Global Warming Costs  by Roger King  

Table of Contents

1. Introduction

2. Costs

3. Conclusion

Introduction

There are several things that must be discussed with Global Warming.  First, of course, it needs to be determined how much man really effects the climate.   Second and something that is little discussed is how do you spend our limited resources.

The Warming Debate's Gray Area  by Investor's Business Daily   October 15, 2007     ... a group of economists, including four Nobel Prize winners, reported in 2004, there are better ways to help the planet.   They found that one dollar spent fighting HIV/AIDS produced $40 in social benefits, and that one dollar spent on fighting malnutrition yielded about $30 in social benefits, but that one dollar fighting to lower CO2 emissions yielded between 2 and 25 cents in benefits.   Link

Cost Effective Strategies to Encourage Economic Growth and CO2 Emission Reductions  by Dr. Margo Thorning, Ph.D.  March 17, 2007   1 6  billion people have no electricity and 2.2 billion cook with biomass, 1.4 million woman and children die annually as a result.   Link

A Conversation with Bjorn Lomborg   by Jason Miks :  November 30,  2006 

1. If you just take the environmental problem first, it's very clear that what causes by far the majority of deaths is lack clean drinking water and lack of sanitation. Millions of people are dying each year from this. Also taking the new WHO estimates of what really kills people, these are the huge issues.
2. The second biggest problem is indoor air pollution, which probably kills somewhere between 1 and 3 million people each year, basically because people are too poor to use good fuels and end up using dung or cardboard or whatever they can find. Only a very distant third comes the climate change, which the WHO puts at 150,000 to die right now.

Costs

Defeating Global Warming: $45 Trillion  by Rick Moran  June 6, 2008   A report issued today by the International Energy Agency based in Paris says that in order to get serious about combating global warming, it will cost the world $45 Trillion:   ...   The entire US Gross Domestic Product is only $13 trillion. Throw in the EU and Japan GDP's and you have roughly $30 trillion. I refuse to accept the fact that we are going to have to bankrupt the planet to solve the global warming problem.

But this is what many global warming advocates want. They wish an end to industrialized civilization, to the modern world in general. It is the one thing that unites many of the disparate groups who seek to end the war by any means necessary.   Link

Congress Picks a Loser  by Dana Joel Gattuso  Tuesday, April 15, 2008 The energy tax bill the House passed in February that slaps $18 billion in taxes on oil production to fund wind, solar, biofuels, and other “alternative” sources.  ...  Two independent studies in the journal Science report that the clearing of forests, grasslands, and other ecosystems throughout the world to grow corn, soybean, and other food-for-fuels will double greenhouse emissions over the next 30 years. Because plants and soil hold enormous quantities of carbon, destroying existing plants and tilling the soil releases the stored carbon.  ...  The second study by scientists from the University of Minnesota and The Nature Conservancy estimate that in the United States, converting the Central grasslands into corn ethanol emits so much carbon dioxide, it would take almost a century—93 years—to offset the damage.   Link

Can You Buy a Greener Conscience? by Alan Zarembo  at the Los Angeles Times  September 2, 2007  A United Nations panel recently concluded that actually reducing emissions to avoid the worst perils of global warming would cost trillions of dollars a year over the next several decades.   ...     The race to save the planet from global warming has spawned a budding industry of middlemen selling environmental salvation at bargain prices.  The companies take millions of dollars collected from their customers and funnel them into carbon-cutting projects, such as tree farms in Ecuador, windmills in Minnesota and no-till fields in Iowa.  In return, customers get to claim the reductions, known as voluntary carbon offsets, as their own. For less than $100 a year, even a Hummer can be pollution-free -- at least on paper.  ...     But the industry is clouded by an approach to carbon accounting that makes it easy to claim reductions that didn't occur. Many projects that have received money from offset companies would have reduced emissions by the same amount anyway.  ...      Price of feeling good Without government regulation and mandatory caps on emissions all that is left to drive offset sales is guilt and marketing. Offset company’s charge what the market will bear.  

Climate of Fear  by Richard Lindzen  April 12, 2006     ... the success of climate alarmism can be counted in the increased federal spending on climate research from a few hundred million dollars pre-1990 to $1.7 billion today. It can also be seen in heightened spending on solar, wind, hydrogen, ethanol and clean coal technologies, as well as on other energy-investment decisions.

Enviro-Harassment by Investor's Business Daily March 25, 2008 Global warming alarmists are using shareholder resolutions — corporate policy proposals brought by shareholders to a company's annual meeting to be voted on by stockholders — to force companies to disclose their responses to climate change.  ...   

