The Global Cooling Crisis

It may mean nothing, but average global temperatures actually fell last year by 0.6405°C. That is apparently almost the same amount temperatures have risen over the last 100 years. Does that mean global warming is over and we need to start getting ready for the new ice age that was being predicted in the 1970’s? Not so fast, but it will be interesting to hear theories explaining it.

Is global warming real? The evidence (last year’s anomaly aside) is that the planet is getting warmer. What is less clear to me is that this warming is due primarily to human activities. The global warming theory is that Co2 released by human activity has permeated the upper atmosphere and encircled the earth in a warming blanket. (I know because David Letterman explained it on his show last night.) This theory has almost reached the level of religious dogma and scientists that disagree are treated as blasphemers. But there are other theories, including for instance, that solar activity is the primary cause of climate fluctuation on Earth. According to this theory human activity might affect global temperatures, but only as a rounding error.

I am not qualified to tell you which theory is correct. But one thing does seem certain. As long as there has been climate on Earth, that climate has been changing. This was true long before there were homo sapiens using fire, much less building Cadillac Escalades. The real question is what can we do about it?

Economics is the study of the allocation of scarce resources. In, other words, there is not enough stuff in the world for everyone to have as much as they could ever possibly want. (Think of it this way, if they were selling 60” LCD HDTV’s at the 99 Cents store, how many would you buy?) So life is about choices. How and where do we spend money? There is also opportunity cost. For every choice we make there is another choice (or choices) we must pass up. Caps on Co2 emissions are not free. For instance, they make energy and automobiles more expensive. Requiring higher average fuel efficiency can also cost lives. One way to raise mileage is to make cars lighter, making them less safe in the event of an accident than a similarly safety featured vehicle with greater mass. There may be reasons other than global warming to put these mandates in place. But the recommendation of Al Gore and other leaders of the church of global warming will be expensive. As expensive as ruining the earth? Well no, certainly not.

But is that the real choice? Will adopting the Kyoto protocols end the threat of global disaster? No one can really say. But they would hurt our economy, cost us jobs and they may not have any measurable affect on global temperatures. The economic question is more properly this: Does it make more sense to spend money to attempt to freeze (pun unintended) climate change or to ADAPT to it.

How’s that for blasphemy?