Bishop Hill Disagreement over nothing
Oct 17, 2013 Economics ;)
One of Matt Ridley's ancestors was burnt at the stake for refusing to toe the line on the religion of the day, and those in positions of power today seem to have the same distaste for dissent as the Marian persecutors of yesteryear.
The ire of the metropolitan "liberal" elite has been prickled by Ridley's article in the Spectator, which describes the consensus among economists that the effects of small amounts of global warming will be beneficial.
Prof Richard 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 consensus, is sticking to older assumptions, however, which would mean net benefits till about 2080. Either way, it’s a long way off.
Amongst the usual furious discharges on Twitter, has come this response from someone called Duncan Geere, who has this to say at the New Statesman:
If you read the paper yourself, you'll quickly see that Tol's actual conclusion is that things start going downhill at about a +1C rise.
In fact, if you look at the graph concerned you will see that they are actually agreeing with each other. Here it is:
;)
Ridley is saying that things get no worse until we've had another 2.2°C of warming, Geere that the downward trend starts at 1°C. But by saying that "things start going downhill at 1°C", Geere gives his reader the impression that Ridley is wrong and that net benefit only applies to much lower temperature rises.
Geere also says that "multiple analyses have shown that the long-term costs [of AW] are far in excess of the costs of preventing it", but intriguingly he doesn't actually cite any of them. I wonder where they are?
Reader Comments (89)
Gere is an idiot - maybe "things do go downhill from 1C"' but the situation is STILL better than today, until the graph returns to the baseline.
The doom-mongers are always too quick to respond. It is a Pavlovian reaction that means the rabid, incorrect, response is out before the brain has been engaged.
The inquisition was essentially a group of religious institutions which
persecuted so called heretics.
We now have the equivalent scientific institutions, desparate to punish
so called "climate change deniers"
That is exactly how it feels to me.
@Steve Jones
As was found in WWII, half truths are the best lies.
Climate "science" has been based on excluding inconvenient truths
In a green world
all graphs will be horizontal
as it was in the beginning
so it shall be in the end
for evermore
As I mentioned on a previous post, Matt Ridley was on the Politics show today and it will likely be available on the I Player.
To connect to the real world someone should produce a similar graph based on the effects of the current and future cooling trend. For the likely timing and extent of the cooling as a basis for the graph see
http://climatesense-norpag.blogspot.com
I blame the education system for leaving people and trolls unable to read a graph correctly
SandyS
Geere is perfectly capable of reading a graph but like a true believer he will interpret that graph to suit his own prejudices.
In this case he is starting from the belief that Ridley is evil since he denies the True Faith (the True Faith being that all global warming is potentially disastrous).
Therefore anything he says is to be proved wrong since, by definition, he is spreading misinformation.
If necessary this will be countered also with misinformation but since it is being spoken by a follower of the True Faith it must, by definition, be true and ..... so on and so on .....
The difficulty that the likes of Geere have is that their
liesinterpretations are so obviously at odds with reality that sooner or later they will become the laughing-stock that they deserve to be.Sandy
"people and trolls"
A nice distinction.. :-)
Do not feed the troll
Bish will be here presently to delete its rantings and any responses.
I agree with Geere.
Why should anyone give a toss? Are economic models any better than climate models?
Until regional climates can be predicted (don't hold your breath) no one knows whether ice caps will melt and sea level will rise, or precipitation will rise to higher levels and create more ice in Greenland, Antarctica and on mountains / glaciers. It's mumbo jumbo based on a bit of basic physics about CO2 that is then cast into the cauldron of models trying to predict anthropogenic chaotic climate behaviour, in a web of natural, chaotic variability.
When humanity has to adapt it will, it always reacts positively to real, tangible adversity. None of the predictions would happen quickly if they do happen and humanity would have plenty of time respond.
At present (last 150 years) there is no adverse climate trend in hurricanes, typhoons, floods, droughts, cold, hot, just various cyclical behaviours, some slight average global warming trend, a small rise in sealevel, rise in greening and a minute reduction in the alkalinity of the oceans (nowhere near acidic unlike distilled water which is on the boundary between acid and alkali). In that time CO2 has increased by over 40%. The last 15 years has seen global average temperature flat and well under all the predictions of climate models while CO2 continues to grow.
