Posts tagged…Emissions
You need a model?
Fri, Jul 04 2008I can't get a response out of the Garnaut Review website—probably overloaded—to download the Review report. But here's an extract from Prof Garnaut's address to the Press Club on a 'curious turn' in AGW 'dissent':
"The dissent took a curious turn in Australia in 2008, with much prominence being given to assertions that a warming trend had ended over the last decade. This is a question that is…
Read more…Climate Change, Trade and Competitiveness
Sat, Jun 14 2008The papers from a recent Brookings Institution conference on the trade, production and 'competitiveness' impacts of emissions controls and border-tax adjustments are now available (thanks to Simon Lester for the pointer). There's some evidence that border-tax adjustments related to 'carbon taxes' (at feasible rates) would be more trouble to administer and collect than they'd be worth.
Border-tax…
The net benefit of emissions controls
Tue, May 27 2008English mathematican Freeman Dyson, has reviewed Wm. Nordhaus' account of his economic models of emissions controls. Nordhaus claims that passive 'backstop' measures significantly outperform the catastrophists' preference for strangling carbon emissions. But, as Dyson points out, Nordahus has not considered the scientific merit of any of the controls he models and has not provided much detail of…
A foolish overreaction
Mon, Apr 07 2008Former UK Chancellor, Nigel Lawson, in the Financial Times.
"Over the past five years I have become increasingly concerned at the scaremongering of the climate alarmists, which has led the governments of Europe to commit themselves to a drastic reduction in carbon emissions, regardless of the economic cost of doing so. "("FT.com)
Solar-cycle link to cloud cover questioned
Fri, Apr 04 2008British scientists publishing this week in the Institute of Physics journal Environmental Research Letters cast doubt on the validity of a link between ionizing cosmic-ray radiation and low-level cloud cover. This is one of the mechanisms proposed for a solar-cyle link to climate variation. The paper is available here
The Garnaut Climate Review Interim Report—I’m not convinced
Fri, Feb 22 2008
My difficulty with the Interim report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review is that it is headed toward a recommendation that looks disproportionate to the climate risk.
Publicly available data on climate change does not seem to call for extreme measures such as a 70% to 90% cut in Australia's carbon emissions. This data has not been examined by the Garnaut team because it's not their business to…
The cost of the IPCC carbon target
Fri, Feb 15 2008
Italian energy economists report on the means of achieving the IPCC’s target of 550 ppm of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere by the second half of the 21st century. It implies a different world, poorer than we currently imagine, and visibly different too.
Click the image to see a larger version.
The full paper can be found here
“Given projected world population dynamics, this objective requires…
Best demolition of IPCC case on Climate
Thu, Jan 31 2008Dr Bob Carter, a geologist and paleontologist at James Cook and Adelaide Universities writes clear economical prose, provides good illustrations and extensive citations.
His paper The Myth of Dangerous Human-Caused Climate Change is a clever, very readable demolition job.
Design of a multilateral regime for emissions trading
Sat, Mar 10 2007
The most difficult questions about the management of climate change are not about taxes or trading but about the weakness of multilateral regimes. Their recent history should worry anyone who wants a global answer to a problem of managing a global commons.
In my submission to the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Emissions Trading I draw some lessons from the history of multilateral trade and…