Joe Bast, president of the Heartland Institute and one-time ardent environmentalist, has seen it from both sides. He summed up the movement in a speech three years ago: "Let me say it plainly: The environmental movement has been taken over by anti-capitalist radicals who are using it to wage war against capitalism and campaign for liberal Democrats," he said. "Protecting the environment is now number three, or lower, on their list of priorities."

Sounds right. Companies must take time from managing their businesses to deal with these shareholder resolutions. Profits suffer, and everyone's poorer — all to satisfy a small but vocal minority intent on forcing companies to deal with purely hypothetical threats lying a century into the future. The word for this? Spiteful.   Link

Cap-and-trade fraud  by Arthur Laffer And Wayne Winegarden, Financial Post   October 02, 2007   The costs of reducing GHGs through cap-andtrade regulations are not trivial. If implemented, cap-and-trade policies would add significant costs to production and would likely have a severe negative impact on long-term U.S. growth, an amount we estimate at US$10,800 per family.   Link

Countries Missing Kyoto Targets, Taxpayers to Foot the Bill  by Noel Sheppard  November 30, 2007  Many countries that are part of the Kyoto Protocol are going to dramatically overshoot their greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions limits.   …  Japan, Italy and Spain face fines of as much as $33 billion combined for failing to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions as promised under the Kyoto treaty.   Link

Climate Is a Risky Issue for Democrats by Juliet Eilperin Washington Post Staff Writer November 6, 2007   According to energy expert Tracy Terry's analysis of a recent Massachusetts Institute of Technology study, under the scenario of an 80 percent reduction in emissions from 1990 levels, by 2015 Americans could be paying 30 percent more for natural gas in their homes and even more for electricity. At the same time, the cost of coal could quadruple and crude oil prices could rise by an additional $24 a barrel.   Link

Lifting the global warming gag order by Vin Suprynowicz Feb. 25, 2007   Spiralling energy costs fueled by green hysteria "have caused the loss of 100,000 jobs in the UK over 18 months," report Doctors for Disaster Preparedness, again citing techcentralstation.com. Al Gore's anti-global warming plan would leave the average person 30 percent poorer by 2100, according to the Jan. 18 Wall Street Journal.

In the book "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," authors S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery point out that scrapping every car, truck and SUV in America would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only about 2 percent. Meantime, merely extinguishing all the coal deposit fires that continue to burn unchecked around the world would reduce those emissions by 2 to 3 percent. Which is a more sensible thing to try? Link

Lifting the global warming gag order  by Vin Suprynowicz  Feb. 25, 2007  In the book "Unstoppable Global Warming -- Every 1,500 Years," authors S. Fred Singer and Dennis T. Avery point out that scrapping every car, truck and SUV in America would reduce greenhouse gas emissions by only about 2 percent. Meantime, merely extinguishing all the coal deposit fires that continue to burn unchecked around the world would reduce those emissions by 2 to 3 percent. Which is a more sensible thing to try?  Link

Heat Capacity, Time Constant, and Sensitivity of Earth’s Climate System by Stephen E. Schwartz  September 17, 2007  “Effectively, this (new study) means that the global economy will spend trillions of dollars trying to avoid a warming of ~ 1.0 K by 2100 A.D.” Dr. Wilson wrote in a note to the Senate Environment & Public Works Committee on August 19, 2007.  Wilson, a former operations astronomer at the Hubble Space Telescope Institute in Baltimore MD, was referring to the trillions of dollars that would be spent under such international global warming treaties like the Kyoto Protocol.  “Previously, I have indicated that the widely accepted values for temperature increase associated with a doubling of CO2 were far too high i.e. 2 – 4.5 Kelvin. This new peer-reviewed paper claims a value of 1.1 +/- 0.5 K increase for a doubling of CO2,” he added.  Link  

Journalist Conference Takes Left Turn on Climate Change  by Jeff Poor  of BMI   10/5/2007   But even the highly-respected former Federal Reserve chairman and economist Alan Greenspan questioned in his book, “The Age of Turbulence,” the validity of a cap and trade system’s impact as an effective means to fight global warming.  “Yet as an economist, I have grave doubts that international agreements imposing a globalized so-called cap-and-trade system on CO2 emissions will prove feasible,” Greenspan wrote. “There is no effective way to meaningfully reduce emissions without negatively impacting a large part of an economy,” Greenspan wrote. “Net, it is a tax. If the cap is low enough to make a meaningful inroad into CO2 emissions, permits will become expensive and large numbers of companies will experience cost increases that make them less competitive. Jobs will be lost and real incomes of workers constrained.”   Link

