By Robert Bradley Jr.
“No insurance policy is worthwhile if the cost of the premiums exceeds the protection purchased. For greenhouse insurance to be worthwhile, it must either reduce the risks of anthropogenic climate change or reduce the costs of emission reductions designed to achieve the same goal, without imposing off-setting risks, such as those which would result from policies that slow economic growth and technological advance.”“A true ‘no regrets’ approach to climate change is not greater government controls on economic activity, but fewer. Economic growth, market institutions, and technological advance are often the most effective forms of insurance that a civilization can have.”
– Jonathan Adler (et al.), “Greenhouse Policy without Regrets: A Free Market Approach to the Uncertain Risk of Climate Change,” Competitive Enterprise Institute, July 14, 2000.
Bingo! The Jonathan Adler of the Competitive Enterprise Institute circa 2000 made a case against governmental climate policy activism that is timeless and more true today than 23 years ago. But Professor Adler (hint, hint: academia requires climate alarmist conformity for prestige and advancement) has forgotten his argument and spins new theories that do not pass muster on close inspection.
New Adler
Jonathan H. Adler is the Johan Verheij Memorial Professor of Law and the founding Director of the Coleman P. Burke Center for Environmental Law at the School of Law, Case Western Reserve University. He is also the editor, most recently, of Climate Liberalism: Perspectives on Liberty, Property and Pollution (Palgrave), which assumes carbon dioxide (CO2) is a pollutant, necessitating some combination of judicial activism and government intervention in energy and land/agriculture (really, everywhere).
My rebuttal to this book, “Classical Liberalism vs. ‘Climate Liberalism’” was published by Liberty Fund in their “Liberty and Society” website. (I review some of my counter-arguments in tomorrow’s post.) Adler briefly noted my piece in Reason magazine, offered some quick criticisms, and indicated a more thorough rebuttal as his time allowed, the subject of Wednesday’s post.
Old Adler
Adler is also author of a piece refuting the case for government climate activism. Written 23 years ago, its argument rebuts Adler’s argument for a carbon tax and climate tort law.
The executive summary of Adler’s piece is reprinted below. His full research paper, prepared in conjunction with Wayne Crews, Paul Georgia, Ben Lieberman, Jessica Melugin, and Mara-Lee Seivert, is here.
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Due to uncertainty about climate change, and human contributions thereto, many policymakers call for “precautionary” measures to reduce the risk of global warming. Such policies are characterized as “insurance.” Such insurance against the risks of climate change can be achieved by either lessening the likelihood of change by reducing atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases through a combination of emission controls and carbon sequestration strategies, or by enacting mitigation measures to reduce the possible economic and ecological impact of a potential climate change.
No insurance policy is worthwhile if the cost of the premiums exceeds the protection purchased. For greenhouse insurance to be worthwhile, it must either reduce the risks of anthropogenic climate change or reduce the costs of emission reductions designed to achieve the same goal, without imposing off-setting risks, such as those which would result from policies that slow economic growth and technological advance.
Currently proposed precautionary measures, such as the Kyoto Protocol, call for government interventions to control greenhouse-gas emissions and suppress the use of carbon-based fuels. Such policies would impose substantial costs and yet do little, if anything, to reduce the risks of climate change. Such policies cannot be characterized as cost-effective greenhouse “insurance.”
Rather than adopt costly regulatory measures that serve to suppress energy use and economic growth, policy makers should seek to eliminate government interventions in the marketplace that obstruct emission reductions and discourage the adoption of lower emission technologies. Such an approach is a “no regrets” strategy, as these policy recommendations will provide economic and environmental benefits by fostering innovation and economic efficiency whether or not climate change is a serious threat. While fear of global warming may prompt the enactment of these reforms, they merit implementation even if we have nothing to fear from climate change.
A “no regrets” approach to climate change would incorporate the following policy measures, among others:
1) Remove Regulatory Barriers to Innovation: Existing regulatory programs, and many environmental regulations in particular, create obstacles to the development and deployment of emission-reducing and energy-saving technologies. Such regulations retard market-driven enhancements in efficiency and environmental performance that reduce energy use and emissions per unit of output.
2) Eliminate Energy Subsidies: Government energy subsidies distort energy markets and energy-related investment decisions without producing off-setting returns. The elimination of energy subsidies, in the United States and abroad, would result in a more efficient energy sector.
