For those that can get behind the Times paywall, Matt Ridley has a good review of the state of play on the climate debate in the aftermath of the IPCC reports.
These IPCC and OECD reports are telling us clear as a bell that we cannot ruin the climate with carbon dioxide unless we get a lot more numerous and richer. And they are also telling us that if we get an awful lot richer, we are likely to have invented the technologies to adapt, and to reduce our emissions, so we are then less likely to ruin the planet. Go figure.
Meanwhile, Bjorn Lomborg has his own take on things at Project Syndicate, looking at the IPCC's cost estimates, the attempts to adjust them to help the green movement and the embarrassing chasm between current and earlier estimates like those of Lord Stern:
The Stern Review was produced by bureaucrats and never subjected to peer review. Economists knew that the damage costs had been extensively massaged, and that the estimates were outliers compared to the academic literature. The unfathomably low projections for policy costs were artifacts of ignoring most liabilities, again contradicting the academic literature.
The media, eager for breathless headlines, share the blame with politicians for this state of affairs. Following the release of the Stern Review, one British newspaper reportedly wrote: “Act now or the world we know will be lost forever.” Being accurate is less sexy, but much more informative.
No doubt outraged greens and lefties will be vocal in a few minutes' time.