So why should it all kick off in the next 70 years. My advice is don't build your house out of straw and don't build it on a flood plain. The same advice I'd have given 50, 100, 150 years ago.
Matt Ridley seems to be trying to be too accomodating to the scare mongers as far as I can see.
innumerate tool
Would you care to explain why?
In the light of the diagram to which Ridley and Tol were referring it seems to me that the benefits remain positive up to ~+2C and only after that become negative.
Geere is stretching the English language more than a little to suggest that "things start going downhill from +1C". His words may be syntactically accurate but he is distorting the meaning — and quite evidently from what he says he is doing so deliberately.
MJ
It was a semi humorous comment as things were/are getting a bit heavy.
If I was a warmist, knowing I was right about AGW because I had a robust theory supported by indisputable evidence, then I would take every opportunity to debate with the sceptics.
So why don't they? It would be so easy.
Matt Ridley is by no means the only one to reveal that a gentle warming coupled with an increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations (as predicted by the IPCC) will be net beneficial at least until the end of the century. On the other hand global cooling (as seems inevitable at least in the short term) will cause more death from cold as a result of "fuel poverty" and starvation if reliable and affordable energy as well as GM foods are not available . The "Green" legacy.
I spent the afternoon dealing with the people responsible for the rise in my electricity and gas. Not some completely imaginary liberal elite, not Greenpeace, not eco nuts, but Npower. Behind them, the inexorable rise of the global oil and gas price cartel.
Why is there a green surcharge on energy ?
IETA is the biggest industry lobby group present at the COP15 (Copenhagen) negotiations, bringing in 486 lobbyists. Their aim is the creation of a global market for greenhouse gas emissions, including the use of highly controversial offsetting projects through the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM). However, current carbon trading schemes like the ETS have proven not to reduce emissions, but largely generate profits for these companies.
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/15/18632658.php
I am not feeding trolls - it is a waste of time.
Martin A - I tend to believe you are right. Economic modelling makes Climate modelling look good most of the time. The real problem though, as we know, is when you start feeding the former with the output of the latter.
The problem for the warmists though is they have to believe the Economic modellers since it is that double dose of GIGO that produces the frightening scenarios that they require/believe. BUT even when the IPCC does that, the warming looks benign for many decades.
I struggle to understand that intelligent people (and many warmists are) are blind to the obvious effects of a warming against a cooling world. It is cold that kills people not warmth.
The CAGW crowd continually change their pronouncements - denying (sorry) that warming has stopped and then after a decade admitting it has, forecasting a warmer, wetter NH and then saying a colder one is due to CO2 and sea ice depletion. Just a pity the ice is growing again.
Talking about economists (which we weren't) and slightly O/T - this piece by Niall Ferguson is worth a read
http://www.niallferguson.com/journalism/miscellany/krugtron-the-invincible-part-1
should resonate with Climate Realists - some real parallels with climate science here. The people who are always wrong but think they are always right.
Rules for intellectuals:
1. Don't think.
2. If you think, then don't speak.
3. If you think and speak, then don't write.
4. If you think, speak and write, then don't sign.
5. If you think, speak, write and sign, then don't be surprised.
Are warmist fanatics the only people who hate good news?
Geere's presumption is that most people won't bother to look at what he's talking about.
Now, the question is this: since we're all agreed that +1degC from 2009 levels is beneficial, and the new and improved lower sensitivity numbers that even the IPCC backs into says that's where we're going...what on Earth are the alarmists banging their shoes on the table about?
Pseudoscience is finally on the side of the sceptics! Yay for pseudoscience!
Not.
Has no-one got a grain of grudging sympathy for scientists charged with turning an obvious and historically proven economically beneficial warming event into a doomladen disaster requiring epic sacrifice?
Well past two degrees C. the net benefit continues, for a warmer world sustains more total life and more diversity of life.