3) Deregulate Electricity Markets: Local electricity monopolies and government utility regulation are significant barriers to innovation in the energy sector. Electricity deregulation and consumer choice will create market opportunities for alternative energy sources and create further pressure for greater efficiency and innovation in the energy sector.
4) Deregulate Transportation Markets: Airline travel is a rapidly increasing source of greenhouse gas emissions, yet air travel regulations prevent airlines from flying the most cost-effective and energy-efficient routes. Allowing “free flight” could reduce per-flight energy use by as much as 17 percent. Lowering regulatory barriers to improvements in other transportation sectors, such as road construction and management, could also produce substantial emission reductions.
The aforementioned policies may not significantly reduce total greenhouse-gas emissions, but they will reduce emissions per unit of output and spur greater technological innovation. Were it ever demonstrated that emission controls were merited, the adoption of “no regrets” strategies today would make it easier to meet those goals without compromising existing standards of living.
The broader choice in climate change policy is between measures which constrain economic choices and thereby hamper economic growth and innovation, and those measures which free up society’s creative energies to spur innovation and enhance resiliency. The human impact on the global climate system will always be indeterminate to some degree. Unforeseen events, natural and human-induced, will occur.
For these reasons, the best insurance policy is one that improves society’s generalized ability to cope with disasters, environmental and otherwise. Freeing up key sectors of the economy, particularly those most reliant on energy, provides two forms of insurance: It spurs innovation in the energy sector, increasing energy efficiency and technological innovation, while also enhancing society’s overall resiliency.
A true “no regrets” approach to climate change is not greater government controls on economic activity, but fewer. Economic growth, market institutions, and technological advance are often the most effective forms of insurance that a civilization can have.
Policy efforts aimed at freeing up the energy sector, and those segments of the economy that are most energy intensive, will produce both economic and environmental gains. The economic gains will come from greater productivity and efficiency; the environmental gains from increased production per unit of energy expended or emissions released.
Such an approach will reduce whatever threat of human-induced climate change might exist while spurring technological innovation and economic development. This strategy is the only approach to climate change that can be pursued with “no regrets.”
Final Thoughts
The arguments of this article are more important today than when they were written 23 years ago. Climate activism has failed to reverse the fossil-fuel-driven world economy (82 percent market share today versus 86 percent in 2000), making future reversals less politically practical and less effective (the saturation effect of GHG forcing).
The question is: how much longer can the crusade continue with its magical thinking of limiting CO2 emissions effectively? How many industrial wind turbines and solar arrays and batteries/EVs? And how longer can the facade of new nuclear capacity, carbon capture & storage, and carbon offsets mask the reality of consumer preferences?
“The question is: how much longer can the crusade continue with its magical thinking”?
Indeed; how long is a piece of string?
Maybe the question should be: When will they tell the truth?
I suspect the answer to that is never.
The assumption is ‘they’ want to replace what we have with something else. The reality is ‘they’ want to replace what we have with nothing.
Vandals smash things up, street furniture, somebody’s car, shop front, windows – they destroy just for the joy of it, not to replace with something better.
What needs to happen is more people to understand that Net Zero/Green Deal, environmentalism in general is vandalism, and the vandals are criminals and need locking up… or something.
The Grand Solar Minimum has started and may cool temperatures enough to make them rational again.
If, big IF, any cooling occurs, there will be no rational response to it, only more vociferous preaching against sin and the need for greater sacrifices.
Of course it’s never, they have gone on far too long to tell the truth now. They went full bore some time ago, putting their careers and professional reputations (hah!) up as collateral for what they were pushing, they can’t turn back without losing every scrap of their livelihoods, any chance at promotion or advancement. It’s all or nothing now, these are cornered rats fighting for survival and the only way for them is to keep doubling down on the narrative until one side or the other gives way. It’s sad to see but that’s what happens when supposedly rational, reasoning beings go completely emotional and irrational.
Story Tip
The Norwegian Statistics Central Bureau has published a report titled
“To what extent are temperature levels changing due to greenhouse gas emissions?”
Link: https://www.ssb.no/en/natur-og-miljo/forurensning-og-klima/artikler/to-what-extent-are-temperature-levels-changing-due-to-greenhouse-gas-emissions
They have reviewed data on temperature variations in the past as well possible reasons for these
variations.
Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests, they found, as in Dagsvik et al.
(2020), that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause
systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.
Further on, they write.
