To reiterate in relation to Chris’ “critical argument to make,” even the Kyoto Protocol, fully and successfully implemented by all its parties (which it shows no sign of being), would avert but 0.07 degrees C of warming by 2050.

According to this article in the UK’s Scotsman, half of children between the ages of 7 and 11 are so anxious about global warming, that they’re losing sleep over it. A quarter of them blame politicians for the problem, and 1 in 7 believes their parents aren’t doing enough to save the earth. One hopes that the climate inquisition never gets to that point where the kids rat out parents for incorrect beliefs.

Science Daily observes that children who don’t get enough sleep are more prone to obesity.

And this article points out that kids who sleep better learn better.

One has to wonder just how much damage to civilization that Gore and company will do to impose their climate-control regime on the world.

I wish I were making this up, but it’s true . These carbon trading schemes get funnier and funnier.

This release just went out from the Romney press shop (the most active press shop of the pre-2008 campaign season):

GOVERNOR MITT ROMNEY ON
THE CURRENT ENVIRONMENTAL DEBATE

Boston, MA – Today, Governor Mitt Romney issued the following statement on the current environmental debate: 

“Governor Mark Sanford is right.  Unfortunately, some in the Republican Party are embracing the radical environmental ideas of the liberal left.  As governor, I found that thoughtful environmentalism need not be anti-growth and anti-jobs.  But Kyoto-style sweeping mandates, imposed unilaterally in the United States, would kill jobs, depress growth and shift manufacturing to the dirtiest developing nations.  

“Republicans should never abandon pro-growth conservative principles in an effort to embrace the ideas of Al Gore.  Instead of sweeping mandates, we must use America’s power of innovation to develop alternative sources of energy and new technologies that use energy more efficiently.” 

The headline here was just too irresistable, even though it doesn’t quite fit the topic.  South Carolina’s reliably conservative Governor Mark Sanford writes today in the Washington Post about the need for conservatives to engage climate change in a manner consistent with limited government principles He makes a number of points I have made at greater length in my thematic speech “Is ‘Conservative Environmentalist’ an Oxymoron?” . 

So far so good–especially the line in the sand against making climate change an excuse for bigger government.  There is one part of the article that rankles, though.  Early on Sanford laments the effect of steadily rising dea levels on coastal pine trees. It is doubtful the effects he is seeing are because of rising sea levels; it is much more likely to be the result of coastal erosion that has little to do with climate change or sea-level rise, and usually more to do with harbor and coastal engineering (often courtesy of the federal guvmint–this is spectacularly the case in Louisiana).  The good governor should be careful not to validate the wilder and unfounded scenarios of the climate pessimists.

…But for some reason I’m not sure that it is .

If maximizing future human welfare and prosperity is the goal of climate change policy…

I agree that it should be, or at least balancing current welfare and prosperity against future, but all too few people seem to act that way.

Apologies for this rather technical point but it’s worth having a look at the Special Report on Emissions Scenarios (SRES ) which are the economic models that underpin all of the IPCC’s work with the computer models. There are various sketches of what the future might bring in terms of population, technology and so on, and thus emissions that are fed into those computer programs. Something like the Stern Review is based upon the A2 family (with a few more catastrophes thrown in for good measure) and the logic of that review is that by spending x now we can make those in the future better off to a total level of y.

Now the thing is, the A2 family is based upon a reversal of globalization, a return to more regional and local economies. The A1 family is based upon an acceleration of the process. In the A1 family we see greater convergence (the gap between rich and poor narrows), much lower population growth and an astonishing rise in living standards. In fact, in 2100, people will be four times better off than the y result that the Stern Review proposes.

So if people really are worried about future human welfare and prosperity then they would be screaming for more globalization: after all, the IPCC has said it so it must be true!

That the various commentators and activists on the matter do not do so, that many of them insist that the solution is more regionalism, less trade, more self-sufficiency, shows to me that they are motivated by something other than future human welfare. 

I wonder what could be their motivation? 

So what’s the opinion here of Mark Sanford’s piece in the Washington Post today?

As the European Union prepares to overshoot its Kyoto greenhouse gas (GHG) emission targets by a substantial margin (joined by Japan, Canada, and other countries that promised to reduce their emissions under Kyoto), Europe is gearing up for international negotiations on post-Kyoto GHG reduction commitments.

Since significant GHG reductions are likely to cause serious hardship, the EU doesn’t want to kick its economy too hard unless other countries, particularly the United States, agree to hobble themselves as well. Yesterday’s New York Times headline “Europeans Agree to Cut Emissions Sharply if U.S. and Others Follow Suit” tells the story: “European officials want other parts of the world, including the United States, to adopt European-style restrictions on emissions to fight climate change, thus helping European businesses compete globally at a time when the European Union is toughening regulation in sectors like air travel, car manufacturing and construction.”

