AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS ADDICT

The climate march that coincided with the UN’s climate summit a few weeks ago was entertaining to say the least. These two videos show how true believers act when the religion of climate change is challenged. They worship at the altar of climate change, and demand that all infidels accept the teachings of their climate science catechism. True believers never stop to think about trade offs.

QUESTIONS ABOUT TRADE OFFS

A world without fossil fuels is a utopian vision that exists cost-free in the minds of true believers. To their way of thinking, getting rid of carbon based fuels has no consequences. They never ask; how do we get there from here? What is the cost of trying to implement a world of carbon free energy? Will there be enough “green energy” alternatives to make up for the loss of the energy formerly produced by carbon based fuels? What is the cost in dollars per kilowatt-hour for “green energy”, compared to the cost in dollars per kilowatt-hour for carbon based energy? What was the standard of living in the US before we started using coal, oil, natural gas, and nuclear power? How would your present standard of living change if you had to function on 33% less energy a day? What about 40% less, or 50%less? Would you be willing to trade off diminishing amounts of cleaner air against your present standard of living?

CREATING WEALTH ALLOWS US TO AFFORD A CLEANER ENVIRONMENT

Countries like India and China didn’t even attend the climate summit. They are willing to accept more polluted air for a higher standard of living. They won’t clean up after themselves until they have created enough wealth to make it possible to have both a higher standard of living and a cleaner environment. Only wealthy countries can afford to clean up after themselves. People in poorer countries are just trying to make it to the next day. In the case of the US we have clean air to breath and water to drink. Using increasing amounts of scarce resources to make infinitesimal increase in the quality of our air and water, will kill the wealth creation that allowed us to clean up our messes in the first place. There is a diminishing return for trying to create a utopian world. And at some point you start traveling down the “road to serfdom“.

TWO GREAT VIDEOS

Here is a video of Robert Kennedy Jr being interviewed at the People’s Climate March. How condescending is this guy? It wouldn’t take much to push him into a Ray Rice moment.

Here is a video of Alex Epstein at the People’s Climate March. I like the green “I ♥ Fossil Fuels” t-shirt he is wearing.

SCIENCE VS. REALITY

This article, “Stop The Scare Climate Models vs. Human Needs“, by Willie Soon and Christopher Monckton at masterresource.org, asks great questions about the trade offs involved in the discussion (actually it’s a monologue) about climate change. Here are some excerpts from the article.

“India’s Prime Minister Modi, ….. knows that a quarter to a third of India’s people – at least 300 million of its citizens – still have no electricity. In Bihar, four homes in five are still lit by kerosene. His priority is to turn the lights on all over India.”

“Electric power is the quickest, surest, cheapest way to lift people out of poverty, disease and subsistence agriculture, and so to stabilize India’s population, which may soon overtake China’s. Families that no longer have to worry about children dying before they are five, or need them to tend starvation-level crops, tend to downsize their families.”

“Not one climate model predicted the severe Indian drought of 2009, followed by the prolonged rains the next year – a rainfall increase of 40% in most regions. These natural variations are not new. They have happened for tens of thousands of years.”

“Models are not ready to predict the climate. Misusing computers to spew out multiple “what-if” scenarios is unscientific. Most of the fundamental problems in our immature understanding of climate have remained unresolved for decades. Some cannot be resolved at all. The UN’s climate panel admitted in 2001 what has been known for 50 years: because the climate is a “coupled, non-linear, chaotic object,” reliable long-term climate predictions are impossible.”

“Misuse of climate models as false prophets is costly in lives as well as treasure. To condemn the poorest of India’s poor to continuing poverty is to condemn many to an untimely death…..It is time to put an end to climate summits. Real-world evidence proves they are not needed.”

This entry was posted on October 2, 2014 at 11:56 pm and is filed under Econ. 101, Miscellaneous. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments.

Tags: Ales Epstein, Cleaner Environment, Climate Change Religion, Climate Change Science, Climate change Trade Offs, Econommics of Climate Change, People's Climate March, Robert Kennedy Jr. Climate High Priest, Science vs. Religion, UN Climate Summit, Wealth Creation