A “green” economy vs. a productive economy, or how America became a third-world country with first-world feelings of moral superiority
The House of Representatives just took a large step towards refashioning the United State into a Third World economy with first world self-regard. The so-called “cap and trade” (“cap and tax” to its opponents) bill, sponsored by Henry Waxman and Edward Markey (remember those names, voters), squeaked by 219-212. (The roll call is here: check to see if your Congressman just voted to impoverish you and your country.)
Reacting to the Democratic victory (but one, please note, that would not have been possible had not 8 Republicans voted for it: they are listed in italics in the roll call), Rep. Markey of Massachusetts described the “American Clean Energy and Security Act” as “the most important energy and environmental legislation in the history of our country.” This is true. Plenty of unpleasant things are important. Rep Markey is also correct that the legislation “sets a new course for our country.” Indeed, I’d say it was all part and parcel of Obama’s observation, made last October, that he and his henchmen were only a few days away from “fundamentally transforming the United States of America.” Where Rep. Markey errs is in his conclusion: that this “important” “new course” “steers us away from foreign oil and towards a path of clean American energy.”
In fact, Ed, it will do almost nothing to emancipate us from foreign oil even as it steers us towards a path of less American energy. The architect Mies van der Rohe famously said “less is more,” to which Robert Venturi equally famously quipped “less is a bore.” This is not the moment to intervene in that discussion about the place ornamentation and authenticity in architecture. Applied to the world of economics, however, we can observe with confidence that less is less.
The Wall Street Journal explains some of what this new legislation would mean:
By putting a price on emissions of greenhouse gases, such as carbon dioxide, the bill would affect the way electricity is generated, how homes and offices are designed, how foreign trade is conducted and how much Americans pay to drive cars or to heat their homes.
So, thanks Ed! And thanks Harry! And thanks to the other 217 Congressmen and women who just voted to make America poorer and less competitive on the world stage. I hope that the electorate will remember your actions when the next election comes around.
To help them remember, let’s pause further to consider the meaning of this bill. Kimberley Strassel, writing in The Wall Street Journal yesterday, noted that while the green church of Al Gore thrives among the power elite of Washington, elsewhere in the world it is facing serious challenges from scientists as well as politicians. “Among the many reasons President Barack Obama and the Democratic majority are so intent on quickly jamming a cap-and-trade system through Congress,” she observes “is because the global warming tide is again shifting.”
It turns out Al Gore and the United Nations (with an assist from the media), did a little too vociferous a job smearing anyone who disagreed with them as “deniers.” The backlash has brought the scientific debate roaring back to life in Australia, Europe, Japan and even, if less reported, the U.S.
In April, the Polish Academy of Sciences published a document challenging man-made global warming. In the Czech Republic, where President Vaclav Klaus remains a leading skeptic, today only 11% of the population believes humans play a role. In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy wants to tap Claude Allegre to lead the country’s new ministry of industry and innovation. Twenty years ago Mr. Allegre was among the first to trill about man-made global warming, but the geochemist has since recanted. New Zealand last year elected a new government, which immediately suspended the country’s weeks-old cap-and-trade program.
As I say, this reaction to the Gospel of Gore is not just political — not just a recognition and response to the economic consequences of embracing environmentalism as a religion. It is also a response to mounting evidence that Al Gore was, to put it bluntly, wrong. As Strassel notes,
The collapse of the “consensus” [over the idea that climate change was primarily man-made] has been driven by reality. The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02. Peer-reviewed research has debunked doomsday scenarios about the polar ice caps, hurricanes, malaria, extinctions, rising oceans. A global financial crisis has politicians taking a harder look at the science that would require them to hamstring their economies to rein in carbon.
So: countries in the rest of the world, bowing to scientific evidence and economic reality, adjust their policies to make their economies more productive, hence more competitive.
The United States, led by leftist ideologues who are suspicious of American power, and who regard “excessive” prosperity with alarm, have framed legislation that will systemically handicap American industry and make the necessities of life more expensive for American citizens.
The up side? Americans, or at least American Leftists, will be able to luxuriate in the knowledge that they have sacrificed something for an “ideal,” even if it is only the spurious ideal of environmental purity.
