Global Warming Versus Global Good Judgement

Skeptical environmentalist Bjorn Lomborg looks for logic in the setting of global priorities.  His Copenhagen Consensus concluded that the world has better ways to invest its resources than by battling climate change with the Kyoto Protocol.

Ahh, but is this simply an attempt by Mr. Lomborg to set the best as the enemy of the good, as his critics allege?  Yet even if that is so, might Mr. Lomborg be riding a tiger?  And what is with my Metaphor-Masher, and when will all these rhetorical questions end?

Troubling.  Let's pitch in one more pro-Kyoto piece by John Quiggin, and depart.

MORE:  Yes, of course I am totally Kyotophobic.  And can we suggest a motto for Lomborg's website - "Like Kryptonite to Kyoto"?  OK, back to the Scrabble game.

Comments

[Josh]

I was reading some of Tim Blair's posts he linked to in his year end review thing and there was some fantastic Kyoto bashing, which is really good. Check the comments of the posts especially.

[martin]

A coal seam fire has been burning under Centralia Pennsylvania since 1962. Coal fires are burning all over the world. There are extremely large one presently burning in India and China.

The amount of annual emissions from coal seam fires presently burning in China alone are equal to the annual emissions of the Unites States from EVERY source.

IOW-dousing just China's coal fires would be like replacing every motor and plant in the United States with a non-farting horse.

Admittedly, these fires are hard to extinguish-(1962!)

But putting them out-or at least quelling them a little- would be cheaper than Kyoto-and that's not speculative either. Putting out the fires would lessen greenhouse emissions immediately.

A feasible solution apparently acceptable to neither left nor right.

[martin]

Correction-the coal fires in China are the equivalent to every car and truck (not every source) in the US on an annual basis.

[TM]

Hmm, here is an article on coal seam fires. Who knew?

Such fires in China consume up to 200 million tonnes of coal per year, delegates were told. In comparison, the U.S. economy consumes about one billion tonnes of coal annually, said Stracher, whose analysis of the likely impact of coal fires has been accepted for publication in the International Journal of Coal Ecology.

...One suggested method of containing the fires was presented by Gary Colaizzi, of the engineering firm Goodson and Associates, which has developed a heat-resistant grout (a thin mortar used to fill cracks and crevices) known as Thermocell, which is designed to be pumped into the coal fire to cut off the oxygen supply.

[The Kid]

Quiggin and his ilk, including Frankel, get real cute in computing costs of doing something about global warming because they deal with aggregates, not reality. Their underlying assumption is that household income and consumption will remain the same and thus bear the costs of whatever regime is imposed. They don’t deal with the particular choices, better diktats, that folks would be forced to comply with.

For example, we know that SUVs would have to go – say goodbye to Ford and GM – but so would cell phones – each of which consumes an amount equivalent to a hot water heater when the infrastructure is factored in. Goodbye Sprint and Nextel – it was fun while it lasted. What of the employees of these telecommunications (service) companies, and what about the unemployed autoworkers when production moves to countries that can cope with or ignore global warming regulation? The income of US-based employees declines, as does their consumption. So too with many other enterprises whose products and services are no longer affordable or possible thanks to increased energy “user fees.” FedEx and UPS are toast, as are Amazon and Overstocked.com which rely on these transporters for delivery of the goods they sell.

What’s bizarre is that the proponents of such idiocy are those who cite the “butterfly effect,” the notion that the flapping wings of one insect in Sumatra can cause a tsunami that hits the left coast. These same folks boost condor choppers, a/k/a windmills for generating electricity, failing to acknowledge the impact of these devices on the local climate.

Logic? You can find some in the PDF files here.