You Ought to Have a Look is a feature from the Center for the Study of Science posted by Patrick J. Michaels and Paul C. (“Chip”) Knappenberger. While this section will feature all of the areas of interest that we are emphasizing, the prominence of the climate issue is driving a tremendous amount of web traffic. Here we post a few of the best in recent days, along with our color commentary.
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The big news of the week was the “historic” (in President Obama’s words) climate agreement between the U.S. and China—but about the only “historic” thing about it was the hype the White House and environmental groups heaped upon it. In actuality, there was very little new news. The emissions reduction pathway that Obama announced for the U.S. was not much different (actually a teense lower) than the one announced after the (failed) U.N. Copenhagen meeting in 2009, and China agreed to…well, it’s unclear to what they agreed. NBC News reported “China intends to begin to halt the rise in CO2 emissions by around the year 2030.” Try that line (inserting your own specific vice) on your significant other and see how it goes over.
A good article in Reuters by John Kemp nicely eschews the hype and looks more closely at the facts. He opening paragraph reads:
Nov 12 (Reuters) — The joint statement by the United States and China on climate change, issued on Wednesday, is more important for its political and diplomatic symbolism than any practical effect it might have in reducing emissions.
Both Kemp’s article and our article on the announcement are worth having a look at to see what the agreement really entails, and its chances at success (spoiler alert: they aren’t good).
Another big news item this week—or at least it should have been—was the release of Alex Epstein’s remarkable book The Moral Case for Fossil Fuels. We can’t say enough good things about this book—and we try often! You may have seen our glowing review on these pages yesterday along with some provocative text provided by Alex that cuts to the basic premise of the book—that the societal pros of fossil fuel use far, far exceed the cons, and therefore, it is, well, immoral, to try to restrict their usage and further development. This week Alex also hosted a Reddit AMA (“ask me anything”) to allow internet savvy folks to interact with him directly as ask questions about his new book and his general way of thinking. Alex entertained many interesting questions, for example:
Question: What should be the role of government with respect to pollution? Should it ban pollution? Limit it? Tax it?
Answer: Good question, the subject of chapter 7 “Minimizing Risks and Side‐Effects.” The basic principle is that we should think of it in terms of individual rights. At a certain threshold of emission someone is polluting your person or property and should be forbidden to do so. But certain threshold is important and contextual based on the state of technology. So in the 1800s people should have been allowed to use the coal plants they did but we shouldn’t today. If something is fundamentally necessary to human life it’s not pollution. There’s a lot of complexity in application but that’s the framework I use.
If you want to see all that transpired in this lively round of questioning is archived here.
And finally, our friend, the ever‐informative Dr. Roy Spencer has a good post up over at his blog looking at what really are the biggest influences on the climate during the timescale of our lifetime. What does he find? Why natural variability, of course! He takes us through a couple of the most influential natural sources of variability and the possible drivers behind them. Here is some insight from Roy:
But statistics aren’t enough. Since we understand that carbon dioxide is a greenhouse gas, and should cause some warming, but we don’t understand natural climate cycles, scientists only look where the streetlight of government funding illuminates the problem: CO2.
What complicates policymaking even further is that what motivates public perceptions and thus decision makers the most are weather events. Hurricane Sandy. A snowy winter. We end up blaming these on the only thing we thing we think we understand — increasing CO2 should cause some change, so it must be responsible for all of the change we see…
To the extent that human‐caused warming is occurring, I am increasingly convinced it is a largely benign — and possibly beneficial — needle lost in the haystack of Mother Nature’s natural climate gyrations.
You ought to have a look at the rest of Roy’s article, which can be found here.
