Saturday, November 28, 2015

Some good (and bad) climate change commentary

And Then There's Physics has a crack at the "we can't stay under 2C now" pessimism, and I generally agree with him.  (See the comments too, where he says it seems to be a case of climate scientists not being able to "win" either way.)

* Lenore Taylor has an excellent explanation of how Australian policy got to where it is today.   The details of this are hard to keep in memory, so it's really good to see such a clear account.

*  And now for the bad:  the very bad.  Adam Creighton writes with so many errors in his take on climate change, it's hard to know where to begin.  Take this paragraph:
But even more problematic, the link between carbon dioxide and global average temperatures is highly uncertain. Sure, it is probably positive, but the degree of the relationship is vague, as sober analysts of the climate change debate will readily point out. Moreover, splicing the effect out from temperature changes that would have happened anyway is next to impossible.
"Sober analysis" - ha!

This paragraph in particular shows his complete ignorance on the topic:
The other problem with these models is they assume the impact of global warming is unambiguously bad. It might not be. For example, the 44,000 more than expected people who died in the British winter last year — in part because of the cold — might have had a different view.
Absolute unadulterated rubbish, and proof he simply does not read the IPCC reports or any other material - where the cross over between any net benefits to net harm has been a matter of hotly contested dipute.  (Lukewarmer Richard Tol's error prone work being very significant on this.)

But how surprising is it really, that a small government, anti tax, libertarian inclined economics writer knows stuff all about climate change. 

But the basic problem with his argument is the common (and discredited one) - that uncertainty is our friend.   It isn't, Adam.  Read. 



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