In recent days, several stories have hit the presses regarding climate change and, more specifically, the future threat from rising sea levels. The EPA has just released a report on the potential impacts of sea level rise along the mid-Atlantic coast, while NASA’s Jim Hansen, apparently worrying that the economy is going to dominate the Obama administration’s attention, has cited rapidly rising sea levels as the primary basis for his warning that we only have four years to save the world.…
Continue ReadingThis summer, we had the entertaining spectacle of scions of the Rockefeller family joining with environmental activists such as Greenpeace to urge a change in ExxonMobil’s corporate governance, including redirecting their investment towards green technologies. Part of their argument was that research ‘proved’ that the world would need these new techologies and that they would be economically viable soon.…
Continue ReadingWhen I passed around my critique of William Nordhaus’s case for a carbon tax, a typical complaint was that I wasn’t a climate scientist, and so I had no business saying that some of the IPCC projections were possibly biased towards the alarmist side. Of course no one likes to be criticized, but I understood that it was a perfectly fair objection to raise. As an economist, I really wasn’t qualified to cast aspersions on the models of Jim Hansen and such.
So it is with great amusement that I watch the extreme global-warming crowd react to minor expressions of doubt coming from their previous allies in the context of a “green recovery.” Many economists who are completely sold on manmade climate change–and even think that it is important for the federal government to take quick action to curb the problem–are merely pointing out that the Obama Administration efforts to link this issue with the recession may be inefficient. …
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