“In the global climate models (GCMs) most of the warming that has taken place since 1950
is attributed to human activity. Historically, however, there have been large climatic variations.
Temperature reconstructions indicate that there is a ‘warming’ trend that seems to have been going
on for as long as approximately 400 years. Prior to the last 250 years or so, such a trend could only
be due to natural causes.”
“Using theoretical arguments and statistical tests, they found, as in Dagsvik et al. (2020), that the effect of man-made CO2 emissions does not appear to be strong enough to cause systematic changes in the temperature fluctuations during the last 200 years.”
Yes, the Tmax chart for Norway shows it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today:
Do you have any newer graph? 2012 was a decade ago.
No, sorry, I don’t.
Those charts were created by Bob Tisdale and have not been updated since.
I don’t have the chart skills to update them myself.
If you or anyone does have the charting skills, you can create your own charts like this using Bob Tisdale’s instructions at the link below.
I would love for someone to creat a Tmax chart for every nation available in the database. The ones Bob Tisdale created all show a similar temperature profile, where it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century as it is today. I suspect all the Tmax charts show similar temperature profiles, and would love to see evidence one way or another.
Be sure to do the charts the way Bob says using the raw Berkeley Earth data sets. Bob says not to bastardize the Tmax charts.
https://wattsupwiththat.com/2018/12/13/examples-of-how-the-use-of-temperature-anomaly-data-instead-of-temperature-data-can-result-in-wrong-answers/
So if all the Tmax charts show it was just as warm in the Early Twentieth Century, then that means the global Hockey Stick temperature chart is bogus and does not represent reality, and it also means that CO2 is at best, a minor player in the Earth atmosphere since there is more CO2 in the air today than there was in the Early Twentieth Century yet it is no warmer today than it was back then.
A rather easy proof for someone with charting skills. Just duplicate Bob Tisdale’s work and apply it to every region/nation with data available.
The Earth is still in a 2.56 million-year ice age, in a warmer but still cold interglacial period with about 4.6 million people dying every year from heart attacks and strokes caused by the cold weather compared to about 500,000 dying from heat-related causes.
‘Global, regional and national burden of mortality associated with nonoptimal ambient temperatures from 2000 to 2019: a three-stage modelling study’
https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanplh/article/PIIS2542-5196(21)00081-4/fulltext
The Green House Gas Effect is the most complete, perfect and utter travesty of mathematical & scientific thinking there could ever be.
The observed temperature rises are caused by Katabatic Heating of the land masses/continents
The net effect of that is Global Cooling, because:
Because the warm moist air now has somewhere it can descend easily (the continents), this accelerates the heat transport from the ocean surface to the Tropopause.
NO MATTER how vehemently climate scientists screech & scream, no matter how clearly you personally imagine the GHGE to work, the 2nd Law says that None Of That Heat (NONE, not a single Joule) can return to the surface, either land or ocean.
Thus there are 2 self- reinforcing mechanisms moving heat off the surface of this Earth
This Thing Could Not Be Any Worse for all of life on Earth if it tried – not least as there is ‘more water than land‘ so the ocean will keep pumping heat up into the sky – there is NOTHING can stop it doing that.
Apart from, getting the continents to create their own rising air currents.
In theory, insanely simple – flood them with water
it doesn’t take much. A one metre depth of high organic soil contains the equivalent of 6 inches of rain before you even realise it is wet.
High organic soils sometimes were 10 metres deep on this planet.
Not any more, they’ve all been drained, ploughed, tilled, poisoned and burned – in the pursuit of Sugar for us ourselves to eat.
Peta, maybe where you live all the land has been drained, tilled etc….but in the rest of the world….
Of the total land area of or planet of 149 million sq. Km. only 11 million is cropland while 28 million is considered pasture/herd lands.
Another 12 million is bush, 39 million is forest and jungle, about 1.5 million is within city limits, but some cities are less than half urban development.
Animal husbandry is the best way to economically utilize those 28 million Sq. Km. And the other half of the land area of the planet is rocks, desert, and ice.
Story Tip
Logged on and found this alarmist piece circulating around the area====>
Melting masses: Study demotes 52 glaciers to snowfieldshttps://missoulian.com/outdoors/montana-glaciers-snowmelt-climate-change-untamed/article_05d45dd1-5c61-5080-8a69-a3b46527ebe8.html
A quick google found this=====>
https://www.pdx.edu/news/glaciers-becoming-smaller-and-disappearing-psu-inventory-finds
Note that Glacier Park didn’t have any on their list, the only MT ones that I’m familiar with
are not much of a glacier, can’t speak to the ones on the west coast.
