Testimony of
The Viscount Monckton of Brenchley
California State Assembly
21 March 2012
IN the 6 decades since 1950 the world has warmed at a rate equivalent to 2 F°/century. The IPCC’s central estimate is that in the 9 decades to 2100 the rate will be 6 F°/century, three times the observed rate.
Two-thirds of the warming predicted by the IPCC’s (non-peer-reviewed) models is supposed to arise from temperature feedbacks. None of these feedbacks can be measured. There is no consensus about how big they are. There are powerful scientific reasons to suspect the IPCC has very greatly overstated them.
The principal conclusions of each of the four IPCC Assessment Reports are questionable:
- 2007: The IPCC twice concludes that the rate of warming is speeding up and we are to blame. But it uses a false statistical technique to reach its conclusion.
- 2001: The IPCC concludes that today’s temperatures are warmer than in 1300 years. How it reached this conclusion is under criminal investigation.
- 1995: The scientists had concluded that no discernible human effect on climate could be found. Just one man rewrote the report to say the opposite.
- 1990: The IPCC predicted rapid warming. A generation has passed and the predicted warming has not happened. This and many other predictions are overblown:
- Global temperature is rising more slowly than IPCC’s least estimate;
- Sea level has been rising for eight years at just 1.3 inches/century;
- Ocean heat content has barely risen in 6 years;
- Hurricanes and tropical cyclones are quieter than for 30 years;
- Global sea-ice extent has changed little in 30 years;
- Methane concentration is up just 20 parts per billion since 2000;
- The tropical hot-spot the IPCC predicts as our footprint is absent;
- Outgoing radiation is escaping to space much as usual.
California’s carbon tax, with other statewide measures to curb CO2 emissions, will cost $450 billion by 2020. Even if 25% of California’s emissions are abated by 2020, just 0.4% of global emissions will have been abated; CO2 concentration by 2020, instead of the business-as-usual 413 parts per million by volume the IPCC predicts, will be 412.9 ppmv; just one-thousandth of a Fahrenheit degree of warming will be abated; the cost of abating the 0.3 F° warming the IPCC predicts to 2020 by measures as cost-(in)effective as California’s policies would be $180 trillion, or $25,500 per head of global population, or a third of global GDP over the period; and the cost of preventing the 6 F° warming the IPCC predicts by 2100 would be $2700 trillion, or more than 10 times the maximum 3%-of-GDP cost of climate-related damage arising from not mitigating this predicted 21st-century warming at all.
Environmental over-regulation, cap-and-tax, “renewable”-energy mandates, and a 40-year ban on most offshore drilling are crippling California. The Monterey Shale holds 15 billion barrels of oil, yet over-regulation has cut production by more than a third to just 200 million barrels a year. Now 11% are jobless in California, second only to Nevada in the US (50% are jobless in construction); the 2012/13 State deficit is $6 billion; unfunded pension liabilities are $250 billion; 50,000 rich Californians (one-third of them) fled in 2007-2009, taking their businesses and jobs with them: twice as many firms fled the once-Golden State in 2011 as in 2010; Intel says it will never build another plant here; Globalstar, Trizetto, and eEye fled in just one month; Boeing, Toyota, Apple, Facebook, and DirecTV have all fled. The waggons are heading East.
The bottom line: No policy to abate global warming by taxing, trading, regulating, reducing, or replacing greenhouse-gas emissions will prove cost-effective solely on grounds of the welfare benefit from climate mitigation. CO2 mitigation strategies that are inexpensive enough to be affordable will be ineffective; strategies costly enough to be effective will be unaffordable. Focused adaptation to any adverse consequences of any warming that may occur is many times more cost-effective. Since the premium greatly exceeds the cost of the risk, don’t insure. Every red cent spent now on trying to stop global warming is a red cent wasted. Don’t mitigate: sit back, enjoy the sunshine, and adapt only if and when and to the extent necessary. That, however unfashionable, is the economically prudent and scientifically sensible course.
================================
Details: http://coalitionofenergyusers.org/monckton-event/
While on the subject of corrections, 0.5% of 400 is 2, so the difference should be e.g. 402 vs 400 or 411 vs 413 — or the computation needs to be further explained because I don’t know what the “0.5%” means. None of this affects the conclusions, but presentations like this need to be very coherent and consistent or else the critics who disagree will pounce on these trees as they seek to denounce the forest.