============
I have done a fair bit of work with economic models over the years, and regard exercises like the modelling the effects of this or that temperature rise as voodoo - especially over a long period. Indeed, any so-called economic modelling that goes beyond 5-10 years is utter voodoo, with each year after year 1 being progressively less trustworthy. Very often, they are lucky to get the next 12 months vaguely right.
There is plenty of historical evidence to suggest that cooling has adverse effects on economic well-being, and that mild warming is good for it. But I remain deeply sceptical of attempts to quantify the economic future for the entire planet even under scenarios where the climate stays exactly the same.
It's ok. It's not warming up and the critics can no longer by silenced. Kudos to Ridley et al for their insistence.
It's not the Spanish Inquision! Oh, hang on a minute.... The true believers want things to get warmer for deniers - how do you like your stake?
But when the lights go out, the poor, old and vulnerable starve and food supplies run out, how long before the riots start and society starts to disintegtrate - 24 hours? 48 hours? This year, next year, the next freezing winter? Cameron, Clegg and Milliband, over to you - you are the ones who led us here.
What is happening ? Why are Osborne and Cameron falling under the spell of the Greens ? Are they secret socialists ? They must be. Perhaps the CBI is a Greenpeace front ? That must be it.
If I was a warmist, knowing I was right about AGW because I had a robust theory supported by indisputable evidence, then I would take every opportunity to debate with the sceptics.
So why don't they? It would be so easy.
Oct 17, 2013 at 7:32 PM | Steve Jones
When I try to debate the science, it tends to rapidly turn into a conflict between data and ideology. Even when the debate stays close to the science it devolves into my presenting peer reviewed scientific evidence and my opponent saying "That's wrong". No peer reviewed evidence for the sceptic position is usually presented, just comments from spin-sceptic propoganda sites like WUWT.
Having read up on the psychology, I've decided that I'm as likely to convert creationists to evolution as confirmed.sceptics to AGW.
I still debate occasionally, but only with a few people here who have demonstrated their capacity for rational argument.
It is a hard lesson, but nobody has an automatic right to cheap energy, or even enough fuel to survive the Winter. The help available comes because a government chooses to spend financial resources subsidising those in fuel poverty, using your tax money.
Electricity and gas bills are determined by costs, most prominently the cost of imported fuel. If you force energy companies to supply at fixed prices despite rising world prices, they make a loss. This removes any incentive to invest in new plant and quickly leads to blackouts.
Continue your fixed price strategy for long and the companies stop supplying. Push the companies into bankruptcy and you lose all electricity and fuel supplies as they shut down. Welcome to the dark age.
I wonder why we're decommissioning coal fired power stations.
Good wishes to all here,
There is an Australian blog that is supported by the main Universities and CSIRO and out Met Bureau. It's named "The Conversation". You have to be associated with a University to write lead articles, but you are supposed to be free to make blog comments.
I supposed that until yesterday, when I went to sign in. A brown note on the screen told me "Your account has been locked".
I felt that this was a strange act, one that seemed to be in accord with a paragraph from Stanley Kurtz,
"Insight into the quasi-religious motivations that stand behind climate activism cannot finally resolve the empirical controversies at stake in our debate over global warming. Yet understanding climate activism as a cultural phenomenon does yield insight into that debate. The religious character of the climate-change crusade chokes off serious discussion. It stigmatizes reasonable skepticism about climate catastrophism (which is different from questioning the fundamental physics of carbon dioxide’s effect on the atmosphere). Climate apocalypticism drags what ought to be careful consideration of the costs and benefits of various policy options into the fraught world of identity politics. The wish to be oppressed turns into the wish to be morally superior, which turns into the pleasure of silencing alleged oppressors, which turns into its own sort of hatred and oppression."
http://nationalreview.com/education-week/360874/wannabe-oppressed-stanley-kurtz
Here is a suggestion. I'm not allowed to blog in this taxpayer funded place now, but you are.
There is an open invitation to you all to become involved, to blog on The Conversation", perhaps often for a while, as a measure of your personal opposition to censorship. (I am not told why I was censored. The door was shut with no explanation).
I'm very willing to send you samples of my past blogs so you can judge if they should be acceptable or not in a public forum.