But the risks of a substantial emissions-reduction commitment are probably even greater for the US than the EU. America’s population is growing faster than Europe’s, so any commitment to reduce total future emissions will mean a larger percentage reduction in per-capita emissions for Americans than for Europeans. In addition, differences between the legal systems in Europe and the US probably make it easier for European countries to back out of or at least ignore a GHG-reduction treaty if it turns out to cause serious economic harm or a political backlash. In the US, however, once Congress ratifies an international GHG treaty, American jurisprudence will allow any party that can gain legal “standing” to sue to require that the US strictly meet its treaty commitment.

Public debate over climate change has tended to focus on the risks of not doing anything to address it. But trying to do something about climate change also entails risks. Many environmentalists and politicians would like to suppress energy use, with potentially grave consequences for the world’s prosperity. Equally worrisome is the possibility that a world fossil-fuel-suppression regime would create the mother of all cartels, with legions of corporations, lobbyists, bureaucrats, and politicians vying for a share of the spoils at the expense of the world’s consumers.

If maximizing future human welfare and prosperity is the goal of climate change policy, we need to be talking about the risks of doing something in addition to the risks of doing nothing.

A reader disagrees:

I think you misrepresented the MSNBC article. It specifically notes that there has been a history of relatively wet and relatively dry years (i.e. droughts). It also notes that climate change, if it plays out as predicted, will be A factor, not THE factor causing a worsening of the water shortage situation. Lastly, I fail to see your point that “[m]unicipalities have water plans that use water that never existed.” The water did exist, if only for the years measured. And, even if it doesn’t exist, that doesn’t mean that there isn’t an additional decrease happening. It also seems to fly in the face of the typical NR viewpoint that the market solves all problems and that unlimited growth is possible. Well, now we have too many people based on “water that never existed.” What do you think we should do now? Grow our way out of it?

Again, I appeal to Seldon:

Pigou and other economists advocated a system of taxes to discourage activities that generated external detriments and subsidies to encourage and extend activities that generated benefits.

Price rises discourage activity, after all. If people are willing to absorb the cost, as Tim suggests they might, then the detriments remain. The fact the government has more money to blow on other things – hypothecation is not often mentioned in this regard – does nothing to reduce the costs imposed. In the end, they have to be about altering behavior or they are worthless (except to the Taxman).

Pigou taxes remind me of the old line about an economist: “I don’t care how it works in practice, tell me how it works in theory.”

MSNBC has an article up on a new report on how climate change is going to cause major water problems in the American southwest. But it is totally misleading the reader as to what’s really going on. Compare MSNBC’s coverage to the very fair coverage in today’s NY Times. Just to compare headlines…

MSNBC: Behold the incredible shrinking Colorado River; Experts: Even worse water shortages possible due to warming, populationvsNY Times: That ‘Drought’ in Southwest May Be Normal, Report Says

An e-mail:

Hi Folks, I like the new blog even though it will further dampen my productivity. If you haven’t seen the following presentation by Dr. Crichton, it is very much worth your time: (here )
My training is in statistics, so I have studied global warming (and much else) from its perspective. My wife is a research scientist in medicine and while I understand little of the mechanisms being studied in her journals littering the house, I read the methodology and statistics to see the approach taken for analysis. More often than not, the suboptimal, and sometimes flat out wrong statistical tools are applied. These are in leading peer reviewed journals. There seems to be two major problems with scientists and statistics. First, is a general lack of knowledge with respect to statistical techniques. This is entirely understandable, as it is a complex field. When I was in grad school at Ohio State, all Masters and Ph.D. candidates had access to free consulting by statisticians for this very reason. With millions of dollars spent on research a couple grand on a statistical consult to make sure the results mean something certainly seems appropriate. When my brother-in-law was finishing his dissertation (again at Ohio State) he used a statistical technique recommended and set up by a Ph.D. in statistics. He was then forced by his adviser to redo the statistics with an inappropriate technique used in his adviser’s dissertation 30 years earlier. The second problem is the substitution of statistics for science. Finding a statistical link between to things without understanding the underlying mechanism is not science. Clusters and anomalous correlations are a part of random data. A few years back after the completion of the human genome project, about once a week there was some new gene link. The “gay gene” for instance. Virtually all of these associations have been quietly dropped. They arose simply by data mining with high speed computers. The infinite monkeys typing all of Shakespeare’s plays have been created by high speed computers. In short there are always tons of meaningless correlations out there you can find by applying enough computing power. When applying statistics to extremely complex systems such as the environment a third problem arises. We don’t know the interactions within variables to make any kind of projection of the global environment 50 years hence. We can’t even come close to identifying all the variables. We make guesses on variable to variable relationships, with at most secondary or tertiary levels, with error rates overwhelming results in short order. This explains why global warming models that point to a .5 degree warming in half a century, when backcast 50 years are off by 4 to 6 degrees. Climatologists readily acknowledge their lack of understanding on key subsets of variables such as solar activity and cloud formation and yet tell us horrendous overall models result in settled science. One last point. Using the last 100 years of data for greenhouse gasses and global temperatures yields a statistically insignificant correlation coefficient. So we have a theory that doesn’t have empirical support. What it does have is political and grant money support.

