Global warming and economic blogger arguments

So just from a little background reading, the EPA has had a bit of a controversial relationship with global warming. It wasn't until 2007 that the EPA was given the ruling that they are responsible for the regulation of green house gas emissions from automobiles - and really it wasn't until 2007 that the government began mandating anything to do with global warming. In 2007 the EPA said that global warming was impacting human welfare. In 2008 they rescinded this. And yet, their website in the year 2010 under the heading, "State of knowledge" (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/science/stateofknowledge.html) takes a stance that these things are known:
"

• Human activities are changing the composition of Earth's atmosphere. Increasing levels of greenhouse gases like carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere since pre-industrial times are well-documented and understood.
• The atmospheric buildup of CO2 and other greenhouse gases is largely the result of human activities such as the burning of fossil fuels.
• An “unequivocal” warming trend of about 1.0 to 1.7°F occurred from 1906-2005. Warming occurred in both the Northern and Southern Hemispheres, and over the oceans (IPCC, 2007).
• The major greenhouse gases emitted by human activities remain in the atmosphere for periods ranging from decades to centuries. It is therefore virtually certain that atmospheric concentrations of greenhouse gases will continue to rise over the next few decades.
• Increasing greenhouse gas concentrations tend to warm the planet. "
  

And these are the things they listed under the heading, "What is not certain?" -
"

Important scientific questions remain about how much warming will occur, how fast it will occur, and how the warming will affect the rest of the climate system including precipitation patterns and storms. Answering these questions will require advances in scientific knowledge in a number of areas:

• Improving understanding of natural climatic variations, changes in the sun's energy, land-use changes, the warming or cooling effects of pollutant aerosols, and the impacts of changing humidity and cloud cover.
• Determining the relative contribution to climate change of human activities and natural causes.
• Projecting future greenhouse emissions and how the climate system will respond within a narrow range.
• Improving understanding of the potential for rapid or abrupt climate change.

Addressing these and other areas of scientific uncertainty is a major priority of the U.S. Climate Change Science Program (CCSP). The CCSP is developing twenty-one Synthesis and Assessment products to advance scientific understanding of these uncertainty areas by the end of 2008. More information.

"

So the official position of the US government is now that Global Warming is real and Crichton is wrong (under "what is known" see: many of the points Crichton's book endeavors to make us unsure of).

A government website should be a trustworthy, citable source, ideally. So if they say that these things are "known", one might expect that a few people (perhaps just liberals, who love their government?) will believe them. And really, they took a damn long time to buy into what scientists, activists, etc had already been sure of for years. My father has been concerned with the "climate change" issue since the 80s - perhaps one of the first few 'believers' as Crichton would say.

My belief is that the government is not a good legitimating agency. In fact, if anything, us government-weary folk probably are more likely to believe in Global Warming if the government refuses to acknowledge it. Kids in grade school will look up Global Warming on google and get the EPA site as one of the top hits - and maybe they'll do their class presentation or poster on these 'facts' - but adults who are hypothetically concerned about educating themselves who don't already "believe" probably aren't going to trust a government agency to provide them with their facts. So, who do people trust?

I sometimes read this blog, "Marginal Revolution", which is written by a sort of libertarian economist person (not, in my mind, what most people think of when they think of a libertarian) who takes many anti governmental positions and whose followers are those who are interested in economics, libertarianism, or just sick of bipartisanship, etc - in short he has a lot of followers and I have been recommended this blog from multiple disparate sources. In 2006, the blogger, Tyler Cowen, wrote his own opinion on the Global Warming crisis. (http://www.marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2006/05/my_views_on_glo.html)

I was somewhat surprised to find that his position was that it is ridiculous to deny that global warming is man made (this means that the science, the 'facts', the act of legitimating the concept of global warming, has come a long way.) His argument doesn't include so much depth, but he summarizes points that many people are hinged on - with industrialization occurring in China and India, how could global warming possibly be reversible, even if the entire first world converted to Nuclear, Wind, and Solar power? What is our "plan of action" when the great economic industrializing machine cannot (and perhaps should not) be stopped? He takes the position that Global Warming is real, a serious problem, but then poses questions to his readers for discussion - does it matter if it was manmade, as long as its happening? What can we do to mitigate the effects, what do we do for the people unfortunate enough to live somewhere that is adversely affected?

Really the most fascinating part of this blog, though, were the responses. Many 'believers' and 'non believers' provided mini analysis on why they do or don't care about the issue. I think they're interesting enough to summarize:

Arguments of bloggers who were pro GW:
1: Glad that an economist is sensible, but why does this economist believe that the world would fall apart if economic growth discontinued? (What would it take to get India and China to cease economic growth... and if we could, what would the effect be on their populations.)

2: Is it worth sacrificing a percentage or two of global growth to buy 30 years? (Maybe they meant stopping some major industry, but if this reduces funding for research, than the technophiles and the economists will howl.)

3: If oil stays super expensive, the economic incentive to research alternate energy would potentially save us. At that, scientific progress is really all that can save us.

4: GW is real - but the government is the problem, and this brings us back to Pollen and Corn! " If we could only follow Brazil's model and displace, say, 20% of current gasoline consumption we would be much better of. It's not likely to happen because our farmers, and their subsidies, are wedded to inefficient corn-based ethanol and have tariffs in place for imported ethanol."

