fossil fuels, it is far from evident that Kyoto will have any meaningful effect on this. Indeed, under Kyoto, CO2 emissions will continue to rise and the difference between CO2 emitted by human activities for the next 50 years under Kyoto and CO2 emitted by human activities for the next 50 years without Kyoto is only a fraction of a percent. Most economists agree that Kyoto will have a very powerful effect on economic development however, which translates directly in a reduction of our abilities to mitigate any problems that climate change will cause.

As I stated, I do not rule out the possibility that human activities are happening. Until we understand a whole lot more about how the global climate works though, Kyoto seems far too drastic a plan, with too little chance of benefit.

12/11/2004 12:42:00 PM  
Blogger jacob.thrasher said...

I don't believe that humans significantly affect the temperature of the earth. The amount of pollutants we put out are FAR overshadowed by the amounts of those same pollutants that are spewed forth from natural sources, such as volcanoes.

Temperatures fluctuate. They always have. They go in cycles of 20-100 years, and more. You might find it interesting to note that the temperatures now are comparatively cool, compared to centuries past (in which mankind did very little to pollute the atmosphere).

Global warming is a myth. I have yet to understand why so many defend it.

12/12/2004 07:57:00 PM  
Blogger Dave Justus said...

Well, I'm not quite so ready to call it a myth. Climate change does seem to be occuring and human released greenhouse gases are a plausible theory as to why it is happening. On a smaller scale, we know that human activities can effect the climate and whether patterns, so it certainly is possible that we can have a global effect as well.

Certainly though, as I said, we need to know a lot more than we do now before we do something as drastic as Kyoto.

12/14/2004 04:34:00 AM  
Blogger Dave Justus said...

Fair enough...but what if you paid the economic price and it didn't solve the problem, or in fact made it worse? Both of these outcomes are indeed at least as likely as Kyoto solving global warming even if it is caused by human activity.

Second, an economic price is never just an economic price. Lack of economic resources causes real deaths all the time. 100 years of a stagnate economy might very well be more disasterous than even the worst global warming predictions. Many, many studies have linked pollution to poverty, if you stagnate the U.S. economy you are going to have a tough time getting the third world into prosperity, even with the fact that they don't have Kyoto restrictions.

12/14/2004 04:08:00 PM  

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