Global warming whining
By S. Fred Singer
Copyright 1999 Washington Times
April 16, 1999
After a cold winter, it's easy to convince people that warming
would be a good
thing. What is new and surprising is that a warmer climate would,
overall, be
good for Americans, improve the economy, and put more money in the
pockets of
the average family. Good news for taxpayers the day
after the filing deadline.
And how do we know this? Well, a team of 26 respected
economists, led by Yale
Professor Robert Mendelsohn, has taken a closer look at the
evidence. They
have re-evaluated the United Nations report that has been used to
justify the
drastic policies of energy rationing and taxes,
demanded by the 1997 Kyoto Protocol (to the 1992 Global Climate
Treaty). Where
the U.N. report found only economic losses from warming, the new
study, just
published by the prestigious Cambridge University Press, finds
mostly gains.
(Ironically, the CUP also published the 1996 U.N. report.)
What a refreshing thought -after listening to the
"Chicken-Littles" in academia and the media telling us
about the horrors of greenhouse warming.
According to our vice president, it is the
"greatest challenge facing the United States in the coming
century." (Having invented the Internet and mastered spelling,
he has also anointed
himself as a
leading expert on climate catastrophes.) Not nuclear war, not
terrorist attacks
with biological and chemical weapons, but an extra degree of
temperature in the
next 100 years - or perhaps 2 degrees (if you believe the
theoretical
calculations). Really? Who can take this perverted sense of
priorities
seriously?
Returning to the new economic study, what accounts for this
remarkable
turnaround? Mostly commonsense, but also a much better methodology
for
calculating the effects of climate change for different economic
sectors:
agriculture, forestry, water resources, energy, coastal structures,
commercial
fishing and recreation.
The
common sense comes in considering that farmers are not dumb; they
will adapt to
changes - as they always do. They will plant the right crops,
select the best
seeds, and choose the appropriate varieties to take advantage of
longer growing
seasons, warmer nights, and of course the higher levels of carbon
dioxide that
make
plants and trees grow faster.
One should not be too hard on the U.N. report. It didn't
try to break any new
ground. It merely collected five readily available studies, mostly
from
"climate worriers" (the upper-middle-class overanxious)
who wanted to show how
bad warming really is. The U.N. report reprinted their
conclusions, without
much analysis. Had the editors looked more closely, they would
have noticed
something quite interesting: While all five studies showed losses
of around 1
percent of GNP (actually from 0.3 to 1.2 percent), the individual
sector losses
showed
much larger disparities between the studies up to a factor of 50
for timber
losses! Not exactly confidence-inspiring.
So now we are pretty sure that global warming will be
beneficial rather than a
threat something already anticipated by Hoover Institution
economist Thomas
Gale Moore in his new book
"Climate of Fear: Why We Shouldn't Worry About Global
Warming." What will this new knowledge do for the public, for
economists, and for
politicians?
Well, the public is not likely to hear much about this
blockbuster. There has
been no publicity, not even from the publishers. The dust
jacket of the book doesn't hint at the startling conclusion. Are
there
conspirators out there trying to hide it? The book is mentioned in
the journal
Science but without much enthusiasm. There hasn't been a word
about it from
the White House; but we wouldn't expect it. If only they would
attack it; that
would
create some publicity and get the media to read and report on it.
That leaves the ball in the court of the politicians. Will
the 95 senators who
voted against a Kyotolike policy please take note and use this
result?
Perhaps the battle cry of the coming presidential campaign
should be
"Stop
Global Whining."
S.
Fred Singer is professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the
University of Virginia
and is president of the Science
& Environmental Policy Project in Fairfax, Va.
Comments on this posting?
Click here to
post a public comment on the Trash Talk
Bulletin Board.
Click here to send a private
comment to the Junkman.