TOO DARNED HOT - NOT

Posted at 7:21 p.m. ET

The president-elect announced his environmental team today.  He has pledged that fighting global warming will be a priority for his administration.

That's too bad.  The incoming administration appears to have drunk the Gore-Aid.  And yet, day by day, skepticism about the "consensus" surrounding global warming is increasing.  The Australian prints a piece by prominent Danish skeptic and statistician Bjorn Lomborg.  This kind of dissent needs to be heard more often in the U.S. if our debate is to be informed.  The problem is, many people don't want it informed.

According to Obama, "few challenges facing America and the world are more urgent than combating climate change".

Such a statement is now commonplace for most political leaders across the world, even though it neglects to address the question of how much we can do to help America and the world through climate policies v other policies.

Examples:

Consider, for example, hurricanes in America. Clearly, a policy of reducing CO2 emissions would have had zero consequence on Katrina's devastating effect on New Orleans, where such a disaster was long expected...

...Instead, direct policies to address New Orleans' vulnerabilities could have avoided the huge and unnecessary cost in human misery and economic loss. These should have included stricter building codes, smarter evacuation policies and better preservation of wetlands (which could have reduced the ferociousness of the hurricane).

And...

Likewise, consider world hunger. Pleas for action on climate change reflect fears that global warming may undermine agricultural production, especially in the developing world. But global agricultural/economic models indicate that even under the most pessimistic assumptions, global warming would reduce agricultural production by just 1.4p er cent by the end of the century. Because agricultural output will more than double during this period, climate change would at worst cause global food production to double not in 2080 but in 2081.

Do you get the feeling that this man has done his homework?

Every time spending on climate policies saves one person from hunger in 100 years, the same amount could have saved 5000 people now. Arguably, this should be among Obama's top priorities.

What?  And violate the religion of global warming?

Obama went on to say why he wants to prioritise global warming policies: "The science is beyond dispute and the facts are clear. Sea levels are rising. Coastlines are shrinking.  We've seen record drought, spreading famine, and storms that are growing stronger with each passing hurricane season."

When someone tells you that "the science is beyond dispute," run in the other direction.  Real research scientists generally don't talk that way.  They're careful, and cautious.

Sea levels are rising, but they have been rising at least since the early 1800s. In the era of satellite measurements, the rise has not accelerated (actually we've seen a sea-level fall during the past two years). The UN expects about a 30cm sea-level rise during this century, about what we saw during the past 150 years.

Do not trust this man.  He believes in facts.

Obama's claim about record droughts similarly fails even on a cursory level: the US has in all academic estimates been getting wetter through the past the century (with the 1930s dust bowl setting the drought high point). This is even true globally during the past half-century, as one of the most recent scientific studies of actual soil moisture shows: "There is an overall small wetting trend in global soil moisture."

And...

Furthermore, famine has declined rapidly in the past half century. The main deviation has been the past two years of record-high food prices, caused not by climate change but by the policies designed to combat it: the dash for ethanol, which put food into cars and thus upward pressure on food prices. The World Bank estimates that this policy has driven at least 30 million more people into hunger. To cite policy-driven famine as an argument for more of the same policy seems unreasonable, to say the least.

No question about it:  This man's last name is Exxon-Mobil. No doubt about it.  I have sources.

Global warming should be tackled, but smartly through research and development of low-carbon alternatives. If we are to get our policies right, it is crucial that we get our facts right.

But it's so much more fun the other way.  And there are those great parties, and posters.  This man is too serious.

December 15, 2008.