Bishop Hill Did Stern account for war and peace?
Jul 4, 2012 Climate: WG2 Economics GWPF outlines a study by Erik Gartzke that discusses the links between global warming and war. Gartzke notes that post-war industrialisation is not only the putative cause of global warming but has also been associated with a steady decline in military strife. In fact, what evidence there is suggests that periods of global cooling are usually associated with the outbreak of hostiliities.
"Ironically," as Gartzke writes in the concluding sentence of his paper's abstract, "stagnating economic development in middle-income states caused by efforts to combat climate change could actually realize fears of climate-induced warfare." And thus he states in the concluding section of his paper that "we must add to the advantages of economic development that it appears to make countries more peaceful," and that we must therefore ask ourselves if environmental objectives should be "modified by the prospect that combating climate change could prolong the process of transition from warlike to peaceful polities."
I wonder if Lord Stern considered changes in levels of military conflict in his famous report.
Reader Comments (60)
AmdB: what effect would it have on your thinking if the American Physical Society were to publish a document showing the IPCC Energy Budget has an imaginary ~350% increase in IR warming of the lower atmosphere, an error in heat input 50 times the 1.6 W/m^2 AGW the models set out to prove?
Here it is; http://www.aps.org/units/fps/newsletters/200807/hafemeister.cfm
The author uses Eq 17 to find the emissivity of the lower atmosphere needed to make the UP and DOWN figures balance. The error, 333.[1-0.76] = ~80 W/m^2! So, if I were you, I'd relax a bit!
Re: ArndB
Naval war isn't an explanation. Neither the amount of shipping involved or the amount of energy released through explosives is exceptional.
If you want an alternative explanation then how about .... natural variation.
Re: ArndB
Has there been an increase in shipping to cause the last 3 or 4 cold winters in the UK/Europe?
Didn't the Met Office reckon that the 3 the UK had were a 1 in 8000 event?
Sandy
@ spartacusisfree : „So, if I were you, I'd relax a bit!” That will come as soon as science is able and willing to work with scientifically reasonable definitions on “climate” and “weather”, and understands that the doer of climate on this water planet is the ocean.
@TerryS: „… natural variation.“? It’s all physics!
@SandyS: “Has there been an increase in shipping to cause the last 3 or 4 cold winters in the UK/Europe?” Sorry, shipping is not my issue as mentioned in the previous comment, at least for now.
Did Stern account for war and peace?
Presumably this is 'account for' in the sense used by academic bureaucrats*, where 'account for X' means 'include a made-up term representing X'.
*Climatologists, for example.
Dandruff causes global warming. (As also reported by New Scientist and Fred Pearce no less). (here).
However, I doubt that wars have much noticeable effect on climate. If they did - then why didn't nuclear testing (releasing much more energy and dust than wars) have a noticeable effect? The earth is large, the amount of energy reaching the earth from the sun is large, and almost anything that we do is negligible in comparison - no matter how much we would like it to be otherwise.
Carbon credit scam would have cost Britain £2bn
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/carbon-credit-scam-would-have-cost-britain-2bn-7878760.html
The Independent seems to be losing interest in the more conventional CC scare stories.
http://woodfortrees.org/plot/hadsst2gl/from:1935/to:1950
The above graph is the sea surface temp from 1935-1950. The real temperature change occurred in 1946 after the war ended. It coincided with a regime change in the pacific decadal oscillation and had nothing to do with WWII.
I think ArndB is on to something. The Titanic sank in April 1912, disrupting the ocean. Soon after was The awful August of 1912
Jul 5, 2012 at 5:21 PM | ArndB
I reckon you're talking total nonsense, but may well be a troll with a great imagination.