5: GW is real, but the government and technophobes are the problem, because they aren't willing to try things that geoscientists propose like the "Geritol Solution" or "Iron fertilization" - which involves dumping iron dust into the ocean in order to stimulate phytoplankton blooming... (here is a link about some of the crazy 'solutions that have been proposed' : http://archive.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2007/3/16/153121.shtml ) in 2007, they did try the Geritol Solution.

6: The models show we are f*cked, there is nothing we can do about it, our beach houses are gone.

7: Global warming will lead to lower temperatures if the north pole melts.

8: The earth will never reach "venusian levels" (ie, the state of Venus) which would be unsustainable for life globally, but the least developed countries, such as bangladesh, won't be able to handle the short term warming.

9: "it is probably a much easier world political and economic problem to compensate the Bangladeshis and Pacific Islanders than solve global warming through international agreements not to burn carbon fuels." (wow...)

10: The little ice age and medieval warming period are lies propagated by political advertising agencies.

11: "Anyway, if you don't believe in making policy recommendations based on climate models and theory, how can you make policy recommendations based on economic models and theory, where the data is sparser, the models less thorough, and the subject matter responds to your recommendations? So many fans of the market, who cite their favored economists, while ignoring climate scientists. Tip: meteorology is closer to "hard science" than economics."

12: "A group of researchers recently sampled 10,000 papers on climate change published in major journals like Science and Nature. Out of 1,000 papers randomly selected, they found zero that contradicted anthropogenic GW. That's right, none, nada, zilch, zip. Yet during that same period, 52% of the papers cited in the media contradicted anthropogenic GW (the 2% was probably because of Fox News...the rest were just trying to be "balanced".). Is it any wonder people are misinformed?"

NON Believers:

1: What about the medieval warming period, the little ice age, and glaciers that used to be around and aren't anymore? These mean that GW is not caused by man! (Therefore, not our problem?) Or that this is an unstoppable act of nature, or that this is an act of nature that won't need to be stopped, etc.

2: The computer models are bunk.

3: The last ~7 years show a cooling trend, not a warming trend.

4: "It's hard to believe, but Tyler may have bought into an argument that anyone familiar with McCloskey should be very skeptical of." (When I looked up McCloskey, I found this website which supposedly analyzes the international coal market... awkward coincidence? http://cr.mccloskeycoal.com/ )

5: I am going to quote this entire thing because I think its a fascinating bit of statistical reasoning :P. as a later blogger pointed out, it is ridiculous to assign 50% bayesian probabilities. "

1. For lack of better data, let's say I place the odds of a sustained trend of global warming at 50%. Why so low? Remember that in the 1970s everyone was fussing about global cooling.
2. Similarly, let's place at 50% the odds that the Earth doesn't regulate its own temperature through endogenous means (for instance, an increase in algae to decrease CO2 when temperatures rise). Complex systems often work this way.
3. 50% odds once again that global warming is anthropogenic. After all, Mars is warming too. It could be unusual solar activity.
4. Lets say 50% odds that an increase in temperature would be a net bad. After all, what are the odds that the earth right now is at exactly the optimal temperature? One or two degrees C warmer could increase agricultural output, etc.
5. Why not place at 50% the odds that the cheapest solution is not to do nothing. Doing nothing is often a reasonable choice. I've seen it estimated that its five times cheaper to provide every human being with clean drinking water than to implement Kyoto.
6. What are the odds that if all of the above is true, that warming will affect, me, my children, or my grandchildren. I'll peg it at, oh, 50%.

If my estimates are about right, that means there is a less than 2% chance that I should be concerned about global warming. If any 4 of the 6 are about right, that still puts it at 6%. I'm perfectly content to relax and have a beer instead of fretting about climate change."

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-- basically, you should all read this thread in full, because its fascinating. My conclusion after reading it is that really, pro "Climate Change" wins. Even in this population - people who are more conservative than liberal, people who dislike the environmental movement, people who are skeptical of government and pro technology and pro free market capitalism and pro for-profit are convinced that it is in our best interest to make it profitable to invest in alternate energy, move away from coal, etc.

Back to the EPA site: There is a section under the heading, "What can you do" (http://www.epa.gov/climatechange/wycd/index.html) which will calculate your green house gas emissions, give you tips on how to reduce your carbon footprint, reduce waste, etc - perhaps once you have been filled with fear and you are driven to check a government website for tips on how to save yourself, you will do exactly what the economists think you should do - even if it wont save us from the industrialization of China and India - you will invest in the market of "green technology" - you'll buy green energy, different lightbulbs, - and you'll do some things that only some economists think you should do, like stop investing as much in plastics, ...

Or, because you can't change the structure of the global economy enough to save us from the industrialization of India and China, because you can't force any non-climate-threatened territory to adopt a billion climate refugees, you will do nothing, but perhaps bleakly believe that future technological innovation (solar power?) might yet save us, but perhaps it'll be too late.

What I want to know is: What if coal wasn't cheap? What would the world look like then? Even super duper pro market people are crying about this (If only we could factor the "real cost" into the pricing ... )