Kyoto sinks Europe  by Benny Peiser at the Financial Post  January 09, 2007 Carbon trading is the EU's principal strategy for meeting its Kyoto target of reducing CO2 emissions by 8% by 2012. The scheme was launched two years ago in the hope that it would achieve what more than 10 years of political commandeering had failed: significant reductions in CO2 emissions. Instead, year after year, most EU countries continue to increase their greenhouse-gas emissions. Rather than proving its effectiveness, the trading system has pushed electricity prices even higher while energy-intensive companies are forced to close down, cut jobs, or pass on the costs to consumers.  Although Europe's energy utilities receive carbon permits free of charge, they have passed on the market price to industry and private consumers. In consequence, Germany's energy costs rose by almost ?6-billion ($9.2-billion) in 2005, a price tag that is expected to double in the next couple of years. The cunning strategy ensured that power companies reaped billions in windfall profits. And yet without the massive sweetener, Brussels could not have gained the support of industry for this risky scheme.  As the price for electricity, goods and services continue to rise and Asian competitors catch up with Europe's lethargic economy, the public is beginning to question Brussel's unilateral climate policy. According to a recent EU poll, more than 60% of Europeans are unwilling to sacrifice their standard of living in the name of green causes. As long as advocates of Kyoto got away with claims that their policies would not inflict any significant costs, many people were tempted to believe in improbable promises. Now that the true cost of Kyoto is starting to hurt European pockets, the erstwhile green consensus is unravelling.   Link

Trade-Offs in Allocating Allowances for CO2 Emissions by  Congressional Budget Office  April 25, 2007   The merit of a cap-and-trade program is that, like a tax on CO2 emissions, it could motivate businesses and households to reduce emissions in the least costly way. Such programs have been used successfully in the United States to limit the cost of reducing emissions of other air pollutants, such as lead in gasoline and nitrogen oxides and sulfur dioxide from electricity generators.   ...   "Regardless of how the allowances were distributed, most of the cost of meeting a cap on CO2 emissions would be borne by consumers, who would face persistently higher prices for products such as electricity and gasoline. Those price increases would be regressive in that poorer households would bear a larger burden relative to their income than wealthier households would."   ...  the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimated that the price rises resulting from a 15 percent cut in CO2 emissions would cost the average household in the lowest one-fifth (quintile) of the income distribution about 3.3 percent of its average income. By comparison, a household in the top quintile would pay about 1.7 percent of its average income   ...  Job losses could occur throughout the economy but would probably be especially large (in percentage terms) in industries associated with high-carbon fuels.   ...   A cap-and-trade program for CO2 emissions would tend to increase government spending and decrease revenues.       Link

California gears up for car emissions fight   by Bobby Carmichael, USA TODAY October 28, 2007  California plans to sue the Environmental Protection Agency this week for delaying a decision over whether to let the state aggressively reduce car and truck tailpipe emissions. The lawsuit's outcome could affect not only the California law aimed at cutting greenhouse gases but also the ability of other states to take similar actions.   Link

Kiwi Climatology  From Today's Wall Street Journal Asia   May 13, 2008  Under Kyoto, New Zealand committed to reduce its emissions to 1990 levels, in effect a 30% reduction from expected emissions in 2012.   ...   The cost, for farmers and industry alike, is likely to be prohibitive. The New Zealand Institute of Economic Research, an independent consulting firm, recently estimated that the government's plan would result in 22,000 job losses by 2012, or 1% of today's employment. That translates into NZ$4.6 billion ($3.6 billion) annually in lost GDP, or a NZ$3,000 cut in each household's annual spending.   Link

Billions wasted on UN climate programme   by John Vidal   May 26, 2008   Billions of pounds are being wasted in paying industries in developing countries to reduce climate change emissions, according to two analyses of the UN's carbon offsetting programme.   ...  

Twenty Ninth is Global Warming    The reason this is so low it that the costs far outweigh the projected good that comes from CO2 reduction.  Further, every dollar that is spent on fighting Global Warming can not be spend on these other actions.   Personally this is sad because fighting Global Warming is presented to us as saving the poor in the future.  Sadly, the dollars currently spent for this fight are killing and hurting the poor and children  right now since those dollars can't be spend on current needs.  Even worse things like Ethanol has run up food prices a great deal also starving the poor.

Conclusion