August, 2008

Common Ground

by Jim Manzi
The Conversation
August 29th, 2008

I’d like to thank Cato Unbound for convening such an extended exchange of views on how to deal with climate change, and for giving me a platform for expressing my views on this subject.  I’d also like to thank Joseph Romm, Indur Goklany, Michael Shellenberger, and Ted Nordhaus for their extensive efforts in considering and [...]

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Romm’s Factually Challenged Smear of Conservatives

by Indur Goklany
The Conversation
August 29th, 2008

Joseph Romm asserts:
Goklany’s core point: the classic disingenuous conservative argument that there are better things to spend money on than climate mitigation. This argument assumes 1) there isn’t enough money to do everything whose benefits exceed their cost and 2) conservatives would actually support things like government-funded efforts to deal with “hunger, malaria, unsafe water, [...]

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The Earth is Okay with a 400-Foot Sea-Level Rise

by Indur Goklany
The Conversation
August 29th, 2008

Whether or not Goklany is OK with a 250-foot sea level rise (SLR) — thank you, Mr. Romm, for putting words in my mouth! — the earth is OK despite a 400-foot rise since the last ice age. This translates into an average SLR of 22 feet per 1,000 years. The peak rate of SLR [...]

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Only Inaction Is Costly

by Joseph Romm
The Conversation
August 29th, 2008

I think there is no point in further debunking the myth that unrestricted greenhouse gas emissions leads to tolerable impacts (or even a more optimal world). Even the incredibly centrist Brookings Institution now recognizes that:
The Earth is on a trajectory to warm more than 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit by around mid-century. Exceeding that threshold could trigger [...]

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Invest in America

Four years ago we argued in “The Death of Environmentalism” that greens didn’t need to win the debate over the relative seriousness of global warming in order to enact policies capable of dealing with it. At the time, that claim was viewed as paradoxical and even heretical. But further evidence has been provided here. While [...]

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Goklany Okay with 250-Foot Sea-Level Rise

by Joseph Romm
The Conversation
August 26th, 2008

Before I get to the classic disingenuous conservative argument that is the cornerstone of Goklany’s essay, I must first deal with one of the most astonishing statements ever seen in a serious climate debate. Goklany says:
… there is no guarantee that stabilizing CO2 at 450 ppm would optimize human or environmental well-being. For [...]

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Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Romm

by Jim Manzi
The Conversation
August 25th, 2008

I wrote an essay addressing the challenge of global warming. Joseph Romm subsequently raised four major objections in a response essay. I then reviewed why I believe that each of these four objections is misplaced. Mr. Romm has now responded by reiterating the first of these four objections. To review the bidding [...]

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Seven Points in Response to Romm

by Indur Goklany
The Conversation
August 25th, 2008

1. Romm’s faith in model results is not warranted, as noted in my previous post.
2. Romm’s argument is that in recent years annual emissions have been higher than assumed in the IPCC’s worst case (A1FI) scenario, and that we are on track to get to 1,000 ppm in 2100. However, [...]

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What Manzi Ignored and Why It Matters

by Joseph Romm
The Conversation
August 22nd, 2008

It is a bit tricky to respond to Manzi’s comments on my essay, because he chose to selectively ignore the evidence I presented and thus never rebutted my central points. So I will elaborate here on the discussion he ignored, since it goes to the heart of why he is wrong, why Goklany is [...]

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Reply to Shellenberger and Nordhaus

by Jim Manzi
The Conversation
August 21st, 2008

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus (for convenience, “S&N”) and I appear to agree on a lot that runs counter to environmental orthodoxy. At the level of practical policy recommendations, I believe that S&N:

Oppose a cap-and-trade system or similar regulatory structure to force reduction of [...]

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Reply To Indur Goklany

by Jim Manzi
The Conversation
August 20th, 2008

Indur Goklany and I seem to be in a state of violent agreement.
I view his response essay to be in large part an outstanding quantitative review of the human implications of the trade-offs between carbon dioxide emissions and economic growth. Goklany proceeds from the premise, which I share, that the primary reason we care [...]

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Reply to Joseph Romm

by Jim Manzi
The Conversation
August 20th, 2008

It appears to me that Joseph Romm makes four core arguments in response to my essay:
1. Manzi is wrong on the facts about IPCC projections for expected warming.
2. The consequences of the actual amount of warming that we expect to experience are [...]

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The New Climate Center: How Technology Could Create a Political Breakthrough

Michael Shellenberger and Ted Nordhaus describe what they see as a significant political realignment: Both left and right, they claim, are converging on a state-sponsored and technology-based solution to global warming, one that will emphasize clean energy and/or carbon sequestration technologies. They argue that the debate about climate modeling is largely irrelevant and/or unproductive, because these technologies are generally agreed to be important in their own right and to have positive economic effects regardless of the degree of severity of global warming. They call on policymakers to embrace a large-scale, state-funded effort to achieve these breakthrough technologies and argue that state sponsorship for technological advancement is, historically speaking, the engine of much progress and innovation. This, they argue, is a reason to embrace the same approach with regard to global warming.

Read: The New Climate Center: How Technology Could Create a Political Breakthrough