Love to hear from someone more qualified on the subject and the source authors..
So my question is: Did their research stop before last winter’s massive snowfall in Cali?
Did they pick the perfect time to publish this “study”?
What will a follow up study show in 5 years, 10 years?
If the follow up study returns multiple “ice fields” to “glaciers”, will it ever see the light of day?
The climate has gotten about a degree warmer since the Little Ice Age, so one would expect some modern glaciers to retreat. During the little ice age there are very good records of glaciers advancing as it got colder, including towns in the Alps having to move.
Statistically, it appears that burning witches at the stake resolves the problem within a century. This is much quicker than banning ICE’s will swing the climate back again. Do I need a /s?
Is the historic fact that the general melting of mountain glaciers was most rapid in the latter half of the 19th century and next most rapid in the first half of the 20th century in dispute?
There was a high altitude archology study/conference writeup back in 2017==>
https://billingsgazette.com/lifestyles/recreation/archaeologists-uncovering-ancient-peoples-widespread-use-of-mountains/article_b589afe6-194b-58d7-a1b1-7442b8c10220.html
Among their findings were “The scientists are also finding that the high country wasn’t the same as we now see it. Old whitebark pine stumps have been dated to 1,100 to 2,100 years ago in places that are now 500 feet above where trees are growing now, Guenther said.”
I think that time was when the Vikings settled in Greenland, natural variation seems to have
a wide range in temperature. This glacier study seems to ignore these other findings..
I think we are reaching a ,dare I say a consensus here . Once again society will have to learn the hard way through massive failures in the economic and social structure of our society.This is what happens when large numbers of people emphatically believe in things that are simply not true ; combined with normal climate variability. This is the dark ages.
We need a new renaissance age.
What happened in the ’29 stock market crash? Almost a century ago, will we revisit something similar? The herd mentality overrides rational and objective analysis. Everyone saying it is good ends up in consensus and sooner or later, reality bites you in the butt!
In the US, and most western countries, such a crash and depression are almost impossible without a war.
Social programs supported by printed money will keep the economy going unless the government does MASSIVE things to stop growth. An example of what to do wrong is EVERYTHING the Obama administration did to lengthen the “great recession”. Without that government intervention, the recession would have been over years earlier.
Under Brandon, the Dems have been successful in stretching out slow growth of the economy since the “pandemic” until this coming spring/summer, where they will try to boost growth in time for the next election.
Federal Reserve System manipulations were the major causative factor of the 1920s depression. Enough historians recognized that, finally the Fed chairman confessed it a decade or so ago, with the excuse that it was just inexperience and application of poor theory, not deliberate malice.
What about the Dutch tulip crash 🙂
Societies learning is, at best, a rare event.
Story tip
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/11/14/net-zero-is-driving-inflation-says-bank-of-england-rate-setter/
When the fools are running your nations finances, like fools, you can expect utter poverty
Story tip
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/11/14/snp-quietly-downgrades-claim-that-scotland-has-25-of-europes-offshore-wind-potential-to-just-7/
The SNP are full of hot air, not so much wind
Story tip
https://dailysceptic.org/2023/11/14/gulf-stream-collapse-scare-debunked-by-royal-society/
There is an ice age coming, it’s just not man made
A couple things come to mind.
Number one only work to solve problems that really exist. Just because chicken little preaches that the sky is falling doesn’t mean it is falling. There is no need to build pillars to hold it up.
Number two any action you take to address a problem must be shown to be eliminating the problem. We have wasted trillions of dollars to reduce CO2 emissions yet they continue to rise. What ever we are doing it isn’t working. If something doesn’t work stop doing it. Continuing on is stupid and really really expensive.
Number three only take measures that improve humanity, that make our life easier, healthier, enjoyable and affordable. If your actions go backwards on any of these things stop doing what you’re doing, it isn’t working.
At some point, the level of CO2 in the atmosphere will have to decrease or all politicians who preach this as the proper solution to their imagined climate emergency will lose all credibility. Sometimes the proper solution to a problem is to do nothing. See the results of covid policy, peace in the middle east, ozone holes, killer bees, acid rain, etc. as examples.