Otherwise, the economics of Cap and Trade are very straightforward. They are insane, end of story. First, if things are as bad as they are claimed to be they won’t work. Second, if they aren’t that bad they still won’t work but are then probably not necessary. Third, if we do nothing the natural progression of technologies will very likely ameliorate much of the projected CO_2 increase anyway, and do so in a strictly net-profitable way, by replacing increasingly expensive fuel resources with less expensive alternatives, not cheaper fuel alternatives with more expensive (subsidized or not) alternatives.
Finally, Monckton (sorry, I don’t do “titles”:-) if anything underemphasizes the cost of the misdirected monies. It isn’t just $420 billion, it is $420 billion plus all appreciation that the money, otherwise invested, would have realized. This is serious business. Take that much money and invest it, leveraged, in almost anything versus making it disappear with smoke and mirrors into boondoggles with no actual payoff and over decades you are talking trillions of dollars in differential wealth, not just from the world, but from CA alone. In other words, the net economic impact is easily double the actual loss, more reasonably quadruple, and even on a national scale half a trillion dollars isn’t chickenfeed.
If one took just ten lousy percent of the $420 billion, $42 billion, and invested it directly into research and development, new (more efficient) power plants, nuclear energy — all of these things would yield a return and they would ultimately help ameliorate any emergent problem with CO_2, should we get out there to where there is one. In the meantime, we have the other 90% to spend in equally productive ways, or to leave in the hands of the actual earners of all of that money, the people.
rgb
I think the good Viscount missed an easy one. IPCC’s first assessment report temperature history clearly showed the Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). But their third report (AR3) eliminated them to make it look like recent warming is unprecedented. Clearly, there is rewriting of history going on. Lord Turnbull’s report shows this quite clearly if you get a copy with the illustrations (most on-line copies only show the text)
Why is everyone missing the fact that the goal of the warmist – the end state as has been stated by them many times – is to De-civilize and De-populate the planet? All the rest of it is tactics – including the facts. Words ain’t gonna matter. Reality is out the door, folks. Get your battle-rattle on. You’ve got about 8 months. Here’s a clue: http://militarytimes.com/blogs/battle-rattle/2012/03/19/behind-the-cover-anti-obama-marines/ .
I wonder if the numbers are right with regards to California. If 25% is .4% of global emissions, that would make California responsible for 1.6% of global emissions, a little under 10% of the US total. That is believable, but the problem is the 25% is presumably for 2020 emissions below a certain baseline of emissions, so the cumulative cut is not 25%. Also, the .4% is perhaps the share of the current global emissions, but the share of the cumulative would be much less as China and India are growing.
rgb says:
“…sorry, I don’t do ‘titles’…”
Isn’t “Professor” a title? 🙂
Other than that, spot on.
Reblogged this on Iain Hall's SANDPIT and commented:
Love this piece because it demonstrates the basic cost ineffectiveness of so many well meaning measure to save the planet
Cheers Comrades
Forget it, M’lud. It’s California.
MR. Brown:
i don’t believe that plowing a lot of money into conventional generation techniques would be of advantage. the lads have gotten the standard steam plants about as efficient as is practically possible. they are waaaaay up into the upper limits of economics of scale as it is.
one of the sad facts of technology is that progress comes in little dribs and drabs. true advances in the mechanical arts yield in the ranges of 1-3% and tend to be little gadgets (some of them weighing 50-60 tons and take a half dozen flatbed trucks to bring the pieces to the site) that while although small make themselves felt by their numbers. some advances in efficiency simply cannot be added to a functioning plant without MAJOR RECONSTRUCTION.
this brings another set of problems. if you have only one whatchamacallit pump (that adds .5% to the efficiency of the plant ) do you install two of them for redundancy or shut down the plant when that one takes a dump [it makes for so much fun watching the maintainence crews running around with their hair on fire trying to get back on line again]. keep in mind that that plant produces 92.9 gigundawatts of power and when it goes down everything west of the mississississippi, south of the artic circle and north of the panama canal will grind to a screeching halt (do we hear the words bottleneck bandy’d about).
this brings us to the point of my rant. the nitwits that speak glibly to the politicians in the committee meetings [those politicians belonging to the technical group that cannot screw a right handed nut on a left handed bolt] that their earthshaking process will yield a 200% advance in the art through harnassing the energy of sunlight or (some other version of unicorn horns ground into pixie dust) that is just laying about waiting for a smart lad to use them and they have that lad under contract and just waiting, but he needs a trillion dollars worth of loan gaurantees……….. they don’t seem to realize that the lads whose shoulders we stand on might have tried that a couple of decades ago and found that it just doesn’t scale up.
the latest of the big examples was that Italian fellow who was trying to pass off a medium sized air handler out of a central air conditioning plant as the latest great leap in power resource and supply.
what i would really like to hear is some really informed discussion about the thorium reactors. and not from the shills who are anti because it will dump all of the rice bowls in the middle east or the other ones who are pro, looking for a big project to skim.