We’re still not quite getting this externalities and Pigou thing quite right. Iain says :

First, the case for Pigou Taxes is all about “correcting” behavior to reduce external costs.

No, that would be a punitive tax, like the ones on cigarettes and other such sin taxes (and if anyone tries to claim that those are Pigou taxes I shall snarl at them). Pigou taxes are not intended to correct behavior, although they may have that effect. The aim is that currently there are effects of the individual’s course of action that are not already encompassed in the price system, and we’d like to have those included in said price system. Only if prices reflect all currently available information can we have an efficient market, after all.

The benefits that Iain mentions are already in the price system, but the disbenefits to others are not, in at least some cases. We don’t necessarily want people to change their behavior to reduce external costs: we just want them to pay for them so that we get the socially optimal amount of that behavior.

Of course, if other taxes don’t fall with the imposition of such taxes then it is indeed as Iain says, just more being squeezed out of us and at that point those proposing it can go take a running jump.

Dave Juday on ethanol. Dana Joel Gattuso on the media climate .

Just how is this any different from the Bush administration supposedly censoring NASA scientist James Hansen? Scientists, or at least Al Gore and the advocacy groups that claim to speak for them, were up in arms about that. Where’s the outrage today?

News from a Republican rising star (and McCainiac) :

Minnesota put its faith in a future fueled by renewable energy Thursday as the governor signed a new law requiring utilities to generate a quarter of their power from renewable sources such as wind, water and solar energy by 2025.

Considering where Minnesota stands now — about half the power produced in the state is from coal, and only 8 percent from renewable sources — the move is the most aggressive in the country, analysts say.

“We have to break our addiction to fossil fuels,” Gov. Tim Pawlenty said in signing the legislation.

The new law, which sailed through the Legislature, encourages the use of wind farms, hydroelectric power and solar energy, as well as cleaner-burning fuels.

Those of us who find Al Gore’s protestations that he is not running for President had to believe should take note of Suzanne Fields’s column today. With an estimated 2 billion people watching the Live Earth concerts this Summer, the producer told the Washington Post, “Two billion sets of eyeballs, and we’ll hand the mike to Al Gore.”

Now that’s exposure.

I’ll admit I was a bit sloppy in my last post, but I don’t see any problems with my conclusion.

First, the case for Pigou Taxes is all about “correcting” behavior to reduce external costs. If, however, an activity has external benefits — as driving and energy use do — then if those benefits outweigh the costs, the case for a Pigou Tax collapses. There is no “market imperfection” that needs “correcting.”

Indeed, as Arthur Seldon himself said in his brilliant Everyman’s Dictionary of Economics, “Almost all economic activities, private or governmental, have external effects, and attempts to prevent, or calculate and compensate for them would probably make the economy seize up. In many instances the effort to prevent or control them may be more costly than their effects, and it may be better to tolerate some of them as unavoidable consequences of human fallibility.”

So let’s not forget that externalities, while external to the market, are not external to the economy as a whole. Market actors also act within the overall economy. When a buyer of gasoline makes clear his objections to paying extra tax, he is, to an extent, taking account of the externalities in his objection. When the clear preference of a majority is against that tax, the revenue raisers had better look elsewhere.

Would people accept tax rises on gas if they were given immediate tax reductions elsewhere? Perhaps, but I suspect that is never going to happen, and even if it did, if those other tax reductions mean people are able to choose to spend more on gas and therefore drive just as often, then the externalities will still be there.

In California yesterday :

“I would assess this administration’s record on global warming as terrible,” McCain said, recalling that he got “no cooperation from the administration” at Senate hearings on the subject. He pronounced himself “very happy to see the president mention global warming and a renewed commitment from the administration to this issue.” But he added tartly: “It’s long overdue.”