Video of a recent (December 7) discussion between Dr. Bjorn Lomborg, author and President of Copenhagen Consensus Center, a US-based think tank. and Dr. Jordan Peterson specifically on climate change and the economic arguments, for and against taking measures to address it. Hour and a half.
HT/AlanB
And where do all those billion of dollars come from? Most countries are broke. Just look at the US debt. It is not climate that has a problem but the world economy. An economist like Lomborg should know that.
Global debt hits all-time high of $184,000,000,000,000
The world’s debt currently exceeds $86,000 per person on average, according to the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The US, China, and Japan are the top three global borrowers, accounting for more than half of the global debt.
Lomborg mentions “subsidies” for petroleum based fuels. The reality is that these subsidies are tax laws that allow producers and refiners of these fuels to deduct well-defined expenses that are in some sense intangible and subject to price and technological progress. He is engaging in a rather high level deception with his choice of words. If there were no taxes at all, and if competition was assured, we would see a drop in the price of petroleum based fuels. As we add taxes, the price to consumers increases, which reduces demand. This puts a limit on the exploitation of petroleum resources, since it costs real money to produce a barrel of oil, or a thousand cubic feet of natural gases. In simple terms, the market will rank all production by order of cost, and once the demand is met using the cheapest resources, the rest will be shut in. So reducing taxes has the effect of increasing supply, but that is not the same as a subsidy. He is also ignoring the elephant in the room, which is that most poverty in the world is a feature of a country’s political machinery. It is not an aberration. Providing bread for starving people may not be the as compassionate as one might hope in such countries. The starvation is intentional, and by undercutting the existing supply of bread, meaning indigenous farmers and bakers, you drive them out of work, and into the bread lines. Also, Lomborg’s child-like faith that providing more money for education will be beneficial doesn’t take into account the corruption of our own educational system. We keep providing more and more money for public education, and we get less and less as our political masters divert that money into more and more indoctrination and less and less education. Lomborg is also naïve with regards to medical interventions and nutrition. He keeps saying all people can benefit from modern interventions. But as well learn more, we find that there are genetic factors that determine the effectiveness of these interventions. The cost of figuring out the right intervention for any given individual is high, and presuming that there are simple programs that are good for “all” is nonsense. Lomborg is also overly confident about all his projects.
Jordan Peterson understands Pat Franks discussion of the propagation of error. He is a realist. Note that Lomborg says “we know the causal mechanism is CO2”. Wrong! We assume that CO2 is the causal mechanism at the exclusion of all others. He is a political scientist, and he is taking as a given what other scientists are telling him. What a crock!
Jordan Peterson’s interview with Borg Lomborg is well worth the time. Over the course of their conversation it becomes clear that Lomborg is not claiming expertise in climate issues. He is a PhD political scientist, and his purpose is to provide an objective way of prioritizing investment in issues of global significance. The issues include AGW/ACC, tuberculosis, malaria, early childhood nutrition, and so on. Lomborg rejects the catastrophic version of Climate Change, as this is not amenable to analysis. Peterson points out that any of the globally significant problems could be posed in such a fashion, so this is not a bias. It is reality. Lomborg mentioned that his colleagues had addressed exactly that problem, and used the threat of an asteroid impact to demonstrate that even events that are known to be catastrophic do not command the investment of huge amounts of resources. Lomborg stated that our current distant warning system is 90% effective, not 99.9% for example.
My concern in my earlier comment was that global solutions are bound to be unrealistic. Genocide is the intended purpose of several governments within the U. N., and advocating early childhood nutrition programs for their intended victims would be very much misplaced. But Lomborg is localizing his project so that priorities can be established within developing countries. This would allow the analysts to take into account local religious and political institutions and beliefs. And within those constraints, much could be done. And governments advocating genocide need not be the beneficiaries of this prioritization. This is aligned with Peterson’s advice to clean your bedroom before you attempt to save the world.
Lomborg’s problems with the CAGW cliché arises from the bottom level ranking assigned to current “Climate Change” measures. This is logical even given the assumption that CO2 is responsible for all climate change. Lomborg explains this reality quite clearly if you want to understand the reason for this conclusion.
The only way you can help the poor is by providing cheap energy. Build new generation coal / gas power plants all over the world. Without cheap energy attacking tuberculosis, malaria, early childhood nutrition etc is useless.
How fast do you think the West would change in a third world banana republic if cheap energy would no longer be available?
About 2 months if cheap energy was not available over a large enough area.
In summer or in winter ?
Whoops!
clichéclique