C
Robert Brown says:
March 21, 2012 at 1:19 pm
Finally, Monckton (sorry, I don’t do “titles”:-) if anything underemphasizes the cost of the misdirected monies. It isn’t just $420 billion, it is $420 billion plus all appreciation that the money, otherwise invested, would have realized. This is serious business. Take that much money and invest it, leveraged, in almost anything versus making it disappear with smoke and mirrors into boondoggles with no actual payoff and over decades you are talking trillions of dollars in differential wealth
————————————–
‘scuse me Robert, but do you think being able to make all that “leveraged” money out of a little bit of money is a good thing? I think that is insanity at its most explicit, on a global scale.
As regards titles, chill out man.
Lord Monckton is speaking in San Diego this Saturday if anyone is interested:
http://lordmonckton.eventbrite.com/
One might logically suppose that when California starts to tank, the electorate will throw Jerry “Fruitfly” Brown and his minions out on their keysters. But no. In the Left Coast mind, the solution to failed Socialism is always more Socialism.
Re jorgekafkazar’s comment on Socialism….remember Churchill’s comment (and probably others’): “Socialism works well until you run out of everyone else’s money.”
@Dan in California
IPCC’s first assessment report temperature history clearly showed the
Medieval Warm Period (MWP) and the Little Ice Age (LIA). But their third
report (AR3) eliminated them to make it look like recent warming is
unprecedented. Clearly, there is rewriting of history going on. Lord
Turnbull’s report shows this quite clearly if you get a copy with the
illustrations (most on-line copies only show the text)
**************
See http://thegwpf.org/images/stories/gwpf-reports/lord-turnbull.pdf
[page 5]
IanM
“”””” Robert Brown says:
March 21, 2012 at 1:19 pm
……………………….
Finally, Monckton (sorry, I don’t do “titles”:-)
So I take it that your students simply call you Bob ??
I guess it’s ok to address the occupant of the oval office, as simply “Obama”.
Good points Mr. Monckton. Your economic alarmism based on what you see as certainty for the future sure does show us how pessimistic some can be.
Frank K. says:
March 21, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Excellent!
Here’s what Europe is doing to hasten its economic collapse in the name of Global Warming:
China blocks Airbus orders over EU emissions scheme
China is blocking orders for at least US$12 billion ($14.5 billion) worth of Airbus jets to protest against the European Union’s emissions trading fees, in a new challenge to the programme aimed at fighting global warming, the planemaker said yesterday.
.
.
.
EU officials defended the emissions system. Asked about the Airbus complaint, EU spokesman Isaac Valero Ladron said: “I’m not in a position to make any comments about possible trade decisions. I think it’s in everybody’s interest to reduce greenhouse gases, which affects climate change, and airplanes affect that, as well.”
China is not alone – India is doing so too
“If the European Commission retaliated by suspending Indian airlines from flying to Europe, India would make similar moves and consider charging an “unreasonable” amount for flying over India, the official said on Monday.
“We have lots of measures to take if the EU does not go back on its demands. We have the power of the economy; we are not bleeding as they are,” the government official said, adding that Europe’s position would harm its own economy and airlines.
see:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/20/us-india-eu-emission-idUSBRE82J0D320120320
The end game of California’s misspent wealth is there will be no money left for the inevitable adaption that will be required should any of the alarmist nightmares come true. Not a penny of the trillions that will flow into this program will prevent what they say is inevitable – they haven’t the capacity to slow it let alone stop it. Why to into that dark time with empty pockets, then?
@ur momisugly Ian W says:
March 21, 2012 at 5:50 pm
Frank K. says:
March 21, 2012 at 12:58 pm
Excellent!
Here’s what Europe is doing to hasten its economic collapse in the name of Global Warming:
China blocks Airbus orders over EU emissions scheme
China is blocking orders for at least US$12 billion ($14.5……………………………………
**********************************************************************************
The entire AGW business may become totally irrelevant soon:
” U.S Intelligence agencies monitoring China’s Internet say that from March 14 to Wednesday bloggers circulated alarming reports of tanks entering Beijing and shots being fired in the city as part of what is said to have been a high-level political battle among party leaders – and even a possible military coup.
The Internet discussions included photos posted online of tanks and other military vehicles moving around Beijing.
The reports followed the ouster last week of senior Politburo member and Chongqing Party Secretary Bo Xilai, who was linked to corruption, but who is said to remain close to China’s increasingly nationalistic military.
