Saturday, October 19, 2013

Why climate change is good for the planet - spectator reports on Tol

Richard Tol gets the Spectator treatment.  This is a well written article linking to Tol's 2009 paper reviewing 14 studies and touching a new Tol chapter in a new Lomborg book that looks back to the last century.

The arguments are fine but take no account of tipping points, catastrophic collapse and the costs of climate change induced mass migration.

How all this is discounted is relevant. 

With a large enough "value of statistical life" the numbers can be made to work - it is undoubtedly correct that there will be fewer deaths due to cold winters with a couple of degrees extra on the mercury.

The green movement are struggling at the moment with recession induced apathy and a political backlash against "green taxes" that are pushing up energy bills.  With publicity like this the green movement will only find it harder.

Worth a read.  The views expressed in this article will be seen over and over again. It is important to know the background.

Why climate change is good for the world [Spectator]

Climate change has done more good than harm so far and is likely to continue doing so for most of this century. This is not some barmy, right-wing fantasy; it is the consensus of expert opinion. Yet almost nobody seems to know this. Whenever I make the point in public, I am told by those who are paid to insult anybody who departs from climate alarm that I have got it embarrassingly wrong, don’t know what I am talking about, must be referring to Britain only, rather than the world as a whole, and so forth.
 [..]
 To be precise, Prof Tol calculated that climate change would be beneficial up to 2.2˚C of warming from 2009 (when he wrote his paper). This means approximately 3˚C from pre-industrial levels, since about 0.8˚C of warming has happened in the last 150 years. The latest estimates of climate sensitivity suggest that such temperatures may not be reached till the end of the century — if at all. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, whose reports define the consensis, is sticking to older assumptions, however, which would mean net benefits till about 2080. Either way, it’s a long way off.


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