This is the real future of British energy. Blame Miliband.
The Chancellor, George Osborne, has announced that the UK will allow Chinese companies to take a stake in British nuclear power plants. The announcement also said that Chinese firms might eventually be allowed to take majority stakes in British nuclear plants. Mr Osborne made the announcement on the last day of a trade visit to China.
The first China deal could be as early as next week, with the go ahead for a new £14bn plant at the Hinkley C site. Also on Thursday, a report commissioned for the prime minister warned of a growing risk of power shortages over the next few years.
The Royal Academy of Engineering said the closure of older power plants and the slow progress in building news ones was likely to stretch the system "close to its limits". Supply is expected to come under strain in the winter of 2014-15.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-24561325
Entropic man:
"When I try to debate the science, it tends to rapidly turn into a conflict between data and ideology. Even when the debate stays close to the science it devolves into my presenting peer reviewed scientific evidence and my opponent saying "That's wrong". No peer reviewed evidence for the sceptic position is usually presented, just comments from spin-sceptic propoganda sites like WUWT."
Is this "data" a hockey stick (MBH 98) or have you accepted the peer reviewed literature showing that was incorrect. Have you accepted the hockey stick did not come back? (AR5 figure 5.8 among others). And have you come to terms with the fact that the IPCC knew better than to accept such a clearly wrong and fraudulent study but accepted it and made it the poster child for AR3 because it supported their cause? Have you figured out why many in the IPCC still refuse to say MBH98 was wrong even though their own proxy reconstructions returned to (non hockey stick like) earlier paleoclimate reconstructions?
"Having read up on the psychology"
Using one pseudoscience to support another.
The Royal Academy of Engineering says unless we accept nuclear and increased bills, the lights will go out.
We know nuclear is safe because a government committee called COMARE found that it was. The chairman is Professor Elliot of Glasgow, a former colleague of Dr Gerry McCann (father of Madeleine) who was on the medical subcommittee.
The contract for the first of up to 10 new nuclear plants, Hinkley 'C' went to EDF whose head of media relations is Andrew Brown, brother of former PM, Gordon Brown.
http://www.edfenergy.com/about-us/energy-generation/new-nuclear/hinkley-point-c/
Geoff Sherrington
I reposted your 2:45AM comment as a discussion post here
http://bishophill.squarespace.com/discussion/post/2218754
pointing out that the Conversation is now an Anglo-Australian outfit, financed by the British taxpayer.
I always remember the old addage -
"If you laid all the London buses end-to-end you would reach halfway to the moon, if you laid all the economists end-to-end you would NEVER raech a conclusion" QED!
Oct 18, 2013 at 5:51 AM | Registered Commentergeoffchambers
Sincere thanks from Geoff to Geoff.
Don't forget that WWF have control over a Rainforrest and can get 60.000.000.000 USD along the UNEP/UNFCCC/IPCC track. Yes 60 billions USD.
And we all have to pay for this!
Why is WWF so central in the UNFCCC/IPCC process and at the same time to benefit 60 billion, 60.000.000.000, USD by the UNFCCC/IPCC process?
Corrupt?
Geoff Sherrington, much as I support you in relation to "The Con", as I call it, reading it is just too painful for me. As an increasingly grumpy older woman, my tolerance for what passes for discussion over there is too low; it just makes me cross, especially as I am paying for this twaddle.
I wonder what their readership is? My guess is that it is pretty low, although a few "journalists" seem to trawl through the dross to recycle the material elsewhere.
Entropic man
You are all heart. I suspect you have never sat in a freezing room wondering where your next meal is to come from or if your Gran will survive the night.
The 1°C rise mentioned by Mr Gere has its base in 2009. As the IPCC says that global surface temperatures have increased by 0.85°C since the pre-industrial era, this point of maximum benefit is about equal to the 2°C target set by all UNFCCC conferences since Copenhagen.
At the rate of warming recorded in the recent AR5WG1 SPM (0.12°C/decade since 1951) it will be well after 2100 before even this level of diminishing benefit is reached. The IPCC says that the historic rate won't increase unless the TCR is above about 1.5°C – which seems unlikely in view of recent studies.
