At the Climate Conference, Congressman Dana Rohrabacher (R-California)told attendees that the green legislation is going to be the biggest scam ever perpetrated on the American people. Taxes will be raised and freedoms taken away.
He said that some green advocates even want to stop frequent flyer miles, since in the eyes of these advocates, it is creating an incentive for free flying and, thus, increasing the world's carbon footprint.
After spending a day listening to the scientists at this conference, the green scam appears to be even greater than I suspected.
All the scientists in the "Realist" group seem to have the science on their side versus the Greens. Carbon appears to have about as much impact on the climate as ice cream.
Scientist after scientist decried the fact that the Greens are always unwilling to debate the Realists. Not only does Al Gore refuse to debate, he also refuses to take audience questions after a speech. The Realists on the other hand seemed to be genuinely desirous of carrying on scientific debate with everyone.
This conference was taped and will be out on dvd. Anyone interested in learning what the debate is all about should at least listen to the speech given by Roy W. Spencer from the University of Alabama Huntsville.
Bob Murphy tipped me off before the conference that Spencer was his favorite climatology speaker. I can see why. Spencer walked the attendees through a play-by-play on what the entire debate is all about. You really leave the speech with the big picture as to what the overall debate is all about, and knowledge of some of the deceptive practices the Greens use to advance their cause.
The global warming debate is portrayed in the media and the political arena as a two sided debate.
ReplyDeleteOn one side there are "Climate Change" advocates (a.k.a. alarmists) who diagnose global warming as a real problem and prescribe a range of economic interventionist measures as the solution. On the other side are the Climate Skeptics (a.k.a. deniers) who disagree with the diagnosis and prescription of the alarmists.
In terms of how these political camps relate to the relevant academic specialist communities, the alarmists have the best climatology and the worst economics, and the deniers have the worst climatology and the best economics (relatively speaking). Climatologists who speak about policy solutions to global warming have strayed far from their specialist expertise as have economists who talk about climate science.
But just say it's not a two sided debate but rather a four square (two by two) grid with alarmist and denialist as side by side columns and with diagnosis and prescription as separate rows. If so there is a super-pessimist option that never gets a public hearing. Super-pessimists would say climate change is real and the prescriptions of the advocates won't work, and indeed make society's ability to respond worse.
So far it would seem to me that the true "consensus position" the one which combines the best climatology and the best economics is the super-pessimist group. And this is precisely the faction we never hear from. Which is, of course, precisely what a public choice analysis of the issue ("everybody's business is nobody's business") would predict.
Welcome to the fun filled 21st century!
By the way, not all Austrian economists are in the climate skeptic camp. Edwin Dolan has written an Austrian analysis of the problem from a non-skeptic position. See the PDF file here.
ReplyDeleteBack in the early 1970s, when the environmental movement was but a green shoot, Dolan wrote a great little pamphlet that urged free marketeers and environmentalists to make common cause. I wrote an Amazon review of it here (shameless plug!).
My guess is that Dolan would see climate as a real issue and would see banning frequent flier miles as an absurd non-solution. Probably just another protectionist racket.