It won’t, in the overwhelming number of cases, involve any sacrifice for them personally, of course. Just as Congress has its own health care provisions that are different from, and vastly better than, what they are proposing to provide for the mere citizens of the country, so, too, the onerous restrictions mandated by this legislation will not touch people who have insulated themselves from the strictures they impose on an increasingly docile public. It will cost you a lot more to travel to New York for a night out on the town with your wife, but if you are Barack Obama and the public is picking up the tab for the date, you go by government jet, surrounded by a cocoon of secret service vehicles greedily gobbling up their quota of fossil fuel. It would be instructive to keep tabs on the “carbon footprint” of members of Congress and other government officials — and to discover how the restrictions they have imposed on the rest of us affect them personally.
Today, dirigiste politicians celebrate the advent of America’s embrace of a “green economy.” But a green economy bears roughly the same relation to a productive economy as fool’s gold does to the 24-carat variety. Sooner or later, the country will wake up to this fact. The longer it takes, the less pretty will be the response, because the more serious will be the effect on the country’s economy.
The U.S. Senate now has an opportunity to restore sanity by scuttling this legislative monstrosity. Let’s see how many senators have the wisdom, and the courage, to stand up against the sirocco of left wing demagoguery that will be filling the airwaves and cyberspace in the weeks to come.
At least New Zealand demonstrates that cap-and-destroy can be stopped after it is started. Government medical care — which makes as much sense as government food care and government housing care and government clothing care — will be the defining battle of this wicked age.
“The House of Representatives just took a large step towards refashioning the United State into a Third World economy with first world self-regard.” As a current resident of a “third world country” I resent that remark. How many of these countries are going to follow the wise council of Waxman and Malarkey, err Markey, to “fundamentally transform” themselves? Yes, you’re right. Zero. And there in lies the rub. The increasingly onerous tax and regulatory environment has been contributing to the deindustrialization of the U.S. for years. In fact, in 2007 government passed manufacturing and construction in numbers employed. Now P-O-R are working overtime to ensure that even more U.S. production capacity relocates overseas in order to remain competitive in the world market place. Hey, we’ll be happy to take up the slack down here in Central America. Which gives me an idea, all you entrepreneurial doctors who might want to remain independent can come a few miles south and create profitable businesses providing “unneeded” health care services for Obamacare refugees. Just an idea.
“The inconvenient truth is that the earth’s temperatures have flat-lined since 2001, despite growing concentrations of C02.”
Do we really have to have the weather vs. climate talk again? Are you guys incapable of learning things?
#3′s response is, ultimately, the answer. Most Americans can’t imagine out-migration as a growing trend, but why not? Only a capital and talent strike (with a bit of underground economy on the side) will demonstrate either to Democratic politicians or to the voters who put them in office that such policies are not sustainable.
Bravo Roger. That the US, of all peoples, is in thrall to these fantasies is horrible to watch.
The leaders of the Church of Warming are waking up to the fact that they have been rumbled, and that the game is up. Expect the bullying and the authoritarian hysteria to get worse before it abates.
A suggestion to American readers: after you have digested Roy Spencer’s wonderful book “Climate Confusion”, look out for “Heaven and Earth – Global Warming: the Missing Science” by distinguished Australian earth scientist Ian Plimer, which I think is coming out in the US in July. It has been a runaway best seller in Prof Plimer’s native land.
Ok. Boris. Since you’re the smartest scientist in the multiverse, tell me what the threshold timescale is when weather becomes climate.
Then explain why. In rigorous physics. Y’know, like with those equationy thingies with all of those smart guy greek thingies and all that stuff.
In case it wasn’t clear, let me make it, in the words of Richard M. Nixon, perfectly clear: I’m calling Boris out as a know-nothing blowhard who doesn’t know a proton from a crouton.
Go peddle your consensus to little-minded people like yourself, who are impressed by AIT and similar junk.
The U.S. House of Representatives is making Michael Jackson look like an amateur. Every child in the United States has just gotten screwed.
Strawman:
It’s not that to grasp, sunshine.
CO2 is expected to increase temps by about 0.02 degC/year, so over seven years, we should see a 0.14degC increase.
With me so far?
Now, just looking at the dip from Jan 2007 to Jan 2008, we see a global temp range of 0.5 deg C. (Note that if CO2 were TWICE as powerful as the IPCC says, this would have been a 0.48 deg C drop).