Chinese microblogging sites Sina Weibo, QQ Weibo, and the bulletin board of the search engine Baidu all reported “abnormalities” in Beijing on the night of March 19.
The comments included rumors of the downfall of the Shanghai leadership faction and a possible “military coup,” along with reports of gunfire on Beijing’s Changan Street. The reports were quickly removed by Chinese censors shortly after postings and could no longer be accessed by Wednesday.
http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/mar/21/inside-the-ring-436080940/ “
Robert Brown says:
March 21, 2012 at 1:19 pm
…..It isn’t just $420 billion, it is $420 billion plus all appreciation that the money, otherwise invested…
If one took just ten lousy percent of the $420 billion, $42 billion, and invested it directly into research and development, new (more efficient) power plants, nuclear energy — all of these things would yield a return and they would ultimately help ameliorate any emergent problem with CO_2, should we get out there to where there is one. In the meantime, we have the other 90% to spend in equally productive ways, or to leave in the hands of the actual earners of all of that money, the people.
_________________________________
It is incredible to me that more people have not woken up to how massive this scam is. Eons ago using the US Census, I calculated over 25% of the people in America owed their jobs/income directly or indirectly to the government. I can not see how that can be “sustainable” in a country with less than 9% of the work force in manufacturing jobs that is creating real wealth.
@ur momisugly Gail Combs says:
March 21, 2012 at 7:03 pm
I can not see how that can be “sustainable” in a country with less than 9% of the work force in manufacturing jobs that is creating real wealth.
=====================================================
It’s not sustainable. We entered Never-Never land 3 1/2 years ago.
Bob Brown says: While on the subject of corrections, 0.5% of 400 is 2, so the difference should be e.g. 402 vs 400 or 411 vs 413 — or the computation needs to be further explained because I don’t know what the “0.5%” means.
I’ve listened to a few presentations and read many Lord Monckton essays and I’m pretty sure his math is accurate. My understanding is that the CO2 conc is increasing about 3ppm / year (probably based on that measurement on an active volcano in the Hawaiian Islands.) That means there will be a 24ppm increase over 8 years (2012-2020). Mitigation at 0.4% is 0.096ppm or so.
Frank K. says:
March 21, 2012 at 12:58 pm
” U.S Intelligence agencies monitoring China’s Internet say that from March 14 to Wednesday bloggers circulated alarming reports of tanks entering Beijing and shots being fired….
________________________________
Curiousgeorge says:
March 21, 2012 at 1:24 pm
…..Here’s a clue: http://militarytimes.com/blogs/battle-rattle/2012/03/19/behind-the-cover-anti-obama-marines/ . {muttering among US Marines)
_______________________________
What these bureaucrats jetting around to their various champagne conferences seem to forget, is that there are people involved LOTS of people and more and more of these people have taken their blind folds off.
Whether the “Window of Opportunity” to install a world government has passed or not we have yet to find out. However with the EU disintegrating and the reality of economic hard times making itself felt in several countries, I think the rose colored glasses are off. More importantly people have been shaken out of their comfort zone and are now willing to look around and try to figure out what happen.
Up till a couple of years ago ears were closed. I have found more and more people are not only interested but have a heck of a lot of knowledge.
IPCC folks spinning off new committe to study ‘How Many Angels Can Dance On The Head Of A Pin’. According to Dr. Mann’s newest paper, women and minorities most affected.
In fifty years or so this will take the prize from Piltdown Man, Teapot Dome, and all the other really great scams. This will become the one to beat.
Jakehig says:
March 21, 2012 at 3:30 pm
Re jorgekafkazar’s comment on Socialism….remember Churchill’s comment (and probably others’): “Socialism works well until you run out of everyone else’s money.”
It’s equally true for banking.
“The heavy cost of a non-problem”
Although a compatriot of mine, I think Lord Moncton is a very dangerous man.
In ten years time when the IPCC’s heavily overblown estimate of the effects of climate change due to CO2 have finally been thoroughly debunked, these same people will be complaining that we cannot afford even a one degree centigrade rise in temperature per doubling of CO2, as per Lord Moncton’s estimate, on top of natural temperature cycles. Lord Moncton accepts far too many statements as facts and fails to highlight the gross errors, malfeasance and corruption in the industry and as a minimum, fails to capitalise on these points, presumably in his efforts to demonstrate what a terribly intelligent, reasonable and pleasant English gentleman he is.
The only definitive statement that can be made remains that CO2 has absorption bands in the infra red spectrum and it is a long way to translating this to three degrees or even one degree celsius of warming per doubling.