The series of published economic studies relied upon by Professor Tol are based on the IPCC's earlier assessment reports, which were blithely unaware of the "hiatus". Allowance needs to be made for at least three new factors:
(1) The hiatus has already set the timetable back by about 17 years;
(2) The models assumed a Best Estimate for ECS of 3.0°C. The consensus behind that figure has now evaporated;
(3) We now know that natural variation (or the Davy Jones hypothesis) regularly offsets the effects of AGW.
All these factors suggest that Matt Ridley's timing is extremely conservative. Any warming occurring in the 21st century is likely to be a great boon to planet Earth and its inhabitants.
EM
Re your nobody has a right to cheap fuel,
Hasn't the human race always striven to find a way of getting more energy for a lower investment of money and effort? That is until the end of the 20th century when politicians and environmentalists got deeply involved in the process. Wasn't the requirement for more lower "cost" energy what drove the transition from wind->water->steam->electricity. Isn't the quest for cheap plentiful energy what drove the research into nuclear fusion cold or otherwise? Going back to wind turns the energy clock back 300 years in all respects.
and
"Electricity and gas bills are determined by costs, most prominently the cost of imported fuel. If you force energy companies to supply at fixed prices despite rising world prices, they make a loss. This removes any incentive to invest in new plant and quickly leads to blackouts."
I certainly agree with your second sentence here. But you have neglected the effect of FITs and directives into this equation. The cheapest way to produce electricity as far as I'm aware is not by wind or other so called renewables. In a free market there'd be no windmills. I think that the way the market has been set-up by the requirements of the CCA and the EU has done exactly what you say This removes any incentive to invest in new plant and quickly leads to blackouts."
It's good we can agree on the problem; but do you agree the solution is to repeal the CCA and remove all FITs?
I am afraid that Dr Ridley's comments are pure (politics) as are the repost from Mr Geere. "Discount Analysis" is used to determine the total impact of project to allow decisions to me made with respect to the "best" option. You cannot "take" the benefits up to point "X" and neglect the future "harms" - and I am fairly sure Dr Ridley is fully aware of this! I do not profess to being an Economist and only have limited exposure to this but surely this is simply Economic 101?
The answer using these methods is purely determine by you choice of discount rate and we are so uncertain as to what these are you can pick any number you like and get any answer you like. Scientifically this is a completely meaningless exercise.
The real sad part about this whole debate is the fact that commentators can make such "arguments" and it appears very few people can see them for what they are :-(
I have left the following comment at The New Statesman's site:
Four of Geere's paragraphs in turn begin with "He's right..." so I am glad that Geere confirms that I am right about all my main points. if you read my article you will find that each of Geere's assertions about the eventual harm of climate change are also in my piece. For example, I say: "Even if climate change does produce slightly more welfare for the next 70 years, why take the risk that it will do great harm thereafter?". I do not ignore sea level rise: and anyway it is taken into account in all of the studies collated by Tol.
Geere's main point, that the graph of benefits starts declining at 1C above (today's) is very misleading. What this means is that the benefit during one year is slightly smaller than the benefit during the year before, not that there has been net harm during that year. Geere seems to have misunderstood Tol's graph.
My points about fewer droughts and richer biodiversity are grounded in the peer reviewed literature. Many models and data sets agree that rainfall is likely to increase as temperature rises, while the evidence for global greening as a result of carbon dioxide emissions (and rainfall increases) is now strong. Greater yields means more land sparing as well.
The main point I was trying to make is that very few people know that climate change has benefits at all, let alone net benefits today; even fewer know that it is likely to have net benefits in the future for about 70 years. This fact, which Mr Geere confirms, is worth discussing. Judging by the incredulous reaction to my article in some quarters, this was indeed news to many people.
I note Mr Geere has nothing to say about the harm being done by climate policies to the very poorest people in the world. A peer-reviewed estimate is that 200,000 people are dying every year because of the effect of biofuels on food prices. Western elites may feel comfortable about this, but I do not, and I think a serious debate about whether some current policies (as opposed to others) do more harm than good even in the long run is worth having.
Matt Ridley