If we assume that 0.5 is the entire range of weather (internal) variability then we are looking a signal that is hidden in yearly variation that is about 4 times greater.
Or you could calculate a linear trend on data since 2001. IF you use GISS, you get a trend of 0.013(+/- 0.02) deg C/year. So the trend itself is actually positive. But as you can also see, the uncertainty is so wide that we can’t rule out a trend that is double the worst case predictions. That is the nature of short term trend analysis. That is why people who say things like “Warming has flat-lined since 2001″ don’t know what the hell they are talking about.
No need to thank me.
Hey, Boris, why not get yourself a colostomy bag and have your colon removed? I mean, no, you likely will never get colorectal cancer, but “the uncertainty is so wide that we can’t rule out” the possibility that it could be twice as bad as “the worst case predictions.” After all, that’s what you’re doing to the economy.
Boris,
Some people don’t handle reality real well, they just never catch on.
Boris,
Just curious. Have you ever engaged in building models of physical systems? If so, how complex were the systems, how many parameters of the system were allowed to vary, how many were allowed to interact with other parameters of the system? Were the system models that you built linear, or non-linear?
K
If Global Warmiing is so immanent, shouldn’t the bll have included a program of swimming lessons?
Climate models are just that. Models. They are like Rube Goldberg machines. If you add an extra swinging boot or a mouse grabbing some cheese, you get different results. Scientists — so called — have been doing exactly that, adding tuning knobs to the system to get the models to achieve the (policically correct, grant-grabbing) results they want to achive (CO2 not getting the right results? add knob about aerosol forcing!).
Trouble with the models is that observed reality continues to intrude on what the models have been predicting (quick! add more knobs!). And the models have a heck of a time predicting the past correctly, yet we are to believe they can predict the future. And we are to upend our entire civilization based on what is essentially the flipping of Tarot cards.
Far, far more people will suffer and die from our response to “climate change” than will suffer and die from actual climate change. Unless the world is, indeed, getting colder, because if that goes on long enough we’re all up a frozen creek. If given a choice between warming and cooling, we’d best pray hard for warming.
Way to not answer the question, Boris.
Boris you write:
Or you could calculate a linear trend on data since 2001. IF you use GISS, you get a trend of 0.013(+/- 0.02) deg C/year. So the trend itself is actually positive. But as you can also see, the uncertainty is so wide that we can’t rule out a trend that is double the worst case predictions.
BUT a trend of .013 +/- .02 is not positive, it could be as high as
.013+.02 or as low as .013-.02 = -.007 which is NEGATIVE. Just as you can’t rule out a trend that is double the worse case prediction, you can’t rule out the case that the things will get cooler, at least based on the facts you just supplied.
I think that the science of climate modeling is just not good enought yet to make it predict the kinds of things we are demanding of it.
Here’s a thirty-year graph of temps:
http://www.drroyspencer.com/library/pics/UAH_LT_since_1979.jpg
Here’s a similar date range for CO2 concentrations:
http://global-warming.accuweather.com/blogpics/co2_graph_rt.gif
Regardless of what Boris says, the first graph is not what we’d expect to see if there were as strong a correlation between CO2 and temps as the Chicken-Little crowd say there is.
While you guys are arguing, the arctic looks like it’s on another record melt this summer. Look at http://nsidc.org/data/seaice_index/images/daily_images/N_timeseries.png
and remember that in terms of arctic warming, 2007 was the record year, that’s why it’s plotted.
You can keep this in your browser and check it occasionally, it updates daily.
cheers!
I believe that Waxman-Markey will make America green.
Green weeds will soon start thriving and cover once-prosperous businesses.
The only way we could become much greener would be to put out to pasture the morons who voted in favor (without reading) this legistative abomination.
There is a lot of bunk being posted by both sides squabbling about the temperature of the last few years, have to take a step back and look at the long term climate changes, yes changes, the earth has undergone many climate changes long before we got here. we managed to stay here becuse we evolved and adapted over the years.10,000 years ago glaciers 500 feet tall were moving over New York City, we evolved and adapted. How vain is our generation to think that we can actually change the climate? which has been changing for eons without our help!or how stupid to think that this is the perfect climate for the next eon. Change will happen if we like it or not, our job is to adapt and evolve, like we always have, only now, we have many more tools and technologies to facilitate this