Global Warming: Misguided Priorities
Judge Richard Posner's arguments that global warming is a bigger problem that malaria seem misguided to me.
Malnutrition and malaria are serious problems too, but one effect of eliminating them would be to cause a population surge, which would in turn increase global warming, because added population means added energy demands (met primarily by burning fossil fuels) and added food demands (met in part by deforestation).
So it would be bad if less people died of malnutrition and malaria? I guess when you live in Chicago, Malaria and global warming are equally abstract and far off problems. The 300 million people who get malaria each year and one million people who die from it might set different priorities given the chance.
The Copenhagen consensus is all about reasonable priorities.
My understanding of the Copenhagen consensus is that it's not about reasonable priorities, it's about cost/benefit analysis. Take a look at the list. Notice that overpopulation, war, climate/polution, women's and children's rights, etc. are nowhere in sight. It seems more like a list of things that 1st World businesses can make a buck off of. Not that the things on the list are not important, far from it. Businesses may contribute to solving many of these problems if incentivized, but governments will ultimately need to solve them.
By Christopher Thompson on September 2nd, 2004 at 6:10 pmLomborg is a bit of a side-show magician IMO. He makes superficially clever arguments with no substance.
We're in a truck, hurtling down a steep road in the dark. His response is to press on the accellerator because "speed gives us the means to deal with any obstructions". Not so clever after all. In fact, we need to jump on the brake.
The real danger with global warming is that change is not linear. For a time, as massive amounts of energy get pumped into the earth's weather systems, we'll get pretty much more of the same albeit with slightly higher average temperatures, slightly more energetic hurricanes (and more of them), slightly heavier rainfall / more drought depending on the area. However, at some point the whole system will make a sudden and drastic flip to a new paradigm. Paradoxically, that could be a new ice age. Or it might be runaway global warming as various poitive feedback loops are triggered (thawing tundra changes the earth's albedo & releases CO2 from peat bogs; vast & unstable oceanic methane hydrate reserves could be released with rises in sea temperatures). We just don't know.
Even the lesser, linear change can cause huge problems for millions in flood-prone areas such as Bangladesh, or exacerbate tensions in areas like the middle east where the water supply is a serious problem.
In a sense there's not a lot of point discussing it. There is no chance that anything will be done about it. Major climate change happen will happen - we can only hope it won't be a paradigm shift. Thank goodness we're fast running out of hydrocarbons to burn.
By noel darlow on September 3rd, 2004 at 6:31 amUh-Oh...Chicken Little Speaks
Global warming approaching point of no return, warns leading climate expert.
Money quote...
"Climate change is for real. We have just a small window of opportunity and it is closing rather rapidly. There is not a moment to lose."
Guess we sh...
By Becoming An Economist on January 27th, 2005 at 6:20 pm